The Silver Ship and the Sea

By Brenda Cooper

The colony planet Fremont is joyous, riotous, and very wild. Its grasses can cut your arms and legs to ribbons, the rinds of its precious fruit can skewer your thumbs, and some of the predators are bigger than humans. Meteors fall from the sky and volcanoes erupt. Fremont is verdant, rich, beautiful, and dangerous.
Fremont's single town, Artistos, perches on a cliff below rugged mountains. Below Artistos lie the Grass Plains, which lead down to the sea. And in the middle of the Grass Plains, a single silver spaceship lies quiet and motionless. The seasons do not dull it, nor do the winds scratch it---and the fearful citizens of Aristos won't go near it.
Chelo Lee, her brother Joseph, and four other young children have been abandoned on the colony planet. Unfortunate events have left them orphaned in a human colony that abhors genetic engineering--and these six young people are genetically enhanced.
With no one to turn to, Chelo and the others must now learn how to use their distinct skills to make this unwelcome planet home, or find a way off it. They have few tools--an old crazy woman who wonders the edges of town, spouting out cryptic messages; their appreciation and affection for each other; a good dose of curiosity; and that abandoned silver space ship that sits locked and alone in the middle of the vast grass plain …

• Language: English
• Publisher: Macmillan Publishers
• Release date: Jul 1, 2008
• ISBN: 9781429951869

Brenda Cooper

BRENDA COOPER is a futurist who works with Glen Hiemstra at Futurist.com.  She’s the co-author of the novel Building Harlequin's Moon, which she wrote with Larry Niven.  Her novel The Silver Ship and the Sea won the 2008 Endeavour Award. Her solo and collaborative short fiction has appeared in multiple magazines, including Analog, Asimov’s, Strange Horizons,  Oceans of the Mind, and The Salal Review.  She lives in Kirkland, Washington.

Reviews for The Silver Ship and the Sea

[schnaucl · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I really enjoyed this book. Joseph reminded me very strongly of Charlie Eppes from Numb3rs, both in terms of his genius and his emotional immaturity. Chero, his older sister, reminded me of Don, though not as strongly as Joseph reminded me of Charlie. Much of the book focused on their relationship.I thought [author: Brenda Cooper] did a good job of showing how mistakes have a way of being repeated. Humans don't trust the altered, there's a war, humans raise the altered children but don't trust them because of the war, thus causing the altered children not to trust them thus provoking conflict. She also did a good job of showing the altered learning to use their abilities.I think this book stands on its own just fine, and I have no idea if Cooper intends for this to be a series or not. I'd definitely be interested in reading a follow-up.