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Neo-opsis Review
Rocket Science
Jay Lake
Fairwood Press
ISBN 0-9746573-6-0
Jay Lake is the 2004 winner of the John W. Campbell Award
for Best New Writer, on the basis of his many short stories, and was nominated
for a World Fantasy Award for his editing, so it should come as no surprise
that his first novel, Rocket Science is easily one of the best I’ve read
this year.
The novel is set in post-WWII Kansas where our first person
narrator finds his life turned upside down when his best friend shows up with
what appears to be a stolen German secret weapon. Hiding the German prototype
in the neighbour’s barn, however, it becomes increasingly clear that this is no
ordinary plane, but a four hundred year old artifact the German’s unearthed in
the artic…in other words, an alien space craft.
What makes Rocket Science so entertaining, however,
is not just the usual “I’ve got a spaceship in my barn” storyline, but the way
Lake manages to bypass the last forty years of my life to plug directly into my
13 year old hindbrain and plunk me down once again in the middle row of the
Roxy Cinema for a new Saturday afternoon serial. Lake throws more curves,
cliffhangers, Nazi spies, traitors, moonshiners, benevolent aliens, angora
sweater babes, and trigger happy army commanders into his novel than any actual
serial would have dared. And those guys had no restraint!
But wait, there’s more! Not satisfied with merely romping
through our childhood memories to deliver a page-turning adventure novel, Lake
manages to add in another couple of layers for our adult forebrains too. As our
protagonist finds himself sinking deeper and deeper into misadventure, he
begins to realize that everything he knows about his small town Kansas life has
been completely wrong, that practically everyone else has a guilty past or
current secret they do not want him to expose, and that life is a lot more
complicated than it appears. Lake even manages to convey a fair bit of
character development as our hero loses his naivety, and as various other
characters confront the realities of who they were or what they have become.
As an extra bonus if you order now, Lake even manages to
deliver an upbeat ending and an optimistic view of humanity, in spite the many
villains and hard breaks that beset our hero. This is a protagonist that
believes in the American dream, the progress of science, and that nice guys can
finish first, and he almost makes you believe it too.
I highly recommend Rocket Science and am convinced
you’ll find it worth the trouble of tracking down through your local bookstore
or direct from Fairwood Press.
Review by Robert Runté.
First published in Neo-opsis Issue 7.
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