The Tranquility Wars

Rama #4.5

by Gentry Lee

A young student, a dangerous love affair, and an explosive conflict to establish control over humanity...

For young Hunter Blake, the future is bright.

He has been awarded the exclusive Covington Fellowship, which brings fame, a generous stipend, and two years of privileged study on Mars. He has also been reunited with his lifelong love, Tehani Wilawa.

But as tensions mount between rival government factions, bands of renegade space pirates begin raiding, looting, kidnapping, and building their ranks from the disaffected of both space powers.

When Hunter and Tehani are kidnapped by a pirate band, they find themselves questioning “truths” they’ve accepted all their lives. Are the space pirates really the avatars of a new freedom — or simply criminals?

To answer, they must learn the razor-thin difference between freedom and anarchy, obedience and slavery, pleasure and indulgence. And for Hunter Blake, his greatest crisis is no longer a matter of success or failure, but of life or death.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Science Fiction Fantasy

640 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 2000

About the author

Gentry Lee is Chief Engineer for the Solar System Exploration Directorate at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California. In that position Mr. Lee is responsible for the engineering integrity of all the robotic planetary missions managed by JPL for NASA. His major recent work includes the engineering oversight of the Curiosity rover to Mars, the Dawn mission to the asteroids Vesta and Ceres, the Juno mission to Jupiter, and the GRAIL missions to the Moon. Previously, Gentry Lee provided guidance and oversight for the engineering aspects of the Phoenix and twin rover missions to Mars, as well as NASA's successful Deep Impact and Stardust missions.

Mr. Lee was Chief Engineer for the Galileo project from 1977-1988 and, after working in a variety of positions on the Viking project from 1968-76, was Director of Science Analysis and Mission Planning during the Viking operations. The historic Viking mission was mankind's first successful landing on another planet. The Galileo mission explored Jupiter with both an atmospheric probe and an orbiter that mapped the major Jovian satellites during a decade of operations.

In addition to his engineering work, Gentry Lee has been an active novelist, television producer, computer game designer, media columnist, lecturer, and, more recently, a television performer/narrator. Between 1989 and 1994 Mr. Lee co-authored four novels, CRADLE, RAMA II, THE GARDEN OF RAMA, and RAMA REVEALED, with revered science fiction grandmaster Arthur C. Clarke. All four books were New York Times bestsellers and were translated into over twenty languages. Since his collaboration with Mr. Clarke, Gentry Lee has written three more successful solo novels, BRIGHT MESSENGERS, DOUBLE FULL MOON NIGHT, and THE TRANQUILITY WARS.

From 1976 until 1981 Mr. Lee was the late Carl Sagan's partner in the creation, design, development, and implementation of COSMOS, the highly successful science documentary series for television that won several Emmys and the prestigious Peabody Award. In July 2009, Gentry Lee was the featured performer/narrator in "Are We Alone?" a two hour Discovery Channel documentary about life in the solar system.

Mr. Lee received the NASA Medal for Exceptional Scientific Achievement in 1976 and the Distinguished Service Medal (NASA's highest award) in 2005. In October 2006 he received the prestigious Harold Masursky Award from the American Astronomical Society's Division of Planetary Sciences for his career contributions to planetary exploration.

Gentry Lee received a B. A., Summa Cum Laude, from the University of Texas at Austin in 1963 and an M. S. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1964. Gentry Lee (70) has eight sons, Cooper (36), Austin (32), Robert (26), Patrick (25), Michael (23), Travis (21), Hunter (18), and Francesco (born Mar 15, 2009).

Reviews

[Randal · Rating 1 out of 5]

Arthur C. Clarke chose this guy to be his co-writer? Obviously he's an accomplished scientist / engineer, but as a writer ...
Cons:
Infantile writing about relationships ("me Hunter, you Tehani");
Crude characterization (admittedly not Clarke's strong suit either);
YA level politics;
Cringeworthy (and frequent) sex scenes;
The whole thing has a Tintin-in-space vibe ... Except Tintin has grown up enough to go off to college. En route he reacquaints himself with childhood friend Tehani, who is now The Most Desirable Courtesan in Space. No bonus points for guessing if she falls hopelessly in love with him.
Much ludicrously written sex ensues (the weightless shower scene might be the most laughably bad fictional intercourse in print).
Nothing hangs together for even a minute's thought (the space station / trading post is so puritanical as to have separate men's & women's dorms, yet allows open trading of sex slaves wtf???).
The whole thing's written as a masturbatory fantasy for teenage boys who are afraid of independent women. With spaceships.
I want a gif about here with Darth Vader saying "The Misogyny is strong in this one."
Literally one of the three or four worst books I've ever picked up.
0.000000005 stars.

[Khardiss · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you’re thinking of reading this book because it’s part of the Rama series, don’t bother because it isn’t. The previous books were only mentioned briefly, as a virtual world game. The book itself was not bad, it just shouldn’t be listed as Rama 4.5.

[Herman · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Tranquility Wars by Gentry Lee: This was a really good page-turner of a story I gave it four and a half stars it missed receiving 5 stars from me because of two things one after six hundred pages the end was just that it ended in what I would consider a chapter break rather than wrapping up the story it just ended leaving the reader feeling like I've invested time and effort to understand this wonderful story but is there a part II? Should I go back and read all the Rama books to get a understanding where did this lead I just was a bit disappointed in the ending, also the main character Covington Fellowship winner Hunter Blake just had too much sex it definitely felt like a reexamination of the 60's youth movement just set in space. Very well written interesting characters nicely developed I really enjoyed this book pacing was very natural the technology even though it was written over twenty years ago still feels fresh and well grounded in science. Going to read more of this author's work this year.

[Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a severely underrated book by a severely underrated author.

I'd give it a shot; the Clarke/Lee books were great but the Lee books are truly wonderful in my opinion. I genuinely enjoy Lee's writing style and imagination.

[Sam W. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Written like the author thinks everyone speaks like an 1800s Englishman

[Wolfgarr · Rating 5 out of 5]

There should have been at least one more book to this story...........
...

[Viridian5 · Rating 1 out of 5]

The Tranquility Wars by Gentry Lee was so bad that I could only suffer through it up to page 50, when I realized that the writing wouldn't get less simplistic or better, the narrative would often be done in the passive voice, the character the story focused on most would be one of the most annoying and immature, and that none of the interesting ideas the first pages hinted at would really be developed the way I hoped but instead would be vomited out briefly and forgotten. No one talks like the people in this book. Thankfully.

And too much of what I read is written like this:
The next ten minutes were unmitigated ecstasy, Hunter thought, surprised at the clarity of detail in his recollection.

and like this:
I acted like a prima donna, an absolute ass, he said to himself. I said nasty things I didn't mean. I called her names. I wouldn't let her explain anything.


The worst thing is that the first few pages had some potential before it became Hunter's story and so obsessed with how supposedly smart and noble he is and his obsessions with his beautiful ex-girlfriend who became a prostitute. Oww.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fun yarn that I feel falls under the theme of Robert Frost's poem "Two Roads Diverged in a Yellow Wood" (which was mentioned during the narrative), and the choices we make in life. It really has little to do with wars or the overarching themes in the book's "blurbs" and more to do with Hunter Blake's coming of age (normally a theme I shun, but in this case it was an excellent story).

[Mike S · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book had an interesting story line but the characters were immature, and the author's take on how relationships work is just bizarre. This guy is frozen in his adolescent years and has a lot of catching up to do, imo. That takes most of the fun out of scifi so I won't be reading any more of his work.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

Interesting story, Mr. Blake is a great character. The whole story centers in the vicinity of Mars and nearby asteroids. I enjoyed the book. I've always been a fan of Gentry Lee since his participation with Arthur C. Clark in the Rama series.

[Brett]

Science Fiction

[Joe · Rating 2 out of 5]

Could have been a good story, but just never fully came together. To many side issues distracted from the core story.

[Terry · Rating 3 out of 5]

This novel was strangely readable despite its cliched plot and mediocre writing.

[Xapphirea · Rating 4 out of 5]

+ great read!
+ Hope giving
+ Contains some pieces of wisdom
+ Cool names
- Not enough references of Rama
- the beginning was just a novel
- The decisions were not always logical
- No dragons

Goodbye Rama, It has been a pleasure!