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Action-packed military science fiction set in an alternative universe Panama, strident polemic for the reprehensible

Read this book, know and reject its message

a book review by Eric Jackson

Yellow Eyes

by John Ringo and Tom Kratman

Baen (Riverdale, NY 2007)

608 pp., $26 in hardcover

ISBN 10: 1-4165-2103-8

The Posleen, a cannibalistic race of dimwitted masses and a more clever elite that has figured out someone else's advanced technology, have landed on Earth with the intention of having humanity for lunch. More sophisticated, seemingly more benignly intentioned alien races have meanwhile asserted their economic and political hegemony over this planet's degenerate governments. Traitors are dead set upon helping the invaders serve mankind in exchange for promises of riches and a ticket on a space ship for somewhere else.

The Americans have just a little help to spare for the battle to hold Panama, whose political leaders are venal fifth columnists. The alien artificial intelligence on one of the refitted old US Navy ships thrown into the battle has gone mad, and the skipper has fallen in love with her. A tough but primitive cacique and the jungle are most of what stand against an invasion from Colombia, while a tough but ancient lady and a ragtag militia are what stand against a huge invading force that ate most of David.

This is an engrossing, page-turning thriller by a couple of writers who got to know Panama when they were stationed here with the military. Maybe it will be a Bruce Willis movie, or the flick that marks Conan the Republican's return from Sacramento to Hollywood. It's great escapism for rainy season days.

There is much more to this book, however, and in case anyone misses the point, there is an afterword that essentially calls for people like this reviewer to be thrown in jail. Yellow Eyes is a polemic in favor of the Iraq War, in favor of torture, against all international law and for right-wing totalitarianism. The afterword is an amateurish distortion of the history of the law of nations, a series of nonsequiturs about US law and an overdose of double standards.

If one follows the contemporary science fiction scene and has been doing so for decades, this will be unsurprising. Back in June of 1968, two factions of more than 80 science fiction writers each did battle in competing ads in Galaxy magazine, for and against the Vietnam War. Out of the Vietnam era ideological struggle came great competing works of fiction like Ursula K. Le Guin's 1967 antiwar The Word for World is Forest and Robert Heinlein's 1959 prowar Starship Troopers.

This reviewer was antiwar then, and is against the Iraq War now. This reviewer also recommends the works of Robert Heinlein, including Starship Troopers, as part of the canon that every serious devotee of science fiction ought to read.

So where does Yellow Eyes fit in the grand scheme of what's good, bad, great and horrible in military science fiction? Don't expect it to win any top prizes like the Hugo or the Nebula. It's not on a par with the best of Gordon Dickson's Childe Cycle stories, Lost Dorsai and Soldier Ask Not. But it is a fun read, and if the Panamanian political class finds it totally offensive that's another good recommendation.

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