Fisherman's Hope

David Feintuch

New York: Warner, 1996. ISBN: 0-446-60099-7. Pp. 482.

This is the fourth, and originally intended to be the final, installment in the Seafort Saga, the chronicle of the adventures and increasing personal misery of one Nicholas Ewing Seafort as he rises from the ranks of a lowly Midshipman to exalted Captain and beyond. As the other books, this one is a true sequel in that it takes place immediately after the conclusion of the events in Prisoner's Hope, where Nick came back from Hope Nation expecting a court-martial for treason and detonating a nuclear device only to receive his appointment as Naval Academy Commandant. However, unlike the previous books, this novel is structured a bit more intricately in that it weaves the present-day story with occasional flashbacks to Nick's childhood before the Academy and after he enlisted as a cadet. Although ostensibly separate, the two stories nicely parallel each other and allow a curious mix of the two, otherwise thoroughly incompatible, viewpoints.

For one, we get Nick's struggle to come to grips with his current assignment as a Commandant. He is his usual nervous self (make that near-wreck) and his outbursts are sometimes breathtakingly furious. Yet this time Tolliver, the plucky and sardonic aide from the previous novel, provides a more pronounced counterpoint and injects the occasional comic relief with the irreverent way of addressing his superior and living legend. While Seafort learns of the "other," political Navy where honor and truth are bested by political guile and appropriations, he also gets to recollect his own experiences.

This is the second point of view of essentially the same place, even if it is temporally disjointed. We finally learn about Nick's childhood friend Jason and the reason for the deep scar that is mentioned in the previous books. We get another glimpse of Nick's Father, the stern remote figure who is about as real as Nick's Lord God to the boy/man. (It does not help with comprehending his behavior, I must admit.) We also see how young Nick struggles to cope with the demands of Academy, how he learns of honor in the Navy, and how he befriends Jeff Thorne, then Midshipman and early role-model. (We also get some hints about the fact that Nick is uncomfortable with homosexuality although the fact that this did not prevent him from keeping Jason as a best friend should also be revealing.)

As these two stories develop, there is one large puncture in the narrative when Annie, the former trannie and now Nick's wife, disappears from the hospital where she is undergoing hormone therapy to help overcome the consequences of being gang-raped back on Hope Nation. Nick visits the awful underbelly of New York whose description reminds me of Carpenter's Escape from New York. We get a closer glimpse of the transpops and lots of pages with dialogue that one must actually read out loud to catch the meaning of the slurred words. It's not exactly clear what these transpops feed on (except perhaps raiding the stores of the Holdouts although that's not mentioned) but assuming they have some sort of constant food source, the anarchy is unbelievable. And I mean that as in "as a reader, I cannot believe that something like that can happen." I have seen bad neighborhoods, but one cannot seriously propose that a large city would deteriorate to the point where any passerby risks being skewered within seconds of wandering into the streets at night.

Anyway, Seafort is forced to admit defeat after his initial solo foray and calls on Eddie Boss to help locate Annie. Even though it somehow makes sense in the novel, it probably would not have been my choice of strategy. For example, having heard about trannie tribe culture, I would assume Annie would try to locate her own tribe. I would then inquire with social services and find out which tribe she used to belong to, and then go in with heavy escort to the area. Eddie is at pains to convince us that no trannie would help an Uppie but given the strong reciprocity culture and the general lack of supplies these people have to contend with, I very much doubt that a laser pistol as an "innifo" would fail to result in a "trayfo." But I digress. Of course, once Annie is recovered, it's not at all clear that she will ever be able to return to Nick as a wife. Definitely not with Eddie hovering around.

And just when I thought that the novel would basically provide the missing chapter from Nick's life (no self-respecting military sci-fi novel would omit the bootcamp experience), we get the devastating closing hundred pages or so. The fish suddenly attack Home System in overwhelming numbers and the Fleet is losing the battle in the space just as the aliens hurl rocks at Earth. The only way is to divert them somehow by caterwauling the Fusion drives (producing irregular N-waves that drive them crazy). But how? The Admiralty has basically ignored Seafort's pleas to create a caterwauling nuke, and now it's too late. At his lonely lunar base, unarmed with only a handful of officers and dozens of green cadets, Nick contemplates suicide as the inevitable destruction nears. And then he hits upon a desperate plan, one that would make his previous treason look like the acts of the apostles. The ghastly choices he has to make are painful even to read about: I flinched several times as he sent groups of children to their deaths to save the rest of mankind.

With this entry, Nick's self-loathing caused by his intense introspection and religious devoutness that would shame even Calvin reaches unbearable heights. Again and again he does what he has to only to crumble physically and mentally in the end under the strain. There is nothing left to go on but his sense of duty and it is astounding that this man can continue even on that given how utterly doomed he feels himself to be. Seafort is a frustrating character, one that infuriates just as easily as he compels admiration. If we did not know his inner struggle, he would appear impossibly self-righteous, and his integrity would be seen nothing more than an off-putting pose. But we know that his unyielding devotion to duty comes at an incredibly high personal cost, and we are thus ready to forgive his mood swings and even his lashing out at innocents. With this novel, Feintuch has finally made Nick a being of mythological stature for no human being can survive the internal self-immolation and continue doing right the way he does.

The final pages offer a strange denouement and are probably just an excuse to tie in the inevitable sequels. At least I hope they are, a devout reader's hope this is.

May 22, 2006