The Sci Fi Guy

Empry is the third book in the Trigon Disunity triolgy, which features the continuation of a story that begins decades in the relative past of the storyline (in the first book Emprise). The second story, Enigma, changes direction and follows the main character, Merritt Thackery, as he discovers the secrets of the universe while working for the survey department. These stories come full circle in Empry, as Mcdowell pits mankind against an unknown and terrifying enemy – the Mizari. Thanks to Thackery’s travels through both space and time, mankind now understands that the Mizari are the most notable threat to the existance of the human race – and events unfold to destroy the Mizari where they exist.

Empry focuses mostly on two characters dealing with the threat of alien invasion and decimation, the chancellor Sujata and the director of the military forces, Harmack Wells. These two characters have spent their entire lives reaching to positions of power in an effort to protect humanity from invasion and keep the unified worlds together.

What follows is a chase unlike many others in literature – it happens over the course of some forty-odd years, as these two individuals chase each other across the voids of space traveling and superluminous speeds trying to reach the perimiter. Meanwhile, across the universe, Thackery conjurs a plan to intervene and attempt to discover a solution to the Mizari threat by uncovering the secret of their existance. What are the black “stars” that seem to be able to wipe out essentially anything and everything placed in their way?

Interestingly, I read the Trigon Disunity Trilogy almost in tandem to Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Saga (Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, and Children of the Mind), and there are some parallel concepts that each author deals with similarly. One of the interesting and recurring plot concepts for science fiction is what will humans do if and when we meet an alien culture? In the Star Trek sagas, it seemed like every time Kirk or Picard would bump in to an alien they’d already know how to speak with them, and they’d enjoy some Romulan ale and call it a friendship. Star Wars featured seemingly dozens of different species of alien, but again everyone got along. Yet Card and Kube-Mcdowell are faced with the challenge of crafting aliens that truly are alien. They don’t share human values – they don’t even necessarily think or communicate in simliar ways. I’ll actually discuss more of my thoughts of this alien encounter stuff in a later blog post.

Overall, the Trigon Disunity trilogy is a great thrill ride from one end of the universe to the other – spanning generations of time as well. The series flows well together, but I couldn’t imagine reading one of the later books while skipping over the previous ones. These stories don’t stand alone – it’s essentially one long story split in to three books. It’s a fun ride, and ends leaving the reader satisfied in the characters and the potential for mankind.

The second book of Michael P. Kube-Mcdowell’s Trigon Disunity trilogy is titled Enigma, which is a fitting title for this novel. Essentially, it begins where Emprise left off, however detached from that story by about 150 years of advancements. Where Emprise is a story about the descent into and out of a devestated mankind, Enigma shows a future where mankind has finally figured out what it wants to do – discover the stars, and search for our other colonies from millenium past.

Enigma, is unlike Emprise in it’s narration as well. Where Emprise shifted the focal character of the story as the situation developed, we begin Emprise with an unlikely character to follow – Merrit Thackery. Thackery is, by all accounts, a beauracrat in the making – he attends Georgetown to become a government worker, and hopefully become a secretary to one of the leaders of the world-unifying Council. Most of these ambitions are his own devices, though we soon discover that it’s in fact more an appeal of his mother, Andra.

However, for Merrit, everything changes as he takes a lottery-won journey to Jupiter. From there, he stands in an observation bubble and becomes enthralled by the majesty of the world below him. For him, experiencing Jupiter is akin to a drug that he yearns to become addicted to. And from that moment on, he pushes himself to leave the world of government service, and applies to join the space-going USS (Unified Space Service). He leaves Georgetown to further his space-exploration career, and is driven by a madness to be included on one of the Survey ships that are seeking out new colonies. Along the way, Thackery discovers that he must create alliances with the right people in power, and he must work himself harder than anyone else to reach the level he wants to be at – a colony lander. He parallels his experience over Jupiter to the experience of landing on an alien planet and discovering the true nature of that place.

Enigma is aptly-titled because the overriding question posed in this novel is simple: Where did the first colony come from; and what happened to it? There are obviously more colonies than just the Journians (which conclude the first book), but what happened to the First Colonists (FC)? And why have they discovered some colonies in ruins and others doing perfectly fine (albeit technologically inferior)? The enigmas posed by Kube-Mcdowell prompt the reader the push forward to each chapter to uncover answers.

Where Emprise took earth from a devestated world to a unified planet, Enigma takes mankind from a dim light on some edge of the galaxy to a powerful force sweeping across star systems. Aided by technological advancements that essentially shouldn’t exist (according to the physicists of the stories), man is now able to sweep across vast distances faster than light.

The story itself really does flow at a fast pace. There are numerous characters to follow, but again, Kube-Mcdowell made a great choice to fixate the story on a single main character, which means everyone of relevance flows to and from Thackery’s world. As with most 2nd books of a 3-part series, this novel ends with essentially a cliffhanger. Dozens of questions of answered, but just like with many great Science Fiction storylines, the answered questions only lead to bigger unanswered ones. If you enjoyed Emprise, you owe it to yourself to complete the trilogy. I’m not sure if the book would make sense or stand alone if you haven’t read the first, however.

There are several Science Fiction authors that I’ve tried to follow regularly because for one reason or another, their stories appeal to my reading style. One of those authors is Michael P. Kube-Mcdowell, who has written several great novels, including an intriguing series of books called the Trigon Disunity. The books in the series include Emprise, Enigma, and Empery.

The first book in the series, Emprise, sets up a future world that, when written, actually takes place in our world today. The story begins with an innovative calamity for human-kind; the nullification of atomic weaponry by making the worlds’ atomic energies stable. This means no cold war, no nuclear power, and no nuclear weaponry to grip mankind against each other. In doing so, inadvertently the scientists who created these permanent nuclear “shields” are now villified and accused of being the cause of the world’s problems. Within 20 years, the world goes through numerous world wars for energy, and the nations themselves become devestated by their attempts to acquire energy and resources for themselves and their people.

Scientists and scientific thought are considered the plauge of mankind, and as such the new leadership focuses on how little they actually know about science. This is akin to a self-inflicted social post-apocalypse culture – scientists are hunted and committed of crimes much like witches of the 18th century.

Alone in a remote corner of the United States is a radio astronomer, operating his radio telescope as a hobby and as an obscure passion to suffice his solitude. He must keep his interests a secret, or else his use of solar panels and metal for his hobby will soon make him an enemy of the people. And of course, like radio astronomers do; he discovers a signal that can only mean one thing: we are not alone in this universe.

Emprise, for having been written over 20 years ago, is still an outstanding science fiction novel. The main characters include Rashuri, the leader of the new consortium designed to control the next phase of human kind. Among the other characters worth noting are Tai Chen, the leader of China who positions the Chinese as the dominant force in the new future Kube-Mcdowell explores. Scientists are again able to establish their work, and everything is designed to advance the field of space exploration, for the core desire becomes greeting this alien ship while it’s en route to Earth, rather than allowing it to arrive and suprise mankind with any array of potential outcomes.

Emprise has one notion that I have to believe was slightly ahead of its time for 1985, which was the introduction of a unified global network (read: Internet, anyone?). It’s amazing to consider that he explains the Internet years before it truly reaches the state it actually is today, yet the similarities are stunning. That factor, in my opinion, makes Kube-Mcdowell a powerful science fiction storyteller. To be able to envision a world by extrapolating the state of computing and communication in 1985 is profound.

The characters within Emprise are interesting, but perhaps overly archetyped. For instance, within the Chinese contingent, it seems as though the author considers all Chinese leaders to be empirical and combative. Similarly, the Indians within the story seem to be extremely passive and productive. Perhaps these archetypes were coincidental, but I think moreover they were the result of the state of global affairs of the early 1980’s.

I’ve already read these books before, but I’m looking forward to pouring back through them again, and sharing my thoughts with you here on SciFi-Guy.com. If you have the chance, I recommend picking up a copy of Emprise and seeing if it appeals. Its a worthwhile science fiction tale and for most readers, I think the ending will hook you in to the next two parts of the story.

Update: There is now a summary and review of Enigma, the second book in the series by Michael P. Kube-Mcdowell.