Author Dale Aycock delivers some interminable space swashbuckling with her Stardrifter, as reluctant hero Gil Corbett is pulled into an interstellar conspiracy involving his lost brother Ken, his newly upgraded ship the Gabriella, and his mysterious new lover Beth, the future Marquessa of Sandyminder.
Aycock has a way with names, anyways - the dangerous nobleworld Sandyminder, the (also dangerous, and mysterious) Brothers system, Federation man Pelonyi - and she's gentle with her characters, even the nasty ones. We're all just trying to make it in this big bad universe. Her space opera tech is delightfully retro, with Corbett demanding day capsules for the pain and eying up a deadly LEM - that's a light-emitting matrix, AKA a laser gun, by the way. There's some daring space maneuvers with some plausible-sounding reasons why XYZ has to happen for our characters to make it to their destinations intact that allows for Corbett to strut his stuff as an ace pilot. Meanwhile, Corbett and Beth trade screwball dialogue and will-they-won't-they moments.
This universe is a lonely one. Humanity is limited to a few star systems, longing for a long dead golden age of old Earth and truly galactic civilization. Aycock is coy about the reasons for our reduced state, but her setting is pleasingly unsettling. Unfortunately, once the plot is truly up and running, we find ourselves in Scooby-Doo mode: our heroes running around room to room, finding clues, tying up bad guys, and rescuing old man Silvernight (a genius with new formulas for starship fuel). It's stock genre madlibs, basically.
The cheekily Star Warsian cover art is, of course, completely unrelated to the actual story. At the most, Corbett could be vaguely defined as a Han-esque rogue who's been running from doing the right thing, until circumstances force him to man up. He's also a Federation academy washout and former classmate to hard ass Pelonyi. This galaxy doesn't have any alien sidekicks, or even robots.
Aycock's fair go at space opera thrills settles down for a rough landing of 2/4 stars. In the end, everyone involved deserved a better class of transport.
Leisure Books, 1981
