Downbelow Station by C. J. Cherryh

Hello, Stranger.

Let's talk about C. J. Cherryh's Downbelow Station.

The Short of It

Plot: It's politics! In... SPACE!

Page Count: 526

Award: 1982 Hugo

Worth a read: No.
Primary Driver: (Plot, World, or Character)
Bechdel Test: ...I'm not sure. 
Technobabble: Moderate.
Review: The fact that I did not out and out die of boredom while reading this is all of the proof I needed to confirm that I have, in fact, been dead the whole time. It's an epic space opera with emphasis on the opera portion (for length and pacing, that is). A hefty cast of forgettable and interchangeable characters existing in a generic SF setting coupled with truly glacial pacing made this an absolute chore to read. Even scenes that should be exciting manage to be completely bland due to style choices. A smattering of neat ideas (clever uses of mind wipes in particular) are nowhere near enough to redeem this dud.

The Medium of It

Spoiler Free!

There are some who might enjoy the politicking and negotiations going on here; the attempts at character moments; the clashing groups. Those things are present here - they're just far worse than any other comparable work. Dune is superb in part due to its broader political themes - but it keeps things balanced to stay engaging. Foundation is another excellent example of politics in space. 

This book is just so long with so little return - it feels similar to Foundation's Edge in that regard. There are elements of this that could be good - and a lot of thought clearly went into the world and interactions. The issue is that not all of that needs to make it to the final cut of the book. There's just so much bloat. This is what would happen if you tucked The Silmarillion and The Hobbit into The Fellowship of the Ring. Sure, it would be remarkable how much history the world had. Sure wouldn't help the story progress at all.

The sheer bloat becomes obvious from the start: Book I, Chapter One is an omniscient narrator offering an explanation of much of the history of this universe. Some of these things are mixed into the story later, but it's just such a cumbersome way of setting the scene. 

It is perhaps a personal pet-peeve, but there is just too little sentence length variation. Sentences tend to to be long, dense, and cover an unnecessary amount of page space; they frequently contain multiple clauses, divided by semicolons, separating parts that feel like different lists. That was my attempt to write just such a sentence. Here's one from the very beginning:

The crews which manned those ships on the long flights grew into an inward-turned and unique way of life, demanding nothing but improvement of equipment which they had come to think of as their own; station in turn supported station, each shifting Earth’s goods a step further on to its nearest neighbor, and the whole circular exchange ending up back on Sol Station where the bulk of it was drained off in high rates charged for biostuffs and such goods as only Earth produced.

That's an 86 word sentence right out of the gate. And it's exactly how much of the book reads. A quick note: I'm not crazy, these kind of sentences are indeed ridiculous. A Medium article on the subject (citing a further study, which I have not read; I'm not going to go that many layers deep in this) notes that average sentence length currently is in the 15 to 20 word range, whereas it was 62 words in the 16th Century. This sentence would still be 30% longer than a standard sentence in the era when ol' Willy Shakes was doing his thing. The actor reading for Richard II would have looked at this text and said, "Forsooth, verily, this is a bit much, don't you think?"

Did not enjoy, would not read again, sizable chunk of wasted time.

Don't. But if you're going to: Here's a link that I'll get a few cents from at no extra cost to you!

The Long of It

Spoilers Ahead!

I don't have much more to say about this one. My brain is shutting down just thinking about it.

Here's a moment from an intense action scene:

White dock seal was in place; the seal of green dock was hidden up the horizon. They walked gingerly across the front of the huge seal of white, got in among the gantries across the dock, walked along within that cover, while the horizon unfolded downward, showing them a group of men working at the docking machinery, moving slowly and carefully in reduced G. 

A number of people died a few sentences before, and two people are on the run. And this is the vibe. Jeepers creepers.

That's all I have to say about that, Stranger.

And don't forget to read a book!