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emheld's review
4.0
This reads like a classic sci-fi novel, easy enough to shelve with Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein, etc. It's full of big ideas, actual science, compelling story that doesn't rely on explosions to propel the plot.
Highly recommended. Hopefully this, and the others in the trilogy, will get individual or an omnibus release.
Curious sidenote: this came out the same year as (and was somewhat overshadowed by) Sagan's Contact, and the two share the "message from space" plot device. How they handle that same event is very different. If you read Sagan and think Emprise is a rip-off,think again. It's the equal, maybe superior, story.
Highly recommended. Hopefully this, and the others in the trilogy, will get individual or an omnibus release.
Curious sidenote: this came out the same year as (and was somewhat overshadowed by) Sagan's Contact, and the two share the "message from space" plot device. How they handle that same event is very different. If you read Sagan and think Emprise is a rip-off,think again. It's the equal, maybe superior, story.
tome15's review
4.0
Kube-McDowell, Michael P. Emprise. The Trigon Disunity. Berkley, 1985.
This first volume of the Trigon Disunity series was a nominee for the Philip K. Dick Award, and one can see why. It deals in the way Dick often did with issues of surveillance and bureaucratic skullduggery. During an almost apocalyptic planetary environmental and economic collapse, we are somehow able to martial the resources to travel out several years to meet an incoming alien starship that has pinged us. The story of getting ready to launch is slow, but once the encounter takes place the drama becomes intense as the political and religious divisions among the crew threaten to upset all the apple carts. There is a scientist who is interested in seeing what evolution has wrought, a militarist who is interested in deciding whether to attack, defend, or surrender, a religious zealot who thinks the aliens will be messengers from God. And there is our protagonist, who has to decide how to mediate the disputes and decide what to do when the aliens turn out to be surprising in many ways.
This first volume of the Trigon Disunity series was a nominee for the Philip K. Dick Award, and one can see why. It deals in the way Dick often did with issues of surveillance and bureaucratic skullduggery. During an almost apocalyptic planetary environmental and economic collapse, we are somehow able to martial the resources to travel out several years to meet an incoming alien starship that has pinged us. The story of getting ready to launch is slow, but once the encounter takes place the drama becomes intense as the political and religious divisions among the crew threaten to upset all the apple carts. There is a scientist who is interested in seeing what evolution has wrought, a militarist who is interested in deciding whether to attack, defend, or surrender, a religious zealot who thinks the aliens will be messengers from God. And there is our protagonist, who has to decide how to mediate the disputes and decide what to do when the aliens turn out to be surprising in many ways.
acdha's review
3.0
I first read this as a teenager, and it didn’t hold up well on a re-read: there are some good ideas but the world building tried to be more than the author could pull off, which lasted through the remainder of the trilogy. It tries to be set outside the US, which was a neat idea but the characters and culture act and talk like late Cold War Americans and Christianity is the only religion which is important enough to impact the plot.
Content warning: as was unfortunately common in that generation, one of the female characters is largely defined by a brutal rape described in unnecessary detail and continues to be in the plot mostly for male, and thus more important, characters to want to have sex with her.
Content warning: as was unfortunately common in that generation, one of the female characters is largely defined by a brutal rape described in unnecessary detail and continues to be in the plot mostly for male, and thus more important, characters to want to have sex with her.
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