STRANDED (STARSHIP OF THE ANCIENTS)

Humankind’s mission to colonize a distant planet suffers a disaster in orbit, leaving a handful of survivors marooned.

DuBoff launches an SF series set in humanity’s spacegoing “Commonwealth” far future by raising the curtain on a fraught crash landing on the Earthlike-planet Aethos by escape pods from a doomed colony ship that barely managed to give the evacuation order. Only a few dozen of the thousands of would-be settlers reach the surface alive, falling short of the plateau meant to be their new homestead site on the otherwise uninhabited (well…supposedly uninhabited) planet. The first to meet and team up among the survivors are attractive “xenobiologist” Anya Rojas and a resourceful, mysterious passenger calling himself Evan who intended to start a new life on the stellar frontier. Gradually negotiating a path through predatory animals and poisonous plants, the pair head for the smoldering remains of the military escort ship accompanying their vessel, which also catastrophically crashed. Evidence proves both craft were brought down deliberately. But why? Are the murderous perpetrators on Aethos with them? Anya even begins to suspect Evan, who hints at a former career in the military and security forces but is obviously hiding much. The first half of the narrative is an efficient SF robinsonade with a Golden Age vibe. At about the midpoint, when separate masses of supporting antagonists materialize out of the astro-foliage, the story leans into treasure-hunt skullduggery with some fine ambiguity about who are the good guys and the bad guys (if anyone is a good guy). “Don’t trust anyone you may meet, regardless of who they say they are,” reads a typical piece of cosmic-commando advice before the heroes are thrown into the fray, which includes space pirates, space organized crime, space corrupt politicians, and the possibility of first contact with an alien. Even with dialogue referencing strange “energy readings” and altered gravity, the jungles, forests, and escarpments of Aethos will strike most adventure-seeking readers as territory not all that far removed from old favorites such as Tarzan’s Opar or B. Traven’s Sierra Madre.

Solid, old-school space adventure and intrigue.