Charles E. Gannon

Charles E. Gannon is a mostly-hard-sci-fi writer whose books promise the thrills of the opening words in a Star Trek episode: “To explore strange new worlds/To seek out new life/And new civilizations/To boldly go where no man has gone before.” His Terran Republic series is a perennial runner-up in the Nebula Awards, and Marque of Caine was no exception. Its stalwart hero, Caine Riordan, like his Kirkian model, is the kind of guy who leads the away missions, ship-be-damned. His mission this time is to recover his lover Elena from an alien medical pod.
The action moves us from the warm seas of the Bahamas to a simulated universe in a distant star system. Gannon’s Consolidated Terran Republic is a world where “change was always uneven in distribution and irregular timing. Plenty still varied along social lines. Tidiness was transient.” This untidiness keeps his world believable and relatable. Even his ancient alien mentors seem fuddled at times.
But such a messy sprawl of a world has its downside. As almost every reviewer notes, this 500-page tome is too long and may put some readers into as deep a coma as poor Elena. But the action, with its clever critters and tech, kept me up and at it.… (mais)