After reading and loving the Silo trilogy by Howey, I went back to look for others of his works, and found Half-Way Home to be a fascinating and well-done novel in its own right. It is the story of a group of 15-year-olds who had been raised in artificial wombs aboard a spaceship, one of hundreds of such missions sent out from a future Earth to find and colonize viable planets. Missions landing on nonviable planets were abruptly aborted by the artificial intelligence (AI) controlling them, and the planet subjected to a “scorched earth” policy. Humans landing on viable planets continued to be raised and educated “in utero” until reaching adulthood at age 30, whereupon they are released from their “wombs” and sent out into a new world which has already been terra-formed and is waiting for their individual specialities—farming, mining, teaching, medicine, etc.—to forge the new and presumably prosperous colony.
In Half Way Home, AI determines that the planet is non-viable early on and begins the abort sequence, ejecting 500 half-grown humans from their wombs and setting their ship ablaze. However, it changes its mind and allows 60 of the teenagers to make it out alive onto a planet alien but survivable. No one knows why the abort sequence was triggered, then halted, and that mystery lies at the crux of the story. Rather quickly, AI reclaims control of the flailing group of kids and imposes the most brutal of the bunch as leader. A Lord of the Flies situation emerges, and our hero Porter—trained to serve as psychologist of the new colony—ends up leading a break-away group outside the colony’s perimeters. They suffer tremendous deprivation along with their new-found freedom, and slowly and painfully begin to unravel the great mystery.
At first, I thought this was another innovative young adult novel, dealing with teenagers, relationship angst, reactions to authority, etc., but the book is much more. It is truly great sci-fi, with alien landscapes and creatures enough to satisfy the sci-fi lover, but it is also a powerful essay on the evils of imperialist exploitation. Howey’s extraplanetary missions are not Star Trek-style “go where no man has gone before” kinds of explorations. Rather they are modeled on the missions sent out in our own 15th, 16th 17th centuries and beyond, to bring back the wealth of foreign lands—whether gold, spices, or slaves–by any means necessary, and for the greater glory of the Empire. Readers with an open mind cannot miss the parallels Howey draws.
The author’s fine writing, fully-fleshed characters, attention to technological detail, and fast-paced storytelling make this a great adventure novel, but also an effective political commentary on our own history, down to the present time.
