Antares Dawn (1986) by Michael McCollum
Antares Passage (1987) by Michael McCollum
Antares Victory (2002) by Michael McCollum
Reviewed by psikeyhackr
The first two books of the Antares
Trilogy came out in the 80's but Antares Victory was not released until 2002 so
I reread the first two books to refresh my memory. Michael McCollum is an
aeronautical engineer and this clearly shows in his descriptions of the
starships. McCollum uses what he calls foldspace which is effectively the same
as what Lois McMaster Bujold calls jump points but McCollum goes into a much
more detailed explanation of it. This could be regarded as somewhat silly,
going into details about non-existent physics, but I found it both interesting
and amusing. But this type of FTL travel has the same effect on military
tactics in the McCollum universe as it does in the Bujold universe. These
choke points of travel between star systems must be defended and attacked which
tends to wreak carnage upon the attackers. McCollum has aliens fighting
humans instead of humans vs. humans as in Bujold's universe.
The interspecies war begins
because the giant star Antares goes supernova and disrupts the topology of
foldspace. This brings humans and aliens into contact. So McCollum
spends some time explaining the physics of stars which can be quite educational
to someone who didn't know stars could explode. Frankly, I consider that
a worthwhile part of the book and a strong reason to encourage kids to read
them. How can you tell if a ten year old might turn into an
astronomer or astrophysicist with just a little nudge in a direction s/he
didn't know existed?
Antares Dawn opens on a
distant colony world which has only recently learned about the nova because it
was so far away. The massive stellar explosion caused it to be completely
cut off through its only foldpoint to a star near the nova. Since it was
more than 100 light years from Antares they had no idea why they were cut off
but in McCollum's physics the passage of the speed of light shockwave from the
nova reactivates their connection. Thus begins their adventure of
learning what happened to humanity and the new state of interstellar politics.
Antares Passage is how the
adventurers find their way to Earth via a circuitous route and learn how bad
the war with the aliens is really going.
Antares Victory came out much
later than the first two books. Of course the humans will be victorious
over the pernicious aliens but it is all about how our intrepid hero does the
deed. The trouble with aliens is that, they're alien. Too many
aliens are just humans that look different but McCollum does a fair job of
having his think a bit differently also.
I might give these books four
stars but the trouble with this star count rating system for books is that it
is unidimensional. The SCIENCE is a factor which can be totally separate
from the quality of the story. Today I would admit that I like Bujold's
stories significantly more than McCollum's, but I don't think that would have
been true 40 years ago. I am not going to open 3 encyclopedias today to
learn more about what a writer is talking about in a story. Today if I am
sufficiently interested in that area of science or technology I probably
already know as much as I would learn quickly from an encyclopedia. But
40 years ago those short articles expanded my perspective of the
universe. I would easily have rated Antares Dawn as far better than
Komarr in bygone days. Komarr is quite likely the most scientific
of Bujold's Vorkosigan series. It involves the scientific investigation
of a collision in space that might actually be sabotage. But Bujold
creates far more interesting and textured characters with trickier plot twists
than McCollum so the evaluation of the two is a choice of writing versus
science. So the reader needs to learn what he likes and sci-fi
enthusiasts need to classify their SF better. At the very least the
science and the writing should be evaluated separately.