Is it any wonder, then, that a few malcontents hold out hope for living a better life on other planets? The FTL Heim Drive, recently discovered, has allowed humanity to voyage out among the stars. There, under the tight reins of the Interworld Restructuring Corporation, other worlds are opened to exploitation and colonization—even if natives already exist.

One such planet is Cyrene, where humanoid inhabitants at the early-steam stage of technology lead lives of surprising richness and refinement and peace. Two Terran expeditions to Cyrene have fallen apart, however, since many of the explorers went AWOL. Now a third is to be mounted, to enforce discipline and discover what's luring the humans off base. At the heart of this command is one Myles Callen, merciless veteran "Facilitator" for Milicorp.

Also along is Marc Shearer, a young physicist in search of his lost mentor, Evan Wade, and an exo-anthropologist named Jerri Perlok and her dog Nimrod. Jerri and Marc will become romantically involved, based not only on their affection for each other but on a shared set of goals for a better life for all mankind. But superseding that personal relationship comes their quest for the elusive secrets of Cyrene—secrets that begin to overwhelm them when the first random native they accidentally meet hands them a message from rogue genius Evan Wade, beckoning them to a rendezvous in the Cyrene outback where the ethereal moon flowers bloom!

Solid mid-20th-century SF

Hogan's work sits squarely in a certain grand, mid-20th-century tradition of SF: earnest, robust, unflashy, meticulous, somewhat staid and good-natured. I'm thinking of work by Poul Anderson, Eric Frank Russell, Christopher Anvil, H. Beam Piper, Randall Garrett, et al. Whenever I read a Hogan novel, I always get a mental movie that consists of a steady flow of Kelly Freas drawings, if you get my drift. Core SF at its purest. Hogan does not fully exhibit the dominant High Nordic Angst of Anderson or the absurd satire of Russell, for instance, but he summons just enough of each to evoke memories of their work.

In this novel, Hogan sticks to his tried-and-true metier. He builds a convincing world in Cyrene, both as to its odd multisun astrophysics (charts and diagrams included!) and as regards its culture, which, while it does not reveal the "deep anthropology" of a Le Guin or Cherryh, is substantial and interesting enough to win us over. His humans come in believable packages and range of dynamics, and Hogan is always careful not to trade in total saints and sinners, but in mixed-bag types.

His plotting is always step-by-step logical, although I felt that taking the first 100 pages just to reach Cyrene is a bit of a misstep. One could imagine this book opening with the landing thereon, and the rest of the info inserted via flashbacks or dialogue. But I understand Hogan's goal: illustrating how lousy the Earth is first, to contrast with Cyrene later.

His speculations on ways that human culture has gone off the tracks—producing a meaner, more vicious and limited life for everyone—are probably the best things in the book. One senses a real resonant ache on the author's part regarding how we've despoiled our heritage and failed to live up to our potential.

His inspirational depiction of Cyrene and the new life the humans make there—after sacrifice and attempts to thwart them—fulfills one of the great goals of SF: showing us a better path out of our current morass.