Building Harlequin's Moon [Hardcover]

It would be easy to conclude that Niven did the "science-y bits," while Cooper did most of the heavy lifting regarding plot, characterization, and actual writing. But that would be presumptuous; sometimes a collaboration can inspire a writer to try harder in areas of former weakness.

It doesn't matter. This collaboration, however it functioned, has produced a solid success. There is Big Science here, and there is character-driven drama here. And because the characters are challenged with -- and changed by -- problems that rise directly from the scientific premises, the whole thing works wonderfully and nearly seamlessly as a grand science-fiction story.

The John Glenn is a sublight-speed colony ship, its passengers in cryogenic sleep. When a drive failure prevents the continuation of their journey, they must stop in an inhospitable star system, awaken enough people to create a temporary colony, and over the course of generations create a society whose sole function is to build the means to repair the ship for its continued journey.

This is the story of Rachel, a third Generation "Moon Born," a young woman who doesn't know that she is a slave. And it's the story of Gabriel, the master terraformer who created Selene out of dead rocks and raw biomass, one of the Glenn's crew who are guiding Rachel and her kin toward a future when they will help build the tools that will enable the ship to leave the Moon Born behind on an unstable manufactured planet.

"Building Harlequin's Moon" is populated with a roster of interesting and disparate characters: "Astronaut," the ship's AI, who wants to learn and grow but whose boundaries are constrained by the colonists' fear of unrestrained technology that caused them to flee a now-dead Earth; Andrew, the Moon Born rebel; Treesa, who woke from cold sleep "disaffected" -- crazy, some would say -- but who becomes one of the keys through which Rachel begins to learn the true nature of the purpose-built society she has been born into.

The Earth Born characters' lives are extended and renewed through the nanotechnology that underlies their cryogenic process, and this becomes both a narrative device that allows long spans of time and change to be covered, and a central source of conflict between Earth Born and Moon Born.

Such conflicts are many and profound. For the Earth Born, the issue is no less than the survival of the human race: they *must* reach a habitable planet and start a successful colony; they may be the only humans left in the universe, and their ship the only means to survive. Yet the moral and ethical conflicts that increasingly divide the crew of the John Glenn lead them in many directions, taking multiple sides.

At the same time, as Rachel learns and shares the true nature of Moon Born's existence, they too become divided and conflicted. Can the Moon Born somehow support the goals of the Earth Born without sacrificing their own future?

With engaging characters, several exciting adventure vignettes, vital moral questions about the balance between species survival and ethical necessities, all set against a spectacular backdrop of planet-building, social engineering, and entire human lifetimes, "Building Harlequin's Moon" is more than just space opera. It's a dramatic science fiction novel that entertains, maintains focus and pace, and best of all creates believable and important problems for its characters and then shows us how they solve them.

This is a stand-alone novel (although a sequel would be welcome).

Why not five stars?
The writing is occasionally stiff and a bit awkward, but never unreadable or embarrassing. The lack of backstory for the important Earth Born characters is missed, as is more detail on the formative stages of the Selene society. None of these problems is severe; I just don't think it's the "all-time great" novel I would give five stars to.

RichC

This is a GREAT BIG IDEA book.

The concept that a small group of isolated people would someday be able to create a small inhabitable moon is a startling to say the least. Then to attempt to explain a great deal of human history and behavior based on the experiences of a single woman in a small society is extremely gutsy. To try to resolve all the logical plot threads generated by the first two concepts in 400 pages is bold to the point of crazy.

Yes, the writing is a bit stilted in places and the characters are a bit thin, but I'm willing to live with that given the scope of topics the book attempts to cover.

My big gripe? The ending. Much of the book is based on a false assumption that I'd been wondering about for the entire book, the characters discover this assumption at the end and then make everything okay with far too little effort.

I strongly agree with the reviewers who say that this is Brenda Cooper's book rather than a join collaboration with Niven. I actually view this as a positive because this is a pretty good first novel and I'm very interested in seeing what Ms. Cooper writes in the future.

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The setup -- Earth's first starship breaks down, limps to a desolate extrasolar system for repairs -- is classic, and nicely done. The Harlequin system is typical of recent extrasolar-planet discoveries -- a huge gas-giant has 'eaten' all the inner system as it spiralled in towards its sun, leaving no planets in the life-zone. The crew of the "John Glenn" need to refuel their ship, and need a place to build an antimatter factory, and a workforce to staff it. So they mash a buncha little moons together to build Selene, Harlequin's moon, as the novel opens, setting up the conflict between the demigod Earthborn and their Moonborn servants. Who are also their *children*, an unconvincing detail in the ensuing dustups -- where are the protective parents when the High Council gets high-handed?

OK, some of them were refrozen, in the starship's corpsicle capsules, but this trampling on basic human nature is slipped by quickly, in hopes we won't notice....

The Earthly backstory -- AI revolts! and a gray-goo nano meltdown -- is generic, and not too convincing. And, clearly the "John Glenn" didn't really need to build such an elaborate habitat. I mean, terraform a moon-mash? [1] C'mon. Why not inflate an asteroid, or build an SF-standard O'Neill habitat? Not to mention the Council's REALLY STUPID IDEA of where to build their antimatter factory. But that would have made a more-generic novel, so let's let it slide....

Anyway, I had fun reading Harlequin's. The book recaptures some of the joie de vivre of the classic Niven stories we all know and love. It's definitely a first novel, but an unusually good one. Recommended for old-fashioned space-adventure fans.

The writing here is basically by Cooper, but there are enough Niven touches that it's clear he was substantially involved. They've previously collaborated on short fiction, notably the taut thriller "Ice and Mirrors". She's a writer to watch.

[1] This qualifies as a genuinely Neat Idea, but shoehorning it into the story is a glaring first-novel rough spot. Or maybe I'm being too picky?

Review copyright ©2005 by Peter D. Tillman

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