The Fortress at the End of Time

December 5, 2016
A military officer suffers through a nightmarish posting on the furthest edges of human civilization in this introspective, oddly subdued far-future tale. Ensign Ronaldo Aldo just wants to fly spaceships, but instead he’s trapped aboard the Citadel, a claustrophobic space station, where he’s surrounded by corrupt colleagues and neglectful superiors with absolutely no hope of escape or promotion. As he whiles away his days, plagued by bad luck and poor choices, he struggles to reconcile his principles with the ways things are actually done on the Citadel. Eventually, he chooses to do the unthinkable in a final attempt to change his dead-end existence. Though McDermott (Maze) introduces some intriguing concepts, such as humankind spreading through space with the use of so-called quantum clones, the execution suffers from stilted dialogue and emotional detachment, as well as a general air of apathy and fatalism; whether Aldo is pursuing romance or watching a crewmate die horribly, his narration never fully engages the reader. This passionless, purposeless, high-concept story never truly hits its mark, and the conclusion will leave readers cold.

January 1, 2017

Socially inept ensign Ronaldo Aldo is disappointed to be assigned to a remote station for his first posting out of the academy. When he is cloned and sent through the ansible to the Citadel, he finds that most of his new shipmates are either bored, bad-tempered, corrupt, or in the case of his commander, a combination of all three. While most clones hope to move on to better postings for their next iteration (a process known as transcendence), the Citadel is considered a career dead end. The suicide rate is astronomical, and station personnel often escape to the nearby planet, taking refuge in the monastery there. Aldo manages to alienate everyone he meets, and finds himself a pawn in the growing struggle between planet and station. He is also rigid and humorless, and the narrative framework McDermott employs of Aldo addressing a confessor doesn't help his likability. VERDICT With its intriguing look at cloning and an otherwise enchanting cast of officers stuck at the end of the galaxy, this short novel is marred by the singularly unappealing lead character.--MM

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