Cascade Point: A Review

I've been busy working on a novella, so I've been reading a few more to see how some authors approach the work (I've been reading Larry Niven's Flatlander book with several novellas). I had never read Timothy Zahn's Hugo-winning novella before.

Pall Durriken is captain of a low-class passenger starship called the Aura Dancer. In Cascade Point, interstellar travel is accomplished via   a hyperspace of some sort called Colloton space. One aspect of this space is that those who are awake during it witness themselves in parallel universes stretching out infinitely. Thus, Durriken, who is awake for the first jump, witnesses himself sitting in the navigator's chair over and over again--sometimes in a luxury passenger liner's captain's uniform. The effects of Colloton space can be psychologically depressing. Fortunately, most people sleep through it or are on much more financially enriched ships that can afford an auto-navigator. Zahn goes into a lot of detail about how interstellar travel works, noting that the size of the ship, its shape, and the volume of ming metal (a alloy with specific properties) influences the jump.

When psychiatrist Dr. Hammerfeld Lanton and his patient, Rik Bradley, join the flight, however, things go awry. Lanton hopes to learn if Colloton space and assist Bradley in a recovering. He fails to note or simply doesn't know (in the novella he claims to not know) that one of his devices contains ming metal, and that unshielded ming metal results in a the Aura Dancer not just traveling through space but through universes. As the crew works to figure out how they return to their own universe, questions arise on how it will affect Bradley, who had demonstrated some improvement.

The story is quite simple in that the ship flies out and flies back and in the intervening travel determine that it has switched universes and then working their way back. Two characters are really the focus of the novella: Durriken and his first mate Alana Keal. Durriken is haunted by a rash action years before that sent him down the path, and the Colloton space luxury passenger ship version of him gives him insight into what might have happened had he acted differently. Keal is largely a mystery to her captain,  who describes her as somebody that finds damaged people in an effort to fix them. Keal gravitates to Bradley.

I thought the novella missed some opportunities in really exploring having alternate realities demonstrated to you or the idea that regardless when infinite universes show all possibilities, some version of "you" made each of those decisions. Some weighty philosophical themes are possible, and though they are touched on, they do not come out in full force, for Zahn prefers to stick to mechanics of navigating Colloton space or the character's immediate actions.

The characters are finely drawn, even the minor characters. The story itself is well told, though weakened by an overly "happy" ending I think. A much younger Zahn wrote this, and you can see many of the tell-tale aspects of his later writing. Worth a read.