SF/F Review: Orbital Cloud by Taiyo Fujii (Translated by Timothy Silver) https://t.co/MpS1QsBY9M Short Review: 6.5 out of 10 (1/3)— garik16 (@garik16) November 14, 2017
Short Review (cont): A book filled with interesting ideas about space propulsion and future space travel development is undermined by the main characters being constantly fawned over for their brilliance by everyone else. (2/3)— garik16 (@garik16) November 14, 2017
Orbital Cloud is the second novel by Taiyo Fujii, a Japanese Science Fiction writer, after his first novel "Gene Mapper," which I reviewed earlier this year on this blog HERE. Reading foreign/translated Science Fiction is always an interesting experience (which I heartily recommend), as you often find different ideas and biases in work that doesn't come from a familiar viewpoint. Orbital Cloud is no exception to this, although the book's biases are maybe a bit too blatant to my taste.
Fujii's first book, Gene Mapper, contained some really interesting hard scifi ideas but some rather weak character development. It was also a significantly shorter book than Orbital Cloud, so I speculated the book could've been improved with another 50 pages for character development. Orbital Cloud is such a bigger book.....but suffers still from weak character development. And unlike Gene Mapper, which had a number of really interesting ideas, Orbital Cloud's ideas aren't quite as interesting or as diverse, which makes this not nearly as successful a book.
More after the Jump:
-----------------------------------------------------Plot Summary----------------------------------------------------
In 2015, an Iranian scientist, using only pen and paper, discovers a new form of propulsion that could revolutionize space travel.
In 2020, Amateur astronomer/space-watcher Kazumi Kimura notices that the second stage of a rocket, rather than fall back to Earth, is somehow accelerating and increasing in altitude despite the rocket fuel seemingly having been used up. But as various individuals around the globe also catch on and suggest that this rocket is in fact a secret North Korean weapon, Kazumi and his IT specialist, Akari, are forced to try to decipher the mystery of the rocket and what is happening in space. And a pair of Americans - a rich businessman and his journalist daughter - seeking to show off the future of space travel by launching in their own rocket may be caught right up in the mystery.
Because while the rocket itself isn't a weapon as conventionally seen before, what is happening to it IS the result of a plot masterminded by a slighted scientist who seeks to cause mass chaos for his own ends. If the combined efforts of Kazumi, Akari, and the Japanese & American intelligence services cannot figure out what is happening and find a way to stop it, the future of the world's research into space will be changed forever.
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Orbital Cloud incidentally has two very well written characters - of course, both of these characters turn out to be the story's antagonists. You can VERY easily understand where both characters are coming from in their actions and while the main antagonist is probably a bit TOO capable to be believable (more on this later), their development is better than any other character in Fujii's two books. It's a nice thing to see when villains aren't just 2-dimensional characters, but actually have developed ideals driving them.
Really though, Orbital Cloud is a book all about the future of Space Travel and who will have access to the same. The principle of the new propulsion system that drives the main plot device is explained and figured out relatively early, but really the book seems to be about differing ideas about how people around the world, and not just in developed countries, can possibly gain access to Space. It's certainly an interesting idea.......
....unfortunately, it's not very developed compared to the other ideas which are genuinely less interesting in Orbital Cloud. There's some gimmicks involving online advertising and translation that the main villains use as part of their plan which don't really pass muster - one plot element argues that intelligence agencies around the world would be using translation algorithms to translate a North Korean speech rather than an actual person fluent in Korean, which seem pretty damn implausible.
And then there's the main characters, Akari and Kazumi, who are unbelievably omnicapable. The book replaces the Americans-are-the-best viewpoint of many American books with a "Japan-is-the-best" viewpoint, which honestly isn't the worst thing- however, the way its done in this book is really suspension of disbelief breaking. The CIA is portrayed as being insanely technologically capable in this book, but incapable of putting things together for some reason, while Akari is basically a super-hacker and spy and Kazumi is the most incredible astrophysicist despite having no formal training whatsoever. And even then, this wouldn't be that bad, except that the other characters in the book spend large periods of time openly wondering about how amazing the two main characters (or even just Japan) are. I mean, it basically reminded me of some old Tom Clancy books with American characters, and it was obnoxious there too.
In short, while the characters in Orbital Cloud are slightly better than in Gene Mapper, some of the portrayal of them here is much worse, and the ideas in this book are just less interesting than Gene Mapper. I suspect this will be the last Fujii book I'll read as a result.
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