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Blind Justice
Emile Saint-Just, the last surviving member of the crew of the Mary Damned, a legendary ghost ship, is determined to bring her back and continue the revolution against the corrupt Justica
- GenresScience FictionFiction
265 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published April 1, 1991
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About the author
S.N. Lewitt
20 books3 followersAlternate Known Names:
Shariann Lewitt
Shariann N. Lewitt
S.N. Lewitt
Gordon Kendall - pseudonym also for Susan Shwartz
Shariann Lewitt
Shariann N. Lewitt
S.N. Lewitt
Gordon Kendall - pseudonym also for Susan Shwartz
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
August 22, 2009
Eh. You know that book about a young man who gets swept up in revolution, only to discover that the revolutionaries are just as corrupt as the system which forced him to revolt? Yeah, this is that book.
Emile is a little less naive, and the setting is vaguely interesting, a sort of Francophone New Orleans in space. The most interesting part, and the part I would have been interested in a book about, is the fact that Beau Soliel baptizes their ship AIs. The implications of this could have been quite interesting, I think. (What does one do with an apostate AI? Could a decommissioned AI be sainted?)
As it is, though, I can't quite figure out what impelled Lewitt to write this book.
Emile is a little less naive, and the setting is vaguely interesting, a sort of Francophone New Orleans in space. The most interesting part, and the part I would have been interested in a book about, is the fact that Beau Soliel baptizes their ship AIs. The implications of this could have been quite interesting, I think. (What does one do with an apostate AI? Could a decommissioned AI be sainted?)
As it is, though, I can't quite figure out what impelled Lewitt to write this book.
December 29, 2021
Émile Saint-Just is a member of the Syndicat of the planet Beau Solis, the last bastion of French speaking culture. The mark of Syndicat membership is the cuff, worn round the wrist, binding its wearer to the group. Beau Solis is also the sole producer of sadece senin, a drug highly prized throughout the human worlds but subject to strict controls and taxes by the Justica, a polity somewhat sketchily delineated here but said to be uniform and rule bound and which seems to dominate the rest of human civilisation. Selling sadece senin is a lucrative business for the Syndicat, especially if the regulations and taxes of the Justica can be avoided.
Saint-Just takes a place on the Mary Damned, a spaceship running sadece for the Syndicat between the patrols of the Justica. These are relativistic journeys. When Saint-Just gets back no-one on Beau Solis will remember him. But he doesn’t get back. The Mary Damned is captured with no resistance, since Justica operatives flood it with a soporific gas. When Émile wakes up, sans cuff, he is on a Justica prison ship, the Constanza. The Mary Damned becomes a famous ghost ship, drifting through the spaceways.
Life on the Constanza, as in any prison, is tough but Émile has a few allies and they hatch a plan to escape, but the group splits into two, one of which plans to rendezvous with the Mary Damned. (Outside the prison time has flown.)
It is a very different Beau Solis to which Émile returns. The Justica has taken control and is eliminating as much sadece senin as it can. Émile’s lack of cuff means he is no longer recognized as a Syndicat member and he is thrown onto his own resources and those of the latent resistance, whose project takes up the remaining half of the book.
Reading a thirty-year-old Science Fiction novel can be a jolting experience. Noticeable to a 2021 audience is the importance of newspapers in Beau Solis. (Nothing dates as quickly as the future. Think of all those redundant flashing lights on the computer panels in the original Star Trek or Arthur Clarke’s journalist taking a typewriter along with him to the Red Planet in The Sands of Mars.) This is not Lewitt’s fault. There is only so much invention an author can put into an SF book. And we all have unexamined assumptions about what may be constant in our world. Her storytelling and characterisation make up for any such minor irritations. This is good solid readable SF.
Saint-Just takes a place on the Mary Damned, a spaceship running sadece for the Syndicat between the patrols of the Justica. These are relativistic journeys. When Saint-Just gets back no-one on Beau Solis will remember him. But he doesn’t get back. The Mary Damned is captured with no resistance, since Justica operatives flood it with a soporific gas. When Émile wakes up, sans cuff, he is on a Justica prison ship, the Constanza. The Mary Damned becomes a famous ghost ship, drifting through the spaceways.
Life on the Constanza, as in any prison, is tough but Émile has a few allies and they hatch a plan to escape, but the group splits into two, one of which plans to rendezvous with the Mary Damned. (Outside the prison time has flown.)
It is a very different Beau Solis to which Émile returns. The Justica has taken control and is eliminating as much sadece senin as it can. Émile’s lack of cuff means he is no longer recognized as a Syndicat member and he is thrown onto his own resources and those of the latent resistance, whose project takes up the remaining half of the book.
Reading a thirty-year-old Science Fiction novel can be a jolting experience. Noticeable to a 2021 audience is the importance of newspapers in Beau Solis. (Nothing dates as quickly as the future. Think of all those redundant flashing lights on the computer panels in the original Star Trek or Arthur Clarke’s journalist taking a typewriter along with him to the Red Planet in The Sands of Mars.) This is not Lewitt’s fault. There is only so much invention an author can put into an SF book. And we all have unexamined assumptions about what may be constant in our world. Her storytelling and characterisation make up for any such minor irritations. This is good solid readable SF.
June 14, 2007
Eh ... mediocre. I like the visual elements of S.N. Lewitt's stories, but the plots and characters are always unsatisfying.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews