Coyote (2002)

Trickster Tale from the American Southwest

Coyote is a novel told in 8 parts. I have read a couple of short stories set in the Coyote milieu and other short stories written by Steele and enjoyed them quite a bit so I wanted to tackle the novels at some point. Coyote is built off of a number of stories previously published, and I had some old familiarity from having read parts of this in some issues of Asimov's Science Fiction magazine a decade ago. It was much better reading this in sequence.

Overall I consider this an average novel, but I enjoyed this book well enough that I want to read the later novels in this series. The episodic nature of this story made it very easy to read. This is basically a space colony story with political overtones, especially in the beginning. The story begins in the year 2070. The United States no longer exists, having had a "second revolution" and is now fractured. Looking at some reviews by others on the net I see a huge variation in likes and dislikes. Some favorite parts are what others hate. Some people are really bent out of shape by some of the politics in the book, or at least what was implied. Note to self: When I write my great science fiction novel I will not name the space shuttles in my totalitarian police-state country the "George Wallace" or the "Jesse Helms". I will also not rename Cape Canaveral/Kennedy "Gingrich".

I won't discuss the storylines. Some of the characters in the story are a little cartoonish, and the character development for some was OK and for several here really failed for me, which caused me a bit of trouble keeping track of who was who. I liked the first part of the novel, before the starship arrives at the planet Coyote the best, and felt it bogged down quite a bit with the initial colonization. I did find most of the storylines interesting and involving as a reader. The plusses in this book are more than the few minuses. There are some surprises that stretch things a bit, but I'm glad I read it. ( )

I hadn’t heard of Allen Steele before picking the three coyote books up in Oxfam but I gotta say I rather enjoyed this novel (or is it a collection of short stories set in the same world?) I especially enjoyed the two stories (The Days Between & Lonesome and a Long Way From Home) that deal with being alone; whether it be alone on a spaceship or alone in a unexplored and dangerous new world. It all felt a little like some of the boys own adventure stuff I loved as a kid; Lost World, Journey to the Centre of the Earth etc. I also liked the political aspects and the pioneering spirit and how the book ended. All in all I’m looking forward to the next instalment…. ( )

Read this on M's suggestion. I liked it, I'd read a lot of Steele's stuff when I used to read Sci Fi. This isn't really as much Sci Fi as pioneering. I totally don't see the Robert Heinlien connection, I think its more like Mark Twain's Roughing It. ( )

I’ve previously enjoyed a few of Allen Steele short stories (most memorably the wonderful “The Death of Captain Future”), but this was my first novel from this author.

Steele is an effective storyteller who keeps the action moving, gives us reasonably natural dialogue, and captures the sense of wonder that is such an important element of this sort of book. The plot is driven by a nice balance between a steady stream of surprises thrown at the party by their new environment, and the inevitable inter-party human tensions that would crop up in such a setting. While there are hard science elements, the book is more an adventure saga than a serious exploration of how the first human interstellar colony might fare. It felt to me like a bit more relaxed take on the issues explored in the Niven/Barnes/Pournelle novel The Legacy of Heorot.

The chapters in this book had all been previously published as short stories, leaving the book with a mosaic novel feel. To my surprise I found the second story, “The Days Between,” the tale of a lone crew member who is irretrievably awakened while everyone else sleeps on in hibernation, to be the best part of the book.

Having said all that, I found basic plot elements of this book wildly implausible. This government wouldn’t have undertaken this mission, and no government not facing an Armageddon scenario would have sent such a mission with so few human, scientific, and physical resources, and hence so little margin for error. I also found it implausible that the colonists would make so little effort to explore and understand their new home. The characterization is fairly pedestrian, with Wendy and Carlos being the only characters given any depth.

Still, I’m definitely interested enough to move on to book 2. ( )