The Lost Fleet: Beyond the Frontier: Steadfast by Jack Campbell

book

Back when I was young and still somewhat naive, I was rather taken by the idea of history following a cyclical pattern. I think I first encountered the idea in The Voyage of the Space Beagle by A E van Vogt. At the time, I was studying the classical languages at school and had read Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire which was a somewhat ironic book for a European historian to be writing as the then major European powers were full of optimism and engaged in creating their own Empires. But the idea of a man writing about the fall of one empire as all the other emergent empires were doomed to fall seemed eerily prescient. Anyway, my understanding of history did seem to register Golden Ages followed by Dark Ages as different civilisations rose, prospered, and then fell. It also seemed attractive to believe that, after each Dark Age, the next civilisation would be better than the last. Young people always want to believe the later generations learn from the mistakes of the earlier. Sadly, that’s rarely the case. As each society reaches the point where agriculture and raw material resources can no longer support the local population, there tend to be wars and social collapse (if climate change wrecks enough of the world’s agriculture, the next collapse may not be very far away).

The Lost Fleet: Beyond the Frontier: Steadfast by Jack Campbell (pseudonym of John G Hemry) (Ace, 2014) is rather elegantly playing with this idea as John “Black Jack” Geary begins the book doing a tour of Earth (as the cradle of the now interstellar civilisation). Appropriately, he’s visiting Hadrian’s Wall in the North of England close to where I was born (not, you understand, that I was there when Black Jack visited). There’s much for him to chew on as he considers how the wall came to be built and, more importantly, why it was later abandoned and largely allowed to collapse over the centuries that followed. He also views other sites where the damage caused by the collapse of an empire remains as a reminder of past failure. He sees this alongside his own experience of helping the Alliance beat the Syndicate and then fight off aliens who might have done considerable damage. The state of the two human combatants remains fragile with the Alliance caught in a difficult economic situation as their worlds try to shift from a war to a peace footing. The Syndicate has fragmented with many planetary systems going through local rebellions against the old regimes who continue to holdout. No-one is doing well in this situation.

Jack Campbell (John G Hemry)

The book is full of discussions and insights into the collapse of order on both sides of the political divide. Before the war, there were political tensions but, along the border between the two sides, there was considerable trade and movement of people. Now that the war is technically over, there are the usual problems of recovering prisoners of war and dealing with refugees and economic migrants whose arrival from Syndicate space is stressing the resource-poor economies on the Alliance side. This leaves Black Jack with two major issues to address. The first is the enigmatic presence of six ship from the alien race called the Dancers. Their command of standard English is no doubt good, but they choose to communicate in a very odd way. Indeed, the retired general who’s been given the job of liaison officer finds trying to get anything approximating a straight answer out of them a challenge. Nevertheless, there does seem to be some method to their alien strangeness as they suddenly take off on an apparently random tour of human space with the general in tow. Fortunately, it becomes clear towards the end of the book that they have been able to see signs all is not well in human space.

The second issue relates to the extraordinary secrecy surrounding some of the activities of the Alliance. It seems factions have been taking long-term decisions without any public disclosure let alone discussion. Until the end of this book, it’s not entirely clear exactly what’s been done. Now we have a better view of the outcome, it’s obviously a disaster that’s waiting to rampage out of control. As a warning sign of the capacity for decision-makers to believe they are doing the right thing, we get an early visit to the moon of Europa where a secret lab was trying to create the perfect bio weapon. Unfortunately, it escaped the lab and everyone of the moon died. A permanent exclusion zone has been established and no-one is allowed to visit. This latest discovery may well be characterised as an infection of sorts. It will be interesting to see how Black Jack deals both with the politics of how such a thing came to be created and, more importantly, what’s to be done about it now. Putting the problem shortly, the Alliance and the Syndicates had some degree of stability through maintaining the status quo of the conflict. When Black Jack broke the impasse, the Alliance feared for its own stability as victor. Those who had been leaders on a wartime footing might not maintain their hold over power if there was a return to peacetime democracy. For some this would be unendurable. Such is the way in which leaders sow the seeds of their empire’s fall. Putting all this together, The Lost Fleet: Beyond the Frontier: Steadfast is rather a thoughtful book with quite a lot of fighting for those who like military SF.

For review of other books by “Jack Campbell”, see:
The Last Full Measure
The Lost Fleet: Beyond the Frontier: Dreadnaught
The Lost Stars: Tarnished Knight

A copy of this book was sent to me for review.