100. sf
[The Braided World] [[Kay Kenyon]]

While set in the same future Earth as [Maximum Ice] the stories only share the premise of the plague that has been destroying humanity and the scourge of the incursion of the voracious dark matter cloud that literally "eats" information, destroying every living thing in its path. There are close to being too few humans left for a viable population. Earth receives a message from a star system many light years away to "come and get what you have lost". The governments are too overwhelmed to respond but a ship, The Restoration, funded by a fabulously rich and powerful older woman, Bailey Shaw, formerly a renowned opera singer, goes. The captain dies shortly before they arrive and Bailey chooses a new captain from a pool of two young officers (there had been three, one a woman who has died on the voyage) Nick and Anton, choosing the latter. On planet, they find a people, the Dassa, indistinguishable, at first, from humans. But the majority of Dassa procreate quite differently from homo sapiens and have different sexual mores and not only that, they regard the concept of a woman carrying a child in their own body as disgusting and treat those "throwbacks" born among them cruelly. Likewise, the human crew struggle with revulsion at the many human taboos the Dassa violate. Anton tries to remain open-minded and focussed on the task of getting along and also figuring out the message, which, it turns out, was sent by an earlier race, whom the Dassa call the Quadi. The Quadi, they know, created them, in fact. The biggest flaw in the story is the conflict between Nick and Anton which just feels completely manufactured and completely unnecessary. First there was the cliche aspect: Do two ambitious young men, when one is passed over for a promotion, have to really always end up in a conflict over power? And if they do, does it have to play out so predictably? It's a darned good read despite that, very interesting. ***1/2 ( )