Saturday, August 09, 2008
Red Lightning
by John Varley
This one's a sequel to Red Thunder, the story of how good, ol' American ingenuity beat the Chinese to Mars. (Well, okay, it was American ingenuity backed by the nigh magical invention of an idiot savant.) It's some twenty years later and two of those first humans on Mars have settled onto the Red Planet. They run a hotel. Humanity is reaching for the stars, while the less adventurous settle for an interplanetary vacation. The story, however, really doesn't deal with that. The focus of Red Lightning is Earth. Earth has just suffered a great disaster--an object travelling at near light speed has skipped off the northern Atlantic Ocean and kicked up the most devastating tsunami the planet has ever seen. We're then privy to the adventures of the Garcia-Strickland clan as they deal with the disaster and its repercussions. Some of the latter are expected, some are, well, going off on a tangent. It doesn't make for great literature--it is a sequel, after all--but it's enjoyable enough.
It's very good waiting room material.
LibraryThing link
This one's a sequel to Red Thunder, the story of how good, ol' American ingenuity beat the Chinese to Mars. (Well, okay, it was American ingenuity backed by the nigh magical invention of an idiot savant.) It's some twenty years later and two of those first humans on Mars have settled onto the Red Planet. They run a hotel. Humanity is reaching for the stars, while the less adventurous settle for an interplanetary vacation. The story, however, really doesn't deal with that. The focus of Red Lightning is Earth. Earth has just suffered a great disaster--an object travelling at near light speed has skipped off the northern Atlantic Ocean and kicked up the most devastating tsunami the planet has ever seen. We're then privy to the adventures of the Garcia-Strickland clan as they deal with the disaster and its repercussions. Some of the latter are expected, some are, well, going off on a tangent. It doesn't make for great literature--it is a sequel, after all--but it's enjoyable enough.
It's very good waiting room material.
LibraryThing link
Labels: JohnVarley, WaitingRoomMaterial
// posted by John @ 9:38 PM 
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