Half Way Home

August 1, 2019
Revisiting a popular science-fiction premise--colonists stranded on an unexplored planet--the latest from Howey is a survival story revolving around a group of young pioneers who are awakened from their amniotic vats to find their settlement in ruins and the majority of their fellow colonists dead. For hundreds of years, Porter and the rest of his compatriots have traveled through space as blastocysts--fertilized eggs--en route to a distant world that scientists back on Earth presumed could be habitable. Once at their destination, the AI was supposed to evaluate the planet and deem it either viable or unviable. If viable, the AI would grow the 500 fertilized eggs in vats and educate each one with specific knowledge (in medicine, mechanics, agriculture, etc.) for 30 years before they would be birthed as adults. If unviable, the AI would simply destroy everything. Born 15 years too early, Porter (the colony's psychologist) is awakened to screams as his home burns. After deeming the world viable, the AI has inexplicably begun the abort process. Barely escaping with his life--naked and clueless about the alien world he has stepped into--Porter and 58 other newly hatched humans must survive long enough to understand the AI's brutal decisions. But as the teenagers attempt to build their new society, age-old human flaws threaten to destroy their chances of survival. Howey doesn't offer up anything particularly original here: The worldbuilding is superficial at best and the storyline is formulaic and predictable. But the major issue is with the tone-deaf characterization. Porter, who has been genetically engineered to be gay, is described as feminine and weak. His sexuality--which has little to do with the main story--seems forced and unrealistic. Some readers may find the paper-thin reasoning behind the author's decision to make the main character gay problematic at best. A fun but deeply flawed science-fiction reimagining of the 1955 Heinlein juvie classic Tunnel in the Sky.

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July 8, 2019
In this half-baked futuristic thriller, a few dozen teen colonists—vat-grown and totally unready for their current predicament—struggle to succeed on an alien planet after the AI controlling their development destroys most of their comrades and supplies in an aborted self-destruction attempt. As chronicled by Porter, who was designed to be the colony psychologist, the survivors soon fall into internal strife and power struggles, with one faction quickly establishing dominance to enforce the AI’s demanding timetable for the completion of a mysterious project. When Porter and a handful of others flee to the untamed wilds of their extraterrestrial home, they discover the planet’s true secrets. Having learned why they were saved from destruction, Porter and his comrades must stop the AI’s project at all costs. In this cross between William Golding’s Lord of the Flies and Robert A. Heinlein’s Tunnel in the Sky, Howey (Machine Learning) creates a strange setting that’s atmospheric and alien. However, his characters never fully come to life; they rarely talk or act like teenagers, and Porter’s narrative voice is particularly unconvincing. Like the colony, this tale feels incomplete. Agent: Kristin Nelson, Nelson Literary Agency.

September 15, 2019
Man versus the elements is one of the great tropes of narrative fiction, and it can be especially compelling in the realm of science fiction since the challenges that must be faced are limited only by the author's imagination. Howey (Wool, 2012) shows no lack of imagination at devising obstacles to be faced by a group of colonists?teenagers in this instance?whose task it is to settle a wild and primitive alien planet. And major obstacles they are: before landing an accident kills most of their number and destroys the bulk of their supplies. The rest are awoken prematurely from suspended animation, which was not only meant to grow them to maturity but to fully sleep-educate them as well, leaving a group of poorly educated teenagers who must somehow survive a hostile planet. Taking a page from Lord of the Flies, Howey's young colonists soon discover that the greatest threat comes not from a hostile planet, but from within themselves. This title was originally self-published in 2013; but so was Howey's mega-popular Wool trilogy.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)