Avengers of the Moon by Allen Steele
Cover art by Thomas Ed Walker
Published by Tor Books
Reviewed by Leigh Kimmel
Recently we've seen a lot of remakes and reboots of old favorites from earlier decades. Some of it may be a desire to re-envision them with modern SFX, or at least a more modern sensibility that will be more accommodating to a new generation of readers and viewers. But other remakes and reboots seem to be the result of a sort of creative exhaustion, an inability to imagine genuinely new vistas, such that it becomes necessary to endlessly retread the old. And then there are those that seem to wish only to wipe their feet on the original, to trample it underfoot in an act of scorn and contempt.
I've found that my ability to enjoy a reboot is often inversely proportional to my familiarity with the original. For instance, I genuinely wanted to enjoy John Scalzi's Fuzzy Nation, his attempt to revisit H. Beam Piper's classic Little Fuzzy -- the book even had cover art that harkened back to the edition that originally introduced me to Piper's series. Yet somehow the new version simply would not share headspace in my brain with the original, and instead of leaving me wanting more of his reinterpretation, I genuinely wished that he'd written a completely original take on the basic theme of how do we recognize First Contact when we see it if the aliens are just different enough that we can't quite communicate?.
Although I've heard of the Captain Future series, often in relation to deliberately retro but original movies such as The Rocketeer, I have never read any of the Edmond Hamilton originals. As a result, I came to this novel with a completely open mind. When I was browsing the library, the deliberately retro cover art did attract my attention, and put me on notice that this would be an action-adventure story in the old tradition of Buck Rogers (the original, not the TV series of the late 70's, although I have fond memories of it too) and Flash Gordon.
The novel begins with a brief prolog, the sort that makes me recall the voice-over in the opening credits for Babylon 5 (another beloved series that is before the time of a whole generation now, and has some elements that are growing rather long in the tooth). And then we begin with the protagonist's visit to the Straight Wall, a lunar feature so strikingly described that I seriously wonder whether it is an actual thing, as opposed to something Edmond Hamilton made up back in the days when our knowledge of the Moon was limited to what astronomers could see through telescopes, but which Allen Steele felt obligated to carry forward, even as he included references to the various Apollo lunar missions, to the point of name-checking Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin.
Upon the Straight Wall are a series of carved symbols known as the Deneban Petroglyphs because they were left by mysterious visitors who appear to have come from that region of space, millions of years earlier. It appears that they are some kind of communication, but no one has ever been able to decipher them, although they have been fascinated by one segment known as the "Dancing Denebans" because it portrays a series of alien figures in a variety of poses.
In this scene we also get to meet some of the inhabitants of the other worlds of the Solar System. In Edmond Hamilton's original, they were portrayed as indigenous (and there was a hidden underground lunar civilization, descendants of a people that had once lived upon the surface in a time when it was lush and green). However, given that the various space probes of the last fifty years have pretty well destroyed the Old Solar System where you could find new life and new civilizations on every world of any substantial size. Instead, Allen Steele makes them the product of genetic engineering, an effort to adapt humanity to the other worlds, much like the Azeans in C.S. Friedman's In Conquest Born adapted themselves to live in the dangerous natural environment of Azea. And Allen Steele really thinks through the issues that would arise, including the propensity for such individuals becoming second-class citizens, rather like the Artificial Persons in Robert A Heinlein's Friday.
But the real focus is upon the protagonist, young Curt Newton, and his extraordinary companions: the robot Grag, the android Otho, and the Brain, who was once a famous scientist, before his body succumbed to the ravages of cancer. Curt's having to be very careful to avoid attracting attention to himself, because the universe is a dangerous place for him. And then he sees the man who killed his parents.
Not literally -- the assassins who actually pulled the triggers are dead, killed by Grag the robot. Rather, Corvo was the man who gave the orders, who hired the assassins. And he has gone from being just a corrupt businessman who sees in androids the possibility of creating a rightless slave race to the dizzying heights of public office as a Senator in the Solar System's government. At the sight of him, Curt is consumed by a burning desire to destroy the man.
But Grag and Otho counsel caution. Already Curt has attracted the attention of two agents of the Interplanetary Police Force, just by copying a gesture from the various romantic vids he was so fond of. Far better to retreat for now.
Back at their secret home under the ruins of a blown-out dome, Curt learns the full story of his parents' murder, including the details his guardians have kept from him in deference to his tender years. This account is presented to the reader as a flashback, starting some time before Curt was even born so that we can see just why his parents chose to flee to the Moon, and to fake their own deaths in the process. The net result was for Curt to be born "off the grid," with no official existence, and for the murder of his parents to attract no official attention because they were already presumed dead in an accident.
Now that Curt has calmed down from his initial fury at seeing his parents' killer, he begins to lay plans for Corvo's destruction. However, when it comes time to carry them out, they intersect with another plot, this one on the life of the System President -- and thus give Curt the opportunity to create the persona of Captain Future as a cover identity, which is then formalized when he is deputized to find out just what Corvo is up to -- even as the subject of their discussion is listening in, planning to lay a trap for the very people who are trying to net him.
The rest of the novel is Curt's journey to Mars with his three companions, now known as the Futuremen, and the adorable little moonpup Eek. On the way, an act of gallantry on Curt's part nearly gets him killed -- and the jam was so believable that I was genuinely scared for him even as I knew that the author wasn't going to kill off the protagonist midway through the book. He's rescued, but in the process the Patrol has to reveal the existence of their super-secret faster-than-light drive, something they can do because Curt has been deputized by the System President himself, and thus can be trusted to keep the secret.
Allen Steel's version of Mars in this novel is a fascinating compromise between the exuberant Old Mars of Hamilton's originals and the realistic New Mars of the various robotic missions of the last fifty years. It's a world humanity has spent several centuries terraforming, but it's still a harsh and unforgiving place, where the aresians (humans genetically engineered to be able to live on Mars) mostly live in poverty, presumably under Terran-normal landlords. The reference to aresian sharecroppers is a fascinating hint of a complex and troubled socio-political situation, especially if it really is Southern-style sharecropping, and not just a crop-share rental agreement. Jim Crow-era sharecropping was effectively a form of debt peonage, with all the possibility of abuse one sees any time when one's creditor is also one's employer and it's impossible to quit one's job until those debts are repaid. The bond system in Kate Elliott's Spirit Gate and its various sequels is a good example of what can happen to people who have to work for their creditor, when that creditor can create additional debts at the stroke of a pen.
The ending involves the discovery of Corvo's secret son, who was a major villain in the original Edmond Hamilton books, as well as a breakthrough in the interpretation of the Deneban Petroglyphs -- and a piece of fascinating Deneban technology left behind in a secret place on Mars, exactly where the Deneban Petroglyphs on the moon direct them to look. Yes, the novel does indeed come to a genuine end, not just a convenient stopping place, there are plenty of avenues open for additional novels in the future. But if it didn't sell well enough to suit the publishers, or if the Hamilton estate isn't interested in additional volumes, I can live with there being only this one. In fact, it makes me interested in hunting up the original ones from the 40's -- the ones that Allen Steele describes in his Afterword as having been a big factor in the development of his interest not only in science fiction, but also in space travel.
Buy Avengers of the Moon from Amazon.com
Review posted July 17, 2021.
