Unfriendly Neighbors

Von Neumann's War, Baen Publishing, $7.99 Paperback

Burbrink's Library Rating 3/5

Something is happening to Mars, the little red planet is not as red anymore. John Ringo teams up with Travis Taylor in a possible alien invasion scenario in their book, “Von Neumann's War”.

In the book Ringo combines his signature military writing and character development with Taylor’s scientific expertise to write a short novel that is not only scientifically plausible, but has enough human aspects that your brain does not hurt from all of the scientific talk. 

Scientists and amateur star-gazers alike notice that the color of Mars is changing at a rapid pace.In response to this a team of NASA scientists, along with a Hooter’s waitress, come up with a plan to launch a satellite to investigate. 

The satellite is completed in record time, but moments after arriving at its destination, it is destroyed.The small amount of data the team is able to recover is troublesome, there is a new arrival in the neighborhood, and they don’t seem friendly.

This book is a wonderful example of a scenario where humanity is not prepared to face a new threat and needs to temporarily halt fighting each other to face the new enemy together.

This new enemy takes the weapons and structure greedily, absorbing metal without being harmed. With no weapon to face this enemy, the human race must use the one thing they have left: their mind.

The book starts out slow, with plot and character development taking priority. The wait has its benefit when the book hits its stride around 100 pages in. The reader is drawn into the developed plot and the prior character development makes it easier for the reader to have a connection to the characters.

Science fiction lovers will enjoy the material in the book that discusses what they have to do to try to develop a defence. The average reader can enjoy the characters developed in this book and the human feel of being defiant against overwhelming odds. Personally, I enjoy the development of the final defensive line, summarised in the book as; “If Hooters fell, for all practical purposes the world was lost.”

Amateur science fiction readers should pick this up to have a feel for military science fiction. The paperback book is relatively short, at 576 pages. This book had many positives, however, the occasional lecture-like sections of this book and slow build up hurts the effectiveness of this book.