To Save the Sun [Mass Market Paperback]

(This review is for both To Save the Sun and To Fear the Light as they are, together, one story)

Science Fiction veteran Ben Bova and rookie A. J. Austin have crafted a very attractive story idea with To Save the Sun and To Fear the Light: Humanity has spread out among 100 planets and are loosely collected in the Empire of a Hundred Worlds. When the empire's scientists determine that Sol, the sun of mankind's origin and genetic seed planet Earth is likely to start dying with a few centuries, it is a young scientist, Adela de Montgarde, from a frontier world that boldly proclaims that she can save the sun and thus the foundation of the species.

The scientists are all skeptical as their centuries of life have stifled all inquisitiveness and creativity from them. Many a bureaucrat believes the idea to be folly - including the Princess Rihana, wife of the Emperor's son Prince Javas. But Dr. Montgarde wins the support of the Emperor who initiates the grand scheme. In the process, Dr. Montgarde wins the heart of Prince Javas who discards Rihana like excess baggage when the Emperor moves the seat of power from Corinth to Earth's Moon.

This generation spanning tale starts with much promise, the storytelling delivers with a sweeping grand scope of style that sees the progress of the effort to save the sun first from the political standpoint and necessity and then from the scientific viewpoint. But as the first book, To Save the Sun, progresses, the story starts to loose focus; by the end of the first volume, it is apparent that nothing significant will come to pass before the second book.

Unfortunately, another aspect of the plot starts to become very obvious by the end of To Save the Sun: the 700+ pages of these two books is really just about the power struggle - and not a very interesting one at that - between two women, Adela de Montgarde and Rihana, and the the sons that both women have "with" the Prince (I put with in quotations because there is little normal or natural about how any of this plays out). So, by To Fear the Light, this once promising story looses all focus and becomes a book about the struggle between these two women and basically humanity's seemingly unrealistic fear of an alien race.

What does the second half of this story have to do with saving the sun? Only as much as that idea can interfere with the authors' determined attempts to loose all focus. And that is the sad part, because there is real promise buried inside of this story, which could have been one very good book of hard science fiction.

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A Guide to my Book Rating System:

1 star = The wood pulp would have been better utilized as toilet paper.
2 stars = Don't bother, clean your bathroom instead.
3 stars = Wasn't a waste of time, but it was time wasted.
4 stars = Good book, but not life altering.
5 stars = This book changed my world in at least some small way.

I first read this book many years ago when it first came out. I found it very difficult to put down. I was a full time student at the time and had very little free time. Yet I still managed to read it in 3 days (usually at the expense of sleep). The other 2 reviews gave a fairly good description of the story outline. Though I would add there is a good amount of political intrigue. The parts that actually take place on earth are probably some of the most memorable. I would say that it is a fairly positive outlook on humanity of the far future. Very much worth reading.

from the back cover of the December 1993 TOR paperback edition

Cover art by John Berkey

Ancient Earth is doomed. Its sun will explode, not millions of years hence but in mere lifetimes - violently enough to scour Earth clean and leave the Empire of the Hundred Worlds adrift. For the handful of "primitives" left on Earth are the baseline for humanity's ever-diversifying genetic stock. Every other human world sends regular delegations to check their own genetic pool against "Earth normal".

Now the center will hold no longer. The Empire's scientists deem that nothing can be done. The age of heroism is past: this is the long, stagnant afternoon of the human race.

Until - over massive opposition - a single young woman makes her way to the Emperor with that rarity, a new scientific insight...and a plan, flowing from its implications, to mobilize humanity's slumbering energies toward a millennium-long effort of applied astrophysics. Of engineering carried out on the hearts of stars. A plan to save the Earth. To save the Sun.