Heavy Time

by C.J. Cherryh

Hardcover, 1991

Status

Available

Publication

Warner (1991), 330 pages

Description

Two asteroid miners intercept signals from a derelict spacecraft and find clues to a secret that might change the fate of the world.

User reviews

LibraryThing member clong
Heavy Time is the second book I have read by CJ Cherryh (the other being the Hugo winning Downbelow Station). This is a nice little character driven space opera, set on an asteroid mining operation. The bad guys are the Corporation that runs the operation and the good guys are a group of five
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people thrown together by circumstances and common interests in a series of events that lead up to a political crisis.

The strength of the book is the characterization of the five protagonists. Cherryh does a nice job of giving us five very different people, with different values, backgrounds, and aspirations, and letting each of them grow as events unfold. I also appreciated the dark, gritty, dangerous representation of working in space. The world building is convincing (or "space" building, as the case may be.) This is a credible future driven by economics, population growth, and technology. Different groups use different slang (which was at times slightly confusing, but wasn't overdone). The ending came together a bit too easily for me, but all in all this was a nice read and I certainly will plan to read more books by this author.
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LibraryThing member joeldinda
First read this book when it was new, then reread it just now. The other LT reviews cover both the story and the story's weaknesses well enough....

I've returned to Cherryh after a massive dose of David Weber, Elizabeth Moon, and David Drake--all of whom I like immensely. But none approach C.J.
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Cherryh as a storyteller. This is rich stuff, with impressively well-drawn characters and a convincingly threatening environment.

Miss Cherryh's a master.
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LibraryThing member FicusFan
I really enjoy Cherryh's spam-in-a-can space series. Unfortunately I thought this one was rather weak. Not awful, but not up to the same standards as the rest of the Alliance-Union series.

This book takes a break from the deep space merchanters and stationers, and focuses on asteroid belt miners and
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the earthbound company and its off-planet affiliates.

The small ships are two man crews and are sent out for months at a time to find and sample the rocks looking for metals and other valuable minerals. When they come into their space bases they have to spend 'Heavy Time' with gravity to prevent health problems. The story focuses on 3 crews and their interactions with each other, with their partners, the company and their small world. One of the partners is dead - the victim of a space hit and run by a company ship that the company denies was in the vicinity. The whole book is about the impact of this event, and how it changes all involved. How they have to struggle with themselves, the other partners, and the company to uncover the truth and find the safe and the moral path out of the spreading disaster.

The characters take a bit longer to warm up to, and one in particular is very annoying. The story seems to jump POV from one paragraph to the next and there is not enough difference to warn you until you are far in and find that you are not on the track you thought you were. Finally the set up of the stations, the ships and the base at least on the outside, in the core, and how you move from point A to point B are not described well. I have very little to work with in terms of making mental pictures of the setting and the events. The language is particularly choppy in terms of slang, and sometimes very cryptic in trying to emulate gritty, hard-working, spacers.
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LibraryThing member TadAD
This is one of the earliest novels in the chronology of the Alliance-Union novels. I'd read this before Hellburner but I don't think it matters a great deal with respect to the other novels.
LibraryThing member reading_fox
Short but gripping. CJC's afterword explains that the story grew out of her initial astronomy interests, looking for, and simulating asteroid paths. While there is no astronomy in it at all, the pervading sense of gravity and a real appreciation of the difficulties of mass and momentum, make this
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an easily believable tale. Heavy time refers both to when things get serious, and to the time miners have to spend at dock under g (rather than weightless) for health reasons. This is the first of the Alliance Union series; a self-contained story in its own right, the sequel is Hellburner. All the other stories can be read as standalones.

It's set in 2323, around the Asteroid belt near Jupiter. Mankind has spread to the stars and the distant colonies are rebelling. Hence there's a Hurry up on the miners looking for iron rich rock to be processed into the first military starships, but the operating company is also under budget constraints, looking for shortcuts. None of this is explicitly mentioned but it all becomes apparent background for the real story.

The story opens with two freerunners (independent miners who sell rock to the company) coming across a rescue signal, and discovering a battered mining ship far from it's operation, with one Paul Dekker, still barely alive inside it. Dek, as he's known, is almost insensible and claims a company ship crashed into him, and killed his partner. the long run back to base is hard on Ben and Bird, as Dekker's ravings don't improve. But Ben is contented with the thought of a salvage claim on Dek's ship - something that grates against Bird's oldtimer blue-sky sensibilities, who feels that they shouldn't exploit someone else's weakness. It's quickly clear that Dek's maybe provable claims of Company malpractice are going to strike sparks in an already charged atmosphere. Belter and Earther, corporate drone, independent operator and the military, who you are, where you came from and what you expect from life are all called into question.

The style isn't yet the single character tight third person that CJC uses in some of her later books, we bounce around a bit between Dek and Ben, and sometimes Bird, which does occasionally get a little confusing until you've worked out who is speaking. The characters are distinct and the politics confusing - for those at the sharp end only their personal lives matter to them. CJC conveys very well the struggle of the workmen against and with the ruling corporate elite.

Well worth (re)reading a great beginning to a great series

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If you have any thoughts or comments on this review, there is a thread to discuss them in Review Discussions
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LibraryThing member fuzzi
Superb! Lots of intrigue, politics and coverup within this story of a young man caught in the wrong place by the powers that be...
LibraryThing member Darrol
Rescue of a man from drifting space ship eventually triggers event in the competition between Earth Company and independent miners and the Shepherd organization. Most of the book involves the man's recovery of health and his prospective partnership with the men who rescued him. I enjoyed that part
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of the book, and I would have preferred that this had been the plot, but events overtake. During the rescue and during the man's recovery mystery develops concerning an unauthorized ship that the man blames for the death of his partner. I was hoping this was going to be more mysterious, but it turned out to be just part of competition for mining strikes.
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LibraryThing member Karlstar
This book wasn't bad, but I wasn't overly impressed. This fits into her existing universe, but in an odd way. This book is about a familiar sci-fi subject - independent asteroid miners. Two of them discover a derelict ship, a survivor of a crash who's partner is missing. Unfortunately, the issue of
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missing time seems to be a very critical theme, but in the end it is mostly glossed over. I did not find this as gripping or suspenseful as the cover blurbs indicate I should. The characters seemed half formed, and the lack of action for 90% of the book really dragged it down. All of the real revelations and discoveries happen off-scene, and the resolution is disappointing.
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LibraryThing member Phrim
Cherryh's books are never really what you expect. This one is mainly about bureaucratic indifference. A pair of independent asteroid miners are in the wrong place at the wrong time, there's an accident, and one of them dies and the other is left adrift in space. The latter miner miraculously
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survives, but then has to endure a government that wants more than anything to cover this up, and peers who would rather claim salvage rights on his ship than save his life. He's constantly being told that he's crazy (he does appear to have PTSD) and that his version of what happened is a hallucination. One miner actually does want to help him get back on his feet, he's consistently referred to as an "old-timer" whose values don't mesh up with the current reality. Thanks to the one unselfish guy in the entire story, as well as a fortuitous political shift on the larger scale, the victimized miner is vindicated and actually has a chance to live out a normal life.
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Language

Original language

English

Barcode

9147
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