#hellburner

[an-eccentric-devil]

went through 2 more CJ Cherryh books in the past couple days: Heavy Time and Hellburner. The latter especially is a good book. They're a duology. The first is very very much a people talking in rooms book, for fairly low stakes as those books go. The second is a better book but benefits a lot from the first. Unlike most of Cherryh's Alliance-Union setting, these take place before the events of Downbelow Station, a definite oddity in her writing. A working knowledge of punk culture in the 80s helps a lot when reading. Soft recommend. Last chapter of Hellburner is a capital E *Experience* though. might be worth it just for that even if it doesn't grab you quickly

Also unlike most of Cherryh's books, the scale is zoomed in enough that they can be summarized without sounding like a crazy person! Heavy Time is about freelance asteroid miners and a corporate coverup, Hellburner is about the test program for an experimental spaceship that operates at fractional light speed without automation. Both with the full depth of politics and broader implications that would happen in real life

[automaticharpy]

the thing i especially like about cherryh and the company wars books is how she takes a huge, high-concept situation, then zeroes in on the person who's having the absolute worst time and locks you into their perspective.

like, in Hellburner, the concept is a prototype ship that's so tuned up it can be deadly to pilot unless you have a massive amount of experience that lets you intuit things an AI can't read. cherryh takes that and says, who do we focus on… well, it must fucking suck to be the R&D guys who have to initially test the thing, right?

you've got a complex political situation with a ton of moving parts going on in the background, and an entire war happening offscreen, but what matters right now is how awful the day-to-day is for this dude. it's so different! i love it

[sholiofic]

@eightopals (for the Whump Wheel meme) Human Shield, and you know what I want …please?

Out of his mind, Ben thought hazily. He was completely out of his mind to do what he just did. Couldn't understand it. Some kind of reflex action -- he saw the gun pointed at Meg, his mind went straight to Bird and blood, and the next thing he knew, he was pushing Meg out of the way and then there was a feeling like a punch to his side and he was flat on his back in gee, and the blood was his this time.

"Ben, you're an idiot," Dekker said, sounding distant.

Ben mustered the energy to open his eyes. Dekker's voice had seemed to come from very far away, but he was leaning over Ben, doing something with the front of Ben's coveralls. There was a spray of blood across the side of Dekker's face. He looked scared.

"You're lucky it was Meg and not you," Ben told him. "You, I would'a just let him shoot."

"Ben, shut up," Sal said from somewhere behind him, making him realize that his head was resting in her lap.

This was no way to treat a man who'd been shot, and he was going to tell them that, but then Dekker did something down there where Ben couldn't see, and his vision turned to a sheet of white static and he passed out before he could tell them exactly how wrong they all were.

[negreabsolut]

Art creat per a Hellburner (1992), de C J Cherryh. L’autor n’és Don Maitz. 

[laylainalaska]

Hey, @eightopals, I finally read Downbelow Station! Although this post mostly just talks about the Hellburner characters (spoilers for the end of Hellburner).

So first of all, there's an afterward to the ebook edition of Hellburner that actually says what happens to the various characters in it during the war. I swear, I just put the book down and grinned helplessly after reading that part, because I've yearned for canon confirmation that these guys survived the war ever since reading the book most of my adult life ago, and now we have it:

Dekker, Pollard, Kady, and Aboujib went on to crew the ridership Freya, assigned to ECS 5 Norway. [...] Norway is distinguished among all the ships in the Fleet for never having lost a rider ship.

So basically I got exactly what I wanted. <3

However, this made reading Downbelow Station stressful in ways its author probably never intended. Especially when they had to leave the riderships behind when they pulled out of Pell near the end. (Me: NOOOO GO BAAAACK!) Although I enjoyed the rest of the book, I cannot lie, I spent a lot of time just wanted to know where the Norway riderships were at all times, and now I have about half a dozen missing scene ideas in mind. :D (When does the new round of h/c bingo start, anyway?)

Anyway though, I did enjoy the rest of the book; I need to make a post on how Cherryh’s id -- and mine XD -- seems to be oriented towards creating little codependently bonded (semi-platonic, semi-not) groups of characters, in this case Damon and Elene and Josh, and then of course (separately) the crew of the Norway. I love how into that kind of thing she is, these tightly bonded little character groupings who behave in ways that tend to go beyond how we think of “friends” and straight into “family” without actually seeming to have that concept for it. Her characters are weird about each other, in a way that pleases my found-family feels very much.

[sholiofic]

Search and Rescue (8394 words) by Anonymous Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Alliance-Union - C. J. Cherryh Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Sal Aboujib & Paul Dekker & Meg Kady & Ben Pollard, Sal Aboujib/Ben Pollard, Paul Dekker/Meg Kady Characters: Meg Kady, Paul Dekker, Sal Aboujib, Ben Pollard Additional Tags: Sabotage, Hurt/Comfort, Action/Adventure, Angst with a Happy Ending, Hypothermia, Cuddling & Snuggling, Families of Choice, claustrophobia warning - description of characters trapped in small spaces Summary: God, Ben, Meg thought as she went to get suited up, you better turn up alive, you skuz, or I'll beat you senseless and then let Dek take a turn.

Which didn't make sense even to her, but it was that kind of a day.

A violent act of sabotage leaves the Hellburner crew scattered and separated on a damaged station.

My Space Swap pinch hit, and the first time I've written long plotty fic with these characters! I talked about this fandom a little bit at my main blog but I've spent the last couple of weeks in the throes of a heavy-duty fan fixation on these books (after rereading them to write this fic) and I COULDN'T TALK ABOUT IT without de-anoning myself. So I'm really delighted to be able to share this!

[haveyoureadthisscifibook]

have you read Hellburner, by C.J. Cherryh (1992)?

yes

no

Voting ended onMay 22, 2024

vote yes if you have finished the entire book.

vote no if you have not finished the entire book.

(faq · submit a book)

[laylainalaska]

greyias replied to your post: And with Space Swap reveals out, I CAN FINALLY...

This is a great reminder that I still need to finish Hellburner so I can read these fics! (10+ years later — I’m such a slow reader)

Oh that’s right! You started reading them after I nattered about them on LJ, lo these many years ago. :D

You can just skip the politics scenes in Hellburner and skim for the ones with the Hellburner crew if that makes it easier. XD I realized on this particular reread that I’m pretty sure there are scenes in that book I had NEVER read until now, because the first time I read it, I just skipped over nearly everything that didn’t have the main four in it, and on subsequent rereads I was mainly refreshing my memory on the characters and ... skipped over those scenes again. I read them this time and they are interesting to me now that I know more of the extended set of characters in the universe, but you can totally skip them without hurting your ability to understand the book in the slightest; they’re mainly related to the universe mytharc.