Outcasts of Heaven Belt

Joan Vinge has said this is an homage to the classic Bret Hart story, "Outcasts of Poker Flats." Instead of the wilderness of the Sierra Nevada Mountains during the gold rush, this wilderness is a solar system that is barely habitable, but whose resources, like the California gold, are sought with desperation. In the Bret Hart story, the outcasts are forced out of Poker Flat because they would not follow the strict rules the townspeople set to help maintain peace. In this area, the Vinge story is more complicated than the Hart because the outcasts actually left their original home to seek resources and help from the Heaven system. Unfortunately, the Heaven system has had a civil war and both sides cast out the newcomers because they are show more sure those folks are from "the other side." Bret Hart's outcasts are mostly a group of people that are forced down a slippery slope of one bad luck situation to another. Vinge's outcasts have similar luck, but some of it is forced by the rivalry and desperation of the two sides of the Heaven folks. show less

This is a fine space adventure, with more depth than I expected. With her own world struggling to survive, the main character travels to Heaven's Belt with her family, expecting to fine a rich world full over resources and assistance. What she finds is a fracture realm, full of suffering and death and desperation.
While the book is short, the story has surprising complexity and depth. The world-building is rich, the characters well-rounded, and the plot fast-paced. There was a nice balance between the internal conflict and external action, with realistic conflict creating intriguing tension. Worth reading if you enjoy space adventures, good characters, and imaginative plot.

Ironic, isn't it; that we began with everything and Morningside with nothing … and look who failed."
"We almost failed too-more than once." Betha stared at the wall, looking through time. "So did Uhuru, and Hellhole, and Lebensraum. But we had help."
"From where?"
"From each other. Planets like Morningside are so marginal any small setback becomes a disaster … but they're the most common kind of habitable world; they're all like Morningside in our volume of space. But our worlds are within reach of one another. We set up a trade ring, and when one of us falls flat, the rest pick it up and put it back together. And that's how we survive. That's all we do; we survive. But it's enough … it'll have to be enough forever, now that our show more journey here has failed.
"We have our own ironies, you know.… Morningside was settled after a major political upheaval on Earth. Our nearest neighbor now, Uhuru, was settled by some of our former ‘enemies' after their own empire on Old Earth fell. Need makes stranger bedfellows than politics ever did."

When a ship from a group of self-sufficient but poor planets travels to the asteroid based society of Heaven Belt desperately hoping to set up trade agreements with a much richer society, the Rangers is attacked as soon as it enters the system, and the surviving crew find out that a civil war has left the societies of Heaven Belt disunited and on the brink of disaster.

The Ranger's crew didn't go all out for revenge after losing members of their family, and I liked the themes of co-operation and finding non-violent solutions to life-threatening problems. The scene at the end when the factions were in stand-off and I didn't know whether they would wait for the votes from the Demarchists (an absolute democracy) to come in was incredibly tense, but the book was over really quickly after that, leaving me wanting more. I see there is a related novella called "Legacy", so I will have to get hold of a copy. show less

This is a shelf of books that, counter to most popular fiction, offer nonviolent solutions to their plots.

First up, this 1982 novel about a desperate attempt to establish interstellar trade between colonies that have lost touch with Earth is really a good story of creative nonviolence used to avert war and arrive at a win-win solution to a multitude of problems. It's also a good read with sympathetic characters and surprising plot twists.

Joan Vinge has had a particular strand of stories dealing in the collapse of a technic civilisation and this is clearly in that strand.

The known planets are pretty marginal places barely self-sufficient to survive the occasional bad times. But they have banded together and have just enough surplus to send out a mission to fabled Heaven Belt that was fabled to have untold riches. However, It's suffered a civil war and with no habitable planet in the system, Heaven's populations have it hard. The survivors are largely split into two groups; the Demarchy, with its ubiquitous communications and the Socialist holdouts of Snows-of-Salvation.

Both sides want the Ranger and neither side would let the other have her.

You can't tell at all from reading it, but this is set in Vernor Vinge's zones of thought universe, and parts of it are supposed to be co-written by him. So, interesting for that, and for being Joan Vinge's first novel.

Terrific stuff - does just what it says on the tin.