Allen Steele

[Bick]

I don't know much about Allen Steele, and have not seen him mentioned here I think - perhaps once by J-Sun - however, Goodreads just recommended I try "Coyote" by Steele.

I wondered if anyone has read much by Allen Steele and have any recommendation to make? Is he like anyone else I may know more about? I'm always amazed when I look someone up, having never heard of their work, and find they have written dozens of books and have a following. It makes me wonder how many other good SF authors may be out there, publishing now, who I know nothing about.

 

[J-Sun]

Yeah, I started a thread on him that didn't get a whole lot of response.

All I can add to the other thread is that I've read some stories and many of these are quite good and I've also read Oceanspace because I was wanting something like Clarke's The Deep Range and it has similar virtues and vices as Hex although less extreme on both ends. It wasn't as good as Clarke, though. I do have the Coyote series in the Pile but I also have Sex and Violence in Zero-G: The Complete Near Space Stories (though there's a newer edition and mine is no longer complete). I have high hopes for that based on my better luck, so far, with his stories. He first made his name with that "near space" series - stories and novels - which, as their title indicates, are centered around our first steps in space. The Coyote series is his second major series which is farther future and interstellar. Beyond that, I don't know much - but he is what you describe - author of many books with a following.

 

[Bick]

Many thanks J-Sun. Sorry I missed your other thread completely, even when I just searched for previous threads. My bad!

The Coyote books sound like they may be worth a look at some point, as they are up my alley regards subject matter, but I take your comments on linearity and weakish characterisation on board, so perhaps not as top priority. I have more Bova, Baxter, Bear and Banks in the TBR pile. Now I think of it, his name doesn't begin with a B, so that's against him, clearly.

 

[ralphkern]

I didn't rate the Coyote books too highly, but I very much enjoyed Labyrinth Of Night.

 

[Rodders]

I enjoyed the Coyote books.

I also have a collection of short stories called Rude Astronauts.

 

[J-Sun]

I have more Bova, Baxter, Bear and Banks in the TBR pile. Now I think of it, his name doesn't begin with a B, so that's against him, clearly.

Well, I don't hold the 'S' thing against him. I've just read his Near Space collection and I'm now convinced. I posted about it on the short story thread but thought I'd mention it here as relevant, too.

 

[Bick]

So I did read "Coyote" and indeed I just finished it. My thoughts:

Overall I enjoyed it. It's written in a pretty straightforward style, without flowery literary pretensions at all, and I for one quite like that style. Not entirely unlike Bova or McDevitt. I thought characterisation was okay, and the story has enough in it to be quite well paced. I had no trouble getting through it at all, it was a good light read. There are not too many books I know that deal with first exploration of a new planet, and this was a nice job at that. If I am to quibble at all, it would be on two fronts: Firstly, it was written originally as novellas in Asimov's magazine, and it certainly does read that way; it's rather episodic and slightly disjointed as a result, but not so badly that it spoils it. And, to be fair, many of my favourite SF books are cobbled together from shorts. The second slight quibble concerns a storyline in it, which is quite a large section, describing the actions of some of the young colonists away from the landing site town. (I wont give away exactly what goes on). However, I never did quite believe the motivations behind their actions. It was as though Steele needed them to go and do this thing for the overall plot, so he got them to do it without really convincing us that it made sense. Those quibbles aside, I think its a decent light read and if you're in the market for a colonisation story it's a decent effort. I may read some of the sequels in time, though not immediately. It does kinda suck you in. I'm quite keen to see what happens in the sequel, so that tells you something.

 

[J-Sun]

Sounds pretty good - I've read some of the stories in Coyote but still haven't gotten around to the whole book, or series. Since my last post, I've been reading the Near Space novels. I thought Orbital Decay was great, if not flawless. Seems like it took awhile to get going and I thought he was going to leave one aspect of the ending vague and specify another aspect and, instead, he did it the other way around. But I ended up being really fascinated by the cast of oddballs working in their near space environment. On the other hand, Clarke County, Space was pretty disappointing. I'd recommend new readers not read "The Death of Captain Future"/"The Exile of Evening Star" (or maybe the whole collection of Sex and Violence in Zero-G) before CCS like I did because it wrecks what little drama there might be and, either way, aspects of the story are just too silly and there's at least one gaping plothole. So silly and plotholed that Steele appears to have de-canonized it, in that major aspects of it are never referred to again. Also disappointing considering what I thought the subject matter was going to be - this is not really a direct take on the "revolution in space" motif. It wasn't terrible but it wasn't good. Then Lunar Descent recovered nicely. It wasn't as good as OD but it was close. I think the main problem with it is that it was too much like OD. All four novels I've read (there's a fifth) have repetitive aspects. Oh, and it had a bizarre isolated bit of fantasy in the hard SF story. I didn't care for Labyrinth of Night as much as the best two, but it was much better than CCS. Again, too many similar parts, too melodramatic, not a great riff on the "deadly maze/structure" story. But it had a lot of good parts and was pretty interesting and readable overall. Perhaps the biggest disappointment with the novels overall is that they are - aside from a few cross-references - pretty disconnected and all stick very close to the front end of the "future history" rather than spanning it.

Still, I think Orbital Decay and Sex and Violence are a couple of the best books I've read in awhile.

 

[Bick]

On the other hand, Clarke County, Space was pretty disappointing.

That's a shame, J-Sun, as I actually picked this book up cheap in a used-book store this week. Was is 'don't-bother-reading-disappointing', or was it only 'not-as-good-as-I'd-hoped-disappointing'?

 

[J-Sun]

Hard to say. If you were reading Orbital Decay and all the rest in the series, it's no problem to get through for completeness' sake. But I wouldn't have found it worth reading if it was a singleton. I mean, I would have finished it and wouldn't have been mad about it or anything - it has some good aspects and it's short and there are worse ways to while away some time but the way most of our TBR piles are, there's plenty of stuff we could read instead.

But that's just me and you may like it better - and, like I say, if you don't know how the story generally turns out, it may be much more interesting and less disappointing. Reading those two stories, especially, work against the novel in two ways in that it removes the suspense of not knowing how things will turn out generally, but also sets up misleading expectations (for me anyway) for how the story would get to the ending, specifically. This wasn't at all my only problem - and isn't even a problem with the novel as such - but it didn't help.