Freeheads, by Kerry Nietz

Last summer I read books 1 & 2 of Kerry Nietz's DarkTrench saga, and loved them (see my reviews here and here).  Lucky me, about the time I was finishing those books, Nietz was finishing up book 3, so my wait was blessedly short for Freeheads.  In books 1 & 2, debuggers SandFly and HardCandy are sent to repair a robot on DarkTrench, an interstellar ship which has just returned from a voyage to Betelgeuse.  The robot, as well as the crew, had encountered a curious song from a star, which had transformed them. SandFly and HardCandy then take DarkTrench on a return journey to Betelgeuse where they encounter a seemingly idyllic but ultimately malicious alien race.  Freeheads opens with the pair returning to earth, in hopes of bringing the message of A~A³, Nietz's moniker for God, to people spiritually enslaved by a controlling Islamic regime.

Through a series of events driven by both divine intervention and sabotage, SandFly and HardCandy have to abandon DarkTrench, intending to head straight to earth, but end up on the moon.  There they discover a colony of exiles from earth and learn the source of the rogue stream they had briefly accessed on earth.  To their great surprise, they realize that due to a malfunction on DarkTrench, 40 years have passed since they left earth; to them, it had only been weeks.  Also to their surprise, the message of A~A³ and the superlative stream managed to make its way to earth via the original DarkTrench crew.  However, the fledgling group of followers of the message have been persecuted and nearly eliminated.

Things had changed on earth during their absence.  Before they left, everyone lived under religious oppression, but that oppression had progressively become widespread slavery.  SandFly returning after 40 years to confront the leaders and lead the people out of slavery?  Any Biblical allusions you might imagine here are certainly no accident. 

Nietz has a spiritual message in Freeheads, not in the sense that he preaches, and certainly not in a way that deters from the story.  In fact, that's part of the fun of the whole DarkTrench series: In a world in which Christianity has been effectively quashed by world-dominating Islam, what would it look like to reintroduce the gospel?  Nietz gives us a warning to heed.  Sandfly's theory as to why the message of the Bible "just faded out": "Those who knew the Truth got lazy, or worse, refused to share what they knew. . . .They cloistered.  Failed to do something when they had a chance."  Sobering words for a Christian culture that sometimes seems to make itself irrelevant to the wider world. . . .

Besides a great story and a compelling spiritual message, Nietz handles the science well.  Freeheads is chock full of speculative technology, but Nietz, not satisfied with simply throwing out crazy devices or giving people and machines unfounded superpowers, gives enough description and background to make the technology almost believable.  He's no stranger to natural science either; his descriptions of a close encounter with a comet and a walk on the moon's surface are quite convincing as well.

With his DarkTrench saga, Nietz shows his skill as a captivating writer, adept at conveying a fast-moving story with thoughtful spiritual reflection and an imaginative view of the near future.  The three books can certainly be read and enjoyed independently, but they're best taken as a whole, showing both SandFly's development as well as Nietz's development as a writer.  He's got a few more books to write before he enters the pantheon of sc-fi greats, but I do like Tim George's blurb from the back cover of Freeheads: "Nietz writes in a way that makes me wonder what the masters of the genre like Asimov and Heinlein might have written had they known A~A³."  Well-said.  I'm already wondering what Nietz will come up with next!

The Superlative Stream, by Kerry Nietz

I recently read Kerry Nietz's first novel, A Star Curiously Singing, loved it, and was delighted to see that the adventures of Sandfly continue in a sequel, The Superlative Stream.  In ASCS, we meet Sandfly, a debugger who is sent to investigate the self-destruction of a robot on the space ship DarkTrench.  In the course of the investigation, he discovers a possible cause: curious singing from a distant star.  TSS picks up where ASCS leaves off.  Sandfly and his fellow debugger HardCandy take DarkTrench to search for the source of the singing, the superlative stream.

Nietz clearly matured as a writer with TSS.  As good as ASCS is, TSS adds a higher level of depth and complexity to his engaging style.  Utilizing flashbacks to their lives on Earth, we get to know Sandfly and HardCandy better and see how circumstances have brought them together.  We also gain insight into the Muslim culture of their world.  Nietz will not win friends in the Muslim community, as he takes certain elements of Sharia law to their logical, painful conclusions.

A subplot in both books deal with Sandfly's implant.  As a result of his encounter with the superlative stream, his stops are removed, so, if he wishes to, he can sin with impunity.  For the first time in his adult life, he experiences free will unencumbered by the programmed controls of the implant (and this right at the time time he embarks on an interstellar voyage, alone, with a beautiful woman!).  Given the Islamic theology of good works, he struggles with the realization that his good works can never tip the scale in his favor; his sinful nature will continually pull him toward 50.1% bad works.

Sandfly's understanding will no doubt continue to develop as he gets to know the source of the stream, whom he knows now only as "(A~A)³."  (That's A not A cubed, A being the shorthand for Allah, who is not named in the novel. )  Nietz skillfully weaves basic, thoughtful ideas like this throughout the story without preaching or distracting from the overall plot.

Much of the story takes place on a planet in the Betelguese system.  There the humans encounter a whole new civilization, technically far ahead of human civilization.  This part of the story will feel very familiar to any reader of sci-fi or viewer of sci-fi movies and TV shows: an idyllic, communal society, where there is no evident material need, where everyone seems happy, yet everyone sort of looks and dresses alike.  Nietz kept me going for quite a while, trying to decide if this were some sort of angelic community, or if there were something more ominous under the surface.  I'll leave that discovery to you when you read it. . . .

Nietz shows his skill as a bona fide sci-fi writer with his use of hard science as a driver in the story combined with plenty of realistic scientific and technological speculation.  Combining that with his use of hard theology, exploring theological questions from a refreshing outside perspective, he gives us a thoroughly entertaining and satisfying read.  And here's the good news: the Dark Trench saga will continue!  An e-mail from Nietz confirmed that he has completed book 3.  It's in the hands of the publisher now, so we should see it in the coming months.  Keep an eye out at Marcher Lord Press for the release.