Swan Song

Hooded Swan #6

by Brian M. Stableford

Paperback

Genres: Science Fiction, Space Opera, Fiction

158 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1975

About the author

Brian Michael Stableford was a British science fiction writer who published more than 70 novels. His earlier books were published under the name Brian M. Stableford, but more recent ones have dropped the middle initial and appeared under the name Brian Stableford. He also used the pseudonym Brian Craig for a couple of very early works, and again for a few more recent works. The pseudonym derives from the first names of himself and of a school friend from the 1960s, Craig A. Mackintosh, with whom he jointly published some very early work.

Reviews

[Karl · Rating 4 out of 5]

DAW Collectors #149

Cover Artist: Kelly Freas

Name: Stableford, Brian Michael, Birthplace: Shipley, Yorkshire, England, UK, 25 July 1948.

Alternate Names: Francis Amery, Olympe Chambrionne, Brian Craig, Brian M. Stableford, Brian Stejblford.

Grainger's time of service was nearly up. Pilot of the marvel spaceship Hooded Swan, the strange double-mind that occupied his brain had pulled him out of difficulties that would have doomed anyone else. But now Grainger had been warned. This trip could be the end. Because nobody knew what a newly created reality meant in terms of physics and chemistry - nobody but that alien parasitic mentality and it knew one thing - that it could not survive that kind of flight. Yet the existence of the Hooded Swan might depend on exactly such a survival.

The Hooded Swan series:

1. The Halcyon Drift (1972)
2. Rhapsody in Black (1973)
3. Promised Land (1974)
4. The Paradise Game (1974)
5. The Fenris Device (1974)
6. Swan Song (1975)
Swan Songs (2002)

[Peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

The last of Stableford's Hooded Swan novels, about an abrasive pilot and expert in alien environments and the occasionally unwelcome mind-symbiot that shares his brain, starts with him free, at least as somebody in his position can be. He's finally gotten out from his debt, and away from the Hooded Swan, master of his own fate. But his past associations make him interesting to the wrong people, and he gets drawn back to his old employers... and then, when he finds out that most of his old crewmates are lost and presumed dead, asked to recreate the mission they disappeared on, a journey through an astrological anomaly into what is believed to be a completely different universe.

Reaching the end of this series is bittersweet, and I mean that seriously, because it really does end, he brings to a conclusion several plot points and some of them in a way that not only has its sweetness but also surprising bitterness. The series is told exclusively from Grainger's own point of view, and it makes this finale painful in ways because he lets me down, but at the same time... the book is full of examples where it's obvious that Grainger is being harder on other people, in his judgements of their motives and personalities, than they deserve, so I get the strong sense that he's doing so here, again, especially when some of his feelings and emotions contradict what he's said on previous occasions. In other books, I might call it a mistake, but I truly believe in this it means something, that the only way he can come to terms with things is to be more of a bastard than he needs to, to finally do to the reader what he's tried on repeated occasions to do to everybody else: make them hate him so he doesn't have to deal with them in the parts of his life he's not ready for. It's not the healthiest approach, but it's very Grainger. In the end, I don't hate him, but I feel sorry for him, and I wish Stableford would write one more book set years later that would give me more closure (heck, there's a part of me that wants to write it myself).

Still, revisiting the universe provided me with a lot of enjoyment, and I'm sure I'll come back to it somewhere down the line once again.

[Robin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Incredibly slow and drawn out, like a short story stretched to novel length, and with only one good idea stretched to the breaking point to support it. Many characters are removed or sidelined, including the all-important Wind, for no good reason. Grainger’s world-weariness is given no foil here, so he just comes across as annoying. Overall the novel fails spectacularly to live up to the promise of the first in the series, and drops the ball on all the elements that made the series good - a fast pace, creative worldbuilding, the friction between Grainger’s cynicism and the simplicity of his enemies/friends, and a genuine sense of the alien.

If you’re reading this series, be advised that 1 and 5 are the best. 2 and 6 are dull enough to consider skipping, while 3 and 4 are diverting enough but not great. What a weird quality trajectory...

[Marianne Barron · Rating 3 out of 5]

Menneskene har flyttet fra Jorden og ut i galaksen. Jorden selv er kun befolket av forbrytere og har ikke et akkurat spesielt trivelig bomiljø. Vi befinner oss på New Alexandria, hvor stjerneskip pilotene er dagens helter. Grainger er en av dem - en legende i sin egen tid - som han ble ved å fly en prototype av et nytt stjerneskip ut på et svært suksessfullt tokt.

Grainger har akkurat sluppet unna sin foregående arbeidsgiver Charlot kun for å havne i klørne på firmaet Caradoc som vil ekstrahere all informasjon Grainger har om sitt tidligere oppdrag og sjef. Grainger selv er ikke akkurat overlykkelig over tanken på å bli hjernetappet - eller hjernevasket, som han egentlig er redd for det vil ende opp med. Charlot har imidlertid andre planer for Grainger, og han befinner seg plutselig tilbake i stjerneskipet The Hooded Swan for å lede en redningsaksjon for Swan's søsterskip som har havnet i den bizarre stjernetåken kalt Nightingale. Denne siste reisen viser seg å være mye mer kostbar enn hans første, for her må ikke Grainger kun risikere livet, men også sin egen sjel...


Min evaluering

En god sci-fi historie! Dette er sjette boka i en serie, men den står likevel fjellstøtt på egne bein. Man trenger ikke lese de første fem for å få den komplette historien. Språket er enkelt, men historien er likevel spennende nok. Ønsker du en enkel tilnærming til sci-fi sjangeren så er dette boka for deg.

[Darnoc Leadburger · Rating 3 out of 5]

For the last nine months, Star-Pilot Grainger and the *Hooded Swan* have been entertaining me in this sleek, wholesome, and intelligent way that only Stableford's space operas have been able to do for me so far. They're not my *favorite* space operas, but they achieve a lot of impact in 150-160 pages, and I'd recommend them to any fun-loving science fiction fan. Each of the first five books was *at least* an 8/10 for me (*The Paradise Game* even made 8.5/10), so I had pretty high hopes for *Swan Song*, especially since the last couple books in the series have seemed like they were leading up to some interstellar climax based around human-alien communication. Sadly, this book did not live up to those expectations... it does some epilogue-esque movements right, but for the most part, I think it's an underwhelming way to end the series. I don't regret my time with these books at all, but... well... let me summarize it before I start analyzing anything.

*Swan Song* starts with Grainger taking shore leave on his new ship, a rust bucket which is a far cry from the experimental glory of the *Hooded Swan*. His only "friend" here (besides the wind) is Sam, an engineer whose eyesight is halfway out the door. They're out for a drink one night when a Caradoc Company man arrives asking is Grainger's willing to undergo augMENTation, a kind of mind-scanning and memory-copying process that they're hoping to get the Library of Alexandra's secrets out of. Grainger refuses and consequentially gets assaulted by thugs on his way out the bar. He escapes but ends up getting pursued by the authorities. Sam sticks with him and ends up getting captured with him. Luckily, they're rescued by one of Charlot's policemen, who says Charlot has a vested interest in not letting Grainger's mind get augMENTed. Not to mention that Charlot has a job for Grainger to pull off in return for his rescue: the *Sister Swan*, piloted by Eve and captained by Nick, has not returned after breaching the barrier between our universe and a different one, and someone needs to follow them into this exo-universe. Charlot insists on going with Grainger and the *Hooded Swan* into this other universe despite his devolution into a crippled old man; he'll never survive the trip in and out of this mysterious universe. Even worse, Johnny - that naïve engineer - wants to go on this suicide mission too. Grainger's solution? He wakes up Sam in the middle of the night and hijacks the *Hooded Swan* and goes into the void "himself" so the "rest of his life" isn't destroyed in the process...

Once they're in this other universe, they're stuck in an endless field of light, and the *Hooded Swan*'s engines quickly fail. There is hope left for the mission - they can see the *Sister Swan* on the horizon - but little annoyances, like how Charlot's spinal expert/caretaker snuck her way aboard, complicate the matters, even if Stableford forgets about these little plot threads almost immediately. Regardless, Grainger and the wind reason out that this universe is actually its own mind, and that it's trying to understand the beings trapped within in order to be able to destroy them. Grainger and the wind can fight this off while they move to the *Sister Swan* and rescue Eve and Nick, but the wind can't hold his own on the way back, so he tells Grainger his whole life story. Once Grainger, Nick, and an unconscious Eve make it back to the ship they discover that Sam is now blind, meaning there's no one to man the engines while they fly the *Hooded Swan* out of the universe which is slowly learning to understand them. Grainger puts Eve in the pilot's seat and puts himself in the engine room, a configuration which gets them out of the universe as safely as they can be. They do discover that Charlot has died on the other side, and that Grainger is now without the wind; so they end up flying the *Hooded Swan* away to further adventures, I guess?...

It's really hard to analyze this book outside of the context of the *Hooded Swan* series because, well, it's the last of six books... need I say more? So I'm not even going to try and remove myself from it and jump headfirst into it: *Swan Song*, instead of acting like a swan song for the themes of human-alien themes present from the construction of the *Hooded Swan* to the wind's actions in *The Fenris Device*, sidelines the big galactic conflict that's been welling up from alien knowledge for a plot that vaguely touches upon intergalactic communication and takes multiple characters several steps backwards in terms of their understanding of themselves and the world around them. For example, Stableford felt the need to make Grainger hate the wind with a burning passion again; haven't we already been through this arc? And then to just throw it away with no satisfying emotional conclusion at the end? It just felt anticlimatic. I mean, the book starts in a really picturesque way with Grainger working on a dingy ship and dealing with Caradoc goons on a grungy planet, but then the exposition gets drawn out and the conceptual core of the book doesn't become apparent until about halfway through. The pacing is just a bit off too - we could've used a bit more of the back half of the book to steady things out, and I think all of the development of the wind just felt out of place alongside the rest of the action in the book. Not to mention that Stableford really could've beefed up the concept....

The concept is a good one - a universe made entirely out of one mind - and the threat of it understanding our heroes and being able to wipe them from its sphere of influence afterwards is an interesting and lethal way to take the series' central themes. But even though it's interesting, it almost feels cheap due to how it sidesteps Stableford's usual pathos and ethos. Furthermore, it gave me deja vu for Stableford's standalone 1972 novel *To Challenge Chaos*, which I mistakenly thought was Book Five of the *Hooded Swan* series when I read it. It's all about this cast of characters going into a different universe - one darker than our own - and there are quite a few similarities in the way they each books handles this kind of macabre, existential decay between the universes. *Swan Song*'s alternate realm is less colorful and dreary than that one, but Stableford writes them with this similarly dreamy and noncommittal prose style which just disengages me. I didn't love it; the usual snappy action and thoughtful balance of world-building and action and introspection just isn't there, with the first of those three being absent and the last of them being morbidly overused. I don't know what it is about writing different universes that mucks up Stableford's technique, but I'm not a fan...

I don't want it to seem like I disliked this book because, at the end of the day, it's still an okay space opera adventure. The book itself is only okay compared to the other ones being quite good, but that's just how the dice fall sometimes. It feels like this is more phoned in, with the two halves not quite lining up and characters (like Charlot's spinal "surgeon" or whatever) coming in at weird places and then being forgotten. It just felt like a disservice to characters like Charlot or the wind, and it left me... tepid. A lot of that is probably because of the expectations I held, so I'm going to be gentle and give this book 6/10. Not quite two stars, not enough to make me regret anything I've read, and not justification to get scared about reading Stableford in the future when I can find his work for cheap at the ol' used bookshops. I hope you got everything out of this final journey that *you* could've hoped for, and I suppose... well, I mean, I'm not going to try and end this review with anything less corny than how Stableford ended this series, so here goes nothing: I'll see you down the road...

[James Hogan · Rating 4 out of 5]

And here we come to the final book in the Hooded Swan series. This is another epic book...hard to describe in some ways, because the gorgeous prose of the spaceflight combined with the terse wryness of the protagonist make for a mix that's difficult to get across in a review. This book was published in 1975 I believe...and so as I read this book the other night with Star Wars (A New Hope) playing in the background, I realized this was one of the final sci-fi books to be written before the beast that was Star Wars was unleashed upon the world. And maybe that's partly why I have enjoyed this series so much - it has a flavour that is difficult to find in modern sci-fi books that have been birthed in post Star Wars age (which I would argue has quite a significant influence on the genre). Of course, it could also be that I like early-70's era sci-fi for some entirely unrelated reason. Who knows? But there is a glorious mixture of wonder and awe and a nebulous grasp of the infinite and then also we have a cynical understanding of the human condition and urge to corrupt and dominate all. And pardon if the previous sentence seems ill-suited to this review, but I do believe it well defines this series. And wow, this is far too many words without even discussing this book. Swan Song - a grand book with grand ideas - and almost a bit too wordy and philosophical for my tastes at times (and that's saying something!), but I still greatly enjoyed this book. I almost saw a little bit of a "2001: A Space Odyssey" influence at times. And that's not a bad thing. Grainger continues to do his thing, there are some moments of fraught terror and sheer delight...and I heartily enjoyed. Grainger attempts to pilot a starship through a nebular window into a possible new universe just to save his friends...and what shall he find? Well, that's a story I shall not tell here. This series is now over and I am sad.

[Neil Burton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful end to the series

Grainger isn't an easy character to like, but for various reasons I do keep returning to spend time with him. Swan Song is a beautiful end to the Hooded Swan series. Touching, fascinating and thought provoking. I will return again.

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5

[Paulo "paper books only" · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Last Book "Swan Song" starts with Grainger is working as pilot on a small, undermaintained ship. While on a planet, he goes drinking with the engineer, Sam, and the two are approached by a man named Soulier who wants to hire Grainger. The man works for Caradoc, and wants the secrets Grainger might have learned working for Charlot. Soulier makes a series of attractive offers and veiled threats, but Grainger continues to refuse. Upon leaving the bar they're approached by thugs, hired by Soulier, and though they evade them, Sam and Grainger realize that Caradoc is going to get him one way or the other unless he flees. After being arrested for minor crimes but Denton (a police officer friend of Grainger) and have a way out. A warrant of his own to arrest Grainger for kidnapping (in the Promise Land book). Because extradition is required, Denton takes Grainger back to New Alexandria. Sam, because he's unimportant, unemployable, and Grainger owes him, tags along. At New Alexandria (after his acquittal), Grainger is approached by Johnny who tells him that Eve and Nick (and Rothgar, who was serving as their engineer) are dead. They took the Sister Swan (a second ship of the same design as the Hooded Swan) into the Nightingale Nebula, an unexplained phenomenon that Charlot believed was an interface between our universe and another, and they haven't been seen since. Grainger soon learns that Charlot believes there's a chance the ship and its crew might be alive, and wants Grainger to fly them in. He's willing to come along to prove his theory. Grainger agrees, but he doesn't like the scenario, or all the lives that would be risked. He impulsively decides to take Sam as his engineer and steal the ship and take it through the interface. The trip there is hazardous and, the ship is damaged upon entry to the other universe. Grainger also learns that Charlot's doctor was aboard when the ship was taken. However, they are able to find the Sister Swan. Grainger goes out to the other ship but the journey is complicated by the nature of the universe. The wind informs Grainger that the universe itself is a mind, and that if it manages to understand them, or vice versa, they will cease to exist, and that the danger will be greater when they are out on their own between ships. Aboard the sister ship, Grainger finds that Rothgar is dead, Nick is well and conscious, but Eve is catatonic. The wind also doubts that it will be able to survive the return journey, as it is made to interface with minds and understand them and came close on the journey there. As such, it has a last wish, that Grainger listen to the story of his its life, and remember. The wind dies on the trip back. Back at the Hooded Swan, Sam has become completely blind. With no one else qualified to perform the role of engineer, Grainger takes the job and trusts that Eve will regain herself and be able to serve as pilot once attached to the relatively undamaged, and active, Hooded Swan. When they make it home it is learned that in terms of subjective time outside the nebula, they have been gone for months, and Charlot has died of natural causes after proclaiming them all heroes.

In the end it was a compelling saga and it’s easily read. I must say that the end surprised me. It’s a melancholic end. I miss Wind.

[Louise · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent way to finish an excellent series.

[L. · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great conclusion to a fantastic, classic series.

[SciFiOne · Rating 3 out of 5]

1979 grade C-

series book G6

[Matthew Goode Ⓥ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Okay read - no worries reading it without having read any of the previous books in the series.