Anywhere But Here
Jerry Oltion
Tor, March 2005, $25.95, 400 pages, ISBN: 0765306190
reviewed by Harriet Klausner

In an unspecified time in the future, the global conquering United States is ready to go to war at anytime with countries that don’t bow down to America’s superiority. Meanwhile the hyperdrive engine makes it cheap to travel to other planets. Those people who value freedom and resent the heavy-handedness of the United States colonize planets all over the galaxy.

It is now illegal to build a hyperdrive vehicle and leave the planet because much of America’s most precious resources, the people, are gone. After Trent and Judy Stinson lose their jobs they decide to visit the colonized worlds but while on the French planet of Mirabeau, the United States attacks using asteroids as bombs. When they leave, they become lost in space and end up in an unexplored part of the galaxy. They find a habitable planet so they can fix their damaged hyperdrive but must depart quickly though there are no direct life forms dangerous to humans, the game and water is inimical to Earthlings.

Freedom is a powerful motivator for people to leave their homeland and go to the stars but the Stinsons really want to find a way to change how government operates so it could once again become the land of the free. Homeland security has become a dictatorial giant imagining enemies where none exist and drive people to do the very things they outlaw. Jerry Oltion is a master storyteller who takes readers on a spaceship ride that is exciting, dangerous, and fun. Visiting inhabited colonized worlds and orbs where no sentient life exist makes this work of science fiction a great treat for armchair travelers who want to go stellar from their home.