Page turning - Orion

I've kinda hit a wall with the games lately, just not had the energy or the interest to play them too much. So what have I been getting up to instead ?


Hmm. Music and books. Lots of books. I'm currently re-reading some older books while the music is playing away in the background. I've been enjoying the cable TV box too :-) So what's the 4 above ?

Ben Bova was a favourite author of mine a good few years ago now. Think teenage years. He's written a few series, with the Mars and Orion (above) books probably being his best. Mars is good for its technical aspects, which have a slightly different take on things to what's in Kim Stanley Robinson's 2/3 excellent Mars series. There's actually 5 books in the Orion series, although I give the Star Trek Nemesis treatment to one of them (it's bad, if I ignore it then it didn't happen).

Orion - These books are centred around the better-than-human protagonist, Orion. He's inserted into several crucial nexuses (plural nexus? nexii ? I give up :-) in time, where human civilisation could have gone one way or the other. Orion has his Enemy, in the form of the dark, brooding borderline insane Ahriman. He's put in various situations by Creators, who are the equivalent of gods, although that's really on the level of how a Stone Age person would view a wielder of today's high technology.

This first book has Orion meeting up with fusion power, the Mongols, Neolithic hunter gatherers and the emergence from the Ice Age. At each turn, he's trying to thwart his enemy Ahriman, who is looking to either eliminate humanity or divert it into stagnation. If civilisation stagnates, then the breakthroughs required to bring about the Creators wouldn't happen, which translates as "Everything's gone horribly wrong".

A central theme of all of the Orion books is time travel : As soon as time travel is developed, the people with that power must go back in time to ensure their own survival. And to protect their own race against competitors ... Hence the first book, where Orion is trying to protect humans from the destructive intentions of Ahriman.

Vengeance of Orion - This one sees Orion washed up on the shores of Troy, as a thetes in the service of the Greeks who have the city under siege. It's an interesting take on a few high profile events that took place around that time :

The Siege of Troy
The fall of Jericho
Internecine struggles in Egypt

It also places the siege of Troy at about the same time as the Hittite Empire disappeared into civil war, which places a band of Hittite Engineers under the command of our boy Orion. Said Hittite engineers devise a siege tower, which they use to get over the walls into Troy. It's a decent interpretation of the Trojan Horse myth and is one of the few to make sense :-) I just can't believe that intelligent people would be so daft as to wheel in a big Wooden Horse with soldiers hidden inside. However a siege tower mistaken for a horse does make sense.

Orion then legs it from Troy with the girl :-) Yep, he's now on the run with Helen in tow. Next stop Jericho, which Orion's boss (Apollo aka Ormazd aka Christian God) wants him to help out the Israelites who are knocking on Jericho's door. The Biblical story with Jericho has it that the Israelites march around the city "making a joyous noise unto the Lord", with that eventually bringing the walls down. Orion's Hittite engineers are here again, with the Israelites' noise covering the sound of them tunnelling to undermine the walls.

It's simple interpretation of historical events, tying meanings to them that make far more sense than what's in the various myths. Although Christians will get upset by the portrayal of their god in this one, let's just say he's a little bit insane.

Orion in the Dying Time - Here we have Orion hunting dinosaurs. This is probably the best of the Orion books, as it has Orion starting to emerge into being a major player in the pantheon. There's another old favourite of mythology coming in here in the form of Set, a reptilian from the planet Shaydan which is orbiting the Sun's companion star Sheol.

Everyone's probably gone : Oooookay ... there :-) But it makes sense and works out with a little bit of artistic license applied. Good story this one, although it suffers from Bova not being the best of authors. He comes up with decent stories and is always well worth a read but he's not in the same league as Banks, Weber and Heinlein.

Orion and the Conqueror - Book 2 again but set in the time of Alexander the Great. I skip this one cos it's almost a copy of the second book and reduces Orion back to a point where I'm embarassed to read it. So I ignore it.

Orion Among The Stars - Final book, absolutely no historical context in this one :-) Orion's dropped on the planet Lunga with soldiers equipped with jump packs, laser guns and a liberal supply of nukes. And they're fighting feline people who eat their prisoners (Kzin ripoff?).

Orion gets his people into various scrapes in this one and as a central character, steadily continues the emergence that started in book 3. Good future scifi book this one, with the gloves taken off completely due to there being no need for historical context.

Ben Bova's better books tend to be based around historical events, whether they be distant past or very near future. Possibly his best is Millenium, which is the sequel to Kinsman, being set on the close of the 2nd millenium. However, the historical context falls away somewhat due to the central core of Millenium being the lunar colony fighting for indepence. Erm - we ain't got no lunar colony yet ...

So how do they come together ?

I've read the Orion series a few times now and always remember them being pretty decent. I've matured a fair bit as a reader though since reading these for the first time. I've also read better authors so I'm less forgiving with the content. Ben Bova's a decent author but can suffer from loss of focus in the narrative. That'd be when your imagination, fed by the words, can't quite keep up the picture of what's going on. David Weber's good at this, I can usually keep a picture in my mind of what he's getting up to with ships flying around at half light-speed. But Ben Bova's not quite up to that standard. Not quite top-quality English doesn't stop a book being an addictive page-turner.

Worth reading :-) For a few reasons :

Interpretation of myth, legend and geological history, whether this be Troy, Jericho, Neanderthals, why we hate snakes or just who was responsible for chucking the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs.
Deities and pondering why all that's written about them seems to give the personality of spoilt children. The Greek pantheon gets a decent kicking but that's nothing compared to what the Golden One gets ...

I'm already piling through my next series, David Weber's Ashes of Empire. 3 books, 2 down so far and I'm just starting the third :-) More on that later after I've finished the third.

PS I was contemplating having Chinese tonight but looking outside ... Going out the door may lead to getting drowned and I'm too young to die.