Classic Book Review - "The Disinherited" by Steve White

"The Disinherited" by Steve White, published in 1993, is the first in a very clever and entertaining science fiction trilogy noteworthy for the fact that each of the three books in the trilogy, while they fit together in a logical sequence, are largely of different genres.

This first book is mainly military Space Opera.

The sequel, "Legacy," starts off by continuing the Space Opera story a century later, but suddenly changes to Time Travel.

The third and final novel in the series, "Debt of Ages," is mainly alternative history.

"The Disinherited" begins in the mid-21st century as a joint US and Russian project to terraform Mars is contacted by what they at first assume is an alien spaceship. It is indeed alien in the sense that it comes from another solar system. But when they actually meet, and the American central character of the story sees the leader of the "Aliens" he exclaims in astonishment

"You look human!" and he gets the reply "Thank you. So do you."

This becomes a bit of a running gag through the series: one of the sub-plots is a detective story investigating why there are humans on  two worlds many light years apart. Tens of thousands of years ago, someone took a population of homo sapiens and a few other terrestrial species to another planet hundreds of light years away, and the characters are left to wonder who did this, and why?

But that mystery is not the key decision that the Mars terraforming project's leaders have to face. The visitors, who are called the Raehaniv, have come to propose an alliance: a hostile and xenophobic race of real aliens, the Korvaasha, is attacking them and they are desperate for help.

Unfortunately, Earth is turning inwards - the party which is expected to win the next set of elections in the USA is opposed to the space programme and would almost certainly not support any such alliance.

You probably should not read this book if you are likely to be offended by the secondary villains being a party of woke left-wing politicians. The author writes nothing to suggest that he regards being left-wing or pro-environment as necessarily being stupid or evil in itself but the party poised to take power in the book are also rabid antisemites with utterly ridiculous economic ideas such as legislating to guarantee all citizens an above-average level of income.

There may be other people for whom Steve White writing a novel in 1993 in which the 21st century saw the rise of political parties which were woke, think of themselves as green, horrendously antisemitic and had daft economic ideas appears remarkable prescient ... 

The Korvaasha will undoubtedly become a threat to Earth as well as the Raehaniv: however terrible the odds if the people of the Mars terraforming project join the fight against them, their prospects of they refuse and go back to Earth are likely even worse.

After the coming election the new government is likely to put anyone involved in unapproved activities like space exploration into a re-education camp - and then if the Korvaasha ever find Earth, they will exchange a re-education camp for a far worse kind of slavery..

But if they join the Raehaniv to fight the Korvaasha, they will need to destroy every scrap of evidence on their ships of where they came from, so that if they are captured no information might lead the Korvaasha back to their home planet. They could truly become the disinherited ...

Stephen White (1948-2025) was an American science fiction author who started his writing career as  the co-author with whom David Weber, one of the creators of the "Starfire" science fiction wargame produced a number of books set in the "Starfire" universe.

He had previously served as a United States Navy officer and served during the Vietnam War and in the Mediterranean region.

The "Disinherited" trilogy were three of his first series of novels after the initial "Starfire" books.

He wrote a number of very original novels, and besides this trilogy some of his best other work was the "Jason Thanou" time travel series which begins with "Blood of the heroes" 

You can buy "The Disinherited" on Amazon at

 The Disinherited (Disinherited Series Book 1) by Steve White: Amazon.co.uk Kindle Store

I really enjoyed this book and strongly recommend "The Disinherited" and the other two books in the trilogy.

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