Night Sky Mine

This is an excellent LGBT novel – strong on relationships without sexual distractions; Scott's a Lambda-Award winner – and probably a lot better than I rated it at 2**, but I just don't care for cyberpunk and found all the "flora" and "fauna" of Scott's world confusing. Still, if cyberpunk is your thing, you'll probably find Scott's world-building quite good and rate Night Sky Mine a lot higher than the 2** I've perhaps ungenerously given it.

Melissa Scott is one of those authors that is very well know in the field, but never became well know outside of the science fiction world.

In this story, humanity has taken to the stars. Corporations run the stations, governments control the planets, and travellers belong to non of this, doing there own thing, buying, selling, and bartering as they travel across the universe.

Additionally, "Hammals", semi-living, wild computer code, live in the spaces of the the computers. They can be useful, if you know how to make them safe, or they can destroy code, if ever let out of the wild space they live in. Ista is training to be a Hypothecary, someone who goes out to the wildnets looking for useful programs.

Its a good story - written in 1996, show more we have a diverse group of people, from the gay couple of Rangsey and Tarasov, to the dark skinned Ista. This world is not white, and for the most part, a person is judged on their family and corporations, not the color of their skin.

However, the book isn't perfect. I found it a bit wandering - not always knowing what is happening. Rangsey and Trasov's relationship felt more like close roommates, than a couple. I'm not sure if it because of the time the book was written, or if Scott wasn't that interested in writing relationships that was more sexual.

The first quarter of the book was all over the place. Jumping between the characters perspective was difficult to follow. On top of it, I kept getting them confused, especially Rangsey and Trasov. Once the book settled, it was a solid story. Characters started making sense, the narrative was interesting, and the setting was both familiar and not-familiar. Scott managed to make a fairly typical corporations vs free society story, but added her own twist on it.

The book was written in 1996. And, at times, the technology felt old. But the wildnet makes sense. Scientists are already trying to get programs to write themselves, and with some applications being millions of lines of code- code becoming "Wild" has truth to it.

So, ultimately, a very good book, one that isn't quite up to snuff for a classic, but it should be read anyway. show less

The world building in this is very, very dense – it reminds me of CJ Cherryh – which made it hard for me to get into to start with, but the effort is certainly repaid by the end of the book. The plotline, in itself, was perhaps a bit simplistic in retrospect: at the beginning of the book we hear about an evil mythological creature that will destroy the world, and sure enough that's the great threat our heroes must face. Likewise the solution is handed to them. Admittedly these coincidences are explained, but if you're looking for clever twists and turns, this probably won't satisfy you; it's a more straightforward, but thorough, exploration of the world and some of the people in it.

Series Info/Source: This is a stand alone book. I bought a copy of this book.

My Summary (2/5): Overall I didn’t get through even the first chapter of this book...soooo. I probably don’t even deserve to write a review of it. However, I felt like since Scott was one of the authors I was most excited to read this year I should say something.

This book was incredibly dense and packed with a ton of sci-fi people, places, and things that are not explained at all. I only read the first 20 pages of this book but I think with all the re-reading and going back and forth trying to figure out what was going on, it took me nearly an hour to read that. I just did not have the energy for this. The first part was incredibly dense, a huge info dump, show more and still confusing as heck. I tried and I don’t have the energy to continue. I applaud those who made the effort to finish this, but based on reviews I’ve read things weren’t going to get better...so done is done. show less

Ista Kelly, the main character, is an apprentice hypothecary, licensed experts who harvests wild computer programs and analyzes code in the wildnet. At age two, Ista was the sole survivor of a mineship attack, and was adopted by her rescuer. Because she has no known parentage, she is not a legal citizen, and longs for this belonging. Meanwhile, a new mineship is attacked and a powerful governmental investigator recruits two local policemen (Rangsey and Tarasov) to pose as new age gypsies to find answers, where security forces are not welcome. Ista ask a school friend to help, hoping this work will lead to citizenship. When the two teenage girls use Ista’s friend’s father access credentials they flee with the investigators in their show more spaceship to find answers and avoid arrest. Good characters, but the worldbuilding was too complex, at least for me. show less

Loved this when it first came out, seems like it's holding up so far.

Night Sky Mine involves a society where computer programs have their own biology and biosphere, so must be carefully regulated, with only licenced experts allowed to deal with them, and trading in them is a crime. A young woman is apprenticed to one of these practitioners, and becomes involved in a case that two of the local police end up investigating.

A nearby asteroid complex has been abandoned, and no-one knows why. The police think there are higher corporate and political forces at work, here, and set out to discover what is going on.

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