Downbelow Station (The Company Wars, #1) in Beyond Reality

Aug 11, 2008 Stephen rated it really liked it

Shelves: award-nominee-hugo, award-nominee-locus, easton-press, science-fiction, political-fiction, dark-and-gritty, award-winner-hugo, humans-rule-the-galaxy, multiple-award-nominee, 1980-1989

4.0 to 4.5 stars. Superb world-building, fantastic character development and excellent writing are the highlight of this Hugo award winning novel. Nobody does complex geopolitical plots like Cherryh and this is a great example. Classic space opera by a master writer.

Winner: Hugo Award for Best Science Fiction Novel (1982)
Nominee: Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel (1982)

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Jun 27, 2012 Wealhtheow rated it it was ok

Shelves: sci-fi, didn-t_finish

I got 76% through this and just can't bear to keep trying to read it. The basic premise is fantastic: the under-supported Earth Company Fleet battles the unending waves of Union's brainwashed clones. The Fleet is pushed further and further back, until at last the battle reaches the space station orbiting Pell. Pell's station tries to remain neutral while both sides try to take it over.

I love this idea! It's like DS9 mashed up with Tolkein. But I found the execution so lacking that I couldn't en ...more

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Jul 21, 2012 Snail in Danger (Sid) Nicolaides rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction

I've read this book three times. I think it's an interesting and important work of science fiction. But at the same time ... it will make you think but there is not a lot of whimsy or humor here. None, really. You might see the hisa as a source of that but ... I don't think so. The hisa are 100% serious. The humans see them as childlike, but not in the sense that they are playful. I agree with Jo Walton that the hisa are "furry noble savages" as shown here. Kind of like H. Beam Piper's Fuzzies, I've read this book three times. I think it's an interesting and important work of science fiction. But at the same time ... it will make you think but there is not a lot of whimsy or humor here. None, really. You might see the hisa as a source of that but ... I don't think so. The hisa are 100% serious. The humans see them as childlike, but not in the sense that they are playful. I agree with Jo Walton that the hisa are "furry noble savages" as shown here. Kind of like H. Beam Piper's Fuzzies, without any apparent playfulness or whim. (You can say that the Fuzzies get the noble savage treatment too, for sure.)

This seems ... stilted in a way that it didn't when I read it previously. An io9 blogger claims that Cherryh wrote this as background to Merchanter's Luck. I don't know if that's true but this novel does feel like fleshed out notes, to some extent. Cherryh has the knack for creating viewpoint characters who don't have to be heroes. They may do epic things but they are far from perfect or even good, sometimes. We are told about their motivations but this book doesn't necessarily fully convince us or explain them.

Tech has outpaced the earlier books of this setting and some things seem weirdly dated. (Tape as media, papers as identification.) This is another thing that makes the book seem as if it belongs to an earlier era.

This setting has two major factions, Alliance and Union. Earth is a player but they are somewhat isolated, and they know it. Here, we only see Union from the Alliance and Earther point of view; to Alliance, the Union, with its use of assisted reproductive technology to quickly raise population levels (here, soldiers), is monstrous. (And they are, but we can't tell here if the Alliance really understands what is monstrous about this. And you have to read Cyteen to understand what is genuinely horrifying and not just Alliance and Earth people being unnerved.)

One thing I missed on previous reads: an Earth character thinks of the azi (genetically engineered humans) as mannequins. Through the first few decades of the 20th century at least, mannequins were essentially models for clothing. If you went to an expensive dressmaker, she would have employees to walk around so you could see what her designs looked like. (The Mystery of the Blue Train has a scene like this.) Cherryh probably knew this, but she may also have been thinking of the little posable figures that artists sometimes used as models. Either way, I think the usage is apt; but I particularly like the idea that the azi seem like mannequins: people wearing programmed-in human qualities like clothes. ...more

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Jan 15, 2014 Ben de Groot rated it liked it

Shelves: science-fiction

It took me six months to finish this book. Partly because I've been in a reading slump, but also because this book doesn't have much drive, much tension. It keeps switching among a fairly large cast of characters, without it having a Tolkienesque epic scale. I just didn't know who to root for, except perhaps the strongly independent ship captain who struggled with her loyalty to her superior fleet commander.

The canvas is fairly small: a space station and a small part of the planet it orbits, wit ...more

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Aug 20, 2007 Snail in Danger (Sid) Nicolaides rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction

This was the first book I read in this setting and by this author, if I recall correctly. (It might have been Cyteen, but I don't think so. Plus, I have vague memories of reading Rusalka or maybe a collaboration with Mercedes Lackey, which would have been fantasy ... but I'm not sure. It would have been a really long time ago - before I graduated from high school.) This is a good book for displaying the complexities of this fictional universe in an interesting way. It's where almost all the foun ...more

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Jul 24, 2012 Snail in Danger (Sid) Nicolaides added it

Shelves: science-fiction

I like the introduction. IIRC, this is the one where she tells people to go outside and look at the sky on a clear night and get a peak at our real neighborhood.

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