Last week C and I attended a Sci-Fi writers’ symposium at
UCI. It was very interesting. There were 5 writers there to discuss their
books, the craft of writing and why California often is the setting for Sci-Fi
novels. ‘Oath of Fealty’ was one of the books discussed at length due to it’s
setting of a vertical city in the middle of Los Angeles in the year 2020. Larry
and Jerry wrote the book in 1981 and they discussed the number of concepts in
the book that have come true over the years. It was amazing to hear the actual
authors discuss how they came up with ideas and what they intended.
Oath of Fealty, Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle (3.5)
Set in 2020 (future for the writers in 1981, near future
for us), Los Angeles has had a terrible fire and a corporation has constructed
a self-contained city in the location. The people of Todos Santos have security
and safety – but at what cost? Their location can always be tracked via
electronic ID cards and there are video cameras everywhere. The Angelinos think
of it as a termite hill or hive, but the residents think of it as sanctuary
from the degradation of nearby Los Angeles.
When a group of teenagers infiltrate Todos Santos and appear to be
terrorists, the city must fight back. This causes even more enmity between Los
Angeles and Todos Santos. Add to that the economic successes of the
city-building and the technological advances (they introduce computer to brain
interfaces for the most wealthy in the city), and it is quite a powder keg. The
technical concepts and plot in this story are interesting, but I tend to find
character development choppy with multiple authored books. I didn’t find any of
the characters very likable and they seemed almosd superfluous. They
represented functions, rather than true characters. Despite that feeling, the
book is worth reading for its concepts – both technical and sociological. I
admired that it was agnostic towards which was the best model. Neither author’s
political proclivities (and we found Mr. Pournelle definitely had them) came
through in the writing.
While I am a huge Sci-Fi fan I have to disagree with your numerical rating. I would rate this considerably lower, maybe a 2. I felt there was too much of the authors' political and philosophical content in the book. It had the tone of an Ayn Rand book, but without the payoff. While the concept of the arcology was very interesting and thought-provoking, the implementation was not.
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