Archive for the ‘Brian Stableford’ Category
The Florians, by Brian Stableford
published in 1976
where I got it: purchased used
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Back in January of 2013, Susan of Dab of Darkness wrote a guest post about the works of Brian Stableford, and I’ve been looking for a copy of The Florians ever since. And I eventually found one!
Once upon in the future, Earth was able to send out colony ships with the idea that as they sent back confirmation of habitable planets, we would sent out more colonists. Habitable planets found or not, shortly after the ships were sent out, the project was cancelled for economic reasons. We never set out more ships, we never tried to reach our colonists, and couldn’t afford to worry if they had survived or not. There are those who want to completely cancel all space programs. Many people want us to work on solving problems on Earth (pollution, over population, disease, etc) before spending money we don’t have on outer space missions with no guarantee.
However, limited funding has made a few ships available to contact colonies. Alexis Alexander is a member of the small crew of the Daedelus, on a mission to connect with as many surviving colonies as possible. The ship won’t bring supplies or food or anything like that, only the medical lab on board, and the ecological, biological, and medical expertise of Alexis and his crewmates. All they can do is help the colonists adapt to their new worlds, help them fight off diseases. Even if the colonists don’t meet intelligent life forms, they will still be breathing alien air, be interacting with alien soil and microbes and such.
Today’s post comes to us from nrlymrtl (pronounced Nearly Mortal, not Gnarly Myrtle), webmistress of Dab of Darkness and contributor at Dark Cargo. Thanks to the hardworking folks at Wildside Press who are making a large number of Stableford titles available as ebooks, nrlymrtl has been able to discover and enjoy a new-to-her author. Here’s her thoughts on some of his writings:
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Biologist, Sociologist, Writer: Brian Stableford
by nrlymrtl
In 2012, I discovered Brian Stableford and his Daedalus Mission books (The Florians, Critical Threshold, Wildeblood’s Empire, The City of the Sun, Balance of Power, & The Paradox of the Sets) as published by Wildside Press. The gorgeous, detailed covers on the Wildside Press additions are also an attraction. As a biologist, these books drew me in right away because of the underlying ecological and biological principles as applied to colonizing other worlds. Even on Earth, no matter where we go, we have always had to bargain with Nature, and she has not always been an easy bargainer. Spreading Humanity across the Universe is not only a daunting task mechanically, financially, engineeringly, but also in learning to manipulate new environments and ourselves long term biologically.
And that challenge, met not just in a few years, but rather haphazardly some generations later, is what captivated me about these books. So, of course, I had to read up on Stableford. Who is this man, how many more of his books are out there, and how many should-be-sleeping hours can I physically give up to his books?
The more I learned about this man, the more I appreciated him. This Brit graduated with a biology degree in 1969 and went on to study sociology, complete with a PhD thesis titled, ‘The Sociology of Science Fiction‘ in 1979. At over 70 novels, he is still writing and publishing today, so no worries that I will run out of quality reading material anytime soon.
the Little Red Reviewer 
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