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Lifeburst
Determined to be certified for life in space, young Quin Dain is implicated in his father's murder, and accompanied by a gentle alien, flees the economic and religious leaders of Earth
304 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published November 1, 1984
2 people are currently reading
77 people want to read
About the author
Jack Williamson
541 books166 followersJohn Stewart Williamson who wrote as Jack Williamson (and occasionally under the pseudonym Will Stewart) was a U.S. writer often referred to as the "Dean of Science Fiction".
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
June 12, 2014
This is my first experience with Jack Williamson, who was a Grand Master of the science fiction genre. Don't know how I missed him! This book is an extremely good, old-school (but modern) sci-fi thriller. If you enjoyed the genre before the psycho-babblers took it over, you will like this.
June 3, 2021
The story is set round about the start of the 22nd-century when Earth's economy has become dominated by the Kwan family and its rivals the Chen. They control a system of satellites and huge space stations linked to the Earth by cables. Further cables also connect to the Moon and Mars. Back on Earth there is also a quasi-religious movement led by the Revelator that opposes the Kwans basing its popular support on insisting that an alien invasion is imminent and the Kwans will be in league with it.
Earth's move into space has gone beyond the planets to the distant Oort Cloud, a region also called the Halo, in which there are icy planetoids suitable to house bases to be used for the exploration of deep space. However, there are already beings and entities out there and that provides the basis for the story of Quin Dain's struggle to save the Earth, make allies out of the friendly aliens, and destroy the unfriendly ones. If that sounds a bit old fashioned, even a bit Flash Gordon-ish, that is how the book reads even though it was published in 1984.
The friendly aliens, the eldren and the Newlings, are very well drawn non-humanoid beings with their own philosophies, sense of justice and priorities, some of which do not extend in the favour of planet-based, atmosphere breathing Earth dwellers. The antagonistic alien, the Seeker, is however quite literally an old style bug-eyed monster, even if it is mechanical. The final scenes, in which Quin has to overcome the queen monster and her hatchlings if he wants to win the young lady he lusts after, and follow that up with successful negotiations to bring humanity into alliance with the eldren really does hark back to the pulp era. The story is inventive, up to a point: for a book that was published in 1984 perhaps the author could have thought of a more technological system of message communication than printers churning out paper copies and a rocket ship postal delivery service carrying letters in envelopes. That is a small point, of course, and if what you want is an action-packed adventure with a hero who thinks on the run and acts with decision Lifeburst is as good as any.
Earth's move into space has gone beyond the planets to the distant Oort Cloud, a region also called the Halo, in which there are icy planetoids suitable to house bases to be used for the exploration of deep space. However, there are already beings and entities out there and that provides the basis for the story of Quin Dain's struggle to save the Earth, make allies out of the friendly aliens, and destroy the unfriendly ones. If that sounds a bit old fashioned, even a bit Flash Gordon-ish, that is how the book reads even though it was published in 1984.
The friendly aliens, the eldren and the Newlings, are very well drawn non-humanoid beings with their own philosophies, sense of justice and priorities, some of which do not extend in the favour of planet-based, atmosphere breathing Earth dwellers. The antagonistic alien, the Seeker, is however quite literally an old style bug-eyed monster, even if it is mechanical. The final scenes, in which Quin has to overcome the queen monster and her hatchlings if he wants to win the young lady he lusts after, and follow that up with successful negotiations to bring humanity into alliance with the eldren really does hark back to the pulp era. The story is inventive, up to a point: for a book that was published in 1984 perhaps the author could have thought of a more technological system of message communication than printers churning out paper copies and a rocket ship postal delivery service carrying letters in envelopes. That is a small point, of course, and if what you want is an action-packed adventure with a hero who thinks on the run and acts with decision Lifeburst is as good as any.
August 13, 2023
Chaotic and increasingly unhinged, Jack Williamson’s vision for Lifeburst is epic, but his apparent lack of patience and care sabotage him.
The most disconcerting part of this novel is the tone, followed closely by the pacing. Things start out grim, but reasonable for our humble characters. As the tension mounts, they encounter hardship. Then more hardship. Then things take a turn for the worse. Then things get DRAMATICALLY worse. And that’s just buttering you up for things getting so much worse you have no idea how anyone’s still alive (or why they would even want to be). It gets to the point where all sense of scale and believability is completely thrown out the window. I found myself wondering what the stakes were anymore - I felt like the author kept slapping my hand whenever I tried reaching for the cookie jar of hope. If everything and everyone sucks, what are you fighting for? A handful of lackluster friends back on Janoort? The message this book seemed to send to me was that everyone and everything sucks, humanity (and all intelligent life) either sucks or is a sucker, and that you’re a fool for expecting something better out of them.
This overwhelming animosity was complimented by an accelerating pace and rushed conclusion. The ending of the book was nothing short of an all-sprint, as if Williamson was actively being prodded off the typewriter by someone else. I won’t spoil anything, but I think the last 10% of pages in this book covers as much ground as the other 90% - literally five major plot points occur in the last three pages, it’s ridiculous.
All in all, a disappointing read, if not actively bad. Williamson’s writing is not terrible - in some places, he’s actually quite good - but his prose never seems to rise to the level that I sense he’s capable of. The characters are okay but never stand out, and unfortunately Williamson has no ear for dialogue. The thing I liked most about Lifeburst was the heatseeker aliens, and I kinda think they were Williamson’s favorite part too, which is a shame.
The most disconcerting part of this novel is the tone, followed closely by the pacing. Things start out grim, but reasonable for our humble characters. As the tension mounts, they encounter hardship. Then more hardship. Then things take a turn for the worse. Then things get DRAMATICALLY worse. And that’s just buttering you up for things getting so much worse you have no idea how anyone’s still alive (or why they would even want to be). It gets to the point where all sense of scale and believability is completely thrown out the window. I found myself wondering what the stakes were anymore - I felt like the author kept slapping my hand whenever I tried reaching for the cookie jar of hope. If everything and everyone sucks, what are you fighting for? A handful of lackluster friends back on Janoort? The message this book seemed to send to me was that everyone and everything sucks, humanity (and all intelligent life) either sucks or is a sucker, and that you’re a fool for expecting something better out of them.
This overwhelming animosity was complimented by an accelerating pace and rushed conclusion. The ending of the book was nothing short of an all-sprint, as if Williamson was actively being prodded off the typewriter by someone else. I won’t spoil anything, but I think the last 10% of pages in this book covers as much ground as the other 90% - literally five major plot points occur in the last three pages, it’s ridiculous.
All in all, a disappointing read, if not actively bad. Williamson’s writing is not terrible - in some places, he’s actually quite good - but his prose never seems to rise to the level that I sense he’s capable of. The characters are okay but never stand out, and unfortunately Williamson has no ear for dialogue. The thing I liked most about Lifeburst was the heatseeker aliens, and I kinda think they were Williamson’s favorite part too, which is a shame.
November 19, 2020
The invention of kwanlon - an immensely strong fibre - has made space elevators possible and the Kwan family and associates immensely wealthy. They have become a plutocratic hegemony called the Sun Tycoons, distinguished by a lasered Sunmark on the face to indicate “good genes” and are in conflict with Eartrh-based rebels, barrio dwellers and inhabitants of the far Oort cloud. When a malevolent interstellar visitor enters the inhabited part of the Solar System and proceeds to eat anything emanating radiation (including bases and planetoids) it s decided to leave the Oort to fend for themselves, but a second race - the Elderhood - also fleeing the marauding Seekers, finds the seeker nest but too late as a newly hatched seeker heads to earth intent on consuming the orbiting heat signals - the space levator! Oort resident Quin Dain must find a new small fusion engine if he is to save the Oort settlement but the seekers lie directly in his path… Jack Williamson has given us a surprisingly modern-feeling yarn which captivates the attention and heads laser-like to a thrilling confrontation and conclusion which I won’t spoil here. Good stuff (and it has a sequel I think).
November 9, 2008
I don't think I had read anything by Jack Williamson before picking this novel up. I grabbed it at a library sale 1) because it was one of the true science fiction novels left and 2) it looked like it might be half-decent and I knew my collection of unread sci-fi novels was becoming discouragingly low.
So I finally snagged it off my shelf and started reading. And I must admit, curiosity kept me going more than anything else. Williamson has come up with an entirely intriguing storyline here - not completely unheard off or new, but a definitely different approach to the "alien invasion" sort of novels that are out there. Sometimes I did almost get lost in the various story lines running in the book, but I managed to not lose track of the many characters too much and enjoyed seeing them grow, change, develop and adapt to the different situations they were thrown into.
This isn't science fiction on the scale of Webber's Harrington series or Asimov's Foundation series, but if you lower your expectations to that of a writer of lower caliber, you can enjoy this book quite a bit.
In the end, I barely recommend it. Mainly because it's just neat reading about the different aliens and things he's put in here. The future society he's created is solid, but not too diferent from many others, just a little tweak here and there that make it intriguing. But if you find this book on sale somewhere, don't be afraid to grab yourself a copy.
So I finally snagged it off my shelf and started reading. And I must admit, curiosity kept me going more than anything else. Williamson has come up with an entirely intriguing storyline here - not completely unheard off or new, but a definitely different approach to the "alien invasion" sort of novels that are out there. Sometimes I did almost get lost in the various story lines running in the book, but I managed to not lose track of the many characters too much and enjoyed seeing them grow, change, develop and adapt to the different situations they were thrown into.
This isn't science fiction on the scale of Webber's Harrington series or Asimov's Foundation series, but if you lower your expectations to that of a writer of lower caliber, you can enjoy this book quite a bit.
In the end, I barely recommend it. Mainly because it's just neat reading about the different aliens and things he's put in here. The future society he's created is solid, but not too diferent from many others, just a little tweak here and there that make it intriguing. But if you find this book on sale somewhere, don't be afraid to grab yourself a copy.
October 3, 2010
Upon visiting my hometown a few years ago I spotted this book in a supermarket's makeshift charity book shop stall. It was only 30p, and looked like solid science-fiction fun, so I bought it.
I could have paid some needy ragamuffin 20p to kick me in the balls, and I would have derived approximately the same amount of pleasure from the experience and saved myself 10p.
The book is easy to read, about the only good thing about it, so it didn't take me long to get through almost all of its three hundred and four pages. And yet as the pages passed nothing was really happening, and nothing kept happening. Finally, with about a page and a half to go, the plot appeared from nowhere and rapidly resolved itself. This really could have been a five page short story and still featured just as much character and plot development. Instead it's a drawn out drudgery of a novel which went straight back to a charity shop.
I could have paid some needy ragamuffin 20p to kick me in the balls, and I would have derived approximately the same amount of pleasure from the experience and saved myself 10p.
The book is easy to read, about the only good thing about it, so it didn't take me long to get through almost all of its three hundred and four pages. And yet as the pages passed nothing was really happening, and nothing kept happening. Finally, with about a page and a half to go, the plot appeared from nowhere and rapidly resolved itself. This really could have been a five page short story and still featured just as much character and plot development. Instead it's a drawn out drudgery of a novel which went straight back to a charity shop.
October 29, 2015
A mixed bag of a novel by one of the Grand Masters of the SF genre. Williamson's setting is an unusual and engaging one, incorporating many elements of what was then cutting-edge science and scientific speculation: human and alien colonies in the Oort Cloud, the theory that our own sun had a Dark Companion, the domination of the Earth by a corporation controlling "skywires" (which not only linked Earth with space but generated power). On the other hand, Williamson's characters and dialogue are wooden at best and riddled with racial and ethnic stereotypes at worst (and they are frequently at their worst). I enjoyed this book as a teenager but now find it virtually unreadable.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews