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Title:Tuf Voyaging
Author: George R. R. Martin
Genre: Science fiction
Thingummies: 1.5
Synopsis: A series of linked short stories about a scrupulous trader who acquires a genetic engineering ship and tries to save the universe.
Thoughts: I'd never heard of this book/series of short stories Martin wrote back in the early 80s.
There's a reason for that.
The first story, in which Tuf and a band of mercenaries find and squabble over an enormous, incredibly powerful derelict starship, is quite frankly terrible. Really, truly awful. If I hadn't been trapped on a train, I never would have bothered finishing it. The plot is fairly predictable, even when it thinks it's being clever. Every single character is a cardboard cut-out, and if he was trying to make you celebrate their deaths, he succeeds. I'd wished his protagonist had joined them. There's the venal, foolish, glutton. There's the proud, foolish retired soldier who thinks he still has it. There's the mustache-twirling mercenary, and the backstabby mercenary, and the cyborg who...is a cyborg? No point in wasting characterization on a cyborg. And there's Tuf, who speaks with the flowery self-deprecation you'd expect of a bad stereotype of an Arabic merchant. The dialogue is execrable. The action was mediocre, but literally every time a character opened his or her mouth, I wanted the character to die. Fortunately, most of them do.
From there, we have a series of episodes in which Tuf rolls into orbit, the natives have a problem, and he solves the problem in a way such that the natives get what they deserve but not what they want. These are better than the first story, at least. But they're very much in an older mode of science fiction in which the protagonist calmly and reasonably mansplains to the hysterical people why they are stupid and wrong. The hysterical people learn a Very Important Lesson and are upset about it because they're not as calm and logical as the protagonist, who does not have a character arc, is never wrong, and does not need to learn anything other than Other People Are Hysterical. It should be noted that said protagonist is white and male and very tall, vegetarian, atheist, cultured, and likes cats. Nearly all of the other people are female, non-white, and/or religious. Some of the plots are vaguely clever, but usually in a fairly predictable way. They're competent enough, but just...eh.
Basically, if you loved Game of Thrones and want more...don't bother with this book. Actually, just don't bother with this book.
Author: George R. R. Martin
Genre: Science fiction
Thingummies: 1.5
Synopsis: A series of linked short stories about a scrupulous trader who acquires a genetic engineering ship and tries to save the universe.
Thoughts: I'd never heard of this book/series of short stories Martin wrote back in the early 80s.
There's a reason for that.
The first story, in which Tuf and a band of mercenaries find and squabble over an enormous, incredibly powerful derelict starship, is quite frankly terrible. Really, truly awful. If I hadn't been trapped on a train, I never would have bothered finishing it. The plot is fairly predictable, even when it thinks it's being clever. Every single character is a cardboard cut-out, and if he was trying to make you celebrate their deaths, he succeeds. I'd wished his protagonist had joined them. There's the venal, foolish, glutton. There's the proud, foolish retired soldier who thinks he still has it. There's the mustache-twirling mercenary, and the backstabby mercenary, and the cyborg who...is a cyborg? No point in wasting characterization on a cyborg. And there's Tuf, who speaks with the flowery self-deprecation you'd expect of a bad stereotype of an Arabic merchant. The dialogue is execrable. The action was mediocre, but literally every time a character opened his or her mouth, I wanted the character to die. Fortunately, most of them do.
From there, we have a series of episodes in which Tuf rolls into orbit, the natives have a problem, and he solves the problem in a way such that the natives get what they deserve but not what they want. These are better than the first story, at least. But they're very much in an older mode of science fiction in which the protagonist calmly and reasonably mansplains to the hysterical people why they are stupid and wrong. The hysterical people learn a Very Important Lesson and are upset about it because they're not as calm and logical as the protagonist, who does not have a character arc, is never wrong, and does not need to learn anything other than Other People Are Hysterical. It should be noted that said protagonist is white and male and very tall, vegetarian, atheist, cultured, and likes cats. Nearly all of the other people are female, non-white, and/or religious. Some of the plots are vaguely clever, but usually in a fairly predictable way. They're competent enough, but just...eh.
Basically, if you loved Game of Thrones and want more...don't bother with this book. Actually, just don't bother with this book.
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Date: 2014-04-06 04:15 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2014-04-06 09:46 pm (UTC)From:I think some of the problem is that it also comes off as kind of a poor man's version of Golden Age of Science Fiction stories--they're the kind of thing Asimov and Clarke and co. did better. Maybe I've just read too many in the sub-genre, but I saw the endings of all of them coming pretty much as soon as the problem was introduced, so it didn't even have the suspense of "how is Tuf going to solve this" for me. (Never mind that it's not like he solves it because he's particularly smart or wise, just because he has access to resources no one else has.)