Aaron Johnston

One of the pleasures of listening to science fiction audiobooks over the years has been hearing Orson Scott Card's Ender series. Besides being expertly narrated by an ensemble led by Stefan Rudnicki, these audiobooks are entertaining because Card isn't delivering the same book over and over. In Earth Unaware, Orson Scott Card and Aaron Johnston take the series in yet another direction.

I know, I know. It's been proven time after time. When a book series gets to the point where [Original show more Author] picks up [Insert new author here (often a relative)], the results are just... not good. I'm happy to report that Earth Unaware is an excellent novel. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Aaron Johnston and Orson Scott Card created and are telling the story of the First Formic War in the comic format. I haven't read those, so I can't say how similar this novel is, but Aaron Johnston says in the Afterword that Earth Unaware draws from the characters and events in those comics.

The subtitle (First Formic War) implies that we're in for a military SF novel, but that's not what this is. This novel is a tense near-space adventure set in the not too distant future and peopled with characters I cared about. The opening reveals the thoughts and feelings of teenager on the El Calvador, a mining ship in the Kuiper Belt. Close by, on a different ship, is a man who has invested much time and effort into the invention of a gravity laser. He needs to prove his worth to his corporate employer. And back on Earth, an elite military unit is being formed. These lives, some entwined, move forward as normal until all interests are altered in the face of the arrival of an alien ship in the solar system.

Even though the cover doesn't say it, this is Book 1 of at least a few. I look forward to the continued development of the concept of difference. On Valentine Wiggin's Hierarchy of Foreignness is Varelse. True aliens, aliens so alien that we can't even communicate with them or even hope to understand them. How could war with such a race be avoided? Difference also extends to human beings, who seem so content to drop their conflicts in the face of greater danger. Why is that what it takes?

The audiobook is performed by multiple narrators in the style that fits Orson Scott Card's stories so incredibly well. The narrators (all excellent) change with the POV of the story. Reading the story were: Stefan Rudnicki, Stephen Hoye, Arthur Morey, Vikas Adam, Emily Janice Card, Gabrielle de Cuir, and Roxanne Hernandez. Top notch! show less

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Title: Earth Unaware
Series: Enderverse: First Formic War #1
Authors: Orson Card & Aaron Johnston
Rating: 4.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: SF
Pages: 323
Words: 131K

Synopsis:

From Wikipedia.org

A family of "free miners" show more living on the spaceship El Cavador is working an asteroid far out in the Kuiper Belt when they detect what appears to be an alien ship decelerating from near light speed as it approaches the solar system. Meanwhile, Lem Jukes, son and heir of the hard-driving founder of the largest mining corporation, is also in the remote region, far from the prying eyes of competitors, secretly testing a "glaser" (gravity laser) that promises to revolutionize mining. Back on Earth, Captain Wit O'Toole goes recruiting among the elite New Zealand Special Air Service for the even more select, multinational Mobile Operations Police (MOPs).

Jukes orders his ship to "bump" El Cavador from the asteroid the family is mining, as it is the only suitable one nearby for his test. During the violent collision, an El Cavador crewman is killed. The miners hack into the corporate ship's network, planting a message for Lem Jukes and downloading confidential files pertaining to the glaser. Jukes, fearful of a scandal involving the death of a free miner and the danger of the miners selling the confidential files to his competitors, sets out for Weigh Station Four, where he intends to plant a hacker to strip El Cavador's files.

El Cavador's transmission equipment having been destroyed in the bump, the crew are unable to warn another mining clan about the intruder, and can only watch helplessly as the alien pod destroys them. El Cavador rescues a few survivors. In the meantime, Victor and a few others modify a "quickship," an automated vessel normally used to send processed metals to Luna, to carry one person to warn Earth. When the pod attacks El Cavador, the men on the quickship ram and disable the pod using mining equipment. During the attack, the aliens emerge to battle the humans. Their physiology is revealed to be Formic (ant-like).

El Cavador heads to Weigh Station Four to use their laserline transmitter. As a backup, Victor volunteers to take a datacube with the evidence of the aliens' hostile intentions to Luna aboard the quickship. The journey is perilous, but their duty is clear.

Meanwhile, the Juke ship makes its way to Weigh Station Four, only to come under attack from roughnecks who recognize the crew as despised corporates. Several of the attackers are killed by Chubs, a man seemingly junior to Lem Jukes, but revealed as having been assigned by Ukko Jukes to protect him. The corporates are still able to leave behind a hacker to strip El Cavador's files, but the scheme becomes moot when the Formic ship destroys the station.

El Cavador sends a short-range, broad radio call and is able to contact the Juke ship and a Chinese mining vessel. El Cavador sends its women and children aboard the Chinese vessel, which is too small to help in the attack. The plan is to plant mining explosives along the hull of the alien ship. Unfortunately, one of them detonates early, drawing the attention of the Formics, who at first engage the humans wearing space suits, but subsequently attack without any protection. Seeing the battle go against them, Chubs withdraws Lem Jukes and his men and moves the corporate ship away, as the Formic ship destroys El Cavador.

Victor arrives at Luna, only to be largely ignored and confined for his illegal arrival. Meanwhile, Wit O'Toole prepares his MOPs for any situation, including what he thinks is a hypothetical alien attack. Victor is eventually assigned a case worker who believes his story and helps him transmit the evidence onto the Nets.

My Thoughts:

This was a thoroughly enjoyable read. While a collaboration between Card and Johnston, I suspect Johnston did the heavy lifting in terms of the writing itself. I have no problem with that though. In the intro Johnston talks about how he and Card had collaborated on this very story for comics and so that moving into novel territory wasn't much of a stretch.

I think the various characters were what made this a notch above the typical SF offering. It helps that in Ender's Game you got “characters” in spades, so this felt very much in tune with that. Lem Jukes makes for a great badguy/notbadguy. I felt sympathy for him while simultaneously wanting to take my Combat Knife to his guts.

I'm usually not a fan of multiple points of view, but with the authors limiting them to three, it gave me the overall view that needed to be seen. Being familiar with Ender's Game and the Enderverse, I've been curious how the world got to the point where we see it in Ender's Game. This first contact story sets the stage quite well. We get Lem Jukes and his corporate crew in space, Victor and the free miners in space and then Rackam Mazer and the MOPS on Earth.

This story is all about aliens coming to kill us and how we ignore that threat. Exciting and yet scary and tense at the same time. Perfect recipe for a great story.

★★★★✬ show less

It is possible to write an interesting fast paced adventure without having every protagonist endangered past any reasonable expectation of survival every time there is a conflict. However that's what this book sets you up for and well, it gets tedious when you know who will survive. OSC can do brains and planning and there is some, but this depends more on luck and impossibly fast and accurate engineering. An uneven ride.

In his afterword to this collaborative effort, Orson Scott Card almost gushes in his unbridled admiration for his co-author, ending with a mock plea that Johnston wait five years before he outsells Card's books. I'm here to say that I don't think Card has much to fear.

The story idea for this novel may originally have been Card's, and I have no reason to doubt his repeated insistence that the book was a "true collaboration" -- though there's a definite whiff of "I think the lady [or show more gentleman, in this case] doth protest too much" -- but the writing is nowhere near the quality of even Card's worst effort.

The book would make a good beach read -- fast-paced, undemanding, and very predictable. The characters are more caricatures than real people, and the plot seems culled from any number of C grade efforts from the SciFi channel.

A brilliant but crazed scientist has discovered how to tinker with the body's genetic blueprint (now that's a new and startling idea -- NOT). He forms a sort of New Age religious cult, with himself (brace yourself for a shock, here) as the Prophet. He's gathered a fanatical group of die-hard followers with superhuman powers around him, and although he and his devotees have done some good in the world by healing some folks with incurable genetic illnesses, his nefarious plan is to alter the human genome permanently. I told you the plot was derivative, didn't I?

Add to this standard mix the usual beautiful and brainy lady in distress, her small son, and a stalwart and good-looking male research scientist, stir well, and voila! You have your all too standard medical thriller.

Preston and Child did it better in Mount Dragon, while Dean Koontz created more believable and sympathetic characters in several of his similarly themed books. Card's name on the title, prominently blazoned above his collaborator's, drew me to check the book out of my local library; but I'm glad I didn't waste my hard-earned cash on this one.

Worth reading if you have an afternoon to kill, but not worth buying. show less