Sunshine Patriots

by Bill Campbell

Rebellion erupts on the "paradise" planet of Elysia, plunging the colony into chaos. In response, the all-powerful United Earth dispatches its elite corps of cyborg soldiers, led by Aaron "The Berber" Barber. For a hero celebrated galaxy-wide for his acts of bravery against alien hordes, a ragtag group of colonized miners with antiquated weapons should be no challenge. But Barber and his soldiers are unprepaed to meet the most dangerous enemy yet--humans just like them. And on Elysia, the soldiers discover dangers that neither United Earth nor the Elysians themselves could have foreseen. The secrets Barber and his soldiers uncover lead them to question the true meaning of freedom in a world where nothing is what it seems.

Genres: Science Fiction

220 pages, Paperback

First published February 24, 2004

About the author

Bill Campbell is a native Pittsburgher. Throughout his varied and illustrious career, he has done everything from assembling Christmas toys in Cleveland; loading trucks, bookkeeping, and being an AmeriCorps volunteer in Atlanta; coordinating an elementary school literacy program in D.C. to teaching English as a second language in the Czech Republic. He's also the former publisher of the independent magazine, Contraband, and the music trade magazine, CD Revolutions.

Bill came out with Sunshine Patriots, a semi-satirical, military sf novel, back in 2004. My Booty Novel, which he likes to call "fluff for nerds," came out in 2007. His new book, Pop Culture: Politics, Puns, and "Poohbutt" from a Liberal Stay-at-Home Dad was released in September, 2010.



Bill lives in Washington, DC, where he has worked as a music critic for www.ink19.com and currently works for a company that produces books for the blind for the Library of Congress.

Reviews

[Lisa]

I had a hard time finishing this book for the same reason I won't watch The Handmaid's Tale on Hulu: too much reality. Sure, it's futuristic science fiction set on another planet, but it's so, so timely. The colonialism, jingoism, xenophobia, military fetishism, propaganda, capitalist predation, environmental abuse... Reading this book is like diving headfirst into Trumplandia--and it's a 15th anniversary edition! What kept me reading was the communion between a set of colonists and their sentient planet, the hope that it provided their rebellion against the military-backed corporation that sought to control their lives. That, and laugh-out loud moments of giddy hilarity amidst all the horror. You think telemarketers call *you* at inconvenient times?

[Lisa Yaszek · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm both a long-time science fiction fan (my very first memory is watching Star Trek with my parents) and a professional science fiction critic who works specifically with new voices and new visions in the genre. Reading Bill Campbell's Sunshine Patriots was a fantastic experience for me on both counts. As a fan, I thoroughly enjoyed how Sunshine Patriots resonated with different SF traditions ranging from the military adventure to the ecological puzzle--how often do you get that mix in a novel? Campbell brings the two together in surprising and ultimately very satisfying ways. It makes for challenging reading, but the best SF has always been a literature of ideas--more specifically, it is literature that shakes you out of your everyday ideas about the world and makes you think, "of course, I should have seen it that way before!" And that's what's so much fun about Campbell's book--in short, it's a great head bug, in the tradition of Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers (for its unflinching look at love and war), Hal Clement's Mission of Gravity (for its truly bizarre encounter with the alien other) and John Varley's Titan series (because--not to spoil anything--the alien other in this book is an entire planetary system). And as in all these great books--things get weird, and then they get bad, and then justice gets more than served. I love SF!

As an SF scholar and current Vice President of the Science Fiction Research Association, I'm interested in SF because it demands smart readers. People who really love the genre--not just for its big screen renditions or familiar classics, but for its truly strange new voices--are life-long learners, and SF stories are our teachers. As with any class, sometimes readers will be asked to confront things that are uncomfortable, but that is central to the process of learning--sometimes we have to give up what we think we know about the world and consider other possibilities. Sunshine Patriots fits very well into this tradition. This is a story about cyborg warriors, but they are not your gleaming, seamless Terminators, oh no! Instead, they are real people--often poor, often from discriminated-against minorities, and always thrown into situations beyond their control. Their cybernetic appendages are often grotesque--poorly designed, poorly fitted, and exceedingly leaky. As such, Campbell creates a group of protagonists who very much challenge the figure of the traditional military hero, asking us to think about what it would really be like to be trapped in an endless high-tech war. (A very relevant concern right now!)

By creating these kind of groteque cyborg characters, Cambell writes more precise and more logically-extrapolated SF than many of his counterparts, in the vein of Joe Haldeman's Forever War (for its unflinching look at the psychology of war) and Octavia Butler's Xenogenesis trilogy (for its complex exploration of science, technology, and race). The best part is, that while Campbell refuses to let readers escape into the mindlessly heroic action-adventure of the traditional space opera, like Haldeman and Butler before him, he doesn't ask readers to just sink into despair, either. Instead, he insists that even in the worst of all possible worlds, humans can face the future with dignity, love, and reason--and in doing so, they can change the course of history. Highly recommended.

[ide Thompson · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I looked up Caribbean Scifi On Google this is one of the books that came up. Being for the Caribbean myself I found the use of the various cultures in the novel compelling and real. The mix of Scifi genre was another one of the favorite aspects of the novel I fell in love with. The Creole English and slang-Spanish was on point. The use of African deities as names made me feel literature finally had made a space for me among the stars.

[PRL · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm not sure what I can say about this book. I read it as part of a reading challenge where one of the books had to be Afrofuturism. I'm not going to say anything about the story as spoilers would abound and this book goes to some unexpected (and unfortunately some very expected) places.

I think what this book needed was a good editor. Most of the things for a good story are in place, but the execution isn't quite there. Too often important new characters are just dropped into the story without warning. And this is just personal taste, but there are only three main chapters. I think a slightly more structured approach would have improved the pacing. The ending in particular felt rushed.

[Geordie Korper · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this book... but I couldn't. It isn't bad for a first novel, but it would have been better if had been set aside for a few years and then edited with a little more compassion for the reader. Clearly Bill Campbell is a talented and creative storyteller, but this book is not the best reflection of his talent.

[Justin Howe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Imagine a subversive Warhammer 40K novel as penned by Ishmael Reed. Certainly not to everyone's tastes, but more interesting in the ways it's broken, than a lot of books that get to have themselves called well written.

[Ernest Hogan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't usually read military science fiction, but SUNSHINE PATRIOTS is my kind of book. We have war in all it's horror, madness, and absurdity, and how new technology just makes it more so. With a recombocultural cast that hablas bad words in lotsa lingos.