Voyager in Night

Age of Exploration #2

by C.J. Cherryh

Rafe Murray, his sister Jillian, and Jillian's husband Paul Gaines, like many other out-of-luck spacers, had come to newly-built Endeavor Station to find their future. Their tiny ship, Lindy, had been salvaged from the junk heap, and fitted to mine ore from the mineral-rich rings which circled Endeavor. But their future proved to be far stranger than any of them imagined, when a "collision" with a huge alien vessel provided them with the oddest first contact experience possible!
--This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Fantasy, Aliens, Science Fiction Fantasy, Speculative Fiction, Space Opera

221 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published April 1, 1984

About the author

Currently resident in Spokane, Washington, C.J. Cherryh has won four Hugos and is one of the best-selling and most critically acclaimed authors in the science fiction and fantasy field. She is the author of more than forty novels. Her hobbies include travel, photography, reef culture, Mariners baseball, and, a late passion, figure skating: she intends to compete in the adult USFSA track. She began with the modest ambition to learn to skate backwards and now is working on jumps. She sketches, occasionally, cooks fairly well, and hates house work; she loves the outdoors, animals wild and tame, is a hobbyist geologist, adores dinosaurs, and has academic specialties in Roman constitutional law and bronze age Greek ethnography. She has written science fiction since she was ten, spent ten years of her life teaching Latin and Ancient History on the high school level, before retiring to full time writing, and now does not have enough hours in the day to pursue all her interests. Her studies include planetary geology, weather systems, and natural and man-made catastrophes, civilizations, and cosmology…in fact, there's very little that doesn't interest her. A loom is gathering dust and needs rethreading, a wooden ship model awaits construction, and the cats demand their own time much more urgently. She works constantly, researches mostly on the internet, and has books stacked up and waiting to be written.

Reviews

[Phil · Rating 2 out of 5]

Cherryh is one of my favorite authors, but Voyager is not one of her best by a long shot. Set in her familiar Alliance-Union Universe, the story begins by chronicling the trials and tribulations of a small mining ship working around a new space station. The three crew members pooled their money and bought the little ship, really a clapped out space tug, but already have had some success.

One day a 'bogie' materializes in the system, obviously alien, and after some excitement captures the little ship and jumps away. Most of the novel takes place inside the alien ship. The three crew members are 'deep scanned' or something but only one survives the process; he later wakes up and finds himself, or rather, an image of himself. WTF? Turns out the aliens created a 'clone' of him and his crewmates, or rather a doppelganger; some sort of machine image of himself that can think. Basically, the crew were 'uploaded' to a computer and now exist as programs, but ones that take form as an image.

The aliens, and there seem to be several, have some plan for the crew, but they are not united-- just the opposite!-- and some arcane power struggle soon emerges with the doppelgangers as the object.

Cherryh does aliens very well, but not so much in this case. This is mildly spoilery, but the aliens exist now as programs and now run the ship as they have for thousands of years, their original mission long forgotten. Expect lots of 'is that really me' type dialogue among the various doppelgangers and yes, the 'ship' created several of each crew. This got really tedious and I came pretty close to DNF, but thankfully, this was a short novel. Voyager seems to be an experimental novel, but not one I would recommend except for Cherryh completists. 2 meager stars.

[Mark Schiffer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Creepy, claustrophobic story of doppelgangers of doppelgangers trapped on a semi-organic ship full of unknowable entities. I'm sure this is thought of as "minor Cherryh," and I get it, but for this small work to be as unsettlingly effective as it is speaks to her strengths.

[William · Rating 1 out of 5]

Starts out well, very upbeat and fun, asteroid miners in a tiny ship, happy and in love. Then they are captured by an alien vessel, taken out system, and pain, confusion, suffering and verbal diarrhoea ensues.

I felt like I was in a room full of mirrors, including repetitive echo chamber of thoughts and events. Dull and confusing, depressing.

The story does address the feelings of knowing you are a copy of yourself, while your real self is dead. That’s good for 50 pages perhaps.

I do NOT recommend this book. A failed experiment by Cherryh, too bad.


For Cherryh, the Alliance-Union universe books are (mostly) fantastic -
* In order to read:

Downbelow Station (1981) - Superb!!
Merchanter's Luck (1982) - Perhaps her best ever!
Rimrunners (1989) – Very good!
Heavy Time (1991) - good, but long winded
Hellburner (1992) - good, but long winded
Tripoint (1994) - very good
Finity's End (1997) – Superb
Forty Thousand in Gehenna (1983) - good but uneven, important for Cyteen and Regenesis
Cyteen (1988) – Superb
Regenesis (2009) - Superb

[Justin Howe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another curious and enjoyable stand-alone SF novel.

This one read like the missing link between Peter Watts' Blindsight and Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House. A trio of spacers get hauled aboard an alien craft where they encounter the less than sane remains of an alien AI.

[Joe · Rating 1 out of 5]

Painful read. Some good sci-fi concepts. The amount of doppelgangers of characters and lack of any development made this very nauseating and un rewarding to read. Every scene was a copy of a previous scene as was every character and there was no real threat, other than a mysterious object that occasionally went past going "aaaaaiiiiiii". Perspectives were crazy, should have stuck with less POVs.

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cherryh covers familiar territory with her interest in the differences between doppelgangers in this atmospheric if occasionally confusing novel.

[Angus McKeogh · Rating 2 out of 5]

Extremely strange read, in both story and the way it was written. Basically a small abandoned spaceship is found and the AI onboard has gone sort of schizophrenic, duplicating the explorers on the vessel.

[Nicola · Rating 5 out of 5]

Voyager in Night is a wonderfully confusing and wholly uncompromising story that plunges cold, sharp-fingered hands into the sensitive meat surrounding our concept of self and humanity. Three spacers, temporarily employed as mining scouts but possessed of larger dreams, encounter and are then stolen by an unknown (and, possibly, unknowable) alien entity and then examined, murdered, and recreated as copy/pastes of themselves inside the haunted spiderweb hallways of a not-so-empty ship. These aspects of themselves are allowed to wander and grow, to feel terror, loss, love and madness as a means for the primary entity to understand them - and, possibly, use them to end a timeless struggle with one of its own rampaging copies.

This is not a book for people without the patience needed to think through their narrative, or for people who don't like seeing their favorite characters get hurt - with the element of death quite thoroughly surpassed, any further dangers must threaten something more fundamentally valuable than individual life in order to be at all effective. The ending raises more questions than it answers, and lingers on far past when the book is put down. However, for those who like to keep the mind active during their recreation of reading, this book is an absolute treasure. It goes down like an unfamiliar and not readily identifiable sushi roll: disturbing, yet savory and intensely satisfying.

[Kevin Phyland · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rafe, his sister Jillan and her husband Paul have refitted their ore craft Lindy to barely spaceworthy status and are headed out into space when an alien ship/creature drops out of the Beyond (a kind of translight hyperspace) so close to them that it must take it on board or destroy it. Both things seem to happen - they come to in the partial wreckage of the Lindy and on board a very strange craft - in pitch blackness. The entities on board (with names that cannot be envisaged except as <> or > etc.) are in the midst of an extremely long battle for control of their vessel and the ringleaders must also deal with passengers which vary from indifferent to insane. The absorption of Paul, Jillan and Rafe has given <> a lever in this battle and he creates simulacra of the three humans as patterns on board. Another alien does something similar and weaponises one of his simulacra and the fun begins because eventually there are multiple copies of all three humans…who question whether they are even alive! C. J. Cherryh has crafted a strange and complex story which requires of the reader some concentration but the nomenclature used, initially difficult to follow, becomes easier to parse as the story goes on.

[Roger · Rating 4 out of 5]

Voyager In Night by C.J. Cherryh follows three human space miners trapped in a vast, mysterious alien ship, and has almost everything that makes good science fiction great. Yet it was a little difficult for me to get into due to the alien naming convention - characters named "< >," "< / >," "< ^ >," etc., awkward for me to read and keep straight, and also the multiple instances of human characters' simulacra (avatars / androids) with the same names, sometime referred to as Rafe Two, Paul One, Jillan-Face, etc., which also became hard to keep straight. The characters are explored inside-out, and the reason for the "< / >" names becomes clearer as the story unfolds, and it's worth the effort of a careful read.

[Michael Finocchiaro · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is not one of my favorite Cherryh stories. There are some interesting ideas and it is always fun to be immersed in the Alliance-Union universe. This one leverages the extinct aliens and dangerous AI tropes to function as a sci-fi horror story similar to her Port Eternity book. It is not as essential as the Chanur, Faded Sun, Union, or Alliance stories but still a short but somewhat entertaining narrative with that claustrophobic style that Cherryh is so good at.

[Lync Lync · Rating 5 out of 5]

Set in the same universe as Downbelow Station and Cyteen, this is loosely deemed the 2nd of the Explorer series (1st is 'Port Eternity', 3rd is 'Cuckoo’s Egg'), but should be gathered into her Alternate Realities novels along with 'Wave Without a Shore'. It seems straight forward enough – a tiny freighter, the Lindy, is caught up by a large unidentified ship as it goes into jump in the Endeavour Station system. The small crew of three – Rafe, his sister Jillan, and her husband, Paul - should have died as Lindy disintegrated around them. And maybe they did. But they woke up and nothing would ever be the same again.
<> had created true simulacrum from their physical entities. Rafe has a body, the others do not. The first shock is when Rafe-with-a-body is confronted by Rafe-without-one. Then the other two arrive – also bodiless but very very alive. <> has run the ship for millennia, but <> is not fully in control. > interferes and steals Paul. <> makes another Paul and gives him to his family. But Paul One becomes corrupted by > and dangerous. It is necessary for <> to make more simulacra. Worse, it becomes necessary for <> and his own simulacra to inhabit the three human simulacra in order to communicate with them.
Confused?
Reading takes some concentration and I had to stop and re-read several passages, but within the logic of <>’s mind it all makes perfect sense. And that is the thing about this book. It is not a Human book. It is very much from the Aliens’ point of view. And it works.
I’ve read that people were confused by the names of the aliens: <>, <+>, >, ======, and so on. It’s as good a system as any to indicate different entities with humanly unpronounceable names. I don’t see any problem with it.
A word on covers: I read a version with the above cover. It was a 1st edition, 3rd printing, version of the paperback. The cover is drawn by C.J.’s brother, David Cherry, who has clearly read the book. However, another cover has sat on my shelves for many years. It is very reminiscent of ‘The Thing’ from the 1982 remake of the film. Unlike David’s cover it is an exaggeration of the horror aspect of a novel which is not meant to be ‘Horror’, but ‘First Contact’.
<> has <>’s own reasons for doing things, and in the end <> and the Humans benefit each other. It’s a very affirming novel.
It may have been difficult at times, but it really rewarded the effort required to read it.

[Joe Vasicek · Rating 4 out of 5]

Trippy book, but in an awesome sci fi way. An unknown alien entity kidnaps three human beings and makes multiple copies of them, merging these copies with other kidnapped aliens in an attempt to defeat an evil copy of itself. I don't think I've ever read another book where the aliens are more alien. It can be a little tough to get into, but I loved it.

To read the full review, visit my blog.

[Elaine · Rating 3 out of 5]

another reread; hard to know how to rate this one. I think I understand what's going on better than when I originally read it, but hard to say I actually liked it - but that doesn't mean I disliked it! Very strange, very 'other' - in some ways, very sad.

[Robert Jr. · Rating 1 out of 5]

At first, the story did catch my attention especially when the small miner craft, the Lindy, collided with the massive alien vessel, and the three main characters wake up inside of the craft. However, I should have realized the warning signs that I was not going to like this book. First, there was no atmosphere at all due to almost no descriptions of anything. Second, and this was okay at first as it occurred in a limited fashion, was the use of symbols for the names of the alien intelligence and its "passengers". That got ridiculous later on, it really kicked me out of the story. I would include a quote from the text here but GoodReads keeps trying to interpret the symbols as formatting.

The three lead characters are really bland and barely distinguishable from one another. It only gets worse when they start getting "Cloned", right when I almost started to care the story gave me several and quickly multiplying reasons not to. Another peeve is that the story is mostly dialogue between these characters, their copies, and the alien minds. It got old quick.

I did like an idea that was revealed pretty much upfront after the inciting incident of the crash. The idea that the alien ship could store any mind as a "template" (i.e. file) and thus could make endless copies and backups and allow them to roam the ship as holograms. Although, I feel that this premise was lost in the story which mostly consisted of the bland leads panicking as they met their holographic clones. There were a few scenes in there that I liked but they felt as if they were in the wrong place or just came too late. The ending was a kind of "gotcha" ending which just threw the rest of the story into doubt because of its bad execution.

I did not like this book and do not recommend it to anyone. It had a few good ideas in there but overall it was a thin story with very little plot and thin uninteresting characters. In addition, using keyboard symbols for names was not a good idea here either.

[Howl · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was very strange, both in some of the stylistic choices for names made out of punctuation patterns, and the copying of of the various human characters. In a lot of ways it read as much as horror as SF, something which I don't generally find to be true of Cherryh's work. The only other thing that I've read of hers that evoked as much creeping dread was the Rider at the Gate, had a very "monster in the woods" thing going for it.

Still made for very interesting reading, especially for filling in around the edges some of the backstory of Fargone. The rebellion at Fargone is mentioned in both 40000 in Gehenna and Cyteen but never really *explained*. This at least gives you a few cursory lines to explain why there might have been a revolt and who was rebelling.

Also interesting was the fucked up dynamic between the three human characters, the two merchanter siblings and the stationer, each of whom is suppressing a good deal of resentment for the choices they feel that the other two have pressured them into, but none of them actually saying what they really wanted until it's far far too late.

[Tbfrank · Rating 2 out of 5]

With an awkwardly worded title, Voyager in Night by C.J. Cherryh can be read as a variation on the psychological thriller Alien movie that premiered 5 years earlier.

Three humans are captured by an unimaginable (and for the most part invisible) alien intelligence. Two suffer death when the alien attempts to absorb/upload their minds only to be recreated as simulacrum cum holographs; the third survives.

The novel is a First Contact story that embeds the question of what it means to be human after an 'upload' to a collection of bits and bytes. As regards alien/human interaction, the point is made that neither can understand the motivations of the other except on a transactional basis, that of advantage vs disadvantage. The alien seems to understand that while the same can be true of some human interactions, more elements are involved.

The text has an experimental feel to it as the author uses symbols to represent the alien identities including pronouns. It occupies a niche in the author's Alliance-Union universe, focusing as it does, on the alien intelligence's efforts to comprehend and use the human copies in some manner. Acting as a pseudo-psychologist, the alien eventually converses with the copies and the one survivor. This allows the author to discuss and describe the nature of the human interstellar society that has developed and the human relationships that develop from it.

The initial story elements are familiar to those who've read other novels in the series, but are soon left behind in a confusion of doubles and triples, merged intelligences, crazed software, and a rush to a pair of final scenes that are unsatisfying.

[Andrew · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not what I thought it’d be, which shouldn’t matter much, I know, yet I was hoping for more interaction with Union-Alliance space before the plot really kicked into gear, especially as I don’t think much else is set on Endeavor station. I did think the ending could’ve been more... interesting? ambivalent? brave? I dunno. I know this review is weaselly because I can’t get into the ending without creating massive spoilers (and that goes for most of the plot in general, which means I can’t go into its relationship with Certain Genres). Of her three “magic cookie” Union-Alliance novels, this is the one that most feels like a Union-Alliance novel, and for some readers that’s probably the only thing they need to know about whether to read it or not. :-) TL;DR, I enjoyed it, it was short and quite a page-turner, not a life-changer 35 years after it was published, the ending was much better than the usual Cherryh Special (maybe damning with faint praise), glad I read it, parts might annoy some readers depending on... things, woo-hoo Endeavor station!

[Lucian Bogdan · Rating 1 out of 5]

Nu mi-a plăcut.

Echipajul unei navete de minerit ajunge lângă o navă extraterestră care pare abandonată. Computerul de bord funcționează încă și se află în posesia unei tehnologii care permite uciderea și recrearea în mai multe exemplare a ființelor ajunse la bord.

Pot spune că mi-a stârnit măcar o urmă de interes, spre deosebire de „Port Eternity”. Sunt câteva idei cu potențial acolo, dar modul cum a decurs romanul nu m-a prins deloc. Punctele pe care voia autoarea să pună accentul nu erau cele care mi se păreau mie relevante (sau modul cum punea accentul nu era în sfera mea de interes), câteva găselnițe stilistice consider că aveau nevoie de mai multă șlefuire pentru a se integra în text (semănau mai curând cu modul cum un scriitor aflat la început de drum încearcă doar să șocheze prin ingeniozitate, fără să-l intereseze armonia textului în ansamblu), acțiunea a curs mult prea lent (chiar și) pentru mine.

În mod cert, nu suntem pe aceeași lungime de undă în ceea ce privește literatura SF.

[Bruno · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read it almost by accident, knowing nothing else about this author, i thought the whole idea was brillant and quite honestly explored. After a short and very sufficient intro, we get directly into the main subject of the book, working our way alongside the three heroes to get a grip on what's happening aboard this strange alien ship, where physical laws don't apply -apparently... It could have gone further into the exploitation of the fascinating "mixing" of personalities, through this miraculous technology their kidnapper uses to understand them ; but i really appreciated the fact that nobody's trying to hurt nobody deliberately, and nobody's anyone's foe (but to himself, obviously) : a very welcomed change in standard SF. Very human, despite a choice of writing voluntary radical, though not useless. Different and positive : a very good surprise !

[David Palazzolo · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had intended to read this book last month as the implied horror elements conveyed by the front and back covers seemed a perfect match for Halloween but alas, I was unable to read it in October. For a short book, a lot of things were going on—alien encounters, death and resurrection, a ghost ship, a mutiny, the path to self discovery and how people succeed or fail in healing from trauma. I recommend reading this book in huge chunks as sometimes Cherryh’s oblique style of narration can be a confusing if you read in small doses as I was unfortunately forced to during my time with this book.

[J. J. Klejka J · Rating 5 out of 5]

Picked the book because of how strange the cover looked, and was not disappointed! If you need something to stir your imagination, this book is the quick fix you are looking for~!

Boy, my favorite kind of aliens, my favorite kind of space opera setting, and just teeming with different ways of looking at people through different human and nonhuman eyes. CJ Cherryh is the definition of an author worth reading, is very quick to set the tone of her world and make the characters tangible for the reader.

[Sue Chant · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not her usual Alliance/Union universe story, this is a first-contact novel with elements of horror. A small 3-person ore-prospecting ship is swept up almost casually by a passing ancient alien vessel, who's Minds study them down to the sub-atomic detail and replicate them as simulacra so meticulously that they think, feel and react as the humans they once were. It's quite a confusing book to get through because of the mutiplicity of replicas and the names of the alien minds formatted as symbols, but it is very worthwhile.

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

A weird, twisty, complex story. Cherryh glances across certain topics (same-sex attraction and feminist issues) with a distinctly early-80s elliptical style that's an interesting challenge while telling the story of three humans stranded on an impossibly alien ship. Two of them are basically AI copies of the dead originals, one is the still-living human. But the aliens keep making copies, and things become extremely convoluted. I enjoyed Cherryh's writing style here, she did a good job of keeping the aliens very alien yet also slowly making them more understandable.

[Karl · Rating 2 out of 5]

Perhaps a 2½ star rating would be most appropriate. This short novel has some compelling ideas and questions about the self and identity, but the narrative is slow and the story is frankly confusing. The doubling (and tripling) of characters made it difficult for me to follow who was where and saying what sometimes. I also found the resolution of the novel to be unclear and the very end to seemingly contradict what had come before.

[Reader · Rating 4 out of 5]

First book by C. J. Cherryh that I've read. Initially unaware when purchasing that it was part of a larger series (I usually avoid series) but found it to be self-contained enough to treat as a standalone. Reads like a more existential I have no Mouth and I Must Scream with a happier ending and more complex characters. Throw in a sprinkle of PKD as well. Excellent prose, great idea done well, and well written characters.

[Luca Cresta · Rating 2 out of 5]

Forse il primo testo della Cherryh che non mi è piaciuto. Ho trovato il "gioco" dei doppi molto confusionario e fino stancante ad un certo punto. Il finale è anche un po' scontato. Il testo è ben scritto e scorre abbastanza, ma è proprio la storia che non decolla. Forse una racconto di 50÷60 pagine sarebbe stato sufficiente.

[Michael Levine · Rating 1 out of 5]

I used to think that Cherryh never wrote a bad book. Unfortunately, this book is awful. Confusing, goes nowhere, and thoroughly unsatisfying. The psychology with inner and outer space and reality and the nature of reality just didn’t do it for me. Obviously I can’t recommend this book.

[Gr1972 · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 out of 5

[Captain Marcus · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good! Takes a while to spin up to speed, but solid. 4/5