Take Back Plenty

Greenland, Colin. Take Back Plenty. 1990. Tabitha Jute No. 1. SF Gateway, 2013.
In most space operas, human beings find some way to travel to the stars and either create or join a galactic civilization. In Take Back Plenty, Colin Greenland turns these memes upside down. The aliens have come to us, filling the solar system with extraterrestrial visitors of several species. They have also told us to stay home in the Sol system. Thus, there is interstellar trade and culture, but human colonies are outclassed by large-scale alien habitats. Our heroine, Tabitha Jute, is the owner of a small freighter who makes a marginal living as a trader. The freighter has a damaged AI, called Alice Liddell, after the little girl who inspired Alice in show more Wonderland. To keep it sane, Tabitha tells it stories, some fictional and some from her own past. The main plot begins when Tabitha contracts with a fast-talking, seductive impresario to take him to an alien space habitat called Plenty to pick up his cabaret troupe. Adventure ensues. Tabitha has a well-developed personality with more depth to her character than we usually adventure heroines. The conversations between Tabitha and Alice are charming. The alien menagerie is complex and well-detailed. I don’t know what the competition was, but I am not surprised that Take Back Plenty won the Arthur C. Clarke Award. I plan to read the other two volumes of the trilogy. 4 stars. show less

This wasn't earth-shattering by any stretch, but it was extremely enjoyable. I was going to go straight onto the second one in the trilogy, unfortunaltely it gets really abyssmal reviews(on Amazon at least) so I'm now not at all sure I'll be reading it at all. I can't even bring myself to just skip the second and go onto the third, since that one only gets average reviews and says the first book is a lot better anyway.

Still, this one was good. Tabitha Jute is a well written character and her companions are interesting(especially the cherub). I'm not sure how it managed to pick up two awards in the same year, or even in any year. It's not that it's a bad read, it isn't, but I'm sure there are more deserving reads out there. I was in just show more the right frame of mind for a bit of pulpy science fiction though so that helped my enjoyment.

Very good read. Worth your time. show less

http://nhw.livejournal.com/598430.html

Pretty good (as you would hope for a book that won both the Arthur C Clarke and BSFA awards). Well above-average space opera, feisty female protagonist, solar system where humanity is vying for space and influence with various alien species (like Stephen Baxter's Xeelee sequence but less depressing). Mild rewriting of history to allow us Mars as desert planet with breathable atmosphere and Venus as tropical hell. Generally good fun. Will probably read the other two.

A solar system space opera. Humans and some aliens are confined to the Solar System by an advanced alien race called the Capellans. Space barge pilot Tabitha Jute and her ship the Alice Liddell are down on their luck on Mars. Tabitha falls in with some disreputable characters and a simple mission spirals into something which changes the entire system.

Oh boy. Look at all three covers of this trilogy - note the wildly different styles. Note too the name of Tabitha Jute's ship: The Alice Liddell." If you're ready for a bizarre ride, go for it. It took me much too long to read this, the first of the three, and I'm not going to read the others."

Colin Greenland presumably fed on influences such as Samuel Delany and Alfred Bester (and perhaps the film Dark Star), but what he came up with has his own style, his own characters, and his own fairly complex plot.

He’s not a great prose stylist (though he does try, sometimes a little too hard); but there’s nothing wrong with his imagination, and all he really has to do is to describe what he sees with it; which he can do.

What he sees is the future solar system from the point of view of one of its more lowly inhabitants. Tabitha Jute was born and brought up on the Moon, if you really must know; she doesn’t much care to be reminded of it. She has little education and no outstanding abilities. Partly by luck, she’s the proud owner show more of an elderly space­going barge with which she ferries freight around the solar system; when she can get a job, that is.

The human race as a whole has been rather demoralized by the arrival of a number of alien races, all with better-than-human technology and some with better-than-human intelligence, but mostly rather unpleasant as individuals. The solar system from Tabitha’s point of view is sometimes colourful but often rather squalid, like city life as we know it but more so.

Intrigue is brewing and she gets sucked into it, by accident and entirely against her will, becoming involved with a small troupe of travelling freaks who put on a cabaret act as a front for more shady activities; the true nature of what’s going on becomes apparent only very gradually. In the course of her rather painful and uncomfortable adventures, we discover that this very ordinary woman has considerable determination under pressure, is instinctively kind to people when she’s not in a bad temper, and comforts her ship—the Alice Liddell—by telling it stories. The ship likes stories, though it would be even more grateful for some urgent repairs and proper maintenance.

Tabitha is slovenly and sometimes rude, but likeable in her own way, and generally believable as a character.

The story is somewhat uneven: there are parts that don’t ring true and should have been rewritten. The business with the Capellans near the end reads more like a comic than a novel. However, these are relatively minor flaws. It’s a colourful and original work of imagination.

Although I admire the book in principle, I give it only three stars because (a) it does have some defects and (b) in practice I don’t enjoy it enough to reread it often. show less