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5.0étoiles sur 5
"Master and Commander" in Space - Great!, Janv. 14 2006
Midshipman's Hope, and the six novels following it, seem to be planted firmly in the "love or hate " category. On the whole, I am one of the lovers. My gripes are few and trivial.
MH is set two centuries in the future, when war and anarchy have supposedly led to a violent "Laura Norder" reaction, our times being remembered with a shudder as the "rebellious ages" which must never come again. However, when examined closely, the reaction turns out to have been very limited and "patchy", with the most important 20th Century social changes, such as race and gender equality, coming through without a scratch. There is a degree of class antagonism in regard to the "Transpops", but only slightly greater than between ghetto dwellers and suburbanites in today's US. Even homosexuality is still tolerated, and unorthodox methods of reproduction like host mothers are accepted without demur. The only ban is on producing unplanned children, and that is condemned more as irresponsible than as immoral.
So what changes have occurred? The biggest, from where we sit, is the spectacular revival in the power of the Church. There is essentially only one, the "Reunification Church", which is a sort of amalgamation of most Christian sects, formed after the main alternatives to Christianity have been conveniently wiped out in World War III. It has enormous political clout, and the authority of the civil government supposedly derives from it, or at least from Lord God, whom it of course represents. Oddly, though, it doesn't seem to have really made much use of all this power. Blasphemy is condemned, but apparently not homosexuality, or indeed most sexual behaviour which doesn't lead to unplanned pregnancy. Nor does it control education, or seem very insistant on the traditional family unit. In fact, its main concern appears to be suppressing rival Churches. Pentecostalists are given an extremely hard time and can even get burned at the stake on a bad day, but that's about it <g>. The Church tolerates no competitors, demanding recognition of its undisputed authority, yet does hardly anything with it, just holding power for power's sake. Well, not impossible.
The secular side of government, though in form still democratic, has a distinctly authoritarian flavour. This is most evident in regard to the Space Navy (another powerful political force), where a Captain is literally the direct representative of Lord God, with virtually absolute authority, and who may not even be touched without permission, on pain of death.
There is also a decidedly "tough love" approach to child rearing. Drugs and juvenile delinquency are very severely dealt with, while corporal punishment of minors is accepted as entirely normal, a minor being (with some exceptions) anybody under 22. This has generated an amazing amount of heat in discussion of MH and its sequels, despite being quite trivial compared to some social changes that you get in sf. Indeed, outside (some) Western countries it would scarcely represent a change at all. I have the feeling that a slaveholding or cannibal society would have been less upsetting to certain critics than one in which kids get the cane, but feel this says more about the critics than about the book.
(Incidentally, does anyone know how the legend arose that Cadets and Midshipmen get caned on the bare backside? Offhand I don't recall a single instance of this. Given the absence of privacy in the Wardroom, Middies are often undressed in front of one another , so probably get to see the marks of recent canings, but there is no suggestion of punishment being administered that way. I get the feeling some dirty minds have been working overtime.)
The final social change is strangely at odds with the rest. Education is no longer compulsory. The public schooling of our era is remembered as a waste of resources, and it is entirely at a parent's discretion how he/she educates the kids. Whatever its merits, this seems an oddly "libertarian" approach for such a society. Still, inconsistent doesn't mean impossible.
The central character of MH is Midshipman Nicholas Seafort, aged 17 at the start, of UNNS Hibernia. Thanks to a series of accidents, he finds himself in command of the ship, with a lot of difficult decisions to make. It recalls an episode in Master and Commander , where a Midshipman even younger than Seafort is left in command while his Captain joins a boarding party. In M&C, though, the Captain survives - Seafort's doesn't. Resisting demands to abort the mission Seafort deals successively (and sometimes ruthlessly) with rebellious crewmen, a potentially disastrous mechanical failure, mutiny on a space base, social problems at his destination, officers with major character flaws, and last but by no means least, the discovery of a hostile alien race. Listed like this, it all sounds less than credible, and indeed rather corny space opera, yet it is Feintuch's achievement to make it all quite believable, in the contest of his invented world. I was gripped to the end.
Feintuch also does a great job of portraying Seafort himself. The latter, whose upbringing has been stern and Calvinistic even by the standards of his world, has a savagely demanding conscience , fixated on his duty to the service and to Lord God. How he sticks to right as he sees right (sometimes as a minority of one) and successfully completes his mission, makes fascinating reading.
All in all, a great book. If you like Hornblower or M&C, you should love this. Firmly recommended.
(BTW, I am in my sixties, so definitely not "under 25", though I am male)
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