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Coyote by Allen Steele
01/07/2005 . Source: Tomas L. Martin 
pub: Orbit/Times Warner. 550 page paperback. Price: £ 6.99 (UK). ISBN: 1-84149-367-8. Buy from Amazon US - Buy from Amazon UK
nb: US titles may only be available from Amazon US, and UK titles from Amazon UK. check out websites: www.OrbitBooks.co.uk
I had the pleasure of being on a panel with Allen Steele a couple of years ago at Confluence, Pittsburgh's Science Fiction convention. He's an interesting, friendly man and this novel is, too, luckily for the reader.
'Coyote' is a little bit of a throwback to the Golden Age, where Science Fiction was all about finding new worlds and using technology to travel there and overcome their obstacles. In 'Coyote', the US is a totalitarian 'republic', which has wasted much of its GDP in producing a multi-billion dollar spaceship to travel to the stars, in particular the moon world Coyote.
The government has imprisoned a great deal of the scientists and so-called 'dissident intellectuals', Dis. Most live under house arrest or in concentration camps despite building the government's prize asset, the starship Alabama. Secretly, though, the DIs have a retaliation plan. Together with members of the Alabama's crew, they organise to have fifty of the hundred crew members replaced by captured DIs, steal the Alabama and jet off to Coyote.
Most of what is in the book had previously published as separate short stories, mostly in 'Asimov's Magazine'. The nice aspect of this is that the reader gets the opportunity to see many of the personalities on board the ship and later colony. Gillis, the communications officer that gets woken from stasis three months into a 270 year journey, goes mad, drinks the ship dry, paints the walls with murals and writes a thirteen volume fantasy saga.
Carlos and Wendy and the rest of the teenagers who run away, the cold-hearted police captain forced on the journey against his will, Captain Lee and the mutiny plot, each of these plots and sub-plots are fascinatingly drawn and involving. When another ship arrives from Earth, upsetting the balance of the little community, it matters to the reader.
Steele writes well and 'Coyote' feels a little bit like Kim Stanley Robinson's 'Red Mars' - a group of people, many of whom would never usually associate, thrown together on an unforgiving new world, where everything is undiscovered and potentially dangerous.
The world of Coyote is a nicely made setting, a moon comprised of many small archipelagos amidst planet-crossing rivers. Aside from slightly lower gravity, it seems perfect for human life...until the settlers meet some of the trickster planet's fauna, such as the vicious walking bird-like Boids and the huge aquatic catwhale.
I had read a number of these stories in their original novelette and novella formats, but the stories have been revised and edited to fit together better. As a result, added to the developing storyline and characters, I think 'Coyote' works better as a novel. It gives the reader more satisfaction and when the originals gave a fair amount already, that can only be a good thing.
Tomas L. Martin
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