Listen folks. I have, indeed, been known to wax poetic and speak eloquently (in my mind at least) about works of fiction with major space battles with huge body counts, gigundous missiles and massive blowuptuations that render entire star systems into piles of spare parts. I have praised authors for their talents in describing battles and the bonds of those who fight side by side. Let's face it. I like that stuff. Having said that, there is room in science fiction and fantasy for works that don't center on violence and it’s practitioners. A world where a peaceable man can do his best to make a buck by honest trading and working his way up the ladder and across the space lanes. A series that takes an honest look at the people who sail the high seas in the real world, only putting the story IN SPACE so we’ll all read it.
Nathan Lowell has written that story. It’s called The Golden Age of the Solar Clipper. It’s a really awesome series about a guy named Ishmael Wang and his journey from a raw youth just trying to survive to a ship owner (and no, that’s not really a spoiler when the title of the last book is Owner’s Share). It’s a story of personal struggle and sacrifice and love, both between and his ship, a man and space and a man and a woman.
The series was recommended to me by a good friend with similar tastes in books, but I was still a bit skeptical when I found out that there were really no battles, no derring-do and nothing a hardcore action junkie would expect. It turns out that I was dead wrong to be concerned. There is plenty going on here. It’s just non-violent. Seriously, one of the most important moments in pretty much every book in the series is the first time Ishmael makes coffee. Yeah, I know that sounds lame but it’s true. When the coffee starts brewing, so does the story. Trust me here. It works.
The story is richly woven and surprisingly well rendered. It’s weird how little of this series I was able to predict and how much sense it made. Nothing went quite the way I wanted it to but I was happy with how things turned out. I don’t know if that makes any sense, but it’s true. This series would have gone very differently if I had written it, so maybe it’s a good thing that I didn’t. Lowell finds ways to make things work that make tons of sense after they’ve unfolded. It’s pretty obvious that he spent a lot of time planning and editing to make it all work, but it had to have been worth it for the story to turn out this well.
Of course, Ishmael isn’t alone in his mad dash (or slow poke) across the stars. He has friends along for the ride and maybe one or two people he just doesn’t seem to get along with. The friends all serve a useful role in the story and the one or two enemies may serve a bigger one. Watching who a man associates with is always useful in telling what kind of person he is, but seeing what he’ll risk himself to oppose may tell you more. Ishmael Wang is the kind of guy I sometimes wish I could be. He does the right thing even when it may technically not be the smart thing. This is one character I can respect.
Ishmael’s first friend is a fellow youngster named Pip. Pip is unstoppable, irrepressible and just a fun dude. He comes from a long line of spacers and knows more about interstellar trade in the Golden Age series than anyone besides Nathan Lowell, who probably spent a long time thinking “I wonder what Pip would think” while trying to make his universe work. Pip’s ideas are not conventional, but they seem to work and it’s weird how well that mimics some of the things I’ve studied in history classes.
You have to really read the series to get a sense of the character arcs present. Along the way, things move kind of slowly and you never quite notice how much our heroes are changing. But then you finish Owner’s Share, the last book in the series, and reflect and it’s just like “Wow, how did THAT KID do THAT?!?!?!?!” I mean that in a good way though. It makes sense if you followed the story but when you try to consider it all together it’s just like “WHOAH”.
Uh-oh. Lowell quotes famous works of literature throughout the series and I just quoted Joey from the 90s sitcom Blossom. I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t be very proud of me right now. Whatever. I loved that show when I was in the right age bracket for it to be relevant.
At any rate…
The method of space travel as described in the Golden Age series is not at all reminiscent of Trek or Wars or anything else you’ve read. The term space clipper really does apply here because there are elements of technology that were common during Earth’s Tall Ship Era that are in play while traversing the stars. Throw in a bit of jump technology ala Battletech and you’ve got a pretty close match for how things work. It was fun and the fact that it takes a bit longer to get places than it would in many other franchises works given the internal logic of the setting and also helps set up some things that wouldn’t make sense in other universes. Longer trips provide more opportunity for tension and thus drama and entertainment.
My only complaint really is that Nowell likes to start off each book with a line directly lifted from a literary classic that is no longer subject to copyright. This threw me for the first couple of books, but once I got past the first sentence I was good. Most of the other literary quotes throughout the books are spoken directly by Ishmael (his mother was a literature professor) and make sense, but those were a bit weird. All in all though, if my biggest complaint is about six sentences in a six book series, I suppose I should get over myself. Oh, and if the lack of action has made you feel put off of the series, just trust Lois. And if you don’t know what that means READ THE BOOKS.
Quarter Share/Half Share/Full Share/Double Share/Captain’s Share/Owner’s Share
Nathan Lowell
Durandus, various years
The Golden Age of the Solar Clipper books are available at the following link. If you click the link and buy literally anything from Amazon, I get a small percentage of your purchase at no additional cost to you.
Thanks for the kind words, Jim
ReplyDeleteThere are some spin off series too. Not just the original 6 books. In some ways I think the spin offs end up showing where the world building of the original stories was a little lacking but they are good too and my complaint about the world-building isn't something you notice WHEN you are reading them, it's something I thought about after I'd finished reading all of the ones to date a couple of years back
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