Baptism of Fire

by Linda Grant De Pauw

When Maggie Steele graduates from the Naval Academy gender prejudice has long since vanished from memory. Earth is at war in space, and is relying on its Navy to make the universe safe for hominids. But has the innovative simulation training, known as SOCRATES, prepared the new officer for the rigors of service in space where the tachyonic inertial effect limits use of electronic technology? Telepathic aliens, pirates, epidemics, and chronic conflict among members of the impressed crew complicate the challenge of command in space as a young woman confronts her Baptism of Fire

393 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 1993

About the author

LINDA GRANT DE PAUW is President of the Minerva Center (an institution dedicated to studies of women in the military) and Professor Emeritus of History at George Washington University.

Reviews

[Silvio Curtis · Rating 4 out of 5]

The point of this book seems to be to write about an eighteenth-century navy, only in space and with more women in it. The only other major difference is that the officers are all meritocrats, a caste of people who are superior to ordinary hominids in physical and mental ability, altruism, and discipline. Meritocratic status isn't genetic and appears sporadically in all environments, but conveniently there are objective tests for it and everyone has voluntarily handed over the leadership of Earth to them as a sort of new nobility. Humans have also built faster-than-light spacecraft and made contact with other hominids in the so-called Colony, and with an alien species that eats hominids. That's the enemy in the war. Humans generally treat Colonials pretty horribly, even Colonial meritocrats, and the narrative voice seems not to be on board with that, but it's not clear that those qualms are supposed to extend (as mine certainly do) to the navy's practice of kidnapping social outcasts of all sorts and sending them to fight Delphinians while forcing the captain's religion on them and constantly threatening them with whipping or hanging as a strategy of moral improvement. The episodic plot does a good job of showing you around the ship and how it works. I think the most coherent and best imagined part is the importance of the medical staff, because some ill-conceived treatments and episodes of biological warfare with the Delphinians have made viral epidemics more dangerous than violence again.