The Death of Wisdom

Traveller: The New Era #1

by Paul Brunette

"When Hiver scientists start dying by the hundreds on a frontier world, the future of humanity is called into question. Can this fragile civilization survive the plague that is wiping out its high-tech mentors, or will humanity have to rise or fall on its own? Is this a natural disaster, or is this the work of a hidden hand, willing to gamble the extinction of humanity for the extermination of an alien threat? As the plague spreads, Red Sun and her crew must head into the 'Wilds' of uncivilized space to discover the truth, and to prevent this from becoming the Death of Wisdom."

Genres: Science Fiction, Games

Mass Market Paperback

Published January 1, 1995

Reviews

[Derek · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's a book that wears its reference material proudly on its sleeve. On one hand it lies squarely in the intersection of H. Beam Piper and The Mote in God's Eye and some of the Earl Dumarest series, without extending or innovating in that space. Here is the ruined remains of galactic empire, with small separated colonies of various technological advancement, and little unifying government. There are factions and intrigue. Over in this space are the conventions of the genre regarding futuristic military weaponry and FTL travel and so forth.

On the other, if you look closely at the cracks, you can see the game material and game mechanics peeking out. The provided starmap is practically ripped off from the rulebooks, with a hex grid and coordinate scheme that makes no real-world sense. "Tech Level" (TL) is discussed by the characters as though it is something other than a convenient gaming abstraction, and at more than one point someone mentions "law level" in the same terms. And the story does greatly resemble gameplay.

Despite the limitations, and despite a story decision in the prologue that struck me as glaringly hamfisted and unnecessary and ripped me right out of the story flow*, the book performs solidly if unimaginatively, like a police procedural. Everyone behaves with the greatest professionalism and is purely focused on the problem at hand, with very little digression or subplot or romantic entanglements.

That fact was actually kind of interesting: the love life of the main character, Coeur d'Esprit, is completely unmentioned. Not in terms of being a loveless spinster, not in terms of being explicitly a loner, and not in terms of having someone waiting for her back home. She is too all-business to chitchat about her personal life. And if she is alone, then she's perfectly okay with that.

*A minor character sacrifices his life in exchange for the main character by swapping her faulty cryogenic berth for his good one. This sacrifice has no visible effect on the main character herself--no survivor's guilt, no legal troubles, just over with and done--and was done very obviously despite the fact that it should have been simple to keep it completely hidden. Any in-story explanation for the way it was done and the note after-the-fact seems to fall apart immediately, and one can construct simpler and easier ways to go about the same thing, but then the note would not have been necessary and nobody would have known. So the author had decided that the engineer had to martyr himself, and everyone would be aware of that. And then nothing comes of it.

I could go on and on about it--more than I have--but I'd start foaming at the mouth. It bothers me to a completely unreasonable degree. *foam* *foam* *foam*

[Frank Mikes · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Death of Wisdom is a pretty niche book. It's based on the Traveller role playing game which is a lot like Dungeons and Dragons but as a science fiction rather than fantasy game. While I know a fair bit about the game, I'm not as familiar with the era that most of this book takes place in so even I was a little lost at times. I can only imagine what a reader who knows nothing of Traveller must think about this book.

Aside from this, the book is well written, the pacing is pretty good and several of the characters are interesting. The problem is that there are a lot of characters and from several of them I was never really sure who was who. Part of this difficulty is that they all take on callsigns, like Red Sun or Scisor and these are often used even in casual conversation. Perhaps this is a common cultural thing in the far future but it left me often confused and wondering would someone really introduce yourself to a person of importance as “Drop Kick”?

The plot was also fine, interesting in it's own way, but I found it hard to find anything truly compelling about this book. It was a nice read but even with a life and death plot I didn't find anything to grab me and say, 'this is a great book.'

[Peter Juzyk · Rating 4 out of 5]

While not the most thought provoking book I enjoyed it for being set in the Traveller: The New Era game setting.

[Shannon Appelcline · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty average gaming fiction. Rambling and lightly characterized, but offering some nice insights into the universe, particularly concerning the Hivers.