The City Who Fought

McCaffrey, Anne, and S. M. Stirling. The City Who Fought. Riverdale, NY: Baen, 1993. Dist. New York: Simon & Schuster. © held by Bill Fawcett & Associates.

Simeon is the male shell-person running Space Station SSS-900, and he is a human body and brain, encased in a metal shell and interfaced with the station computer and its AI program. The station is more or less Simeon's body, the AI program his faithful (talking) dog. In the course of the story, Simeon adopts a girl-child, falls in love with his female "brawn," Channa Hap, and becomes a kind of co-husband to Channa along with Benisur ben Sierra Nuevos (called Amos): a "sheik of Ara-by" sort. The plot of CWF is the defense of the station against the pirate Kolnari: a physically superior, racist warrior race. See also for Simeon's adopted daughter, "the child called Joat, for Jack-of-all-Trades [sic], who was hiding in the station's maintenance passages, and whose mechanical genius even Simeon found impressive" (cover notes). Cf. and contrast Newt in ALIENS (film). CAUTION: Casual readers may see CWF endorsing xenocide of the dark-skinned Kolnari. (RDE, 10/10/96)