Paradise, A Chronicle of a Distant World

Resnick's [Birthright: The Book of Man] is an old favorite of mine, painting a picture of how today's politics might play out over the span of a Galactic Empire. Paradise is nominally set in the same universe and has a similar tale to tell. Humans colonize an alien world and the tribal natives

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never adapt to the institutes of man that they are forced to fit themselves in to, like laws and currency. The planet quickly degrades into chaos and disorder as the ecosystems and economies fail. The nice thing about the story is the way it is written, from the perspective of a writer collecting information for a series of books over his lifetime. It is a fine story in the end, but depressing, like Birthright. Every resident that the author, or should I say narrator, interviews pines for the Paradise of the previous generation, back when things were better than what the person lived through. The connectedness with the Birthright universe is very minimal, almost to the point of name-dropping and nothing more. One of those books that doesn't really offer a solution to the crises presented through the story other than Man screws up every system that he interferes with. Resnick, according to the book jacket, owns the largest dog grooming kennel in the US. I think this illustrates the point that he has more hope for dogs as a species than people, which might have some merits.

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I have never picked up a Mike Resnick book that I didn’t like, and this one is (by far) the best one yet. By setting this parable of the colonization of Africa on another planet, the author was able to delve into socio-political waters that would otherwise have him pilloried – and he managed to

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do it without sounding preachy, a rare accomplishment.

Full of sweeping landscapes, action, raw emotions, moral dilemmas… . Highly recommend it.

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