Book Report: Star Rebel by F.M. Busby (1984)

A book review of F.M. Busby’s Cage A Man, the first part of the Demu Trilogy, prompted me to pick up this book (as I prophesied a couple weeks ago). It’s the first half of a two-book set which I purchased in 2011. So it’s been, um, a couple of years since I read the Demu Trilogy in my early adulthood.

This book takes place in a far future world where near faster-than-light travel exists, possibly stolen from an alien race. A corporation has taken control of the Earth and its outworld colonies and looks to eliminate its rival corporations and foundations on Earth. Members of one such rival foundation get their young son into a military service academy under faked papers to keep him safe, but he endures hardships in the brutal training academy. He shows aptitude in ship piloting and fighting, though, so he graduates despite two stints in the special torture cell used as punishment. He gets posted as a cadet to a ship whose captain notoriously “spaces” cadets, throwing them out of the airlock for small offenses. Bran survives and thrives in his next posting.

He learns that mutiny is not uncommon, and that after mutiny, the mutineers rename their ships and head for Hidden worlds–worlds that the corporation does not know about but whose locations are shared by the Escaped captains. When the captain decides to punish Tregare’s friend and lover for an infraction, he triggers a mutiny that liberates a ship. A counter-mutiny by captured corporation loyalists elevates Tregare from third in command to captain of his own ship, and he vows revenge upon the corporation and hopes to build a wider rebellion.

Part of the world-building going on is that the spacers, who travel at near light speeds, take the Long View because their calendar time differs from the experience of time for residents on planets they visit. We don’t see much of this in the books as most of the books and characters are on the same ship, but although it tries to handle this, it’s a little wonky. The personal calendars of individuals are going to differ based on how long they travel at near-light speeds and how long they spend on planets. Forget the people on the planets, who are going to age decades for every couple of months that the spacefarers travel–the other space farers are going to age at different rates as well, but this book kind of overlooks that. And the trade–basically, the ship is going to load up 40 or 50 years before it will reach its destination in real time. What goods and services will those planets need in a hundred of their years? The book is vague on the trade goods, but one wonders how that would work. It’s a shame to introduce the Long View when it’s not all worked out, but I guess it added a touch of novelty and verite to the book in 1984.

It’s not bad for rocket jockey kinds of science fiction. However, unlike some of the juvie stuff, the books contain sex–not especially graphic, but it’s there, so if you’re put off by that, the book might put you off. But not bad for its time.