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Limbo System
An Earth ship encounters a densely populated alien system possessing advanced technologies and a highly aggressive nature, and they must prevent their own advanced transportation from falling into alien hands
305 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published August 1, 1989
4 people are currently reading
100 people want to read
About the author
Rick Cook
34 books81 followersRick Cook is a journalist, computer hacker, and fantasy author best known for his "Wiz" series of books. Since his hospitalization in 2000 he has not resumed fiction writing.
Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.
Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
January 21, 2019
Rick's wizardry series provided me hours and hours of sheer, unalloyed joy. I don't think I've gotten to rereading them all for Goodreads, so I'm sure I will, but I powered through them many years before I started cataloguing.
This was ... average, really. But to read it after all this time, I can't resist enjoying it. So not an objective rating, but a well-earned one.
This was ... average, really. But to read it after all this time, I can't resist enjoying it. So not an objective rating, but a well-earned one.
January 2, 2018
A starship has made the FTL leap to another star system -- a minor little sun, for the purposes of surveying the stars to make charts. Its crew was not so much selected as negotiated. About a third of them are effectively in (temporary) exile. Others -- well, Billy Toyodo was sent because his uncle thought it would do him good to get off earth.
Except that they keep finding anomalies in their data about the star. They investigate and investigate -- and finally conclude that yes, it's aliens.
Someone thinks to tell the captain, and the argument they should flee with the news is shot down. Meanwhile, the aliens, in all their individual colonies, have noted the arrival and began to ponder it. When the ship reappears deep within the system, they realize these beings are not like them, the descendants of those who chose to live in space or the Colonists, and furthermore, have a form of FTL drive that they don't, one that makes FTL travel feasible.
They succeed in opening up communications, and things happen. Even though there is no real main character, only major ones, the book still is focused about the impact on both the Colonists (or Owlies) and the humans. One human becomes infatuated when he realizes they have no war. Another remains certain that the Colonists are their enemies. Many other talk with them just to talk. The Colonists suppress some knowledge about themselves, but it comes out when plots start to come to fruition.
The rest of the book involves intra-Colonist politics, drugs, hand-optimization of translation tables leading to truly oddly phrased conversations, gold, explosions, philosophical discussion of the truth, the conversion of ships meant to dive into Jovian atmosphere, sabotage, a trial, the reentactment of an ancient Japanese tale not quite faithfully and a daring rescue.
I particularly like that there are two characters in it who are clearly meant to be wise, and he succeeds in pulling it off. The only way I have ever seen any writer pull off wisdom: he ripped off historical wisdom and put it in his characters' mouths. Indeed, we are told where they get it. (No actually wise man is ashamed to believe what has been believed before.)
Except that they keep finding anomalies in their data about the star. They investigate and investigate -- and finally conclude that yes, it's aliens.
Someone thinks to tell the captain, and the argument they should flee with the news is shot down. Meanwhile, the aliens, in all their individual colonies, have noted the arrival and began to ponder it. When the ship reappears deep within the system, they realize these beings are not like them, the descendants of those who chose to live in space or the Colonists, and furthermore, have a form of FTL drive that they don't, one that makes FTL travel feasible.
They succeed in opening up communications, and things happen. Even though there is no real main character, only major ones, the book still is focused about the impact on both the Colonists (or Owlies) and the humans. One human becomes infatuated when he realizes they have no war. Another remains certain that the Colonists are their enemies. Many other talk with them just to talk. The Colonists suppress some knowledge about themselves, but it comes out when plots start to come to fruition.
The rest of the book involves intra-Colonist politics, drugs, hand-optimization of translation tables leading to truly oddly phrased conversations, gold, explosions, philosophical discussion of the truth, the conversion of ships meant to dive into Jovian atmosphere, sabotage, a trial, the reentactment of an ancient Japanese tale not quite faithfully and a daring rescue.
I particularly like that there are two characters in it who are clearly meant to be wise, and he succeeds in pulling it off. The only way I have ever seen any writer pull off wisdom: he ripped off historical wisdom and put it in his characters' mouths. Indeed, we are told where they get it. (No actually wise man is ashamed to believe what has been believed before.)
January 12, 2015
Limbo System
by Rick Cook
Published in 1989, it is on my read shelve but it has been a while and this is another one that I don’t recall.
So here is my review after re-reading:
Main thing I remember that stuck with me after first reading (though I didn’t recall it was from this book) : vast space colonies with no planet because once you escape the gravity well, what do you really need a planet for?
The cover has some cheesy reptilian aliens straight out of Star Trek and bad B movies. One human dressed like a Samurai and another like your typical space fairing hot shot also from B movie science fiction.
Told in third person past tense, typical for this time period and genre.
Characters:
Dr Sharon Dolan
Captain Peter Jenkins
Dr Andrew Aubrey
Iron Alice DeRosa
Major Autro Delorenzo
Father Michael Simon
Barry Kirchoff
Karl Ludenemeyer
Note: all of these characters appear in the first 13 pages! Even more are introduced as the story progresses so I got tired of listing them. There is no “POV” really, it is a story told by the narrator.
They are all on a space ship, The Maxwell (FTL), on an routine exploratory mission. It is a just a scientific expedition and they expect to make observations of a star. They quickly discover that there is a highly technological alien civilization. They live in vast colonies in space and mine the astroids and gas giants and strangely there is no earth like planet in the system and none of the planets are inhabited.
there is exposition explaining that all of the explorations have only found mars-like and gas giants in all the systems they have visited. Nothing suitable for life.
There are periodic paragraphs from the aliens POV but only in a general since, no specific aliens as the Captain and crew debate what to do about their discovery. Make contact or run? Once the aliens launch a ship in their direction, they have six weeks to decide, because you know space is HUGE. At least the science if pretty good in this book if the character development is nearly non existent.
In Part II
The book switches to the alien who are debating what to do about the ship. From there POV, we find out they are very excited about the FTL drive which they had believed wasn’t feasible.
After some time, they manage a dialog (no easy universal translators, they power through it slowly, but entirely possible if both parties are motivated). When the start talking, the aliens immediately ask for trade for the star drive design. They have a star drive of sorts but not as good. They reveal that they are colonists from another system and that ships arrive ‘occasionally’. They admit that they use generation ships to travel from system to system. And apparently, their civilization is millions of years old (probably).
While the humans work to understand the aliens, the aliens have political splits over show to deal with them. Most think the star drive is worth trading for while others want to destroy them. Kudos to Rick Cook on the complicated byzantine structure of the aliens. They tell the humans that they have disputes but they are settled with trade, talk, etc, but never war.
The negotiations and interactions are very well written and make for interesting science fiction. The aliens are playing a long complicated political game in an attempt to get the star drive and supremacy for their ‘lineage’ - how they are divided. The alien sections are some of the most interesting and fun to read. With so many characters on the human ship, I never felt any of them had a particular voice.
In particular, when the aliens start bribing and manipulating the humans, it seems so transparent that it couldn’t possibly work. Starting with the fact that they allow anyone on the ship to talk to the aliens uncontrolled and unmonitored. Really? And when they assault the ship with a boarding party (having manipulated some of the crew to place ‘packages’) the human are taken completely by surprise. I have to really suspend believe given how paranoid they were when they first learned of the aliens.
The story gets very interesting toward the end. Father Simon is among the human taken prisoner in the raid and his interactions with the aliens is some of the best and most fascinating of the entire book.
Back at the ship, the Captain has that ‘aha’ moment and now he ‘understands’ the aliens. This is a really common si-fi trope. No one was paying attention to the translations, no one was really studying the aliens culture and then in one swoop, someone gets it (one of the crew actually explains it to the Captain.) They do have the excuse that they didn’t expect aliens and didn’t have linguists or anthropologists or qualified to study them but still…the aliens weren’t that clever really.
After rescuing the hostages, the Captain makes a deal with the aliens that he thinks is clever and safe. He will take a colony ship home to Earth and their they will learn how to build a star drive and send the information back.
The story wraps up with the implausible story line of Father Simon staying behind to teach Christianity to the aliens.
by Rick Cook
Published in 1989, it is on my read shelve but it has been a while and this is another one that I don’t recall.
So here is my review after re-reading:
Main thing I remember that stuck with me after first reading (though I didn’t recall it was from this book) : vast space colonies with no planet because once you escape the gravity well, what do you really need a planet for?
The cover has some cheesy reptilian aliens straight out of Star Trek and bad B movies. One human dressed like a Samurai and another like your typical space fairing hot shot also from B movie science fiction.
Told in third person past tense, typical for this time period and genre.
Characters:
Dr Sharon Dolan
Captain Peter Jenkins
Dr Andrew Aubrey
Iron Alice DeRosa
Major Autro Delorenzo
Father Michael Simon
Barry Kirchoff
Karl Ludenemeyer
Note: all of these characters appear in the first 13 pages! Even more are introduced as the story progresses so I got tired of listing them. There is no “POV” really, it is a story told by the narrator.
They are all on a space ship, The Maxwell (FTL), on an routine exploratory mission. It is a just a scientific expedition and they expect to make observations of a star. They quickly discover that there is a highly technological alien civilization. They live in vast colonies in space and mine the astroids and gas giants and strangely there is no earth like planet in the system and none of the planets are inhabited.
there is exposition explaining that all of the explorations have only found mars-like and gas giants in all the systems they have visited. Nothing suitable for life.
There are periodic paragraphs from the aliens POV but only in a general since, no specific aliens as the Captain and crew debate what to do about their discovery. Make contact or run? Once the aliens launch a ship in their direction, they have six weeks to decide, because you know space is HUGE. At least the science if pretty good in this book if the character development is nearly non existent.
In Part II
The book switches to the alien who are debating what to do about the ship. From there POV, we find out they are very excited about the FTL drive which they had believed wasn’t feasible.
After some time, they manage a dialog (no easy universal translators, they power through it slowly, but entirely possible if both parties are motivated). When the start talking, the aliens immediately ask for trade for the star drive design. They have a star drive of sorts but not as good. They reveal that they are colonists from another system and that ships arrive ‘occasionally’. They admit that they use generation ships to travel from system to system. And apparently, their civilization is millions of years old (probably).
While the humans work to understand the aliens, the aliens have political splits over show to deal with them. Most think the star drive is worth trading for while others want to destroy them. Kudos to Rick Cook on the complicated byzantine structure of the aliens. They tell the humans that they have disputes but they are settled with trade, talk, etc, but never war.
The negotiations and interactions are very well written and make for interesting science fiction. The aliens are playing a long complicated political game in an attempt to get the star drive and supremacy for their ‘lineage’ - how they are divided. The alien sections are some of the most interesting and fun to read. With so many characters on the human ship, I never felt any of them had a particular voice.
In particular, when the aliens start bribing and manipulating the humans, it seems so transparent that it couldn’t possibly work. Starting with the fact that they allow anyone on the ship to talk to the aliens uncontrolled and unmonitored. Really? And when they assault the ship with a boarding party (having manipulated some of the crew to place ‘packages’) the human are taken completely by surprise. I have to really suspend believe given how paranoid they were when they first learned of the aliens.
The story gets very interesting toward the end. Father Simon is among the human taken prisoner in the raid and his interactions with the aliens is some of the best and most fascinating of the entire book.
Back at the ship, the Captain has that ‘aha’ moment and now he ‘understands’ the aliens. This is a really common si-fi trope. No one was paying attention to the translations, no one was really studying the aliens culture and then in one swoop, someone gets it (one of the crew actually explains it to the Captain.) They do have the excuse that they didn’t expect aliens and didn’t have linguists or anthropologists or qualified to study them but still…the aliens weren’t that clever really.
After rescuing the hostages, the Captain makes a deal with the aliens that he thinks is clever and safe. He will take a colony ship home to Earth and their they will learn how to build a star drive and send the information back.
The story wraps up with the implausible story line of Father Simon staying behind to teach Christianity to the aliens.
March 30, 2025
This was an ambitious first or second novel: Cook published two novels in the same year, and I don’t know which he started writing first.
It features a large spaceship using some kind of hyperspace drive, which travels to a new and unknown solar system to conduct scientific research, and is very surprised to find there an intelligent alien species capable of space travel, but lacking the hyperspace drive.
In broad outline though not in detail, the story is resembles that of The Mote in God's Eye; although I once corresponded with Rick Cook, who told me that he didn’t read the latter book until years after his own was published. And the aliens in this one remind me more of David Brin’s than Larry Niven’s.
The coincidence is unfortunate, because on its own this is a respectable book with a gripping plot and a well-constructed scenario, but it’s in danger of being written off as an inferior copy of The Mote in God's Eye. Well, it’s not as good as The Mote in God's Eye, but that’s not to say it’s a bad book.
Both books have characterization that is passable by sf standards but not great. Sf writers have a lot of science and technology issues to worry about, which writers of mundane fiction don’t usually have to bother with.
In The Mote in God's Eye, there are two spaceships with all-male crews, and just one female passenger who happens to be aboard by accident. Limbo System, on the other hand, has one spaceship with a crew of both sexes.
Neither book is primarily religious, but Limbo System has more religious content. There’s a Catholic priest on board who doubles as astronomer, his religious beliefs rather improbably infect some of the aliens, and there are some discussions of philosophy and theology, which don’t interest me (I’m not religious).
Overall, this is not one of my favourite books, but it’s one that I can reread occasionally.
It features a large spaceship using some kind of hyperspace drive, which travels to a new and unknown solar system to conduct scientific research, and is very surprised to find there an intelligent alien species capable of space travel, but lacking the hyperspace drive.
In broad outline though not in detail, the story is resembles that of The Mote in God's Eye; although I once corresponded with Rick Cook, who told me that he didn’t read the latter book until years after his own was published. And the aliens in this one remind me more of David Brin’s than Larry Niven’s.
The coincidence is unfortunate, because on its own this is a respectable book with a gripping plot and a well-constructed scenario, but it’s in danger of being written off as an inferior copy of The Mote in God's Eye. Well, it’s not as good as The Mote in God's Eye, but that’s not to say it’s a bad book.
Both books have characterization that is passable by sf standards but not great. Sf writers have a lot of science and technology issues to worry about, which writers of mundane fiction don’t usually have to bother with.
In The Mote in God's Eye, there are two spaceships with all-male crews, and just one female passenger who happens to be aboard by accident. Limbo System, on the other hand, has one spaceship with a crew of both sexes.
Neither book is primarily religious, but Limbo System has more religious content. There’s a Catholic priest on board who doubles as astronomer, his religious beliefs rather improbably infect some of the aliens, and there are some discussions of philosophy and theology, which don’t interest me (I’m not religious).
Overall, this is not one of my favourite books, but it’s one that I can reread occasionally.
October 5, 2007
I guess this is a good "stuck somewhere for a few hours" book, but by far not his best effort.
November 26, 2014
An odd book, a series of quirky what-ifs that add up in interesting combinations. It explores religion, culture, societal assumptions, complexities of long term space life. I enjoyed the romp.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews