William R. Pogue (1930–2014)

Bova, Ben, and Bill Pogue. The Trikon Deception. 1992 Tor, 2006.
Longtime near-future science fiction author Ben Bova and Skylab astronaut Bill Pogue would seem to be the dream team to write a novel about life on a space station. Sadly, it doesn’t quite work out. The problem is not so much with the science and technology—though that is not everything I could wish—but with the characters who seem to have come right off the set of a bad 1970s TV movie. There is gender, cultural, and racial stereotyping. The scientists are all jealous marionettes and the villains would be kicked out of a Batman comic for being too over-the-top. It is interesting to note that assembly of the International Space Station began in 1998, the year the novel is set, only six years after its publication. Yet the private station of the novel is several times the size of ISS and it lacks any participation by the Russians or the Chinese. There is one character with an Indian surname, but we are told he is more Brit than the Brits. As to science, the novel is a mixed bag. We learn almost nothing about the biological experiments that are the station’s main effort or about the Mars survival project that is running in one of the station’s habitats. Station design is well-described and reasonable, and we do learn about the relationship between station orientation and orbital stability. It is too bad that Pogue did not draw more on his own sociological experience on Skylab for the novel. In his mission, a unified team worked hard to get back on schedule despite health issues and nagging from Nasa that inspired them to stage the first space mutiny by shutting off the Nasa radio feed. Here, the people on board the station are all at odds with one another almost all the time. Bova has done better.… (altro)

This is a mystery/thriller masquerading as science-fiction. The time is the near-future and the action takes place on a scientific research station orbiting Earth, where global warming is rapidly destroying micro-ecological systems in the ocean which are essential for all life. The research involves genetic alteration, and environmental activists have prevented the research from taking place on Earth.

The research station is a joint international venture. There are three groups of researchers--an Asian lab, a European lab, and a North American lab. The three factions are supposed to cooperate and share research results. However, in reality each group wants to be the discoverer of a solution, and each jealously guards its research. When one of the groups discovers that it has been the victim of "espionage", an investigation begins, and then dead bodies start turning up. Discovery of the murderer becomes vital for saving the Earth.

So what we essentially have is one of those "closed door" mysteries that were so popular in the Agatha Christie erea. The similarity is that there is a limited number of suspects, but in this case the fate of the world rests on solving the case.

I think either a mystery fan or a sci-fi fan might like this.… (altro)

My reactions to reading this book in 1993. Spoilers follow.

This novel is about environment apocalypse in the improbably near future. Here the ocean’s plankton is beginning to die en masse. The deception of the title is the idea that Trikon space station is really a place of international scientific cooperation. The place is actually rife with industrial espionage, drugs, and sabotage. This book paints an unflattering – but not necessarily unrealistic -- picture of scientists wrought with ego and jealousy.

This novel has a high proportion of people motivated by blackmail. Hugh O’Donnel blackmailed by Welch into working on anti-sense DNA to suppress cocaine production. Welch also blackmails Fiabo Bianco into doing that research on Trikon Station. Carla Sue Gamble and Aaron Weiss blackmailing Kurt Jaeckle with information about him incestuously raping his daughter (Carla Sue wants a slot to Mars; Weiss just wants Jaeckle to shut up about his Mars mission.)

Unfortunately, there wasn’t a lot of details about life in space by ex-astronaut Bill Pogue though I did like the problems of using screwdrivers in microgravity and the information that your head has to be restrained while sleeping because it nods back and forth from the pulses of blood going through the cardiac artery.

The physical descriptions of a lot of these characters were embarrassingly clichéd. The authors seem determined to attach personality traits to physical features. The characters themselves are not real interesting. O’Donnell is the best of the lot, and you do care that he isn’t framed as a lapsed junkie. But Lance Muncie seems an implausible excuse for a psycho. Sir Derek Brock-Smythe is the typical thriller villain: rich, well-connected, and given to violence and strange sexual tastes (and it’s pretty well-implied at story’s end that an angry Fabio Bianco bribes Smythe’s mistress to kill him). Aaron Weiss is an obnoxious reporter (I was glad of his murder.) who isn’t afraid of lies and innuendo to sell a story. There wasn’t a lot that surprised me in this story -- basically only that radical feminist and lesbian Thora Skillen doesn’t start a plague, but I found her conversion to loving technology again unconvincing. I knew Hugh O’Donnel was working on a Drug Enforcement Agency project. (I hope the authors didn’t think they were fooling anyone, only that they were giving subtle exposition). I knew Lorraine Renoir and Don Tighe would get together (and what an annoying romance it was) and that he would take manual control of the station). I knew Freddy Ariles was sent to guard O’Donnell.

Nevertheless, I did find the book exciting and the narrative pulled me along, It was a clever move to have the book open with the hook of the station’s impending destruction and then back fill. I assumed Chakia Ramsanjowi would be foiled and killed (unfortunately not), but I wanted to see how. So, there was a lot wrong with this book, but I had a moderately good time with it.… (altro)