The Gap Series

By Stephen R. Donaldson

 

I just finished rereading “The Gap Series,” which I do about every other year, five books in a space operatic universe, except better thought out than most. Humanity is threatened by its own corruption and the “genetic imperialism” of an alien race similar to the Borg but more insidious and with biological technology.  The themes are the struggle between virtue and vice within and without individuals and how people build narratives to understand the world.

 

It is also about Morn Hyland, a good cop in a corrupt organization, who is captured and raped by a pirate, and then sold to pirates who work in a mercenary fashion to do work too dirty even for the police. The main characters on the second pirate ship are Nick, a man driven by vengeance, Mikka whose primary goal is the protection of her brother, and Vector, a scientist who fled after the police suppressed his vaccine for the virus the aliens use to turn us into them. The police did so to keep people afraid of the aliens thus enhancing their own power.

 

While Morn struggles with abuse and eventual pregnancy, the police themselves struggle to rise above the political corruption within their own organization.  There is continual tension between Data Acquisition (their CIA) and Enforcement Division, and the head of the police struggles against the powerful businessman who had too much control over the government. These struggles even influence the programming of a super-cyborg created using the body and brain of Angus, the rapist who is the father of Morn’s son, and whether the cyborg should kill or save Morn.

 

And those are just the first two books.

 

Style wise, the most interesting thing about these books is that the every character spends a lot of internal energy creating stories to find the meaning within their limited facts. None of the characters know everything, so they all have to engage in guess work based upon rumors, research, and the careful weighing of their lives’ premises. The winners are those who build narratives the closest to reality and yet leave open the possibility of improving humanity.