February 02, 2003
Kings of the High Frontier, by Victor Koman
Just two days ago, Friday, I received by mail my only copy of a book I'd lent out to a former co-worker, who surprised me by finally returning it to me by a private express carrier. I'd been warned by Murray Rothbard many years ago never to lend out my personal books, as I'd never see them again... even if that book was one of Murray's own (which it was, which was a reason we were having the chat at school... another story).
Friday's mail gifted me Victor Koman's Kings of the High Frontier, to my relief - and to my erstwhile colleague's credit, in exactly the same good condition as I'd lent it. The events of the last couple of days, including my truly belated and short account of a visit I made a little over a year ago to private space transportation startup XCOR, prompt me to write at least a short recommendation, if not a comprehensive review, of this superb novel.
The story surrounding the publication of this book is a bit of an unknown to me. From what I can gather so far, Victor Koman first published it online, then arranged with a small publishing house, Bereshith Publishing, to publish the novel as the first book in Bereshith's new "Final Frontier Books" imprint. My "First Limited Edition" of 1998 is signed on a page that was sewn into the book, and numbered 545 of "...1250 signed and numbered copies". The frontspiece is enticingly subtitled "Book One of the High Pilgrimage", but I know of no as-yet published "Book Two".
I'm astonished that the Amazon listing for this edition of the book (there's also an even more limited edition listed for $75) mentions a 4-5 week availability, with a US$1.99 surcharge. This extra little charge is apparently due to the requirement that Amazon special order their copies from Bereshith, manually.
No knock on the excellent job that Bereshith did with the book - everything between the covers is as good or better than what most major imprints would have done - but the idea of limiting such an important work to 1250 copies borders on tragic. The only thing I don't like about the book is the unfortunate cover. I'll go out on a limb here, but I do tend to judge a book by its cover. Good books deserve good covers, and it's unfortunate that few publishing houses with a science fiction imprint produce to the quality of the cover - as an example - on Ken MacLeod's The Stone Canal (TOR). I've even seen people on various mailing lists recently mention that they had a copy of Koman's book "laying around, waiting to be read", but were put off by the cheap dustjacket.
These same people are getting around to reading the book now, and are exclaiming their delight: it's a first-rate piece of science fiction, and one of those books, like Atlas Shrugged, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, or Unintended Consequences, that you simply can't put down once you pick it up.
Neil Walsh, even with his slightly squishy Canadian sensibilities, gives a good account of the book in his otherwise glowing SF Site review, and the Amazon entry gives a large body of editorial reviews of the book, with synopses. Go there for a longer description.
L. Neil Smith stated yesterday, on the day of the Columbia disaster:
NASA needs to be abolished, rather than handed over to anybody. It's a great wonder that many more of these fatal accidents haven't happened. NASA's record of incompetence (read the original specs the shuttles were supposed to meet), together with their real mission -- to keep you and me out of space -- make them a burden and a liability to anyone who wants to get off this mudball or who simply desires to be free.
Koman is a friend of Smith, and the above is pretty much his thesis too... and an opinion I share wholeheartedly. Even as I write this, my TV in the background is airing the opinions of hairspray heads like Geraldo Rivera who are wailing and needling people like "space tourist" Dennis Tito that "non essential personnel" shouldn't be flying into space, since... get ready for this... "it's tooooooo dangerous..."
Well, hell, human life is inherently dangerous. There's no escaping that fact. There's also no such thing as risk-free human action.
Koman's characters take that risk on themselves, as free men and women, and defy a government and its bureaucracy - NASA - that have no intention of allowing the final escape from tyranny that space truly represents. The viewpoint characters (there are quite a few of them) explore some wild and wonderful - and mostly fairly plausible - escape vehicles. The engineering efforts alone are fascinating stories, but the characters themselves, by the end of the story, are well fleshed-out and memorable.
This book really deserves a much larger audience than its initial 1250 print run. It's the Unintended Consequences of the free space movement. Pick up your copy before it becomes unavailable... then carefully lend it out to your friends!
And while you're at it, contact Bereshith Publishing and see if they'll consider another print run.
Posted by Russell Whitaker at February 2, 2003 05:30 PM | TrackBack