Fireship

by Joan D. Vinge

FIRESHIP

Ethan Ring was an incredible synthesis of man (to be candid, not much of one) and computer (superior to anything ever before de-vised). Unhappily, his talents had made Earth too hot for him, to the tune of a half-million-dollar price on his head, and he fled to Mars for seclusion, safety, and a little fling at the fabulous casino of Khorram Kabir. For a superman, Ring had no luck—a lovely black-mailer found him and pressured him into agreeing to penetrate Kabir's planet-wide computer network. That wasn't a problem but staying alive after he did it was....

MOTHER AND CHILD

The king of the Neaane saw and desired the Kotaane priestess Etaa and had her brutally taken from her husband. His joy was great when she gave birth—but the child she bore was not his... and was fated to be a major piece in an incomprehensible game that spanned the stars and would change the face of his world and its people forever.

These two short novels show the diverse and wondrous talents of one of today s most remarkable new writers.

Genres: Science Fiction, Short Stories, Science Fiction Fantasy, Fiction, Novella, Collections

191 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published December 1, 1978

About the author

Joan D. Vinge (born Joan Carol Dennison) is an American science fiction author. She is known for such works as her Hugo Award-winning novel The Snow Queen and its sequels, her series about the telepath named Cat, and her Heaven's Chronicles books.

Reviews

[Olethros · Rating 3 out of 5]

-Más exitosa la obra que no se cita en el título.-

Género. Novela corta.

Lo que nos cuenta. El libro Nave de fuego (publicación original: Fireship en unas ediciones y Fireship/Mother and Child en otras, 1978) es la unión, en un único volumen, de dos novelas cortas (pero de casi cien páginas cada una) de la autora.

¿Quiere saber más de este libro, sin spoilers? Visite:

https://librosdeolethros.blogspot.com...

[Swankivy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I liked "Mother and Child" more than the title story "Fireship," but both were amazing. "Fireship" was about a man who has a computer with its own personality and the two of them are wired together. Without the computer, he's just Michael, and the computer's just the computer, but the two of them together are a third personality. And it's neat to watch him kick ass. And "Mother and Child" had such a rich world it was hard to believe its whole scenario was established in a novella--just goes to show you that even though Ms. Vinge writes LONG books, she CAN write short, poignant, concise works. "Mother and Child" dealt with a culture that was almost entirely made up of deaf people who communicated through sign language, mostly following the life of one person who can hear and is both revered and feared for it. Highly recommended, guys!

[Ronald · Rating 2 out of 5]

Fireship by Joan Vinge (Not Vernor) is a collection of two novellas of vastly different tone and quality. It is a set of very 1970s stories as the cover art tells you. The first story Fireship is an interesting Pulp / Space Opera / Heist story. The main character is a person with three personalities. The base human personality is described as not that bright and unlucky, the other personality is a supercomputer and the third personality is their child. An interesting idea of what could happen when plugging a computer into the human brain. He is being blackmailed into hacking a secure computer system by a trio of “smart” people from a think tank. The leader of the group is a strong smart woman and two annoying men. It was kind of interesting to see a woman portrayed as a whole person in a story from the 70’s. The story is not bad, the speculative science is interesting and the computer science was much more plausible than a lot of science fiction I have read. So good times worth the read.

Mother and Child on the other hand. While it started out as a nice speculative story of people living on another world, a primitive world with different ideas a customs. There is a lot of world building in the first part of the three parts of this story. The second part of the story starts with the kidnapping of the main female character from the first chapter by a local king. The King takes her home and rapes her, sexually abuses her and makes many threats to her safety if she does not produce a child. Her husband was killed during the kidnapping. This casual rape and abuse is triggering. The story continues from the point of the view of the King as he tries to civilize his victim and obtain her help and her child. There is some court intrigue and the woman and her child are kidnapped / disappeared. The story continues without her as the King has to deal with stuff to save his kingdom from barbarians.
The third and final part of the story is from the point of view of one of the world’s “Gods” that had kidnapped Etaa. She is taken to a desolate moon of the world and held there with her child. Over time the alien god learns to understand humanity thanks to Etaa. A lot of the story is about the alien adapting to the environment and isolation from its home and people. The alien is actually interesting and very much not just a human with a different nose ridge. Eventually they return to the main world of the story with some plan to save the humans, Etaa’s child is going to be the chosen one it appears. While there was some interesting world building the story it just does not pay off after the whole rape and kidnappings.

From reading the blurb and other reviews of this book and this story specifically I thought that Etaa was going to be a main character like the woman in Fireship. But instead Etaa was the mcguffin the object that moved the plot along and the male characters controlled and moved around. All the stories were from people in control of Etaa’s life (the men). For the most part Etaa meekly accepted her fate, her abuse and all that she was not in active in her own story. Moth and Child was a very disappointing story.

[Althea Ann · Rating 4 out of 5]

This early book by Vinge is actually a "double" of two novellas:
Fireship is sort of a proto-cyberpunk heist adventure - our "hero" is the first person to have his consciousness linked with a computer. He was only an experimental subject, but once the computer linked with his brain, it achieved sentience, became a new amalgamate personality, and he was out of there - escaping to Mars with the technology.
Once there, a radical political group tracks him down and blackmails him into sabotaging the computer system of the guy who owns not only the Mars resort casino but has a politcal monopoly on earth...

The second novella is "Mother and Child," which reminded me much more of LeGuin in tone. In the far future, on another planet, two groups of the decadent remnants of humanity conflict against each other - one group follows an Earth-centric nature religion, and believes that those with special abilities are blessed by the Goddess. The other group believes these people are cursed. And, giving them an advantage - they have Gods - who are physically present and have been providing them with technology.
The story follows a priestess of the goddess, as she is kidnapped by the ruler of the opposing faction, but then removed from the path of the resulting war by a young and idealistic xenobiologist, who hopes for a better result of his race's interference than the mere control of a dangerously violent alien species...

[Saya · Rating 4 out of 5]

La primera historia, «Nave de fuego», de toques ciberpunk, es interesante aunque, para mí, ligeramente caótica (y hace tiempo que me alejé del género). Está narrada en primera persona por el protagonista, un vendido al mejor postor con quien me ha costado mucho empatizar por lo confuso de su personalidad o, mejor dicho, de sus personalidades.

En cambio, he disfrutado mucho con la segunda historia, «Madre e hijo». Pese a que tiene ciertos elementos que rozan la fantasía, la magia reside precisamente en (de)mostrar cómo tras los relatos fantásticos, la superstición y las distintas religiones se pueden esconder hechos reales que la mente humana de ese momento es incapaz de comprender. La aceptación de la verdad oculta tras las supercherías precisa de una mente abierta y una personalidad fuerte capaz de asumir los cambios por venir; Etaa es un claro ejemplo de ello. En algunas ocasiones he llegado a pensar que la autora estaba siendo cruel con Etaa, a quien he compadecido, con quien me he frustrado y a quien he acabado cogiendo cariño y respetando. Sin duda, una lectura sorprendente y muy recomendable.

[Jordan Bethea · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fireship is a fun, heist-ish type story about a human/computer hybrid type person getting caught up in criminal antics. It's kind of a shadowrun-lite. It has some fun ideas, though the tech concepts are a little dated today. The characters are simple and straightforward for the most part, but earnest. It's fun, but not especially deep, and the ending is more cute than satisfying.

Mother and Sun, the second story, is better, with a more interesting, evocative world, and told in an interesting way, where different viewpoints are used to illuminate more of the setting. It's a much more simple, human story about conflict and loss, but the characters feel more complex and are more engrossing. But I found the ending to be very bad and doesn't seem to flow from the arc of the story at all. It felt more like the author was trying to make another cute, tied with a bow ending, which doesn't feel like it fits this story nearly as well, because this story is more raw. It feels instead like it becomes an unintentional tragedy. I was all set to give this 4 stars until I got to the last couple pages.

[Joe Bruno · Rating 2 out of 5]

Hey, this might be ok for wat it is, but half the book was of no worth to me and I did not finish this.

I got this at my local grocery store from the shelf of books for sale for some charity or another. I read a great deal of Sci-Fi as a kid and pick up an odd volume or two sometimes. This started out great, with an interesting story about a guy merged with a computer becoming a third person in the process.

That took up half the book. Then came a story about a primitive female dominated society who didn't speak but communicated in sign and so on and so on. Lots of Sci-Fi from when I wasa kid was like this and then I did not realize, but now find totally implausible.

The first story could have been a decent story a Sci-Fi pulp mag, the second was useless to me. If you see this book on a charity sale shelf, buy it for the benefit to the charity but don't expect much. Otherwise it is just one decent story.

[Jeanette Greaves · Rating 5 out of 5]

In this fifty year year old book, there are two very different novellas written by a sf master. Fireship tells a tale of a casino / resort built on Mars by Earth's wealthiest man. Ahem. Anyway, that's not quite the point. The point is that our protagonist is a hybrid creature; an average Joe who, when symbiotically plugged in to a stolen supercomputer, becomes someone new and very much in demand. This story has barely dated, I loved it.

The second novella, Mother and Child, is a science fiction story with a strong fantasy feel to it. Like all good sf stories, indeed, like Fireship itself, it explores what it means to be human, to love, to adapt. Again, I loved this story.

[Surly Gliffs · Rating 2 out of 5]

Picked up an old hardcover edition of this one for fifty cents at an estate sale. The original slipjacket art is quite something: classic seventies watercolor, gangsters! girls! circuit boards! And I've read quite a bit of Vinge (Joan, not Vernor): The Snow Queen is a masterwork, though the rest of her opus is hit and miss.

Fireship is unapologetic pulp, and it seemed to recall Cowboy Bebop more than anything else. It centers on a casino on Mars and its reclusive owner, with thugs and a femme fatale to add verisimilitude. There's an AI and computer hacking, but this being pre-cyberpunk, there are plenty of quaint cords, cables, and circuit boards. A pleasant period piece with a nice twist at the end.

Mother and Child starts with a pastoral shepherd scene and ends in the stars. I appreciated the ambitious reach of the story, but couldn't quite get over the rape that defines its second act, which seemed too cavalierly inflicted and forgiven. There was some intrigue in the third act, along with some interesting riffs on the theme of mother and child, but nothing that made the story especially memorable.

Together the stories are mildly diverting but not great. Recommended with reservations for fans of seventies pulp sci-fi.

[Joachim Boaz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Full review: https://sciencefictionruminations.com...

"Like so many SF fans, my first exposure to Joan D. Vinge’s work was via her wonderful Hugo-winning novel The Snow Queen (1980). Eventually I found a copy of her first published novel, The Outcasts of Heaven Belt (1978), which had an intriguing [...]"

[Drew · Rating 3 out of 5]

3-4 stars for Fireship, a fun and easy SF read. 1-2 stars, maybe, for “Mother and Child”.

[Palo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Only read Fireship. It was not too bad and quite short.

[Alexandra · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love the idea of the novella double. I really enjoyed the Tiptree/Russ double I read a few months ago. This one is different because it has two novellas by the same author, both of which had previously appeared in different venues. And the two stories are really quite different.

"Fireship" has the feel of a proto-cyberpunk story, to me, in that its emphasis is on a man/machine meld, and the action revolves around hacking a computer. The secondary characters are, sadly, largely two-dimensional and boring; they are there for plot resolution and really that's it. The main character though... he is fascinating. MILD SPOILER! Ethan Ring is a gestalt: his personality is only created when a very ordinary man jacks into a superlogical supercomputer. Vinge posits the result as being entirely human in reactions and emotions, but lifted up by the computer's abilities. Perhaps the most interesting dialogue is the internal, when human/machine/gestalt very occasionally interact. This is a really interesting take on the cyborg, and one that I'm not sure has been explored as much as it could be (if I'm wrong, tell me in the comments!). The other wonderful aspect of the story is the setting, Mars. We get intriguing glimpses of what it's like to be on the colonised world - and it's definitely got the feel of a colony - and some touching moments, like when the rains come and people rejoice. Additionally, there are some hints of some really interesting politics. Written in the late 1970s, it imagines politics basically being split between the US and "the Arabic states," with Russia and China largely out of the picture.

Overall, "Fireship" is a quick read, with a fairly basic plot and ordinary characters. It's worth reading to think about Ethan and what Vinge is saying about cyborg possibilities.

"Mother and Child" is an entirely different proposition. In three stages, the story is gradually told of a world struck by a terrible plague and suffering the consequences. The point of view gradually gets broader: at first, we see from a village smith's perspective; then from a king's; then, eventually - SPOILER! - from the point of view of an alien, tasked with dealing with the world and its inhabitants (reminiscent of le Guin's Hainish cycle and Iain M Banks' Culture, to an extent).

I'm somewhat conflicted about how it represents the main female character. On the one hand, the narrative is never from her point of view: it's from that of her husband and then two abductors. On the other hand, she is entirely central - as the title points out - and is certainly shown as having agency: she picks her husband, and she actively decides on the fate of her child, and ultimately the fate of her world.

One of the most fascinating things about the story is its emphasis on the body. The plague has changed people, and it took me a while to realise just how much; revealing it would be too much of a spoiler, so I'll just say that when they talk about having second sight, it's not what you immediately think - and probably not what you thought just then, either.

I think "Mother and Child" is better written than "Fireship" and stays interesting more consistently. It certainly has better pace, perhaps because the three sections were really quite different from one another. I think I will read more Vinge, although I don't think I will be racing out to get my hands on all her stuff.

[Julie Decker · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book contains two novellas: Fireship and Mother and Child.

Fireship is about a man named Ethan Ring who owes his existence to the two "personalities" that make him up: Michael Yarrow, his human self, and ETHANAC, an intelligent computer. He is the blending of the two, and he is very different from either of the two entities that make him up. He was created experimentally, but now he's on the loose on Mars, caught up in an international and interplanetary conflict. When Ethan wins lots of cash while gambling in a casino (thanks to ETHANAC) and encounters an alluring woman, he thinks he's just enjoying his freedom, but soon he comes to find out that he's about to be blackmailed and betrayed, and that the folks on Mars know more about him than he expected.

This story was less interesting to me than the second one, but I enjoyed the idea of Ethan existing as the strengths of two other entities. I also thought it was funny that he pretended his computer case was a kidney machine. This was written a long time ago so I'm guessing the choice to make the computer an actual thing he had to carry around was based on the limited technology at the time. Ethan, Michael Yarrow, and ETHANAC were very distinct voices in the story, and I loved how naturally they all interacted in his head.

Mother and Child began with a simple love between two young people in a goddess-based culture. Hywel was never anything or anyone special, and Etaa is gifted with the Second Sight and is a priestess, so he's shocked and delighted when she returns his love. But when a king kidnaps Etaa and forces her to submit to his "motherless," patriarchal culture, Hywel vows to get her back. The king, Merton, wants Etaa because her supposed Second Sight is actually just a sense of hearing in a predominantly deaf culture, and he wants hearing heirs. Etaa is disillusioned when some of her beliefs are given practical explanations, but what will happen if she actually meets a god?

The political clash and interaction with the alien species was less interesting to me than the beginning of the novella; I loved the culture Vinge created with the sign-language-using characters and the way hearing was described as some spooky second sight with a nature unclear to those who couldn't hear. I liked that Hywel was nearsighted and so appreciative of his relationship with Etaa, and I loved their interaction. I felt this story was pretty influential for me as a writer, and elements of it inspired and informed one of my short stories (though instead of a culture that used sign language, I had a mother character who could not speak and had to use gestures; they have a goddess-based culture too, though so do many of my stories). That story was my second short story sale and I'm pretty sure I never would have written it without some of the seeds from this novella.

[Dave · Rating 4 out of 5]

Two short novels in one

The first: fireship, is terribly dated and mostly silly but is possibly one of the earliest stories I've read to depict what it feels like to hack a system as an AI.

The second: Mother and Child is brilliant. I won't go into much detail as the joy of the story is in the constant stream of little reveals.

[Linda · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this short novel once before and I still thought it was good the second time around.

[Frank · Rating 3 out of 5]

A couple of good short stories (novelettes?), reminiscent of Kate Wilhelm but with the Vinge's characteristic ambience.

[Pedro Ferreira · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bastante engraçado, uma escrita electrizante sobretudo no primeiro conto (Nave de Fogo), mas nada de especial dentro do campo da FC. A leitura é (na minha opinião) pouco empolgante.

[Lynne Fort · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mother and Child is a fabulously inventive, original novella. I got very invested in the characters and the world was pretty interesting. Fireship was just OK to me, but still worth a read.

[Ethan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Two really good SF stories.