Stargods by Ian Douglas | 01 Dec 2020|Harper Voyager

Stargods is billed as the final entry in Ian Douglas’s Star Carrier series, set after the final conflict with the Sh’dar who attacked Earth way back in book 1, Earth Strike. Trever Gray has been the main character throughout, rising from a squatter in Manhattan’s ruins to an admiral in charge of the Star Carrier Group. With the war over, what’s to worry about? Mostly the upcoming Singularity, which we’ve now seen alien races handle pretty badly. Though Earth’s politicians are doubling down on abandoning a world with AI to avoid whatever comes next, a few, including Konstantin, Earth’s most powerful AI (located mostly on the moon), and Alexander Koenig, the former president, want to send Trevor on an end-run around the current administration to find the remnants of the Sh’dar that didn’t opt to ascend into virtual light and see if there is anything humanity can do to avoid a total meltdown.

Oddly, meeting with aliens for coffee and conversation isn’t the most interesting part of the book. The fun starts when a U.S. President asks the Russians for a favor to help stop the fleet, and the turmoil back on Earth, as various factions try to sabotage our space-going capability and shut down all the AIs, despite the fact that those two items are holding civilization together.

Crazy humans. Good thing nothing like that happens in real life. Ian Douglas is a solid mil-sf writer, and he’s generally on solid ground from a hard-sf standpoint, allowing for the occasional jump gate and FTL drive. There’s hardly a hint of identity politics here unless you count the occasional android love affair, but even that’s handled with a minimum of angst.

While this is the end of one series, we’ll have to wait and see if the conflict over human ascendency to virtual life and the conflicts it causes with the corporeal world generate a new one. Like the promised singularity, if it does, we’ll be in uncharted territory.

The last time I read about the main character, Trever Gray, he had just elevated his status in life from that of a squatter in the Manhatt Ruins of old New York to a starship fighter pilot. This uplift occurred in Earth Strike, Book 1 of the Star Carrier series. Stargods is the last book in that series. I regret not having read the intervening books as I truly like the storyline.

Trever Gray is now a space navy admiral in charge of the Star Carrier Group America. His closest friends are Alexander Koenig, the former president of USNA, the United States of North America, and Konstantin, a powerful AI located on the backside of the moon.

In Stargods, Earth’s civilization is bordering on the evolutionary edge of human ascension. Millions in Earth’s population are already talking about the singularity, a state of ascension where humans and AI intelligence become one in a virtual existence, as being inevitable. Like today, some are looking forward to the rapture while others are against it due to divergent personal beliefs.

The Sh’dar, an alien species fought against in a previous book, has already gone through transcendence. Not all Sh’dar ascended, however. In this book, Gray, on a secret mission authorized by Alexander Koenig, is sent to meet with the remaining Sh’dar to find out what physically happened when transcendence occurred, how it was achieved, and what were the resulting ramifications.

As with most space operas, space battles, won more by cleverness rather than the strength of armament, take place. Cleverness in battle results in the defeat of a war leaning alien race bent on the total annihilation of Earth. In addition to this alien threat, duplicity from Earth's political power elite wanting world domination threatens the current way of life.

The author, Ian Douglas, embodies USNA leadership with many of the same autocratic leanings as US current leadership and propaganda programs being generated by it to alter political facts. These references are not subtle and may anger those with extreme right leanings. Ian Douglas is either politically motivated or assumes that the Alt-Right does not read Space Opera Sci-Fi. If wrong, then he risks alienating some of his readerships.

The Star Carrier series is a great read that is not only action-packed Sci-Fi, but that also addresses human relationships and frailties.