Soothsayer

Mike Resnick has taken a few archetypes, added a couple of interesting twists and a vexing moral question, set the whole thing in a science fiction universe (though it could have worked just as well as an ancient Greek drama), and conjured an entertaining story that compels your attention throughout.

Using archetypes is always fun and a guaranteed attention-getter because, of course, the archetypes represent aspects of the human character; we can easily find their cognates within ourselves. In the case of Soothsayer, the fulcrum of the story is focussed on a little girl, Penelope. She is a pre-cog - she sees the future. This is not a surprising capability for a character in a science fiction novel; it has been done many times. But show more Resnick adds in the caveat that Penelope can see how different sets of conditions can produce different futures. She then chooses the future that she prefers and, recursively, sets up the conditions for that future to occur. One of the questions the story ponders is if this always a good or a bad thing. From an archetypal and philosophical perspective, is there a moral justification for the application of free will toward a purely personal objective when that action affects many other people as well? While this story has been compared to Firefly, I find much stronger parallels to Star Trek, which wasn't afraid to take on archetypes and moral questions either. ( I love speculative and science fiction! Don't you?)

Other characters/archetypes that play a major role in the story are "Mouse", a small thief with a heart of gold - she's a good person who is ruled by love; the "Iceman", who is really the opposite of the Mouse - he chooses his actions based on an entirely objective analysis; emotion plays no part in his decisions. Finally, there is the "Forever Kid", who has lived over two centuries and is a killer who is mostly looking for a way to die, himself. Resnick has fun with the names of the bit players who fill out his universe: Friday Nellie, Bet-a-World Murphy, Backbreaker Ben Ami, Sally the Blade, Cemetery Smith and a slew of others.

And so the characters are put in place and they flit from world to world with no real attention being given to the enabling technology - the characters are the story. Most of the characters are out to kidnap Penelope, the pre-cog, and use her to gain fortune and power, with the exception of Mouse and a couple of others who try to protect her. But the other big kicker, the one that really provides a deeper perspective on the morality of pre-cognition, is that as the little girl matures, her innocence morphs, and her motivations for deciding one future is preferable to another change.

Wondering how Resnick will resolve the conflicts caused by the archetypal inner drives of the characters and their fascinating interactions with each other will keep the reader staying up way past her bedtime - a quite enjoyable and entertaining insomnia!

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. show less

So what if you could see the multiple paths that the future can take? This would make you a very important person to many dangerous people. But, what if you could actually affect the future? That is the subject of this great story by Mike Resnick.

What makes this story so good, is that this little girl has the ability to affect the future. She doesn't do it by manipulating people or anything like that, but by simply looking into the different paths, and taking action in to works best. In most times, it just means moving to the left or right, so it appears through a series of coincidences, that this little girl is the luckiest girl around. Where other authors have used this ability before in their protagonist, this is the first where show more this ability is truly thought out. Which brings you to the ultimate question, is this little girl just a sad unfortunate being, or she the most dangerous person in the universe? show less

This is the first book of the Oracle trilogy and serves to set the stage for what is still to come in the following novels. In this story we are introduced woman who calles herself Mouse as she stumbles across a young girl named Penelope while doing a job. Mouse takes Penelope uner her wing to try and protect her from those who would do her harm. As we follow the two through this western-themed, muti-world chase, we learn that Penelope has an unique ability to peer into the future and see all of its possibile outcomes. This allows her to select the best outcome of nearly any situation and then choose her actions to achieve it.

An easy read, it is largely the dialogue between the characters carry us through the story. I find it is rare show more for an author use this technique as effectively as Resnick does here. He uses it so effectively that I felt as if I was witnessing the events and hearing the characters interact right in front of me.

Not many of the characters are developed very well, but as mentioned before, and the ending seems a bit abrupt. As I hinted at earlier, I don't think this is meant to stand on its own, I think that Resnick is merely setting the stage for what is to come and from that persepective, the book does a good job of that. The full story is built up in this first installment and I'm looking forward to seeing it play out in the following volumes.

I was given a copy of the book in exchange for an honest review. I DO plan on purchasing the next two installments to see how it all turns out. show less

Mouse, a world class thief, who robs people while her partner peforms a magic show, stunbles across a little girl

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