Books (Special Matt Hughes Team Review)

james_nicoll organized a simultaneous review of this book, based on Matt Hughes' willingness to provide early copies to reviewers. Here's my contribution.

_Template_, Matt Hughes

Immature poets imitate, mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different. The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different from that from which it was torn; the bad poet throws it into something which has no cohesion. -- T.S. Eliot

Well, Eliot was a jerk, but that doesn't make him wrong. Matt Hughes has stolen threads from Heinlein, Kipling, Dickson, Panshin and Zelazny in order to weave a beautiful cloth of his own. _Template_ is the story of Conn Labro, an orphan slave trained as a fighter. The term mamluk comes to mind. His world is Thrais, a Libertopia where contracts are held sacred and can extend to anything at all. Debt slavery is standard practice, and so Labro expects to remain a slave forever, never earning his way to freedom. His only friend is an elderly man who has paid for the right to play strategy games with Labro since time immemorial. But the friend dies in mysterious violent circumstances, and Labro's place of employment/servitude is attacked. So we jump out of _Citizen of the Galaxy_ and into _Dorsai!_, as Labro takes a spaceliner trip. He makes friends, he makes enemies, violence follows him and his strategies succeed.

Saying more would constitute spoilers which I don't want to get into here; let it suffice that we see a sampling of the Ten Thousand Worlds and meet representatives of more. The Meaning of Life is debated, as is the validity of aasking ontological questions in the first place. Really, this is science fiction where the main science in question is philiosophy as expressed through psychology. Allies are found in unlikely places, while most of the villains wear big black hats. There are plot twists, and I only saw a few of them coming. Hughes seems to delight in setting up situations reminiscent of great predecessors and then subverting them. I don't think any of the references to classic SF are made explicit, but they infuse this book like smoke in good barbeque. You can certainly enjoy this book as the good story that it is without a background in SF, but I think it will be much more enjoyable if you are not a newcomer.

I would also like to note that _Template_ contains no Big Dumb Objects, few if any Hegemonizing Swarms, and he goes the entire length of the book without once using the word 'computer'. Nor does he dwell on the mechanics of FTL, the vastness of space, or the whichness of what. The story is complete in one volume. There are other stories set in the same universe, but they are not required for plot, characters or technology, and only slightly helpful for sociology.

Recommended.

Books (Special Matt Hughes Team Review)

james_nicoll organized a simultaneous review of this book, based on Matt Hughes' willingness to provide early copies to reviewers. Here's my contribution.

_Template_, Matt Hughes

Immature poets imitate, mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different. The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different from that from which it was torn; the bad poet throws it into something which has no cohesion. -- T.S. Eliot

Well, Eliot was a jerk, but that doesn't make him wrong. Matt Hughes has stolen threads from Heinlein, Kipling, Dickson, Panshin and Zelazny in order to weave a beautiful cloth of his own. _Template_ is the story of Conn Labro, an orphan slave trained as a fighter. The term mamluk comes to mind. His world is Thrais, a Libertopia where contracts are held sacred and can extend to anything at all. Debt slavery is standard practice, and so Labro expects to remain a slave forever, never earning his way to freedom. His only friend is an elderly man who has paid for the right to play strategy games with Labro since time immemorial. But the friend dies in mysterious violent circumstances, and Labro's place of employment/servitude is attacked. So we jump out of _Citizen of the Galaxy_ and into _Dorsai!_, as Labro takes a spaceliner trip. He makes friends, he makes enemies, violence follows him and his strategies succeed.

Saying more would constitute spoilers which I don't want to get into here; let it suffice that we see a sampling of the Ten Thousand Worlds and meet representatives of more. The Meaning of Life is debated, as is the validity of aasking ontological questions in the first place. Really, this is science fiction where the main science in question is philiosophy as expressed through psychology. Allies are found in unlikely places, while most of the villains wear big black hats. There are plot twists, and I only saw a few of them coming. Hughes seems to delight in setting up situations reminiscent of great predecessors and then subverting them. I don't think any of the references to classic SF are made explicit, but they infuse this book like smoke in good barbeque. You can certainly enjoy this book as the good story that it is without a background in SF, but I think it will be much more enjoyable if you are not a newcomer.

I would also like to note that _Template_ contains no Big Dumb Objects, few if any Hegemonizing Swarms, and he goes the entire length of the book without once using the word 'computer'. Nor does he dwell on the mechanics of FTL, the vastness of space, or the whichness of what. The story is complete in one volume. There are other stories set in the same universe, but they are not required for plot, characters or technology, and only slightly helpful for sociology.

Recommended.