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Laurie Jo Hansen #2
Exiles to Glory
Kevin Senecal was nobody's hero. All he wanted from life was a professional career, a strong union to protect him, and a comfortable company-owned housing well away from his Welfare Slum origins. As a senior engineering student at Cal Tech, Kevin seemed on the verge of realizing his ambitions, when one night he was attacked by a murderous "youth gant" - and accidentally killed one of them while escaping. That's when it all changed: "You don't kill juvies in this town," the Homicide Detective told him. Suddenly Kevin Senecal was on the Run, and on all of Earth there was no place to hide.
- GenresScience FictionFiction
216 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 1977
16 people are currently reading
159 people want to read
About the author
Jerry Pournelle
264 books548 followersDr Jerry Eugene Pournelle was an American science fiction writer, engineer, essayist, and journalist, who contributed for many years to the computer magazine Byte, and from 1998 until his death maintained his own website and blog.
From the beginning, Pournelle's work centered around strong military themes. Several books describe the fictional mercenary infantry force known as Falkenberg's Legion. There are strong parallels between these stories and the Childe Cycle mercenary stories by Gordon R. Dickson, as well as Heinlein's Starship Troopers, although Pournelle's work takes far fewer technological leaps than either of these.
Pournelle spent years working in the aerospace industry, including at Boeing, on projects including studying heat tolerance for astronauts and their spacesuits. This side of his career also found him working on projections related to military tactics and probabilities. One report in which he had a hand became a basis for the Strategic Defense Initiative, the missile defense system proposed by President Ronald Reagan. A study he edited in 1964 involved projecting Air Force missile technology needs for 1975.
Dr. Pournelle would always tell would-be writers seeking advice that the key to becoming an author was to write — a lot.
“And finish what you write,” he added in a 2003 interview. “Don’t join a writers’ club and sit around having coffee reading pieces of your manuscript to people. Write it. Finish it.”
Pournelle served as President of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America in 1973.
From the beginning, Pournelle's work centered around strong military themes. Several books describe the fictional mercenary infantry force known as Falkenberg's Legion. There are strong parallels between these stories and the Childe Cycle mercenary stories by Gordon R. Dickson, as well as Heinlein's Starship Troopers, although Pournelle's work takes far fewer technological leaps than either of these.
Pournelle spent years working in the aerospace industry, including at Boeing, on projects including studying heat tolerance for astronauts and their spacesuits. This side of his career also found him working on projections related to military tactics and probabilities. One report in which he had a hand became a basis for the Strategic Defense Initiative, the missile defense system proposed by President Ronald Reagan. A study he edited in 1964 involved projecting Air Force missile technology needs for 1975.
Dr. Pournelle would always tell would-be writers seeking advice that the key to becoming an author was to write — a lot.
“And finish what you write,” he added in a 2003 interview. “Don’t join a writers’ club and sit around having coffee reading pieces of your manuscript to people. Write it. Finish it.”
Pournelle served as President of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America in 1973.
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
July 28, 2011
Even watered-down Heinlein is worth the time investment. Pournelle gives it a valiant try, but I have to wonder why a character with admitted temper problems allows *everyone* he meets to withhold information so obviously.
It's actually a better read if you skip chapter 12, where the author tells you the backstory of Earth, and chapter 13, where the villain broods and explains his motivations to himself. The only effect this has on the story is to spoil the reader's surprise when the villain is revealed to the protagonist later, removing what little mystery the plot has.
Sorry, fans. I really wanted to like the book more, but it fought me at every turn.
It's actually a better read if you skip chapter 12, where the author tells you the backstory of Earth, and chapter 13, where the villain broods and explains his motivations to himself. The only effect this has on the story is to spoil the reader's surprise when the villain is revealed to the protagonist later, removing what little mystery the plot has.
Sorry, fans. I really wanted to like the book more, but it fought me at every turn.
March 26, 2024
Pretty good story. Some of the science is decent, most is not quite. The social setting, is really hard to buy in the timeline. Our hero is an engineering student forced to flee the earth for his own safety. All the way out to the asteroid belt. Intrigue, danger and industrial espionage follow. A fast paced story. Uncomplicated. Decent read.
December 11, 2018
Surprisingly uninteresting really.
January 1, 2022
A quick and enjoyable read, rather simple but satisfying. The book was written long enough ago that a skeptic can take issue with the future it forecasts, but it's fun anyway.
July 27, 2023
Pure. Pournelle.
Coming of age the hard way. Even a princess. Problems discovered, then solved, And the science is real, too, Priceless!
Coming of age the hard way. Even a princess. Problems discovered, then solved, And the science is real, too, Priceless!
January 16, 2024
Light entertainment, from when SF included lots of science. Similar to a good AC Clarke story, with a little Edgar Rice Burroughs thrown in.
November 4, 2024
fun book some parts not as smooth as could be
September 11, 2020
The possibilities of 70's sci-fi is only limited by your imagination. And you can't go wrong reading Jerry Pournelle :)
December 30, 2019
I found out yesterday that Pournelle passed away, so I decided to reread one of his books as a memorial.
This one is one of his juveniles, which are clones of the Heinlein novels of many years past, and they include many of their flaws as well as virtues. The first major flaw is that space is relentlessly white, the two characters with French and Spanish names are villains with almost all the other characters having WASPy sorts of names. This book came out 10 years after Star Trek, so it's inexcusable, no Asian engineers, etc? My schools and companies I worked for had a fair amount of diversity even then.
The female love interest/protagonist comments to the male lead that he was one of those men that though women couldn't be engineers, the author has no other female engineers or scientists in the book, reinforcing the point. In the 70s and 80s the troglodytes often said this and it popped up at Google a while back. Hard to say how much of this was the future the author created or personal opinion, this book doesn't pass the Bechdel test.
Heinlein liked preaching politics in his books, Pournelle has the same bad habit, preaching extremely conservative/libertarian politics, but he's not as subtle and the sides are far more black and white. These issues occur in many of Pournelle's earlier works.
There are a couple of plot holes in this novel that are doozies, critical flight systems with no backups or redundancies and in a packed spacecraft where the two main characters could only be alone in the septic tank, a murder occurs and the body spaced without any witnesses.
What's good? It's still a cracking good YA adventure novel in the style of the Golden Age showing its wrinkles. My twenty-year-old self was happy the first time I read it.
A more enjoyable Pournelle read would be one of the books he coauthored with Niven like Lucifer's Hammer or Oath of Fealty, one of the most successful partnerships in SF, they were better together. His military SF is good as well if you like the old school variety.
This one is one of his juveniles, which are clones of the Heinlein novels of many years past, and they include many of their flaws as well as virtues. The first major flaw is that space is relentlessly white, the two characters with French and Spanish names are villains with almost all the other characters having WASPy sorts of names. This book came out 10 years after Star Trek, so it's inexcusable, no Asian engineers, etc? My schools and companies I worked for had a fair amount of diversity even then.
The female love interest/protagonist comments to the male lead that he was one of those men that though women couldn't be engineers, the author has no other female engineers or scientists in the book, reinforcing the point. In the 70s and 80s the troglodytes often said this and it popped up at Google a while back. Hard to say how much of this was the future the author created or personal opinion, this book doesn't pass the Bechdel test.
Heinlein liked preaching politics in his books, Pournelle has the same bad habit, preaching extremely conservative/libertarian politics, but he's not as subtle and the sides are far more black and white. These issues occur in many of Pournelle's earlier works.
There are a couple of plot holes in this novel that are doozies, critical flight systems with no backups or redundancies and in a packed spacecraft where the two main characters could only be alone in the septic tank, a murder occurs and the body spaced without any witnesses.
What's good? It's still a cracking good YA adventure novel in the style of the Golden Age showing its wrinkles. My twenty-year-old self was happy the first time I read it.
A more enjoyable Pournelle read would be one of the books he coauthored with Niven like Lucifer's Hammer or Oath of Fealty, one of the most successful partnerships in SF, they were better together. His military SF is good as well if you like the old school variety.
February 9, 2017
This is one of my favorites when it comes to adventure/ sci fi. The political content would probably put many people off, the themes of anti welfare and social work run strong and in places there are right wing overtones reminiscent of Heinlein (starship troopers in particular). Hopefully sci fi aficionados can overlook these issues and read it very much as a what if. There are some great science fiction concepts used intelligently along with a couple of solid physics problems. The ending is of particular note in that I have not encountered before or since I first read this book. (spoilers) The good guys win but the bad guy doesn't really lose. Allowing one person to get away with murder and escape justice is considered a worthwhile price to secure the future of humanity. This flies in the face of most storytelling and our modern justice and retribution obsessed society. This is what I truly think makes this book great science fiction, the good guys don't like it but are prepared to sacrifice their own sense of honor to serve humanity, this in my mind makes them truly enlightened. I think if this novel was written latter in his career it probably would have been longer however I certainly do not begrudge this short, punchy and exciting adventure.
December 12, 2009
A bit simplistic in style, and certainly geeky in perspective, but that is part of it's charm! Hard Sci-Fi in an easy to read format. Highly recommended for young adults and those looking for something a little more realistic in their vision of the future.
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December 13, 2007N/A
April 28, 2015
1983 grade C
May 12, 2012
Interesting if dated story
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews