Halcyon Drift

In this first novel of the 'Hooded Swan' stories, the space pilot Grainger is rescued from a deserted planet after an accident which left him marooned and his engineer dead. And in the meantime, Grainger has picked up an alien mind parasite who, during the course of the novel, begins to get as sardonic as Grainger is cynical.

After his rescue (which he ends up liable for the costs of), Grainger is manouevered into taking a job piloting a new type of starship on a hazardous mission. Along the way, we find out much more about Grainger, the various people who form his small crew, and the interesting - if resolutely Seventies - galaxy they inhabit.

I read this novel as a part of an omnibus edition of all six 'Hooded Swan' novels, 'Swan show more Songs', from the now defunct UK small press publisher Big Engine. Stableford contributes an introduction which sets the writing of these novels and their publication into context, both with his life at the time and with the SF publishing scene. Nowadays, this novel would probably have been straight to ebook publication; but back in the Seventies, there were some publishers out there with a schedule to meet and a target of books to publish. Those were the days, and there were plenty of writers who got their start in professional writing that way.

As a journeyman work, 'Halcyon Drift' shows promise, as long as you aren't looking for star smashing adventure. Stableford had an interesting line in technobabble - as a biologist turned sociologist, he had a sufficiently broad education in the soft sciences to lace the sciencey talk with terminology that for once did not come out of physics - and his view of the various races in the galaxy is at the same time both hard-boiled but sympathetic. His hero, Grainger ("...we never knew his first name, but then again he wasn't the sort of man to have one", as Peter Tinniswood once said) is a cynical, hard-boiled sociopath with a penchent for dry one-liners, straight out of Central Casting. Still, it made a change from the super-competant heroes of most space operas. And the descriptions of the Drift itself, as well as some of the other worlds encountered, sometimes veer off into the surreal.

It is these things that make 'Halcyon Drift' a most unusual space opera, and these are the things that will keep me reading on into the second novel in the sequence. show less

An absolute favourite. First read over forty years ago and still great after the latest read (third or fourth reading).
A fascinating setting, with a compelling lead character. The story line was great, well paced and the scientific descriptions were informative as opposed to a grind to plough through. The Hooded Swan is a beautifully painted spaceship, and the details enthral and fascinate.
A great book, one that leaves a feeling of regret when finished, because quality like this is so hard to find.

We don’t read classic scifi because it contains flawlessly crafted gems that have stood the test of time— it doesn’t. Classic scifi is choppy, broken, poorly structured, and while showing us possible futures does more to reveal the blind spots in our past. Anyway—this book has heart and many good qualities, and it’s exactly what I’d expect from a falling apart paperback with an artsy cover in a used bookstore. If that sounds like your kind of thing, dive in!

After being marooned on a planet within the Halcyon Drift, Grainger, our intrepid anti-hero is rescued and the wheels of a plotline are set into motion. Grainger is a rather arrogant, surly and unpleasant individual, but he's also a most excellent pilot - so excellent that he's selected (against his wishes) to fly a prototype spaceship into the core of the Halcyon Drift to find the wreckage of the ship "The Lost Star". After it went down 80 years ago, the Lost Star has become something of an urban myth and lately several groups have gotten very, very interested in finding the wreckage and laying claim to the contents of her hold.

Unfortunately for Grainger, no one but him has a chance in hell of finding the wreck and making his way back show more out again. And that ends up putting a very large target on his chest.

I really enjoyed this little book. The human/spaceship integration was very interesting and seems like it may have been a precursor to 'The Matrix' with it's human/machine interface. I also liked Grainger - for all his gruffness he was an honorable soul and kept his word. I can respect that. show less

Curious. There were things that I really loved about this book, and yet I still came away unsatisfied. It's the start of a series, so - as a true completist - I'll be ploughing through the rest, but I'm not sure that another reader would be willing to carry on.

The series - variously titled 'Hooded Swan' or 'Star Pilot Grainger' - is a run of six short Science Fiction novels written in the 1970s. This book introduces the pilot and his amazing new starship. I was expecting to follow a young blade as he sets out on a path to carve a name for himself as a pilot, but Grainger has already established himself as a skilled independent space-jockey. Indeed, his reputation is as the best pilot around. We meet him in a situation where he has lost show more his ship and his partner (and in his marooned state he picks up a strange parasite). His rescue burdens him with a massive debt, which enables a powerful organisation to manipulate him into taking on the job of piloting the Hooded Swan - a step-leap in starship technology. The bulk of the story is the hunt for some lost treasure, in competition with another organisation, but this almost seems inconsequential.

And that inconsequentiality of the story is part of the problem I have with this book. The settings; the journeys; the meetings; the characters and action are fine, but the book is all about Grainger and everything else just seems peripheral. On the other hand, Grainger's character is explored in some detail and we really get a good picture of his stand-offishness and independence of spirit, which turns out to be crucial as the series progresses. Perhaps it is just this confounding of my expectations that irks me: I was expecting a grand Space Opera but was delivered a character study. The Hooded Swan is just a way of getting Grainger around the galaxy, and doesn't add much in the way of interest.

Anyway, enough of my negative comments. (Oops - just thought of another. Stableford plays fast and loose with the laws of physics and bandies technical terms around without any attempt at realism. There - I've finished now.) The writing is really great. I love the spare prose style which is taut and accurate (except about the science) and is by far the best thing about the book. In fact, whatever I thought about the story, I'm sure that I would have been easily persuaded to pick up another Stableford book just for the writing. And, for all my criticisms about the concentration on Grainger, I do like the character, and am sure that the series can only get better as we find out more about him.

So, a well-written book about an interesting character with plenty of zipping about the galaxy and a bit of alien interaction. But there's still those niggles about his science and the fact that the character is just too central and the rest of the universe is there just as a plot device. Weighing the pluses and minuses makes it average, but there is enough interest to keep me reading on through the series. show less

3.5 stars. Originally posted at FanLit.

Grainger, a spaceship pilot, has been shipwrecked on a deserted island in a dangerous star system called the Halcyon Drift. Heƒ??s just about to give up hope when he is unexpectedly rescued by a commercial spacecraft. They charge him for the rescue and take him to court, so now heƒ??s deep in debt. When he arrives on Old Earth, he finds it in decline. Thereƒ??s no hope of getting off or finding lucrative work, so heƒ??s forced to accept a job offer to pilot the prototype of a new hi-tech spaceship, the Hooded Swan. Unfortunately, this means going back to the Halcyon Drift to help his boss, a mad scientist, hunt for the Lost Star, a spaceship that disappeared in the Drift carrying a show more potentially valuable cargo. This is a very dangerous job, but perhaps Grainger will get some help from the alien parasite that took up residence in his brain while he was stranded in the Drift.

Thereƒ??s so much ... Read More: http://www.fantasyliterature.com/reviews/the-halcyon-drift/ show less

After owning for thirty years and admiring the artwork of the “ Hooded Swan “on the cover for as many. It was time to read. It was tough going but I’m glad I read it. The other books in the series I’ve had for years as well may wait a few years longer to be read.