Re: (Meetpoint) Brothers of Earth by C J Cherryh

In article <4oj2ojlu1lbm3iacgkdvjrtk1kdggqkkl4@4ax.com>,
Paul S Person  <psperson@old.netcom.invalid> wrote:

On 10 Jan 2025 15:03:17 GMT, Chris Buckley <alan@sabir.com> wrote:
>

On 2025-01-07, Paul S Person <psperson@old.netcom.invalid> wrote:

On 7 Jan 2025 14:12:27 -0000, jdnicoll@panix.com (James Nicoll) wrote:
>

>
Brothers of Earth  (Hanan Rebellion, volume 1) by C J Cherryh
>
Castaway Kurt Morgan will live the rest of his life among the humanoid
nemet. The rest of Morgan's life might not be long. Nemet know humans
as would-be conquerors and brutes. Why trust Morgan?
>
https://jamesdavisnicoll.com/review/when-the-rains-came-tumbling-down

>
Although /some/ of her series make sense and might even be
intentionally set in the same future, I suspect that others are the
result of the publisher's wanting every book to be in a Series.
>
I don't recall /ever/ believing that /Brothers of Earth/ and /Hunter
of Worlds/ had anything in common except the author.
>
A lot of mine were SFBC editions, some quite early. Indeed, my first
CJ Cherryh was a genuine series: The Faded Sun. After that, anything
she wrote was a mandatory purchase/read.
>
Being this tight with SFBC may or may not have affected availability.

>
I agree, I never saw any relationship between her first two novels and
I don't think she did either at the time.  I met Cherryh at the only
SF convention I ever attended, just after _Hunter of Worlds_ was
published.  She talked about her upcoming series and a common
technological background that she wanted to work with, but not that
everything was the same universe.
>
Cherryh is probably my favorite author, with many more of her books on
my Favorite bookcase than any other author (though neither of the
first two is there). I think I have all of her books except her
translations.  Even with that background, though, I wonder how James
is going to get through this project.  I really don't see that the 22
books of the _Foreigner_ series is worth the effort of
reading/rereading and writing a review for each book.  A
bit of a waste of James' talents. The series as a whole may be worth
several reviews, but the theme doesn't change throughout, just
incremental developments.  Still, James is managing to review Japanese
manga with much the same problem, so perhaps...

>
The _Foreigner_ series is, basically, a soap opera. There is no
conclusion possible (except to just stop). Well, short of having the
Humans show up and vaporize the planet, anyway.
>
But even without them, there are a /lot/ of novels. An interesting
idea might be to trace the concept of the Azi from, say, /Serpent's
Reach/ to /Regenesis/. There are quite a few books, listed in
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azi_(clone)]. This page exhibits a lot
of doubt as to whether or not it should exist, but just ignore that
and keep scrolling down.

I am going to mostly stick to chrono order, which is a bit interesting
where the Azi are concerned. In Cyteen, the idea seems to have been
that the azi were a temporary measure, a peculiar institution that
would surely whither away as the economy and population matured. But
Serpents Reach, which predates Cyteen by a decade, makes it clear
that's never going to happen. Slaves to order are just too convenient.



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