Recent reads

Balshazzar's Serpent, by Jack L. Chalker. Space opera from a long-time master of the craft. It's the first book in a series of three. According to his website and Wikipedia, this series is the last long fiction he completed and published before his death in Feburary of 2005.

Although it's clear from the title that the planet Balshazzar will eventually be centrally important to the story, most of this first volume is devoted to the trials and tribulations of one Doctor Karl Woodward, a spacegoing evangelist, and his missionary crew. Woodward's starship, The Mountain, travels from world to world seeking to spread the word of God. The cultures that his crew of missionaries encounter are scattered fragments of an advanced civilization that has disintegrated due to the mysterious disappearance of all contact with Earth and the rest of its central, governing, industrialized core. Religion is one of the only threads that still binds humanity together, and sometimes it's a mighty thin thread. Occasional unsuccessful missions are expected, and The Mountain and its earnest acolytes go forth well able to defend themselves should the necessity arise.

It's notable to see a Christian evangelist portrayed favorably in a science-fictional setting, although religious themes are secondary to a fairly conventional exploration-and-conflict narrative through most of the story.

As the story opens, Woodward and his crew make contact with a previously uncharted populated world. Tentative first contact leads gradually into suspicion, intrigue, and conflict as it becomes clear that there's more to the planet and its population than is immediately apparent. Most of the book is devoted to plotting the course of this conflict. Occasional hints are dropped about a legendary set of three planets once found by an interstellar scout, but since lost. It should come as no surprise when, near the end of the novel, information regarding the location of the legendary "Three Kings" is discovered, and our intrepid evangelist sets course toward them. Unfortunately, the missionaries' discovery of the lost "Three Kings" system of planets is given short shrift. I presume that their landing on Balshazzar, the most apparently Earthlike of the three, is intended to lead to further adventures and revelations in succeeding volumes.

The plot device of multiple planets in an unusual orbit, each holding some unique hazard or secret, is of course familiar to anyone who's read Chalker's Four Lords of the Diamond series (1981-1983). However, my biggest objection to the book is not the duplication of this plot device, but the fact that the mysteries of Balshazzar -- the "serpent" of the title -- are overshadowed by the long-drawn-out space-opera conflicts that lead up to its discovery. The "serpent" itself, when it finally makes an appearance, is rather underwhelming. As the book ends, a contest of sorts is proposed, with some parallels to Biblical precendent. But there the book ends, and we don't find out anything more about it. Presumably the "serpent" of Balshazzar, and the way that Woodward's missionary crew deal with it and the other hazards of colonization, will be addressed more fully in subsequent volumes.

The story's exciting and competently told, but the bulk of the story is not what the title would lead one to expect, and the ending is weak. Perhaps the book should have been titled Finding Balshazzar, to more accurately reflect the true focus of the narrative.