James L. Cambias has been writing for Steve Jackson Games for a number of years. In A Darkling Sea he ventures into fiction for the first time, with a first contact novel. Vernor Vinge, whose own writing about alien races and first contacts has been excellent, compares Cambias to Hal Clement, one of science fiction's great masters of worldbuilding and alien race creation. Happily, this praise turns out to be deserved but there's more going on in this novel than that.

In fact, Cambias gives us two different alien races. One is native to the planet where the story takes place, a world very different from Earth, whose geology and biology have been worked out in impressive detail. The other is a starfaring race, far older than humanity, but with a troubled history that makes them cautious about advanced technology, population growth, and interstellar exploration. This second race, the Sholen, want humanity to be equally cautious—especially in their contact with the newly discovered inhabitants of the world humanity has named “Ilmatar,” after a character from Finnish legend. There lies the primary conflict of the novel.

But there are many secondary conflicts, not between races but within each race. Humans, Ilmatarans, and Sholen all have their divergent viewpoints, their factions, and their conflicts. Cambias's narrative builds up to a climactic struggle between two emergent multiracial alliances. And as a result, no character of any race can be reduced to a one-dimensional sketch.

Of the three cultures, the Ilmatarans are shown in the greatest detail, partly because their entire society is on stage; for humans and Sholen, the reader sees only expeditions sent out for different purposes, each a small sample of an entire race. Cambias pays attention to Ilmataran laws and political institutions. Despite having evolved in a radically different environment, they have to solve many of the same problems as early human civilizations, including scarcity, limitation of violence, and preservation of capital, and they often have parallels in human customs, ranging from analogies to Icelandic law to an Ilmataran group somewhat resembling the early Royal Society. In fact, the plot begins when Ilmataran scientists detect, capture, and dissect a human observer with too much confidence in his stealth technology!

In an odd way, A Darkling Sea reads almost like a satire on Star Trek, with Sholen in the role of Vulcans as a self-appointed wise elder race disapproving of younger, more daring humans. But the conflict that emerges is rather more overt! And the Sholen are hardly the cold, rational Vulcans of Star Trek. Ironically, early in the story, the Sholen leader, Gishora, tells his main aide, Tizhos, that he anticipates little trouble from humans, who are obsessed with rules, pride themselves on behaving rationally, and thus will be entirely predictable! The story that follows dashes that hope, showing the unpredictability of all three races, and, indeed, celebrating it.

Despite this appealing subtext, I don't think this novel can be described as “libertarian” in any overt sense. But it does have ideas that libertarian readers will find appealing. In particular, there's a scene where Broadtail, the main Ilmataran character, explains to Holdhard, his juvenile apprentice, the virtues of peaceful cooperation over combat, leading to a summation that libertarians will applaud:

“Working makes food?”

“Exactly! Fighting only steals food, but working makes more.”

With ingenious worldbuilding, complex and appealing characters, a tense storyline leading up to a dramatic climax, and intelligent themes, A Darkling Sea is a creditable first novel. I hope Cambias will give us many more.