Warpath - Hardcover

Daniel, Tony

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312852827 ISBN 13: 9780312852825

Publisher: Tor Books, 1993

Synopsis

In the far future the bulk of humanity has spread to the stars - only to discover that the American Indians got there first!
Long before Columbus, a tribe of Mississippi Indians discovered the metaphysical Effect that makes space travel possible and paddled their birchbark canoes to distant worlds light-years from Earth. Now an interstellar Indian nation, armed with spears and guided missiles, comes into conflict with colonists from a technological civilization so advanced that even their homes and newspapers possess artificial intelligences. History seems poised to repeat itself, but on a galactic scale.
Will James is a reporter on the icy planet Candle. He is also a five hundred year old transmission from Earth's distant past. Reborn into a future that amazes him, Will is torn between his ties to the settlers, his friendship with an Indian Wanderer, and his feelings for a strange young woman who may not be entirely human. But, in the end, he may be the only person who stands between the universe and an endless ... Warpath.
Combining stunning science fiction concepts with powerful human drama, Warpath is an engrossing novel of extraordinary richness.

About this title

From Publishers Weekly:

An original premise, interesting characters and stylish writing distinguish this first novel, but they are buried under a mountain of pseudo-mystical philosophy and fuzzy science. Set five centuries in the future, the narrative concerns a conflict between settlers and Native Americans. However, these settlers are colonizing not new continents but new planets, on which they find Indians who began to inhabit these far-off realms long before Columbus discovered the New World. Individual character portrayals of both settlers and Indians are well-rounded and credible, but the structure of each society is only vaguely suggested. Much of the conflict, for example, is caused by the manipulations of the Clerisy, which seems to be a spiritual descendent of the Catholic Church but whose tenets are never adequately explained. Characters complain that politics on Earth are creating trouble, but the reader never gets a clear picture of the political situation there. Too many pivotal plot developments take place off-stage, and the narrator keeps interrupting the action to give us his views on the Life and the Universe, views that are neither new nor particularly deep. Soft science fiction need not be technically accurate but it does have to be convincing. Daniel's effort, despite his evident talent, leaves important details unfortunately vague.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews:

Half a millennium from now, when humans discover the chilly planet Candle, they are astonished to find it already inhabited--by Mississippian Indians! Hundreds of years ago, assisted by spirit familiars called ``chocolacas,'' the Indians paddled their canoes through higher dimensions in astonishing voyages of exploration. Now, newspaperman Will James, a man reconstituted from a broadcast radio wave, his Indian friend Thomas Fall, whose chocolaca is the powerful Raej, and Janey--she has powers, uncontrolled as yet, that can alter reality--must team up to prevent Janey's vicious, venal sister, Georgia, from exploiting the Indians' deposits of valuable Loosa clay, the complex structure of which can house chocolacas and personality algorithms. The struggle on Candle is part of a war instigated on Earth, where group-mind Ideals have subverted the religious Clerisy for an assault on the governing Westpac. The chocolacas are also involved; they're actually advanced aliens inhabiting higher realities, but an evil faction, since it feeds and reproduces on human conflict and suffering, seeks to destroy the good-guy Raej and indefinitely prolong the war. Fizzing with ideas (not all convincing), gloriously diverse, bizarrely uncontrolled: Daniel has plenty of work still to do, but his debut holds forth immense promise. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Tor Books
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 0312852827
• ISBN 13: 9780312852825
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 318