Coyote is, for my tastes, as close as it will likely ever get to perfectly satisfying science fiction. Mr. Steele rambles, he meanders, and he pontificates without much by way of subtlety, but the earnest egalitarianism expressed in this novel about liberation from tyranny is exciting, gripping, and gleeful. It has a spirit which makes its flaws unimportant.
The 21st century has not gone well for the United States. A rising tide of religious intolerance has swept into power a one-party state which, by the 2070s, has succeeded in making a mockery out of all the freedoms for which America once stood. Now, fascism reigns in the guise of a kind of faux liberty platform, a fascism which jails dissident intellectuals, neglects the inconvenient poor, and forces upon everyone a rigid order designed to institutionalize the worship of the nation's heroic political leaders. But though everyone may be afraid to speak out, fear cannot be an excuse for inaction. Something must be done to reverse the tide of recent history. A hero is required.
Enter Captain Robert Lee, a descendant of the great Virginian general. Having long since had enough of this tyrannical America, he plots to spit in its face. For he has been chosen to captain the government's vanity project, the URSS Alabama, an interstellar spacecraft designed to carry this new brand of authoritarian Americanism to the stars. Carefully selecting a crew loyal to him, Lee bids his time and then, in a move whose boldness is worthy of his famous ancestor, Lee steals the URSS Alabama, taking with him, to the stars, the seeds of a new beginning.
Coyote has, imbued in its pages, a spark of the freedom that kindled the American Revolution. The tyrannical government is a 2070 version of the nearsighted British who peevishly attempted to claw back power from the 1776ers. In the same vein, captain Lee fits the reluctant hero of George Washington, a man forced to be a statesman, to lead a people even though he is not suited for it. But as much as politics launch Coyote on its journey, the second and third acts of the story are just as good. The former chronicles the Alabama's journey to the moon Coyote. This, humanity's first interstellar jaunt, is wonderfully harrowing. The latter is taken by the frontier life: the settling of a new world, the establishing of a newer, freer government, and the revelling in the opportunity to live, liberated, under a new set of stars.
Yes, Coyote sprawls more than it ought to, and, yes, it uses a baseball bat to make some of its arguments, but the irrepressible verve of its dissidents fighting to be free powers the story relentlessly on towards a satisfying conclusion. This is the kind of fiction only an American could write. And yes, that is a compliment. Well done, Mr. Steele. (4/5 Stars)
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