Steelheart

by William C. Dietz

It falls to Harley Doon, an android and a most reluctant hero, to unite the human, alien, and android forces on a future planet against an alien race that seeks to use its total control of technology for evil

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Ebooks, Space Opera, 20th Century, Fantasy

Mass Market Paperback

First published August 1, 1998

About the author

New York Times bestselling author William C. Dietz has published more than fifty novels, some of which have been translated into German, Russian, and Japanese. He grew up in the Seattle area, served as a medic with the Navy and Marine Corps, graduated from the University of Washington, and has been employed as a surgical technician, college instructor, and television news writer, director and producer. Before becoming a full-time writer Dietz was director of public relations and marketing for an international telephone company. He and his wife live near Gig Harbor, Washington.

Reviews

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

Steelheart is a stand-alone novel by William C. Dietz. What do you get when you mix humans, androids, and two alien races marooned on a planet that is literally tearing itself apart? You get Steelheart! In Steelheart Harley Doon is an android trying to survive the collapse of civilization on Zuul. He cares nothing about much of anything. The colony that was established on Zuul is rapidly failing because if an environmental collapse. The alien race known as the Zip are anti-technology and are on a mission to destroy all technology belonging to the humans and to the other alien race on the planet, the Mothri. Number one on their list is the destruction of all androids and any other sentient machines.
Harley gets caught up in a quest to save the planet. He is not happy about it. He is forced into a situation where he has to cart a program from his new arm to a human reserch facility half way across the planet. He takes a human named Mary who is searching for her daughter under his protection and they must venture across a hostile planet during a holy crusade by the Zip. Things will get much worse for Harly and Mary before they get better!

[Andrew Nguyen]

In the book “SteelHeart.” Brandon Sanderson uses a lot of detailed descriptions and dialogue and metaphors to tell us about the significant meanings about power some people in life believe that power is important , it’s in their heads that power is everything it’s rule over others, to dominate. But what they don’t understand is that you don’t need power to live a normal peaceful life.

In world full of villains a place called new cargo a city full of sad memories and hatred towards the epics and the cities ruler steelheart The book “SteelHeart.” the author, Brandon Sanderson Focused deeply on detailed description and metaphors to compare things based on resemblance. In the beginning he uses metaphors for fun on the serious parts and in the middle he describes the surroundings. Throughout the book he uses dialogue to tell his characters to make a wise decision on life.

“Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely .” in this dialogue he tells us in a form of way of thinking that if you had all the power in the world and you took that for granted, then it just means you're slowly killing yourself. Dominating yourself , and suffocating yourself. With that type of power If you had too much power, power shall corrupt itself as in yourself.

“It’s like a banana farm for guns.” in this quote he uses quote in the scene of the book when the main character was first introduced to a weapons merchant named “Diamond.” Diamond, has connections with everybody because of everyone wanting to buy such incredible weapons and gadgets. David liked to use the metaphor “it’s like a banana farm for guns.” to make a resemblance of in the shop the many displayed guns hanging on the shops entire walls.

“Never throw the first punch if you have the sec. try to make sure they don’t get up for the third.” in this quote this tells us the reader as before you do anything that could lead to mishap or misconception is that you should think before you act. Sometimes in the world people get angry , start fights and if they to survive in the real world. you must win.

“You can’t be so frightened of what might happen that you are unwilling to act.” in this dialogue this quote leaves us thinking that they should look closely more at their situation and realize you can’t be scared all the time, it’s the time to have faith and just do the best you can.
as you can see it is clear that in the book SteelHeart in the book it tells you that power is the main part. it’s everything in this book, “What it lies in our power to do, it lies in our power not to do.”

In “SteelHeart” the quote “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely .symbolizes power that lives in the human soul. The feeling of wanting to be better, the hope that things will change. The many quotes in “SteelHeart” it makes you think back on life and it makes you think “is this the right thing to do?”, it lights up the world, but it also leaves. At the end of the story, the reader is left to wonder--are the people in the city of new cargo better off for having experienced the feeling of suffering because of one another?

[Chris The Lizard from Planet X · Rating 3 out of 5]

Steelheart by WilliamC. Dietz is Military SF novel that set in the far future of 2176 on an artificial planet accidently shared by 3 species of aliens that hate each other.The first chapter almost caused me to abandon the book…I don't enjoy dystopias. But I persevered and found a very clever plotline: 3 separate interstellar species, all of whom were abandoned on this planet to form individual colonies, or die-humans, who arrived last and have been decimated by the religiously fanatical anti-technological zealot early-comers-amazingly humanoid android robots, brought by the humans, that seem to be suffering from a pseudo-emotionality-an insectoid intelligence that lives mostly underground (and whose eggs are delicious)-all on a planet that was constructed atom-by-atom by some unknown intelligence long ago, and is now dying because of the ignorant interference of the 3 speciesThis all blends together several different narratives that I quickly found intriguing. The stories began to flow together quite intricately as Dietz narrates the different story-lines as if weaving a tapestry in words. Great idea, well-conceived plot mixture, but a weakly executed result. Too much was introduced too quickly to be absorbed properly, resulting in a story that is much too short in terms of its possibilities. This book should have been at least twice as long, to give us time to fully grasp the complexities of the individual species-particularities and the inter-species accommodations.Overall, Dietz had a winner here, if he'd only not been so eager to finish it.It's a good book, with the surprise ending being that it ended so soon.

[James Ingraham · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed the book. A solid sci-fi read, heavy on characters. It's not heavy on the sci-fi, but what's there is interesting. The plot is a bit thin, and there are a lot of characters to keep track of. I took a star off because of some confusing jumps, where it was like a paragraph was missing. It really jarred me out of the story numerous times. Still, it was a fun read.

[Darin]

Not the book I am reading!

[Cristofer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Decent military-ish science fiction, rather standard Dietz fare. I felt that the core conflict of science vs religion was rather trite. A quick decently entertaining read.

[Alex of Yoe · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was a hot mess. It tried. It really did. But it ended up just being a disappointment.

Inexplicably, the planet Zuul is dying, and an alien race known as the Zid thinks technology is to blame. Invoking the name of their god, they rush to exterminate all technology, making life for a sentient android named Doon very, very difficult. However, when he meets another android named Sojo, he learns of a human base that is hoping to fix the planet, and they need his help to do so. The only problem is that to get there takes him straight through the holy lands of the Zid.

I liked some of the questions this book put forth about sentience, feeling, and religion. It did actually try for some interesting depth, especially where robots/AI are concerned. I also liked some of the technology that was described, and the idea behind the overarching conflict. There was some good thoughts in it! But only some...

As a whole, this book had very little going for it. It's dreary, choppy, and cynical. The character development was totally off and disjointed with so many characters introduced who end up serving no purpose to the plot. There was not a single character I liked or felt connected to, nor was there any part of the world that intrigued me. There's an entire alien race in this book that serves virtually no purpose and gets barely explained, and one of the main characters gets no concluding arc. It's like the author only had half the creative juice he needed to make this work. The objectification of women was blatant and gross, and the obvious antireligion sentiment was overdone and tropey. The end was ridiculously rushed and concluded haphazardly (and we were still getting introduced to new characters!). So many character decisions made little sense or they had sudden changes of heart that seemed out of the blue....the whole thing just seems to have no idea where it's going.

Also, this author is truly obsessed with sentient robots and flirts with suggesting that such things are the same as/better than humans. In light of the recent AI stuff going on in the world, I find this sentiment really terrifying, especially since it has little basis on fact. Just because you can program something to say it feels something when receiving certain inputs doesn't mean it actually does. It has no will and no power outside of what we give it, which is not at all the same as being a human with a soul and a capacity to truly feel and think independently of what we're told to. The book displayed a pretty cynical worldview, comparing humans to robots and trying to underscore that if there truly is a God who created us, then we're not much different than the AI we create, and that is just a wildly ignorant oversimplification that can do immense harm while ignoring free-will, spirituality, and love. There's nothing about this book that inspired me. At most, it just made me depressed.

Trigger warning for: sexual assault, child abuse, spiritual abuse. There's one graphic sex scene, some language, and a lot of violence. Overall, I don't really recommend this to anyone. It tries hard to make points and be creative and just falls flat. If you want a great book about aliens and saving a dying planet, check out Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir instead.

[Metaphorosis · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 stars, Metaphorosis reviews

Summary
The planet Zuul was established by the vanished Forerunners, but is now occupied by humans, huge insectile Mothri, nanomachines, synthetics, and roughly humanoid Zid. Some of the Zid have established an anti-technist church and accepted human converts. But there's a problem - the planet is starting to fall apart, and the explanation is at risk of vanishing in a bloody religious war.

Review
I don’t know much about William Dietz, but I previously enjoyed the first two books of his Pik Lando series, so I picked up a few more e-books some years back. I suppose this first one pretty much met my expectations – competent and enjoyable, but not outstanding.

The main problem with Steelheart is simply organization. Dietz introduces far too many characters and locations, switching among them without warning. For at least the first half of the book, I began each chapter with little sense of whom I was following or where they were. He does tie all the characters together at the end of the book, but this approach would have worked far better with more signposting.

It’s a shame, because the story itself is interesting. We only touch on the edge of the most interesting question – who made the world and why – but it’s a character-driven story, so that should be alright, and would be if only the characters were fewer. As it is, the whole thing is something of a muddle for quite some time. I never really felt grounded in the location, and only began to feel engaged about halfway through, once the flood of characters had slowed enough to begin tracing the paths of some of them. Overall, the book feels more like a well-developed sketch than a full-blown novel.

The book isn’t helped by a low effort conversion from paper, with OCR errors fairly prevalent. They rarely interfere with comprehension, but they’re annoying.

[Craig W.]

Intriguing, but not very captivating. For some reason, this novel was a slog for me to get through. The plot involved many elements that I usually enjoy--conflict between humans and aliens, between aliens and aliens, between aliens/humans and cyborgs, between religion and science. The story follows sample representatives from each of the factions. I guess my trouble was that the story is unendingly gloomy, although there were a couple of heartening relationships between some characters and a sort of lightweight "happy" ending. Also, though the race to save the planet from destruction is addressed, the underlying mystery of the Forerunners, the race that created the failing planet, is never revealed.

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good action, good characters keeps you interested

Steelheart by William C. Dietz

Good. Humans & 2 other non native sentients on a planet that's self-destructing. Religious anti-tech zealots complicate all. Good characters but too many of them. 'Droids are too human & hard sci sometimes off.

All in all a good read that keeps you interested.

[Sherry Groshong · Rating 5 out of 5]

Best book I have read in a very long time. Premise is good, action is continual. Grabs you from the first page.

[Geoffrey · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a fun and interesting single-serving of sci-fi, well written and easy to read. Good character and world building, although the ending felt a little clipped.