 My work here on YouTube is supported by viewers. Please follow the links in the description below where you can make one-time donations or you can go to the 30-second sci-fi website and pledge a small monthly amount to become a sponsor. This 2005 book by K.A. Bedford was one of my favorite books of 2015 and I promised when I talked about it in January of that year that I would give it a review, a proper review someday and the reason I hadn't to that point was that I had found the book so so upsetting It's one of the best modern science fiction books I've read it's also one of the most unpleasant and I've pointed out numerous times over the course of my years here on YouTube That unpleasant is not the same thing as bad. In fact, this is a very good book. Okay. Here's the 32nd short review. It takes place in the distant future. A young Academy cadet has just graduated He's been given his first assignment aboard an interstellar military vessel. He is looking forward to leaving the Academy and entering the world of professional military and leaving behind the the amateurs and the hazing and the violence and He discovers very quickly that he has not left any of that behind He quickly discovers that his ship has been assigned to a first contact detail, which he didn't know was even a possibility and He finds that he is personally targeted for shipboard accidents along with so many others on board. I really enjoyed the story. I enjoyed and also dreaded the the subplots and the overarching Conflict and I do recommend it. Here's another brief quality of the book that I liked It was a really unusual future that Bedford has written here and he establishes this in the beginning of the book So it's not a spoiler In this distant future the earth has disappeared It's gone. It wasn't destroyed and it hasn't been forgotten to the annals of mythology like so many other distant future sci-fi spacefaring books do It simply disappeared one day one day it was there the next it wasn't and there was no explanation for it No one has ever understood it and the human race of What's left of it is surviving on a handful of colonies on other planets and the majority of the people who survived were of course military Because those are the people who were off-planet. Okay having said all of that Here's why I'm including this book in my horror month This book contained a kind of reality horror That I found more real to me than any other kind of horror I could read like the the stuff in the Stephen King books That's fantasy. That's ghost stories. That's monster stories. That's I those don't frighten me Those don't fill me with dread this book. However, I mentioned the overarching subplots and conflicts the major conflict with this young cadet the constant stress And cause of tension that he's facing every minute of every day is the threat of military rape It is constant. It is unrelenting and It's not just him he as he's going aboard this ship He meets a young woman who is being recruited for the first time just out of the Academy like him Both of them are savagely assaulted their first day aboard the ship this constant threat of assault rape Really never lets up I couldn't read more than a little bit at a time and would have to stop and come back because I'm there was this constant tension of Is it gonna happen is is he gonna be able to avoid it or put it off? Is it gonna happen now while I'm reading I? Could hardly stand it, but I also considered it a very good book The reason I'm willing to recommend this book the reason I'm willing to accept this is because This is an aspect of military life That's always missing there are so many science fiction books that take place in a future military utopia And I've always found it to be phony I've always found it to be false because military life is a life of violence That's what the military is for and everyone in the military is there for the purpose of committing horrible horrible violence And to leave that out of any story about military life To me makes the story False makes it unbelievable. You look at all the military utopia Books that Heinlein wrote in every one of them It's always just a great bunch of guys living a hard life, but having a great time There is never a hint of the kind of Daily hatred and violence that they're facing and committing against each other to me this This aspect of this book was real because I know it is real when I spent some time as an atheist activist in the early 21st century I Was constantly receiving stories about people in the military Particularly atheists who are facing daily threats of violence Because they were not Christians Who were being assaulted? Physically assaulted thrown down staircases thrown out of windows because they were not Christians and not just atheists Jews Constant threats of violence. I can't imagine what other minorities go through in military life African Americans Hispanic Americans women I can't imagine what women go through in military life and in police Academy life So this had a horrifying reality to me that that to me gave the book a kind of horror and a kind of Believability that wouldn't have been there otherwise and I've that I've never seen in any other book about the military science fiction book I should say At the end of the book Bedford included an afterward in which he thanked his parents He thanked his parents and my first thought was your parents read this Please remember to press that like button it helps my videos get seen and then subscribe so you can come back next time I do science fiction book TV and movie reviews all the time and please consider becoming a patron There's a link in the description below