The Disinherited

This is the first of a series of three space adventures, each of which can be read on its own or together as a trilogy. The very unusual thing about this trilogy is that each of the three books falls into a slightly different genre The full series is The Disinherited (Space Opera & first contact) Legacy (Time Travel) Debt of Ages (Alternative History) Steve White started out his writing career with the "Starfire" books which he co-authored with David Weber. Both writers then branched out on their own, and both developed enormously as a result: "The Disinherited" was the first published novel which Steve White wrote on his own. In my opinion it's not at all bad, but it isn't in the same league as some of his more recent work. "The Disinherited" was written a couple of years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and assumes that in the following two generations America, and the rest of the world has gradually begun to succumb to an extreme form of political correctness combined with sophisticated antisemitism. Perhaps White slightly overdoes the stupidity of his villains here: the "Social Justice Party" which is expected to win the next US elections has policies such as to guarantee every citizen an above-average income. (Duh!) They also plan to shut down the international space project to terraform Mars and send all its personnel to re-education camps. Then one of the spaceships working on that project is contacted by visitors from another star. The good news is that these visitors, the Raehaniv, are friendly: the bad news is that their home world is about to be attacked by a species called the Korvaasha, who are not. The Korvaasha have a huge and very powerful empire, and intend to conquer the entire universe: just as the Social Justice party are cartoonishly incompetent politicians, the Korvasha are a cartoonishly horrible alien threat. Rather than face a re-education camp back home and sitting around waiting for Earth to be discovered and conquered by the Korvaasha, some of Earth's astronauts decide to help take the battle to the Korvaasha - but in the process they become the Disinherited. The story contains a lot of highly implausible elements, although some of them are explained towards the end of this book, and one or two more in the sequel, "Legacy." Overall this is a fairly good book, worth a read if you like space opera.

I'm a fan of the Classic SF RPG Traveller. I'm betting that the author is a Traveller fan too. There were just too many concepts and items straight from the game. Tailored Vac Suits, Battle Dress, Stutterwarp (ok that's 2300, but close enough), and more.This made the book more fun for me. Non-Traveller SF fans should like it as well.