Overview
Nicholas Seafort, Secretary General of the UN, is fiercely determined to clean up the planet, despite the fact that his plans clash head on with his beloved UN Navy's mission to colonize the stars.
Synopsis
Nicholas Seafort, Secretary General of the UN, is fiercely determined to clean up the planet, despite the fact that his plans clash head on with his beloved UN Navy's mission to colonize the stars.
C. A. Mobley
Feintuch fans, rejoice! The tormented Nicholas Seafort, now UN secretary general, is back in all his glory. In Patriarch's Hope , he faces the toughest challenge of his life -- saving humanity from itself. Feintuch won the John W. Campbell Award for his first book in the Seafort Saga, and this book is even better. Duty, honor, and courage in the face of agonizing, world-destroying choices, along with stunningly realistic battle scenes -- if you haven't discovered Feintuch, you're missing the hottest SF writer since Robert Heinlein and the most compelling and absorbing SF hero ever.
Feintuch paints a bleak picture of the year 2241. A unified Earth is ruled spiritually by state-sponsored religion and temporally by the United Nations, as are the colonies scattered across the stars. Earth itself is an apocalyptic disaster collapsing under its own sewage. Large areas of the planet are completely uninhabitable, vegetation shriveled under toxins in the air and water, land barren and desolate. Almost all of Earth's food and resources come from the thriving colonies.
The Enviro party wants to restore Earth, but they're in a minority. The Navy and the other military forces have a better idea -- build a class of massive interstellar warships capable of reining in the colonies chafing under Earth's rule. The first of these, the Galactic, carries over 3,000 colonists. The Galactic-class ships are intended not only to transport colonists and goods between the stars, but they're also rippling with massive armament and weapons.
Enter Nicholas Seafort, Navy officer forced into politics by circumstances. As UN SecGen, he faces interference from the Church and dissension within his beloved Navy. Seafort's own son, Philip, is a member of the Enviro party and staunchly opposed to his father's politics. When an explosion paralyzes the elder Seafort from the waist down, Philip finally has a chance to show his father the bleak, uninhabitable landscape that was once the ancestral home in Wales. The SecGen sees his duty. Earth must be reclaimed, no matter who opposes him. He proposes the legislation that will begin the healing, then leaves Earth for critical low G surgery to knit his shattered spinal cord.
Betrayal. His beloved Navy mutinies and attacks Earth itself in an effort to force Seafort to abandon his environmental policies. The SecGen has no choice. He must risk his newly regained mobility -- and his small band of supporters -- to take possession of the Galactic and put the Navy back in its place. Battling his way corridor by corridor, Seafort and his people reclaim the vessel and the future of humanity's birthplace.
One of the most compelling features of any Feintuch story is the relationship between Nicholas Seafort and the young sailors who follow him, and Patriarch's Hope is no exception. Seafort agonizes over the danger he forces his people to face and never realizes that it is his hope, his spirit, that leads them to live lives that are worthwhile. The threads of honor, duty, and self-sacrifice that run through the plot are stunning examinations of the choices that our world faces today. Patriarch's Hope is SF at its finest. -- C. A. Mobley
Editorials
C. A. Mobley
Feintuch fans, rejoice! The tormented Nicholas Seafort, now UN secretary general, is back in all his glory. In Patriarch's Hope , he faces the toughest challenge of his life -- saving humanity from itself. Feintuch won the John W. Campbell Award for his first book in the Seafort Saga, and this book is even better. Duty, honor, and courage in the face of agonizing, world-destroying choices, along with stunningly realistic battle scenes -- if you haven't discovered Feintuch, you're missing the hottest SF writer since Robert Heinlein and the most compelling and absorbing SF hero ever.Feintuch paints a bleak picture of the year 2241. A unified Earth is ruled spiritually by state-sponsored religion and temporally by the United Nations, as are the colonies scattered across the stars. Earth itself is an apocalyptic disaster collapsing under its own sewage. Large areas of the planet are completely uninhabitable, vegetation shriveled under toxins in the air and water, land barren and desolate. Almost all of Earth's food and resources come from the thriving colonies.
The Enviro party wants to restore Earth, but they're in a minority. The Navy and the other military forces have a better idea -- build a class of massive interstellar warships capable of reining in the colonies chafing under Earth's rule. The first of these, the Galactic, carries over 3,000 colonists. The Galactic-class ships are intended not only to transport colonists and goods between the stars, but they're also rippling with massive armament and weapons.
Enter Nicholas Seafort, Navy officer forced into politics by circumstances. As UN SecGen, he faces interference from the Church and dissension within his beloved Navy. Seafort's own son, Philip, is a member of the Enviro party and staunchly opposed to his father's politics. When an explosion paralyzes the elder Seafort from the waist down, Philip finally has a chance to show his father the bleak, uninhabitable landscape that was once the ancestral home in Wales. The SecGen sees his duty. Earth must be reclaimed, no matter who opposes him. He proposes the legislation that will begin the healing, then leaves Earth for critical low G surgery to knit his shattered spinal cord.
Betrayal. His beloved Navy mutinies and attacks Earth itself in an effort to force Seafort to abandon his environmental policies. The SecGen has no choice. He must risk his newly regained mobility -- and his small band of supporters -- to take possession of the Galactic and put the Navy back in its place. Battling his way corridor by corridor, Seafort and his people reclaim the vessel and the future of humanity's birthplace.
One of the most compelling features of any Feintuch story is the relationship between Nicholas Seafort and the young sailors who follow him, and Patriarch's Hope is no exception. Seafort agonizes over the danger he forces his people to face and never realizes that it is his hope, his spirit, that leads them to live lives that are worthwhile. The threads of honor, duty, and self-sacrifice that run through the plot are stunning examinations of the choices that our world faces today. Patriarch's Hope is SF at its finest. -- C. A. Mobley
Publishers Weekly -
It's full speed ahead with all lasers blazing in this addition (after Voices of Hope) to Feintuch's popular space opera series. Nicholas Seafort, hero of the Transpop Rebellion, has risen to the post of SecGen of the United Nations on a badly polluted 23rd-century Earth dominated by a fundamentalist Christian Council of Patriarchs. Seafort, a devout Christian and a former military man, tries to strike a balance between an increasingly belligerent navy (backed by the Patriarchs) and an increasingly intransigent Enviro Lobby. The screws are further tightened on Seafort when he becomes the target of terrorist attacks supposedly conducted by Enviro radicals. Then the Patriarchs try to force him to support a naval buildup that will negate even the most modest environmental legislation. A bomb attack leaves Seafort partially paralyzed--and at this point the novel's action takes off with a vengeance. As always in the series, Seafort is a powerful, larger-than-life figure. If his heroics seem improbable, he is rendered somewhat human by his acute awareness of his moral failings. But he is also a relatively unpleasant hero, given to bullying, holier-than-thou pronouncements and prone to mete out physical punishment to young men who do not meet his high moral standards. This novel will appeal to Feintuch's many readers and to most aficionados of military space opera, but it is unlikely to attract fans of more sophisticated SF. (May) FYI: Feintuch won the 1996 John W. Campbell Award for best new science fiction writer.Library Journal
As U.N. Secretary General, career navy officer Nicholas Seafort supports the Earthwide planetary colonization movement until an act of terrorism alerts him to unfulfilled duties on the world of his birth. The latest addition to Feintuchs popular Seafort Saga (e.g., Voices of Hope, Warner, 1996) revolves around the struggles of an honest man to maintain his personal integrity while learning the wisdom of necessary change. Topnotch sf political intrigue with a strong military flavor, this fast-paced tale should appeal to a wide readership. For most sf collections.Locus
...[Y]et another angst-ridden military SF adventure....There's plenty of exciting action...Don D'Ammassa
[A] truly gripping novel filled with political maneuverings in the first half, and with military confrontations and desperate battles and rescues in the second. Feintuch handles both modes superbly. His hero may be flawed, but he is no less a hero, and his response to every crisis is ingenious and entertaining.—Science Fiction Chronicle