Friday, October 10, 2008

The Great Planetary Robbery

I'm a total sucker for spaceships. If a book has a starship or even a rocket ship on its cover, I can't help myself. I must pick it up and check it out. The only exceptions for my spaceship mania are all those godawful Star Trek paperbacks which, more often or not, are a shameful waste of good paper. I love the TV shows and the movies, but I absolutely abhor the Trek books.

My spaceship mania paid off recently when I discovered The Great Planetary Robbery by Craig DiLouie, an entertaining space-opera comedy with a touch of military science-fiction, too. The story reminded me very much of some of the classic Traveller role-playing scenarios where a band of rag-tag space voyagers set off into the galaxy to seek their fame and fortune.

Near the end of their service careers, Colonial Space Marine NCOs Lawrence Dobbs and Timothy Muldoon organize a motley team of adventurers on a private mission to a legendary lost world abundant with riches. Their career hitches are actually over 800 years long due to the effects of star travel's time dilation. Along the way, Dobbs and Muldoon come up against a whacked-out hacker and his computer viruses, a combat assassin android named Bova, galactic bounty hunters, millions of hostile aliens, and the insane AI simulacrum of the emperor of a long-extinct enemy alien civilization.

The Great Planetary Robbery is a lot of fun, and I hope author DiLouie will let us continue to follow Dobbs and Muldoon in more cosmic hijinks … in the future.

D'os Vadanya,

VIKTOR KUPRIN

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