Today Obscurists, we’re going on a space adventure with Z.D. Dean’s military Sci-Fi novel “Stowaway.” So you know, pack your good comfortable shoes because it’s a one-way trip.
***The Non-Spoiler part of this review***
What I love about this book:
I love military science fiction—just in general—but it’s especially at its best in my opinion when someone familiar with the contemporary armed forces, like someone who served, writes it. Z.D. Dean is such a person, having served in the Army, which I respect and thank him for his service. The depth of his experience comes across in this book, and I feel it enhances the narrative.
Part of the reason I like this subgenre and this book is that it lends itself well to focusing a story to a fine point. Characters with military backgrounds in fiction tend to be to the point, confident, and self-possessed enough to have a plan of action, even if events around them look hopeless. To me, there is something refreshing about characters with those qualities, and they have a momentum to them that is always engaging—even when they’re wrong, they’re at least doing something. Most people outside of the military—I include myself—tend to dither because rarely is discipline demanded of us at such high stakes that death isn’t just possible but likely. So it’s fascinating for me to watch a character in a crisis who might not know exactly what to do but have the training to not let ambiguity paralyze them.
The Sci-Fi technology in “Stowaway” might not be anything that I’ve not encountered before in one form or another in my travels through science fiction. Still, Dean has a genius for the description and innovative applications of that tech. It isn’t just Zade’s weapons that I found interesting in how they’re put together but also his tools. I especially liked that early on, even though Zade has an aptitude for customizing the kit he uses in the field, there are still design shortfalls. Dean shows how the character refines and improves with experience.
What I don’t love about this book:
So at heart, I am an agnostic—bare with me, I’ll get on point soon—to the question of whether or not there is a prime cause, the cause of all the subsequent causes that resulted in our universe. In short, my answer to is there a God is: I don’t know. I don’t think I am capable of ever knowing. What I don’t believe in is religion, anybody’s religion—across the board. At the same time, I respect your right to have it, and in return, please don’t bother me about having your flavor of religion.
Now that my stances are clear, early in this novel, there is a statement that by no means is direct but seems to suggest that Islam is somehow more incompatible with good world order than literally all the other ones. I can understand why someone who fought in the middle east might think that, and I’ll even grant that there is a robust series of examples to support that idea in the short term of history. In the long view of history, though, there are countless examples of precisely the same sort of fanatical behaviors borne from a genuine belief in all the other major world religions in history. There are significant differences, sure. Those fanatics didn’t have access to planes or high explosives, both being relatively new inventions in human history. Also, unlike today how everything is carefully recorded and cataloged, events in the past didn’t get recorded for historical reasons unless a learned person was handy to literally write it down, and even then, that writing could be burned, and that was an effective form of censorship. But we do know, through robust documentation, that groups such as the Templars absolutely murdered men, women, and children—wholesale—with absolutely no sense of irony in Jesus’s name.
That one throwaway comment is actually my most significant complaint about this book. I believe people of all walks of life are equally capable of being shitty or saintly, and no group is more inherently capable of either than any other group—in the long term—clearly in the short term groups like Nazis were as a group really, really bad. Still, Germans overall aren’t any more vicious or virtuous than any other segment of the human family.
I’ve read reviews saying there are many plot holes to this novel, and I didn’t find that to be true. I mean, I didn’t buy for a second the reason Zade is stranded because of what essentially is a data loss situation, but other than that, I found the internal logic of the story to be okay.
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***The Spoiler part of this review***
***Ye be warned to turn back now***
The quick and dirty synopsis:
We begin “Stowaway” on Earth with Lt. Zade, an artillery officer in the United States Army currently deployed in Afghanistan. Much like with the rest of the war in Afghanistan, it isn’t going well, bureaucracy is a nightmare, and it feels like leadership doesn’t know what it’s doing. This is especially emphasized in the form of Zade’s current CO, a major who speaks in the third person and is obsessed with the idea of glory—not something conducive to the health of his subordinates.
