Providence

Starred review from January 13, 2020
This terrific sci-fi thriller from Barry (Lexicon) pits humanity against a powerful and rapacious alien enemy. In the near future, scientists studying bacterial growth aboard a research vessel in space die after being attacked by six-legged creatures, some human size, that spit tiny black holes. Earth declares war on the aliens, nicknamed salamanders, recruiting the best and the brightest to seek out and destroy as many of the creatures as possible. Seven years after that deadly first contact, five combat spaceships enhanced with advanced AI are launched. One is under the command of Capt. Jolene Jackson, whose crew consists of an IT expert, a weapons officer, and a life officer responsible for maintaining the crew’s mental health. All four struggle with the challenges of their isolated and claustrophobic four-year mission, even as the vessel’s AI makes most of their abilities redundant. Naturally, the assignment isn’t as straightforward as it was billed, with the salamanders able to learn and adapt from every defeat, and each team member is tested both mentally and physically. Fans of Robert Heinlein open to more nuanced characterizations will be delighted. Agent: Luke Janklow, Janklow & Nesbit.

January 15, 2020
A heavily armed starship heads into deep space to combat a race of alien invaders. Australian author Barry (Lexicon, 2013, etc.) made his bones on satires of corporate life before diverging into fast-paced fantasy with his last offering. Seven years later, he swerves yet again into hard science fiction that bears influences from everything from Ender's Game to The Martian to 2001: A Space Odyssey with a dash of Starship Troopers and the Alien franchise here and there. The title refers to a massive starship, the fifth of its kind, which has been dispatched to find and kill an invasive alien species known to most earthlings simply as "salamanders." This follows a first-contact skirmish seven years earlier that left its survivors devastated and led Earth's leadership to develop massive AI-driven ships designed for zero-casualty warfare. While Providence is a big ship, it has a small crew, consisting of commander Jolene Jackson, weapons specialist Paul Anders, life manager Talia Beanfield, and intelligence officer Isiah "Gilly" Gilligan, the civilian tasked to the starship by the Surplex corporation. They're a diverse bunch, representing a lot of character tropes, from the square-jawed captain to the secretive madman to an unlikely survivor. Their current mission is to go into what the military terms the "Violet Zone," a communications dead zone akin to Star Trek's intergalactic nebulas. After a series of successful raids on the salamanders, things go awry when the ship's AI starts malfunctioning and the enemy grows more tactical, ultimately forcing the crew to the surface of a planet where they're forced not only to struggle to survive, but also to face their enemy instead of simply nuking them from orbit. (It's the only way to be sure). Yes, the plot and the technology are lightly derivative of other works in the SF canon, but at least Barry is pinching all the cool stuff from the best influences. Something for everyone: space combat, interpersonal tension, and aliens, ultimately leading to a story about survival.

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February 28, 2020

Seven years ago, the space research vessel Coral Beach was attacked by an alien species known as salamanders. Earth and the salamanders have been at war ever since. The Service has created a new level of war ships known as Providence Five. They're massive, built directly in space, self-repairing, self-defending, and almost exclusively controlled by the latest in artificial intelligence (AI). A crew of four sent up after the completion of the ship will perform basic monitoring and send video clips back home to create more war support. But about halfway through their four-year space tour, they start having serious doubts about the ship's A.I., their mission's true purpose, and the capabilities of the enemy. Barry (Lexicon) takes sf outside the box, adding in elements of horror and humor to explore the moral, biological, psychological, and political issues of a community at war with an enemy they cannot possibly understand. VERDICT Recommended for general sf fans and admirers of John Scalzi and James S.A. Corey. [Prepub Alert, 9/16/19.]--Jennifer Funk, McKendree Univ. Lib., Lebanon, IL

Copyright 2020 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 15, 2020
This latest from Barry (Lexicon, 2013) follows the crew of a massive AI-run ship as it plunges into the depths of space as part of a war against a deadly alien race. The novel hops between each of the crew members' perspectives, exploring their reasons for signing up for an extremely isolating and possibly redundant role as the crew of a completely automated war machine. As the ship travels to space beyond Earth's communication range, the periodic encounters between the ship and hives of salamanders become increasingly challenging due to a mixture of the aliens' evolving tactics and the crew's rising mental instability. Eventually the crew of Providence Five will be forced to deal with circumstances far beyond their training as they struggle to understand both the completely alien mind of their enemy and the impenetrably complicated behavior of their own ship. Sitting somewhere between the bleak first contact of Peter Watts' Blindsight and the many sf critiques of endless war, this uncomfortable novel should please fans of Barry's earlier work.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)