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When Heaven Fell
In the 22nd century, Earth has been subdued by a cybernetic master race, humans are slaves, collaborators, or, like Athol Morrison, mercenaries. For 20 years he has been conquering in the name of the master race. Now, upon his return to Earth he must make a decision: die betraying his masters or live betraying his dream.
343 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1995
4 people are currently reading
152 people want to read
About the author
William Barton
125 books17 followersWilliam Renald Barton III (born September 28, 1950) is an American science fiction writer. In addition to his standalone novels, he is also known for collaborations with Michael Capobianco. Many of their novels deal with themes such as the Cold War, space travel, and space opera.
Barton also has written short stories that put an emphasis on sexuality and human morality in otherwise traditional science fiction. His short fiction has appeared in Asimov's and Sci Fiction, and has been nominated for the Hugo Award, the Theodore Sturgeon Award, the Sidewise Award, and the HOMer Award, and three of his novels (The Transmigration of Souls, Acts of Conscience, and When We Were Real) have been nominated for the Philip K. Dick Award.
Librarian Note:
There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
Barton also has written short stories that put an emphasis on sexuality and human morality in otherwise traditional science fiction. His short fiction has appeared in Asimov's and Sci Fiction, and has been nominated for the Hugo Award, the Theodore Sturgeon Award, the Sidewise Award, and the HOMer Award, and three of his novels (The Transmigration of Souls, Acts of Conscience, and When We Were Real) have been nominated for the Philip K. Dick Award.
Librarian Note:
There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
September 10, 2019
4.5 stars: grim but fascinating alien invasion, not for the squeamish.
This is one of the few SF novels to consider what would happen if hostile aliens *really* invaded Earth, which is to say it would be like 16th century Aztec warriors vs. the 21st century US Army. Not much doubt about the outcome -- although Barton has humans inflict 600,000 casualties on the invaders, who killed 8 billion humans. So a better comparison would be Zulus vs. British, or Apaches vs. the USA: no hope of victory for 'our' side, but we're strong enough to inflict casualties and win skirmishes. After conquest, it got nastier than any of these examples -- the Congo under King Leopold comes to mind. This is not a cheerful book.
The book is matter-of-fact throughout, and is less depressing than it sounds. Life does go on, through the most awful circumstances, and people cope as best they can (or die). There's even a thread of hope that the Evil Overlords will someday get their comeuppance....
Full review: https://www.amazon.com/review/R4AYAL2...
This is one of the few SF novels to consider what would happen if hostile aliens *really* invaded Earth, which is to say it would be like 16th century Aztec warriors vs. the 21st century US Army. Not much doubt about the outcome -- although Barton has humans inflict 600,000 casualties on the invaders, who killed 8 billion humans. So a better comparison would be Zulus vs. British, or Apaches vs. the USA: no hope of victory for 'our' side, but we're strong enough to inflict casualties and win skirmishes. After conquest, it got nastier than any of these examples -- the Congo under King Leopold comes to mind. This is not a cheerful book.
The book is matter-of-fact throughout, and is less depressing than it sounds. Life does go on, through the most awful circumstances, and people cope as best they can (or die). There's even a thread of hope that the Evil Overlords will someday get their comeuppance....
Full review: https://www.amazon.com/review/R4AYAL2...
March 6, 2009
This is the sort of story that lodges somewhere in your consciousness and can't easily be shaken. It is at once deeply disturbing and oddly hopeful, erotic and gory, angering and pitiable; ultimately, ambiguous. In sometimes heavy prose, Barton writes about a mercenary struggling to understand his humanity in the face of atrocities he both witnesses and participates in. The character is not likable, usually a deal killer for me, but I found myself compelled by him, partly because Barton is such an expert and evoking character. This book is also one of the frankest treatments of sex in human psychology that I've ever read in a book. Bottom line: Wow. I would give it 4.5 stars if I could.
November 6, 2017
After reading a short-story by William Barton in a sci-fi anthology ("Down in the Dark"), I felt that it was one of the most impressively depressing things I have ever read. Needing more, I sought out "When Heaven Fell", devoured it in two days, and am thoroughly impressed.
There is no better perspective that could have explored the themes of humanity, sexuality, oppression, alien life, and warfare than that of Athy. He could be described as a mercenary who excels in committing genocide against barely equipped aliens on all their respective home-worlds, and occasionally struggling to deal with his own morality.
As other reviewers note with displeasure, this book is very sexualized. In fact, . However, I don't believe these scenes are meant for an erotic/pornographic purpose, rather a purely literary function.
On this note, every theme explored in this book is tied together with sex.
At the most basic level, our first person perspective of Athy is that of an experienced and respected soldier, accepting the role he has chosen and accepting without hesitation that he is a tool used by machines. Athy describes the environment/beings around him, things he can have sex with, and things that have relation to his distant past as a child in the invasion. This connection to distant past provides expositional information on the state of Earth and the logical events leading to it's present state.
My personal estimate is that this connection to distant past displays Athy's place as a "human", a member of the oppressed species. The views of a beaten Earth bring back memories and dreams of being un-oppressed, the visibly aged denizens of his home-town reminders of the current brutal oppression. Meanwhile, this visit to Earth are also fraught with sexual encounters with his old fling, consciously manipulating and distracting Athy through sexual means to form a failed rebellion of sorts.
Such a heavy emphasis on sex leads me to believe that Barton is also trying to display manipulation present on the part of the "Masters", conquerors of Earth. They provide him and other professional services with personal prostitutes as part of the "burdar" system, distracting him with the thing that is shared among all oppressed organic species.
And yet, in "When Heaven Fell", sex is a thing that describes humanity, with all its connotations and complexities essential to being a human being. Constantly used to describe relationships between characters, and this also continues to when Athy is entranced by the sexual rituals of other alien races who make up the Master's empire. The biological mating rituals so intimately held by each species of subjects, possibly the last thing they still "own" in a sense, purposely contrasted with the sexless, cybernetic beings that rule over their empire.
"When Heaven Fell" is a dark, gritty work that provides a logical background for the popular "Alien Invasion of Earth" trope so common in sci-fi. It makes it work, and I genuinely enjoyed this book. It explores and connects themes in an enticing work of literature that I would recommend to anyone.
There is no better perspective that could have explored the themes of humanity, sexuality, oppression, alien life, and warfare than that of Athy. He could be described as a mercenary who excels in committing genocide against barely equipped aliens on all their respective home-worlds, and occasionally struggling to deal with his own morality.
As other reviewers note with displeasure, this book is very sexualized. In fact, . However, I don't believe these scenes are meant for an erotic/pornographic purpose, rather a purely literary function.
On this note, every theme explored in this book is tied together with sex.
At the most basic level, our first person perspective of Athy is that of an experienced and respected soldier, accepting the role he has chosen and accepting without hesitation that he is a tool used by machines. Athy describes the environment/beings around him, things he can have sex with, and things that have relation to his distant past as a child in the invasion. This connection to distant past provides expositional information on the state of Earth and the logical events leading to it's present state.
My personal estimate is that this connection to distant past displays Athy's place as a "human", a member of the oppressed species. The views of a beaten Earth bring back memories and dreams of being un-oppressed, the visibly aged denizens of his home-town reminders of the current brutal oppression. Meanwhile, this visit to Earth are also fraught with sexual encounters with his old fling, consciously manipulating and distracting Athy through sexual means to form a failed rebellion of sorts.
Such a heavy emphasis on sex leads me to believe that Barton is also trying to display manipulation present on the part of the "Masters", conquerors of Earth. They provide him and other professional services with personal prostitutes as part of the "burdar" system, distracting him with the thing that is shared among all oppressed organic species.
And yet, in "When Heaven Fell", sex is a thing that describes humanity, with all its connotations and complexities essential to being a human being. Constantly used to describe relationships between characters, and this also continues to when Athy is entranced by the sexual rituals of other alien races who make up the Master's empire. The biological mating rituals so intimately held by each species of subjects, possibly the last thing they still "own" in a sense, purposely contrasted with the sexless, cybernetic beings that rule over their empire.
"When Heaven Fell" is a dark, gritty work that provides a logical background for the popular "Alien Invasion of Earth" trope so common in sci-fi. It makes it work, and I genuinely enjoyed this book. It explores and connects themes in an enticing work of literature that I would recommend to anyone.
September 10, 2011
A great, but flawed book.
This book should have been a scifi classic. And in many ways, it's as good or better than many in the pantheon.
Barton uses colonialism as the core of this book, with humanity being the colonized, to take a deeper look at what it means to be colonized and to be a subjugated people. At the same time, he keeps the actual content action packed and pulp-y.
The one criticism is that it's way oversexed and definitely not for kids. I understand the desire to add a sexual dimension to the subjugation, but alot of it just seemed gratuitous and prurient.
This book should have been a scifi classic. And in many ways, it's as good or better than many in the pantheon.
Barton uses colonialism as the core of this book, with humanity being the colonized, to take a deeper look at what it means to be colonized and to be a subjugated people. At the same time, he keeps the actual content action packed and pulp-y.
The one criticism is that it's way oversexed and definitely not for kids. I understand the desire to add a sexual dimension to the subjugation, but alot of it just seemed gratuitous and prurient.
November 29, 2025
review of
William Barton's When Heaven Fell
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - November 28, 2025
I'm not sure I can acct for the revulsion I feel for this bk & for this author. I'm sure it's an over-reaction. I reviewed his & Michael Capobianco's Iris from March 1-8, 2020, the truncated review of wch is still available on Goodreads here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... . Looking at that review again I have to compliment myself & say that I nailed it better than I can now. Here's an excerpt:
""William Barton is the information systems manager for Health Sciences Consortium, a nonprofit medical/educational publisher.""
"[..]
"Michael Capobianco is a founding partner and C.E.O. of Not-Polyoptics, a software company specializing in orphan computers." - p 403
"Ok, my bad attitude is showing: I'm a bigot, a bigot against C.E.O.s. So what do the authors do to put a little wild world spice into their privileged authors story? Lots of sex. LOTS of sex. So much SEX that, for me, it became quickly very tedious. Again, maybe I'm just not getting enuf. Instead, tho, I feel like I wandered into a Nxivm (pronounced "Nexium") Wonderland, 50 Shades of Greys [plural intended]."
Ha ha! "Nxivm (pronounced "Nexium") Wonderland, 50 Shades of Greys"! That's rich. & it pretty much describes this one too. I love sex. & I've been widely censored for using it in my 'work'. But. Oh. My. Clod. Did I get sick of it in this bk. What was the formula? Sex every 2 pages, brutality every 4 pages? Maybe it's not really that extreme but when I was reading it it sure seemed that way. This was copyrighted 1995 so I reckon it was too early to've been written by AI. Still, I can imagine feeding the formula in & having the AI crank it out.
"Somewhere up there, beyond this tawny and dust-filled sky, an armed warship of the Master Race floated in orbit, bearing its cargo of software and little blue poppets, the beings who'd conquered us all." - p 2
Yes, the "Master Race" has conquered Earth & killed most of its human population. Some of the survivors became mercenaries for the invaders & went off to conquer other worlds w/ them. The main character of this bk is one of them. He fucks alot when he's not killing off huge populations w/ the Master Race's superior genocide technology. 2 bks after I read this I read H. Beam Piper's Uller Uprising (1952). Piper's plot wasn't really that much different, invaders killing off the natives, glib rationalizations justifying extreme brutality - coupled w/ a love story involving a woman who's initially opposed to the military extremism but who falls in tove w/ the military boss & philosophically joins his side. But did I hate the Piper? No, I somehow found Piper's writing style to reveal some sort of real human in the author. W/ Barton, I just feel like he's a sociopath.
ANYWAY, the mercenaries are given near invulnerability in relation to the peoples they're wiping out - but, of course, not enuf invulnerability shd they decide to revolt.
"Down, down . . . Kathy Lee tried to catch the damn thing but it came apart in her hands, powder spilling like red dust for just a moment, cloud enveloping her, then it ignited.
"Blossom of fire and black smoke, rising in a little mushroom cloud, then the pressure wave from the explosion washed over my sensors. Echo. Echo off the surrounding stone faces. I could see her there, standing in the fire." - p 4
The mercenary is given leave to go back to Earth after yet-another successful annihilation of the dominant life forms on some planet or another.
"Later, having said my good-byes to Shrehht, having agreed to meet her again in New York in time for the Gosudar's Ceremony, I rode the coastal monorail home. The sun rose in a pale, bright blue sky, tinged with the faintest touch of gray, while we slid above the tangled, overgrown ruins of New Jersey, following the broken line of the twentieth century's famous I-95 corridor." - p 28
Home, the mercenary finds the bks he read as a kid in his former bedrm:
"I reached out and pulled one of the Burroughs volumes, one whose title caught my eye, looking at the cover. At the Earth's Core. I gave the book a gentle squeeze and the bulging breasts of the almost-naked cave girl turned my way, delicate-boned Victorian face turning up toward me, eyes pleading. Another gentle squeeze and the story began. David Innes and Abner Perry. Mechanical mole. Pellucidar, Mahars and Sagoths. Dian the Beautiful and Hooja the Sly One. Ja the Mezop.
"I squeezed the book off and put it away. Sat staring. I must have remembered why the Sirkar police might be called sagoths. And rememberance, however deeply buried, had guided my hand to that particular book." - p 46
I read something like 17 of Edgar Rice Burroughs bks in quick succession when I was 13 & At the Earth's Core wd've been one of them. Of course, interactive Frank Frazetta covers weren't available in the 'real' world. I mostly read the Pellucidar series w/ one or more Tarzan & Mars novels in the mix. I can't honestly recommend them but I enjoyed them immensely.
My reviewer's note to self for the following is just "SHEESH":
"No, I suppose not. Imagine a human culture in whoch sex is everything, available to everyone, men, women, children. No exclusions. No jealousies. No hormonally driven male aggression. No female economic territoriality.
"It's been suggested that the prevalence of child molestors in most human societies is driven by an ancestral memory of the path we almost took. Bonobo children didn't seem to mind. Maybe we would have been better off that way. Then again, Bonobos didn't build starships." - p 104
To me, such 'logic' is rooted in wishful thinking further rooted in denialism. There's a whole view of sex in wch it's solely something that produces pleasure, no mention of the drive to reproduce. An adult doesn't reproduce w/ a child, they just use them as a sex toy that they can have power over. Ignoring the basic biological aspects of the sex drive mainly serves the purpose of rationalizations for sadistic selfishness.
The mercenary, when back on Earth, reunites w/ his girlfriend from when he was a teenager. She wanted glorious stories of what it'd been like since he left Earth to be a soldier.
"I'd checked the duty rosters, confirmed my order checklist, and sprayed them with my torch, watched them fall in the flames, curl and blacken and die. Local things that stood in for flowers would one day soon bloom in the field of ashes I left behind.
"Tried to tell her that, but failed. What she wanted was the beauty of other worlds, the glory of my soldier's life. Something to hold against the drear and limit of the world she'd known since I went away. Some way to confirm what she'd always imagined: that, wherever I was, I was happy." - p 120
I've been mentioning sex, some of you probably know what it is, but, in case, you don't, I'll give you a sample:
"Alix slid the rest of the way up my thigh, put my penis in her mouth, working at it with her lips and tongue, moving rhythmically, slowly, reacting to feedback from my body. I sat. Waited. Stared at the silvery moon. Wished for another life. When my orgasm came I heard Alix choke softly. Choke softly and swallow." - p 178
&, then, of course, there's human & ET sex.
"They moved together, dancing around each other, whirling . . . suddenly the man dashed inside the arc of the spinning tail, grappled with her, arms around her, holding her close, smashing their faces together. The native's mouth opened and she stuck out a thin, forked tongue, very much like a snake's tongue, thrust it into his mouth. A very long tongue . . .
"It kept on coming and I realized she must be putting it dozens of centimeters down his throat. "Holy shit . . ."" - p 244
But will it come out of his asshole?
"Put her hands between her legs, fingers sliding through all that yellow pubic hair, palms flattening against her mons, pulling it apart, opening herself to me. Distracting me. Making me look away from her eyes. See, Master Athol? See how wet I am? Ready for you.
[..]
"Janice tucked her hands under the backs of her knees, pulled her legs up until they were against her chest. Lay still, still watching me. Waiting. Prepared, I suppose to wait me out. Didn't take long." - p 264
Sex & genocide, a real winner of a formula!
"One of the mountain peaks was sliced away at an angle, a hundred thousand tons of solid rock maybe, gone to who knows where, nothing left behind but a mirror-bright surface, reflecting clouds, reflecting sky."
[..]
"Vronsky's voice said, "OK, that's the sidearm you'll be carrying.["]" - pp 272-273
I'd recommend just about ANY SF over this.
William Barton's When Heaven Fell
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - November 28, 2025
I'm not sure I can acct for the revulsion I feel for this bk & for this author. I'm sure it's an over-reaction. I reviewed his & Michael Capobianco's Iris from March 1-8, 2020, the truncated review of wch is still available on Goodreads here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... . Looking at that review again I have to compliment myself & say that I nailed it better than I can now. Here's an excerpt:
""William Barton is the information systems manager for Health Sciences Consortium, a nonprofit medical/educational publisher.""
"[..]
"Michael Capobianco is a founding partner and C.E.O. of Not-Polyoptics, a software company specializing in orphan computers." - p 403
"Ok, my bad attitude is showing: I'm a bigot, a bigot against C.E.O.s. So what do the authors do to put a little wild world spice into their privileged authors story? Lots of sex. LOTS of sex. So much SEX that, for me, it became quickly very tedious. Again, maybe I'm just not getting enuf. Instead, tho, I feel like I wandered into a Nxivm (pronounced "Nexium") Wonderland, 50 Shades of Greys [plural intended]."
Ha ha! "Nxivm (pronounced "Nexium") Wonderland, 50 Shades of Greys"! That's rich. & it pretty much describes this one too. I love sex. & I've been widely censored for using it in my 'work'. But. Oh. My. Clod. Did I get sick of it in this bk. What was the formula? Sex every 2 pages, brutality every 4 pages? Maybe it's not really that extreme but when I was reading it it sure seemed that way. This was copyrighted 1995 so I reckon it was too early to've been written by AI. Still, I can imagine feeding the formula in & having the AI crank it out.
"Somewhere up there, beyond this tawny and dust-filled sky, an armed warship of the Master Race floated in orbit, bearing its cargo of software and little blue poppets, the beings who'd conquered us all." - p 2
Yes, the "Master Race" has conquered Earth & killed most of its human population. Some of the survivors became mercenaries for the invaders & went off to conquer other worlds w/ them. The main character of this bk is one of them. He fucks alot when he's not killing off huge populations w/ the Master Race's superior genocide technology. 2 bks after I read this I read H. Beam Piper's Uller Uprising (1952). Piper's plot wasn't really that much different, invaders killing off the natives, glib rationalizations justifying extreme brutality - coupled w/ a love story involving a woman who's initially opposed to the military extremism but who falls in tove w/ the military boss & philosophically joins his side. But did I hate the Piper? No, I somehow found Piper's writing style to reveal some sort of real human in the author. W/ Barton, I just feel like he's a sociopath.
ANYWAY, the mercenaries are given near invulnerability in relation to the peoples they're wiping out - but, of course, not enuf invulnerability shd they decide to revolt.
"Down, down . . . Kathy Lee tried to catch the damn thing but it came apart in her hands, powder spilling like red dust for just a moment, cloud enveloping her, then it ignited.
"Blossom of fire and black smoke, rising in a little mushroom cloud, then the pressure wave from the explosion washed over my sensors. Echo. Echo off the surrounding stone faces. I could see her there, standing in the fire." - p 4
The mercenary is given leave to go back to Earth after yet-another successful annihilation of the dominant life forms on some planet or another.
"Later, having said my good-byes to Shrehht, having agreed to meet her again in New York in time for the Gosudar's Ceremony, I rode the coastal monorail home. The sun rose in a pale, bright blue sky, tinged with the faintest touch of gray, while we slid above the tangled, overgrown ruins of New Jersey, following the broken line of the twentieth century's famous I-95 corridor." - p 28
Home, the mercenary finds the bks he read as a kid in his former bedrm:
"I reached out and pulled one of the Burroughs volumes, one whose title caught my eye, looking at the cover. At the Earth's Core. I gave the book a gentle squeeze and the bulging breasts of the almost-naked cave girl turned my way, delicate-boned Victorian face turning up toward me, eyes pleading. Another gentle squeeze and the story began. David Innes and Abner Perry. Mechanical mole. Pellucidar, Mahars and Sagoths. Dian the Beautiful and Hooja the Sly One. Ja the Mezop.
"I squeezed the book off and put it away. Sat staring. I must have remembered why the Sirkar police might be called sagoths. And rememberance, however deeply buried, had guided my hand to that particular book." - p 46
I read something like 17 of Edgar Rice Burroughs bks in quick succession when I was 13 & At the Earth's Core wd've been one of them. Of course, interactive Frank Frazetta covers weren't available in the 'real' world. I mostly read the Pellucidar series w/ one or more Tarzan & Mars novels in the mix. I can't honestly recommend them but I enjoyed them immensely.
My reviewer's note to self for the following is just "SHEESH":
"No, I suppose not. Imagine a human culture in whoch sex is everything, available to everyone, men, women, children. No exclusions. No jealousies. No hormonally driven male aggression. No female economic territoriality.
"It's been suggested that the prevalence of child molestors in most human societies is driven by an ancestral memory of the path we almost took. Bonobo children didn't seem to mind. Maybe we would have been better off that way. Then again, Bonobos didn't build starships." - p 104
To me, such 'logic' is rooted in wishful thinking further rooted in denialism. There's a whole view of sex in wch it's solely something that produces pleasure, no mention of the drive to reproduce. An adult doesn't reproduce w/ a child, they just use them as a sex toy that they can have power over. Ignoring the basic biological aspects of the sex drive mainly serves the purpose of rationalizations for sadistic selfishness.
The mercenary, when back on Earth, reunites w/ his girlfriend from when he was a teenager. She wanted glorious stories of what it'd been like since he left Earth to be a soldier.
"I'd checked the duty rosters, confirmed my order checklist, and sprayed them with my torch, watched them fall in the flames, curl and blacken and die. Local things that stood in for flowers would one day soon bloom in the field of ashes I left behind.
"Tried to tell her that, but failed. What she wanted was the beauty of other worlds, the glory of my soldier's life. Something to hold against the drear and limit of the world she'd known since I went away. Some way to confirm what she'd always imagined: that, wherever I was, I was happy." - p 120
I've been mentioning sex, some of you probably know what it is, but, in case, you don't, I'll give you a sample:
"Alix slid the rest of the way up my thigh, put my penis in her mouth, working at it with her lips and tongue, moving rhythmically, slowly, reacting to feedback from my body. I sat. Waited. Stared at the silvery moon. Wished for another life. When my orgasm came I heard Alix choke softly. Choke softly and swallow." - p 178
&, then, of course, there's human & ET sex.
"They moved together, dancing around each other, whirling . . . suddenly the man dashed inside the arc of the spinning tail, grappled with her, arms around her, holding her close, smashing their faces together. The native's mouth opened and she stuck out a thin, forked tongue, very much like a snake's tongue, thrust it into his mouth. A very long tongue . . .
"It kept on coming and I realized she must be putting it dozens of centimeters down his throat. "Holy shit . . ."" - p 244
But will it come out of his asshole?
"Put her hands between her legs, fingers sliding through all that yellow pubic hair, palms flattening against her mons, pulling it apart, opening herself to me. Distracting me. Making me look away from her eyes. See, Master Athol? See how wet I am? Ready for you.
[..]
"Janice tucked her hands under the backs of her knees, pulled her legs up until they were against her chest. Lay still, still watching me. Waiting. Prepared, I suppose to wait me out. Didn't take long." - p 264
Sex & genocide, a real winner of a formula!
"One of the mountain peaks was sliced away at an angle, a hundred thousand tons of solid rock maybe, gone to who knows where, nothing left behind but a mirror-bright surface, reflecting clouds, reflecting sky."
[..]
"Vronsky's voice said, "OK, that's the sidearm you'll be carrying.["]" - pp 272-273
I'd recommend just about ANY SF over this.
August 8, 2012
When Heaven Fell is both interesting and depressing. The book is dark, showing a future that we wouldn't wish for. A cybernetic Master Race has conquered Earth, killing billions in the process. Humanity is now a subjugated race, basically a slave race, and it seems that is the way it will be forever. But life goes on and isn't too bad for some ... if you can adapt and accept your place. There is a lot of explicit sex, some fighting (the main protagonist is a soldier), and a bit of intrigue. Some deep moral questions are at least asked if not answered. (Would you betray those close to you to save your country? Your race?)
When Heaven Fell is a well written book. As trends in SF go, it was before its time.
It was a good read and I will be buying more of Barton's work.
When Heaven Fell is a well written book. As trends in SF go, it was before its time.
It was a good read and I will be buying more of Barton's work.
July 3, 2024
Recent Rereads: When Heaven Fell. William Barton's grimdark milSF deconstructs Heinlein's Starship Troopers, with a defeated Earth slave mercenaries to interstellar AIs. In soldier Athol's story Barton asks the question, "Who do we owe duty to?" A good book, but oh so dark.
July 30, 2024
The universe is a dark and ugly place in William Barton's decidedly unromantic military space opera in which mankind's own troubled history of fascism and exploitation is set on a galactic stage. A devastated Earth reduced to slave labour and police states is but one of thousands of worlds taken over by the ancient cybernetic "Master Race" who operate by the credo "submit or die" (and they do indeed have the technology to turn any planet into a smoking ball of slag). But the Master Race relies on their organic subjects to carry out their assault operations and this is the story of one such recruit, Earthling Athy Morrison of North Carolina. A thoroughly unlikeable character, Morrison has few qualms about staging bloody pogroms against uncooperative races before returning home to bed his "burdars" (indentured sex workers)...all the while justifying his actions with the same excuse used for centuries by those who would cozy up to tyrants: "I was just following orders". Sex and violence go hand in hand in Barton's narrative with his protagonist using the former as a panacea for the bad vibes brought on by the latter. But while the erotic passages are both explicit and plentiful they eventually take on a pathetic sheen, Morrison's juvenile couplings becoming increasingly mechanical as he struggles to suppress a conscience grown more troubled with each atrocity he commits. Employing an intense writing style Barton mixes passages of poetic clarity with moments of unflinching brutality as he ruminates on exploiters vs the exploited, conquerors vs the conquered, and those who would resist oppression vs those who stand to gain by collaborating with the oppressor. The politics of this slash-and-burn colonialism are not so simply divided into good and evil however for Morrison's tale is recounted in frustrating shades of grey as he tries to find the lesser evil in a universe that at times seems to contain nothing but evils. So is he an unflinching pragmatist? a grimly determined survivor? or a special kind of psychopath? The only drawback I found was the character of Morrison's childhood sweetheart, Alix, with whom he tries to reconnect. Described mainly in terms of her sexual attributes, Alix is presented as a needy doormat onto which Morrison's own feelings of ambivalence are projected---she eventually does find her voice but by then it's too little too late. Overall a gut-churning and at times infuriating read (for all the right reasons) filled with bizarre aliens and exotic worlds frustratingly devoid of heroes. "When Heaven Fell" is a book whose dark vision is only broken by the slimmest ray of hope and even that is uncertain at best, but it's still enough to give us one of science fiction's more poignant closing sentences.
July 1, 2024
A weird and frustrating one I picked up because in The Dreams Our Stuff Is Made Of Thomas M. Disch singles it out as doing interesting things contra the military SF genre, and then kept putting down, and picking up, and putting down again, because I found it deeply offputting. In the 23nd-ish century, our narrator Athel Morrison is a proud subaltern of the galactic empire of AI brains that has very casually conquered Earth; they're called, apparently by themselves, the Master Race. We catch him at the tail of one campaign; he goes back for R&R on earth, reuniting with his teenage girlfriend, then we see him go follow his career in more and more fragmentary episodes. The book's larger flaws lie in the weird imbalance of the structure--the Earth section being like pages 50-250 of 350, or something like it--and the odd preoccupation with sex it demonstrates.
Starting with the Earth part: the whole section is a sort of distended organ in the middle of the novel. It feels like Barton very much wanted to do some kids-riding-bikes, some local colour North Carolina stuff, and it all feels bizarrely anachronistic. In the future no-one remembers what war the memorial in Washington commemorates but gridiron football is still played and NC still has the same state highways. The wreckage of shopping malls. The book both requires the total destruction of American suburbia by alien intrusion and the notion that American suburbia would have survived unchanged 2-3 centuries before the aliens got there. As the novel drags on we start to notice the fault lines opening up between how the novel works as symbol and as realist world-building. The Master Race are somewhere past the event horizon where their technology is essentially magic but they're still using slave labour.
The sexual mores of the 2200s are as unchanged as other forms of recreation: 'girls don't want to tell boys they want to have sex' is presented as a kind of cultural constant. Morrison is torn between a desire for his teenage love he's not sure he's in earnest about and his earnestly shallow desire to keep making use of military prostitution. There's a sort of biological determinism / eve psych thing running through Morrison's ruminations on his wants that Barton presumably felt was thematically integrated with the subaltern Earth bit--all life is the impulse to domination and protection of the gene pool, do you see--one imagines Disch nodding and going "yes, this probably is what sex is like for straight people."
Starting with the Earth part: the whole section is a sort of distended organ in the middle of the novel. It feels like Barton very much wanted to do some kids-riding-bikes, some local colour North Carolina stuff, and it all feels bizarrely anachronistic. In the future no-one remembers what war the memorial in Washington commemorates but gridiron football is still played and NC still has the same state highways. The wreckage of shopping malls. The book both requires the total destruction of American suburbia by alien intrusion and the notion that American suburbia would have survived unchanged 2-3 centuries before the aliens got there. As the novel drags on we start to notice the fault lines opening up between how the novel works as symbol and as realist world-building. The Master Race are somewhere past the event horizon where their technology is essentially magic but they're still using slave labour.
The sexual mores of the 2200s are as unchanged as other forms of recreation: 'girls don't want to tell boys they want to have sex' is presented as a kind of cultural constant. Morrison is torn between a desire for his teenage love he's not sure he's in earnest about and his earnestly shallow desire to keep making use of military prostitution. There's a sort of biological determinism / eve psych thing running through Morrison's ruminations on his wants that Barton presumably felt was thematically integrated with the subaltern Earth bit--all life is the impulse to domination and protection of the gene pool, do you see--one imagines Disch nodding and going "yes, this probably is what sex is like for straight people."
September 25, 2025
Ostensibly military SF, Athol is a human mercenary working for a conquering race who inflicted 6
billion human casualties. The conquerors in turn work for (gasp) the Master Race, an even more feared alien race. Athol reflects on his place in the big scheme of things on a trip home to Earth - and drifts casually into a rebel cabal with mixed results. The unrelenting bleakness and degrading sex which William Barton provides make this an uncomfortable read, and if it's an allegory of wartime comfort women, collaboration and subjugation then it's heavy-handed. Take out the constant male-centered sex and it would be a novelette.
billion human casualties. The conquerors in turn work for (gasp) the Master Race, an even more feared alien race. Athol reflects on his place in the big scheme of things on a trip home to Earth - and drifts casually into a rebel cabal with mixed results. The unrelenting bleakness and degrading sex which William Barton provides make this an uncomfortable read, and if it's an allegory of wartime comfort women, collaboration and subjugation then it's heavy-handed. Take out the constant male-centered sex and it would be a novelette.
March 22, 2024
The story started of really great with incredible world building… but it just turned into sex scene after sex scene after sex scene, which literally made me google if I was just reading blatant pornography. Towards the end I got my hopes up for a satisfying ending which turned in to a cliffhanger.
Won’t recommend, the book catfished me and leaves me extremely pissed of.
Won’t recommend, the book catfished me and leaves me extremely pissed of.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 22, 2018
This could have been a great book, but as it is, no. Great plot and world building, but the endless sex scenes really detract from the story.
December 16, 2025
I was not sure if this could be viewed as exploitation. Certainly influenced by the Gor series if transposed to a hard sf setting
January 17, 2012
5 pages of any type of exploration of larger themes such as conquest,sacrifice, etc rest was just primarily ambivalence and ambivalent sex..not for me. Glad it's over.
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