Technokill (Starfist, Book 5)

by David Sherman and Dan Cragg

Book Overview

A terrifying secret, an evil coterie of ruthless masterminds, a murderous battle of cunning and deadly skill--it's time to send in the Marines After the Confederation makes a shocking discovery on an... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0345435915
• Release Date: August 2000
• Publisher: Del Rey
• Length: 352 Pages
• Weight: 0.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 6.8" x 0.9" x 4.2"

Customer Reviews

More Aliens

After reading the first four books of the series and encountering a universe where humanity is the only sentience, until the last volume, it was surprising to find more aliens in the very next installment from a completely new planet. It was surprising but nicely handled. This time the jarheads are sent to an ultra secret planet to fight smugglers. The existence of this planet is known to only a few at the highest levels of government because the natives there are intelligent but very far behind humanity in terms of development. Think in terms of nomadic hoards. There is a sort of "Prime Directive" at work in which the decision has been made to let the culture develop naturally. There are a few problems with this. The natives produce some extremely valuable gemstones which makes smuggling worthwhile and the head scientist is doing nasty experiments on the natives. When the marines are sent in to stop things, they have their hands full. Instead of being action packed, this book spends more time on story development. That didn't bother me but those who don't want the shooting to cease may be a bit disappointed. I would have given this book a fifth start where it not for one thing. It seems in many places to be temporally disjointed. There is a perception that some of the narrative is out of order. Sometimes it was a minor matter of the difficulty of telling two simultaneous stories. Other times it was more distracting in that I thought I was reading of subsequent events when actually I was reading of prior ones.

Great adventure, daring effort!

My hat's off to co-authors Dan Cragg and David Sherman for not taking the easy path. This series has been building an ever-greater following, and the thing most authors would have done would have been to stay in the groove and keep re-writing the same book over and over again. With volume V, Cragg and Sherman have certainly kept the basic themes and characters, but they've also taken chances by pushing the envelope and reaching (successfully, in my book) for ever-greater creativity. I found the picture of the alien world the most intriguing I've read in many years--it took me back to my youth and the great age of sci-fi, with writers like Heinlein, Asimov and Company. Other reviewers have gone over the basics of the plot, so I'll keep this short and not re-hash it. But this book revitalized my interest in the series--because there's more to life and conflict than just raw combat, even in a troubled, war-torn future--and because it is, in this reader's view, a marvelous work of the imagination. I hope the series continues for many more volumes, and I suspect the audience will continue to grow. In the meantime, I just passed this volume to my brother, who also remembers the golden age of fictional speculation. Very well done!

Protecting the Natives

Technokill ReviewI've said it before, I'll say it again - if Tom Clancy wrote far-future SF, it would look like this. Some SF tales are "Gadget" stories - the main character is a computer, a time machine, or a space ship - the humans (or other sentient creatures) are mere window dressing. This is where a lot of SF writers start out, and these stories are sometimes, but not always, bad. At the other end are "people" stories - the story is about people and situations, and the SF elements are thrown in as a seeming afterthought. These can often be good - Ray Bradbury's Martian Chronicles are "not really SF", but they're good stories. The same can be said for Spider Robinson's "Callahan's Bar" series. I'll add another distinction - I consider the culture a form of technology, something a lot of writers don't consider. For example, James Blush's "Cities in Flight" follows the people of New York City a thousand years in the future. It's a good story, but I have trouble believing that a thousand years from now, after 800 years of Soviet Occupation, New York City would look and sound so much like the NYC of 1960 - especially since NYC has changed so much in my lifetime... The FIST series falls just a little right of center on this spectrum - there's a bit of science here, and neat, well thought out gadgets, but the real story is in the characters. I can believe in the Confederation culture - given the authors' assumption about the developments of the next few centuries, it makes sense. The main characters are much like the military folks I know - I can tie most of the characters to a real-life person. Mssrs Cragg and Sherman concentrate on the Marines, but they also follow the grand sweep of the action- from the highest level of the Confederation government, the smoky back rooms of power politics, the Conference rooms of the military leaders, right down to the conversations in the berthing spaces of the transport ships. That's not unusual - what's remarkable, is that they do it so well. For example, if you watch Star Trek (tm), you'd think that Starfleet (tm) lobotomizes all Admirals - I can't think of a single intelligent Flag officer in that universe, Kirk included, in many years. Back when I was an enlisted troop, I might have agreed with that, but over the last few years, I've personally met many Generals, Admirals, etc. I've concluded that, when you can see the big picture, things that looks stupid to the Line Animal and his micro view, make sense to the General and his/her macro view. This story pits the Marines against a bunch of smugglers trying to take unfair advantage of a group of intelligent avian creatures. The Confederation leadership wants the avians to develop technology on their own, without outside interference. The smugglers want to obtain some high-value gemstones that are only found on this world, and who cares what happens to the natives and their culture? Further, the Marines

Good, but not the best.

I thought it was a great addition to the Starfist Saga. There was a little issue following the story in the beginning, but it leveled out afterwords.I like the aliens the authors use, both in this one and the last book. They are not the conventional alien, hard to describe, but you will understand when you read the book.All and all, a good book. I look forward to the next one.