Summer’s End

Family looms large even in the vastness of the cosmos in this retro space opera from Van Stry (Portals of Infinity), which would sit comfortably on a shelf of 1950s science fiction. Dave Walker, a recent engineering graduate with a checkered past, goes off-Earth to avoid being killed for political reasons by his ambitious stepfather and finds a surrogate family with the crew of a tramp space freighter. Dave sets out to earn their trust while also relying on his past as a gang member to dispose of the assassins who come after him. After the ship is besieged and Dave is captured by refugees who survive by piracy, Dave turns his technical skills to solving his sympathetic captors’ problems—and so earns himself a lucrative trading partner. Settling on the dwarf planet Ceres, he plans to salvage his old freighter and start up a business that will enable him to rescue his remaining blood family from the crumbling society of Earth. Van Stry deals in the middle class of a far-future, libertarian galaxy that nevertheless is still controlled by billionaires and planetary governments. The female characters go frustratingly underdeveloped, but the action keeps the pages turning. Readers with a fondness for old style coming-of-age sci-fi will appreciate the rapid rise of Dave Walker. (Dec.)