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"The Green and the Gray"
Apr. 1st, 2006 06:37 pmI have a certain fondness for the SF of Timothy Zahn. I can't call him a great writer; his prose is usually pedestrian and his characterizations no more than adequate. But he's a capable craftsman, and occasionally shows flashes of something more. ("The Final Report on the Lifeline Experiment" is a very nice meditation on ethics and the demands of honesty, and there's one passage in the novel Warhorse that I think quite good. If you know the book, it's Chapter 23 - the encounter with the first shark, and with the second.) He plots well, specializing in that special subgenre of SF in which the interest lies in figuring out what's going on, and what to do about it.
The Green and the Gray is one of his recent works, and a good example. It tells the story of a - young? middle-aged? somewhere in between - married couple who, returning one evening from a play (she liked it, he didn't), are accosted by a mugger. The mugger, instead of taking anything from them, insists that they take charge of a young woman with a badly bruised throat. Events spiral outward; the two learn of the presence in New York City of not one but two alien races who had fled, separately, from a disastrous war between their peoples. Until just recently the two sets of refugees had been unaware of each other's presence; now, it looks as though the war will resume, with the people of New York City caught in the middle.
The truth that needs to be recognized and dealt with in this story is particularly intricate: the origins of the two races, the causes of the war, the maneuverings of the various factions... It's a bit talky at times, but there's enough misdirection and intrigue to make up for that. I enjoyed it quite a bit.
What pleases me most about the story is that, despite efforts on both sides to keep the crisis secret, the New York police do get involved. This isn't Sunnydale. The cops recognize that something is coming down; some of them figure out a good deal of the truth; and their presence is, as it should be, critical to the ultimate resolution.
The Green and the Gray is one of his recent works, and a good example. It tells the story of a - young? middle-aged? somewhere in between - married couple who, returning one evening from a play (she liked it, he didn't), are accosted by a mugger. The mugger, instead of taking anything from them, insists that they take charge of a young woman with a badly bruised throat. Events spiral outward; the two learn of the presence in New York City of not one but two alien races who had fled, separately, from a disastrous war between their peoples. Until just recently the two sets of refugees had been unaware of each other's presence; now, it looks as though the war will resume, with the people of New York City caught in the middle.
The truth that needs to be recognized and dealt with in this story is particularly intricate: the origins of the two races, the causes of the war, the maneuverings of the various factions... It's a bit talky at times, but there's enough misdirection and intrigue to make up for that. I enjoyed it quite a bit.
What pleases me most about the story is that, despite efforts on both sides to keep the crisis secret, the New York police do get involved. This isn't Sunnydale. The cops recognize that something is coming down; some of them figure out a good deal of the truth; and their presence is, as it should be, critical to the ultimate resolution.
