End in Fire

by Syne Mitchell

Book Overview

Astronaut Claire Logan is living her dream working on the space station Unity. But two days before her mission ends, Earth is engulfed in nuclear war. Stranded, helpless, and desperate to contact her... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0451460332
• ISBN13: 9780451460332
• Release Date: June 2005
• Publisher: Roc
• Length: 337 Pages
• Weight: 0.42 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 4.2" x 6.8"

Customer Reviews

A sidestep in Mitchell's development

I was born in 1950, so I grew up with science fiction during the Cold War. I found End in Fire to be an odd blend of SF from then and now, especially since SF then tended to look beyond the insanity of the time at hand to successfully dealing with future challenges. Modern SF seems to extrapolate the way things are going and often winds up some place I'd rather not be. Still, End in Fire is worth reading, for the warning of a possible future, for the hands-on jury rigging of tin cans to get home, and for a decent stab at handling various personalities and nationalities thrown together in situations that weren't in the training manual. Ultimately, people will look back at this as a bit of a sidestep in Mitchell's development as a SF writer. One's firstborn can do that to you....

Cover Version

In "End in Fire" Syne Mitchell, one of sf's outstanding new voices, goes back to the middle of the last century and lovingly re-creates a classic "problem" tale--one in which a group of people (typically spacefarers, as here) are confronted with a life-threatening situation and who must, with pluck, luck, and good old American knowhow, save themselves from disaster. That happens here, as nuclear war (another favorite theme from the mid-20th century, of course) breaks out between China and India, and intrepid Claire must get her team of astronauts back to Earth. There's a gender-bending twist--Claire has a young son and a husband at home--but other than that the story could easily have appeared in 1956. This is far from a bad effort, but (especially if you're a longtime sf-fan) it's possible you'll wonder why this gifted and original writer wanted to do this. It's like a talented singer-songwriter who spins out a whole album of covers--and covers that are merely syllable for syllable renditions of the originals at that. You may get some insight into the kind of material that influenced her when she was young, but maybe you wish she'd discovered something new in the tunes.

A good, though disturbing, read.

One of the first science fiction books that I read was "Alas, Babylon," by Pat Frank, which was written back in the early 1960's. Therefore, when I saw this book, I figured I'd see what new ideas had come up. There were a couple of flaws I found, one of which was that some characters seemed to be developed purely to be thrown away. The fate of one of these characters (a NASA launch director who bucks the bureaucracy to send a rescue mission) is left in a murky limbo that seemed more irritating than anything else. Another was that there seemed to be she tends to try to drive her point home about kicking the fossil fuel addiction with a 9-pound sledgehammer. Having said that, I have also to say that they are minor flaws. In contrast to those, I was highly impressed with the author's attention to technical details. I believe she did an excelent job in communicating the tension of living in what amounted to a deteriorating tin can. Her depiction of the total breakdown in world-wide communications was highly effective, as were her characterizations. I recommend this book quite highly. It will probably not light up your life, but if it makes you think... then all the better.

terrific Sci Fi on earth and in space

In the year 2027, oil resources are nearly depleted and the Digboi oil field which borders the Himalayas is claimed by India but the Chinese want it for their people. It starts off as a conventional, localized war but China uses a high atmosphere nuclear device before sending in troop. India retaliates using its nuclear arsenal and the United States is on a war alert ready to help India. The America Reliance space station carrying five astronauts is getting ready to launch a satellite that will deploy solar reflectors to use as a cheap energy source. They are witnesses to the nuclear war that broke out between India and China and are desperate to find a way to get home. The Chinese space station whose commander Zhang is willing to help them in return for a ride home but people in both stations fear that war on earth will influence discussions in space. END IN FIRE is a story about the courage of two crews in Chinese and American space stations trying to overcome the distrust that led to war back home. In both crews, there are hostiles unwillingly to trust or work together and it is only through the leadership of Claire Logan that the remaining men and women have a chance of surviving. The premise for the war on Earth is plausible and all the more frightening because oil reserves are depleting now and it is conceivable that nations will go to war sometime in the future to gain control of the oil fields. Syne Mitchell is a fantastic storyteller who uses hard science that can be found in a Ben Bova novel and places it in an outer space thriller. Harriet Klausner