Black Gate

Welcome back to the Black Gate Book Club! We are rapidly closing in on C.J. Cherryh’s Downbelow Station (DbS).  You can get to speed with the first, second, and third rounds.

Adrian S.

Fourth round!

Okay, page 285 and Fletcher, you are right that things are (finally) happening quick. The Union Fleet has dropped into the system, and the Company Fleet and the militia go out to meet them.  I like the idea that all the ships look the same on scan, whether they are jump-capable merchanters or in-system merchanters, or Fleet Carriers or whatever—they all look the same until they maneuver or start to fire.

Jon Lukas has become the bad guy that he was hinted at with a full murderous take-over of Downbelow Station.   Of course, he’s made a choice on which side he’s on, gambling that the Union is going to win, and from there getting roped into helping Union win.  This puts him with a lot of targets on his back.

Kressich is in the exact same boat, but with more targets on his back, he’s terrified of his people in Q, and terrified of his own security, but once the shooting starts, he is one of the few people who has security and has people.

The relationship of the “leaders” to their armies/militias is interesting.

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Welcome to the second round of discussion on C.J. Cherryh’s classic 1981 novel Downbelow Station. New to the program? Check out the first and second rounds. We lose Chris on this one, perhaps a casualty of a bad Jump from the Beyond. Fletcher and myself carry the standard of the Black Gate Book Club as best we can!

Adrian S.

Third round! And it is appropriate that I just started book 3 of DbS.  I’m on page 190, so I have surpassed my previous record of 169.

What can I say at this point? Well, my guess that conspicuously-absent Admiral Mazian was, in fact, behind the destruction of several company/neutral stations has borne out to be true!  I guess the big game is to try to force the Union to take control of these damaged stations and spread themselves too thin?  And to put all their resources at a station called Viking—the only 100% working station in Union space, I guess?  And to attack/destroy/cripple it and thus break the Union.

Of course, Union seems to be playing the same trick — forcing the refugees all to Downbelow Station, which has now become the one 100% working station in Company space.

So that’s what the power-players are doing, and everyone else is just running around between their feet.

I like how Cherryh illuminates parts of the plot, then occludes other parts. The sudden retreat of Mazian’s fleet from the Viking attack — was it due to Ambassador Ayer’s orders, or some other factor?

But again, I have to say that Jon Lukas, who does the right things for the wrong reasons, is still coming off as one of the only active people in the book. Honestly, how hard is it to get on the goddam PA system and say “Yes, the fleet is coming, no we are not all gonna die, keep calm and carry on.” Hard enough that only Jon Lucas can do it and keep Downbelow Station from tearing itself apart in a panic!

Satin, the Downer now working on Downbelow Station, is also active in that she is following her vision-quest thing regardless of what the older Downers and the Lukas-men and everyone else thinks.

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Welcome to the second round of discussion on C.J. Cherryh’s classic 1981 novel Downbelow Station. New to the program? The first discussion can be found here.

Chris Hocking gets the ball rolling this time around.

Chris Hocking

Hi people,

I had business travel to do and took Downbelow Station on the plane for some serious reading. I came away from it realizing that I had developed an unusual (for me at least) attitude toward the book.

This is an intense SF novel depicting otherworldly conflict in alien environments, but it’s tone is resolutely workaday and normalized. The exotic situations and scenes described are experienced by the characters, and presented to the reader, with matter-of-fact realism. We follow several characters whose histories and position are laid out and fitted into this fictional environment with great skill. This is a story of interplanetary war, of political maneuver and counter-maneuver, of individuals and policy makers struggling to deal with the critical issues and collateral adjustments that inevitably arise in wartime. It is executed by Cherryh with remarkable depth and solidity: the environment meshes completely with the story being told and the overall effect is very convincing. This is a powerful and deep imagination at work.

Yet having said all that, I find the book a half-step out of phase with my own reading tastes. The consistent desperation of most of the characters, the grueling effects of war and displacement are all well done and appropriate to the story being told, but for me the cumulative effect was kind of enervating. I’ve read enough bleak modern fiction and noir that this didn’t bother me much in itself, but it was coupled with the notable absence of an element I tend to seek in Science Fiction.

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Welcome to the very first post of the Black Gate Book Club!  What are we up to?  As Fletcher Vredenburgh said in his introduction to the Book Club:

The plan is to read Downbelow Station over the month of June and post a discussion of it each Monday afternoon. This time around, the Book Club participants will include Adrian Simmons, Charlene Brusso, Chris Hocking, and me. We’d love it if you’d read along with us and join in the conversation.

Of course, it is now Wednesday, not Monday, and Charlene had to bow out of this round because life intrudes. Never the less, Vredenburgh, Hocking and I soldiered on! Below is our exchange:

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