Richard C. Meredith (1937–1979)

Classic space-opera is a hard sell, often being rather clumsy, outdated and downright uncool, but Richard C. Meredith's We All Died at Breakaway Station has aged better than most. It has one of the best titles (and prologues) I've ever come across, and its story is compelling. A ragtag collection of resurrected battlefield soldiers must defend, Thermopylae-like, a lonely outpost in space which has been threatened by a fleet of alien warships. The story can sometimes be rather slouchy; show more shallow in its characterisation and less than clear in the finer details of its plot, but like its soldier protagonists it manages to hold it together. Against all odds, this is a respectable showing. show less

(Original Review, 1980-09-13)

"We All Died at Breakaway Station" was written by Richard C. Meredith.

As Dewey Henize mentioned, [V2 #74] one of the main characters was a disembodied brain, or rather a person who had lost his human body in warfare, and was re-fitted with a spaceship or space station to control. Extensive use was made throughout the story of highly developed prosthetic and electronic implant technology, as well as "cold sleep" (hibernation) for transporting injured people. The show more technology was not really a main focus of the story, however. The narrative describes a group of people in a supporting role in a rather desperate survival-type interstellar war between humans and an alien species. "Breakaway Station" is a medical, communications, and supply facility which accidentally achieves an important role.

Warning: "Breakaway Station" is a strong and vivid book about people at the limits of stress, and as such, can be quite stressful to read.

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Side Issue, intended to provoke further discussion:

I remember a lot of the plot of "Breakaway Station" which vitally/ depended/ on the medical or spaceflight technology for motivation of the personal interactions of the people portrayed. (Okay, so the disembodied starship pilot is an extreme case...) It seems to me that the same general situation could have been set up under other, non-SF, circumstances, such as an aircraft carrier in the South Pacific during WW-2. Many of the same conditions of technological warfare: bodily damage, difficult (long-range) communications and logistics, etc. would apply, and the psychological reactions could be similar, although occurring in a different cultural setting. It seems to me that "What If"s in the medical and interstellar technologies were in a separate layer of the novel from the issues of warfare and personal interaction while under stress.

The issue I want to raise is:

What themes can be dealt with in SF, that are not mappable to historical fiction, fairy tales, "westerns", "war stories", etc. The mapping consists of being able to imagine a similar story where similar characters and actions would be motivated by circumstances acceptable to the particular genre.

Several possibilities come to mind:

- "rivets" stories where the primary topic is a hypothetical engineering or technological idea which can only be developed in a future setting requiring extensions of our present technology, and where the people in the story are not strongly characterized and exist to operate and explain the technological goings-on to each other while we (the readers) listen.

- "soft rivets" stories which are primarily concerned with the "What Ifs of people’s lives in an environment based on a different technology, such as space colonies.
- "time travel/paradox" stories. (Some overlap with fairy tales, fantasy.)

- "alien culture" stories, which explore the limits of what it is to live a life truly different from ours (not just green skin), or of interactions of a culture similar to ours with an alien one.

Involved are issues of what gives a life meaning and what gives a culture stable existence. I keep having the feeling that if a writer managed to space out far enough to imagine a culture truly/ different from ours and novelize it, the story would be totally incomprehensible to us. (Seemingly random actions.)

WE ALL DIED AT BREAKAWAY STATION was by Richard Meredith, the late, lamented, intelligent libertarian who also wrote THE SKY IS FULL OF SHIPS; RUN, COME SEE JERUSALEM; AT THE NARROW PASSAGE; NO BROTHER, NO FRIEND; and others. Not one of the best writers, but consistently capable and occasionally thought-provoking; generally very pessimistic in tone. show less

I am glad to have read this minor classic of science fiction, but I do have mixed feelings about it. I had hoped (and expected) it would be better. What is excellent about this novel is the basic story it tells. It is a timeless story of terribly injured men and women in battle against impossible odds, most of whom are willing to fight to the very last, all to protect an irreplaceable communication station and give earth a better chance of defeating an alien enemy. Like Spock sacrificing show more himself when the needs of the many outweighed the needs of the one, the choice is made. It is a heroic story by the end. Getting there has some rough spots, however. We learn the backstories of a number of characters, and we are inside the head of the overwrought, angst-ridden, and severely injured captain of the starship Iwo Jima a lot. Probably too much, but on the other hand some side stories in the book weren't as interesting.

I remind myself the story is over 40 years old so the writing and thoughts do betray more than a bit of dating. The writing, to me, seems to get rather weak in places, even groan inducing. The dialogue, even for the times, could have been a lot better. So this comes in as a low-average novel for me, even considering when it was written. show less

This is a war story thru and thru-- but it was grit and pain and loss. The title says it all: They ALL died at Breakaway Station. For a kid, it was a chilling read. For an adult, it's a sobering account of men and war, following orders and dying-- without the heroics, the super cyber-enhancements, the obligatory sex scenes and hand cannons blazing. The story tech is only a little dated-- but subordinated to the story, thus timeless