When Heaven Fell

The universe is a dark and ugly place in William Barton's decidedly unromantic military space opera in which mankind's own troubled history of fascism and exploitation is set on a galactic stage. A devastated Earth reduced to slave labour and police states is but one of thousands of worlds taken over by the ancient cybernetic "Master Race" who operate by the credo "submit or die" (and they do indeed have the technology to turn any planet into a smoking ball of slag). But the Master Race relies on their organic subjects to carry out their assault operations and this is the story of one such recruit, Earthling Athy Morrison of North Carolina. A thoroughly unlikeable character, Morrison has few qualms about staging bloody pogroms against show more uncooperative races before returning home to bed his "burdars" (indentured sex workers)...all the while justifying his actions with the same excuse used for centuries by those who would cozy up to tyrants: "I was just following orders". Sex and violence go hand in hand in Barton's narrative with his protagonist using the former as a panacea for the bad vibes brought on by the latter. But while the erotic passages are both explicit and plentiful they eventually take on a pathetic sheen, Morrison's juvenile couplings becoming increasingly mechanical as he struggles to suppress a conscience grown more troubled with each atrocity he commits. Employing an intense writing style Barton mixes passages of poetic clarity with moments of unflinching brutality as he ruminates on exploiters vs the exploited, conquerors vs the conquered, and those who would resist oppression vs those who stand to gain by collaborating with the oppressor. The politics of this slash-and-burn colonialism are not so simply divided into good and evil however for Morrison's tale is recounted in frustrating shades of grey as he tries to find the lesser evil in a universe that at times seems to contain nothing but evils. So is he an unflinching pragmatist? a grimly determined survivor? or a special kind of psychopath? The only drawback I found was the character of Morrison's childhood sweetheart, Alix, with whom he tries to reconnect. Described mainly in terms of her sexual attributes, Alix is presented as a needy doormat onto which Morrison's own feelings of ambivalence are projected---she eventually does find her voice but by then it's too little too late. Overall a gut-churning and at times infuriating read (for all the right reasons) filled with bizarre aliens and exotic worlds frustratingly devoid of heroes. "When Heaven Fell" is a book whose dark vision is only broken by the slimmest ray of hope and even that is uncertain at best, but it's still enough to give us one of science fiction's more poignant closing sentences. show less

One of the most disturbing science fiction novels I've ever read. A first-person look at a man who collaborates with alien overloads after their invasion of earth. As David Brin noted in his review, it's a look at the psychology of the capo, the collaborator.