Oath of Fealty
Larry Niven Jerry Pournelle
Read 106 reviews from the world’s largest community 
    for readers. The consortium executives of a four-square-mile, self-contained community inside the city …
/favicon.ico
Goodreads
December 10, 2013

One of the more vile and viciously right wing novels I’ve read, though to be fair I haven’t read many of them at all. But this is something like Ayn Rand – wig askew and on her 13th pink gin fizz – going off on a paranoid scree about the muggers and rapists who are all out to kill her. Because she’s so rich and talented and beautiful and they just can’t handle that so she’s bought 10 attack dogs and built a concrete bunker.

It’s all about taking the gated community to the next level, making it a maze of about a cubic square mile with about a quarter of a million people. It towers like a monstrous black cube in an area essentially burned down by its own residents – I would think Watts or Compton. It’s powered by hydrogen, fed through pipes from ‘a complex of nuclear breeder plants in Mexico’. Ah, the outsourcing of risk and contaminants. It calls itself Todos Santos – All Saints – why do white people in the Southwest always call their high-end real estate developments nice things in Spanish? A patronising nod to the people they stole the land from? Easier to pronounce than indigenous phrases for ‘Pretty View’ and ‘Mountain Hills’? But the authors aren’t being entirely metaphorical in calling the residents saints. Apparently you can pick them out of a crowd of poor old Angelinos, they are the shiny beautiful people who move in a certain way, speak in a certain way. They are a new kind of person.

THINK OF IT AS EVOLUTION IN ACTION. I thought at first this rather chilling slightly fascist slogan must be ironic or a nod to the dangers this kind of project could raise. But no. These really are a better kind of people, helped by those who commit suicide or get themselves killed. They like this slogan, paint it on walls, put it on stickers and huge banners like a big F-you to L.A.

The Utopia? ‘We’re running a civilization, something new in this world, and don’t bother to tell me how small it is. It’s a civilization. The first one in a long time where people can feel safe’ (18). Constantly watched, constantly surveilled and monitored. But the many guards are their friends. They don’t arrest people for being too drunk the way the terrible LAPD does, they walk you home. What is better than being safe after all? We know that the real danger is from criminal poor people who are all on the outside, hopped up to their eyeballs on drugs and trying to shoot down helicopters.

Todos Santos is of course trying to be completely separate from Los Angeles – the crime, the pollution, the drugs, the poor people. There’s a lot of anger in this book about how the government forces all of us to become accountants to pay our taxes, and the pain of collecting receipts and things. A whole lot of anger. Familiar tea party sort of anger. Taxes in Todos Santos don’t go to welfare and they are part of your mortgage payment to the company – kindly saving you from wasting any thought on them at all. It's a bit feudal, yeah, but they had some good ideas back then. Oath of Fealty rendered, everything else taken care of. Awesome. Of course, I can't quite understand how this fits with America, Land of the Free in their heads, or their hatred of big government...I mean, my opinion is that these fit together because the residents of Todos Santos don't see poor people, particularly poor Black and Brown people, as real Americans or as any kind of people they can cooperate in a democracy or a community with, sad facts that have forced them to sucede and build something new. Something they may one day conquer and colonise outer space with. But I don't think they think that.

Instead the book trys to show it’s not racist by trying to admit that some discrimination exists but it’s less than you think, and making one of the high executives Black. Well. Teak colored in the book’s own words. He’s a bit estranged from other African-Americans and admits there are only maybe a hundred among a quarter million, but his homies break him out of the L.A. prison he gets sent to after he kills a couple of kids pretending to be terrorists and becomes a hero to the population. That’s a long story I won’t go into, who’d want to give away such a sparkling plot?

The kids are sent in by activists to test the defences, because that’s what environmental activists do, right? Use kids without remorse. Make unreasonable demands. The civil rights movement made some unreasonable demands too, which is how they lost the support of the white community

We did care once. A lot of us did. But something happened. Maybe it was the sheer size of the problem. Or watching while everybody who could afford it ran to the suburbs and left the cities to drift, and complained about taxes going to the cities, and—Or maybe it was having to listen to my police explain why they’ll only go into Watts in pairs with cocked shotguns and if the Mayor doesn’t like it he can damn well police that precinct himself.

People think they’ve done enough. (126)

Note the use of the words ‘us’ and ‘people’ to mean white by default. Thinking you’ve done enough when you’ve done worse than nothing is an interesting contradiction noted by many. But let’s get back to the activists. They call people pigs even when they’re not cops – which is silly, cops have really earned that name. Activists are also almost always rapists apparently. Unless they’re women, in which case they are just sadistic and probably Lesbians. ‘She’s probably a Lesbian’ is a direct quote actually, as the 'heroine' imagines shutting her in a room full of rats to mentally survive the indignities of being kidnapped. The men probably couldn’t help raping her of course, they’re brutes and she is a stunning model-turned-business-woman who is powerful and talented and successful and rich and they obviously can’t handle all of that.

Anyway, I haven’t even cracked the surface, just released some of my bile. This is a story where you are supposed to cheer on the beleaguered community of alcoholic rich people who can only drink coffee if it’s Irish, creating their Utopia safely insulated from the nuclear power plants and the poor people who pick their lettuces and sweatshop workers who make their clothes and carrying out their own vigilante justice – which is ok, because they don’t kill people unless it’s absolutely necessary, they just paint them and tattoo them. There’s nothing about how the place stays clean or who makes the food etc, and it’s not the kind of fantasy story where house elves are a possibility though it is one in which things science fiction writers dream up are considered really cool and often become true.

The happy ending is the Black dude gets sent to Zimbabwe.

July 9, 2007

For those too young to remember, Niven and Pournelle (both accomplished hard-science-fiction writers themselves) teamed up throughout the 1970s and '80s to produce a series of novels that crossed over into mainstream Michael-Crichton-style success. Although Hammer of the Gods is their most popular (concerning an asteroid hitting the earth, and what these two scientist-authors imagine would really happen in such a case), my favorite is Oath of Fealty, which imagines a private corporation building an entire enclosed utopian city next-door to Los Angeles, like Disney's actual Celebration, Florida but expanded to an insane degree, and with a roof and walls covering the entire thing. What would such a society be like? What problems would arise from such a situation? And how would the LA municipal government take to such a thing? Niven and Pournelle contemplate some fascinating answers here, as well as painting a vivid "world of tomorrow" where people are connected to the web via biological implants, among other modern wonders. Out of all their books, this is the one I recommend the most.

March 30, 2021

7/10 en 2009.

Ni tan mal para estar en la colección de Acervo, en la que no suelo acertar con casi ninguno.

Aquí distopía de estos señores que crearon La paja en el ojo de Dios, que me gustó bastante más. Pero bueno, esta CF de psicología social funciona lo suficiente como para leerla con agrado.

El binomio Pournelle & Niven funciona bien.

June 9, 2007

In the first chapter of Oath of Fealty, one of the characters makes an off-handed reference to Uncle Tom's Cabin and from that point on I couldn't help but compare the two books. Both books share similar flaws in the strengths of their stories as they sacrifice political agenda for narrative.

Uncle Tom's Cabin was written with an urgency and is a blatant call to end slavery. Oath of Fealty's message while politically motivated isn't as important or significant and therefore the book fails both in being an interesting story and in inspiring action on the part of the reader.

The only truly interesting piece of the book is its set-up. Imagine a city with a population around 250,000 jammed into a massive skyscraper that serves as a controlled environment where the citizens willingly sacrifice privacy for safety. The city (or arcology) is called Todos Santos and it's somehow located in the San Fernando Valley. What happened to the cities all ready there? By choosing to set the story in such a crowded area it is hard to believe that such a huge building could be built (it's also the same major flaw of The Truman Show).

Like Stowe's story of Eliza and Tom the story unfolds as a comparison of free life and slave life (or life off and on the plantation). Niven and Pournelle need a big chaotic city to compare to their controlled environment. Unfortunately there are so many flaws in the idea that a building of such a size could be built near a well established urban area that the story flounders. So much of the book is devoted to justifying their choice of location for this social commentary that the actual story is neglected.

April 30, 2021

This 1981 (then) near-future SF novel hasn't aged at all well. I liked it when I last read it in 1994, but the Suck Fairy has visited since then, to the extent that I will be recycling my copy. Making wrong guesses about the future isn't fatal -- you've no doubt noticed the lack of large urban arcologies then or now -- but the attitudes and mores on display in this book seem to date back to the 1970s or even the 1960s. The novel's treatment of women is, well, appalling. The writing style is graceless and makes points with a sledgehammer. N&P have written some good books together, notably "The Mote in God's Eye," but this one is pretty grim. I did finish it, with some skimming, and parts are pretty good, but I don't recommend it.

July 20, 2016

Oath of Fealty is a dated, but not outdated, science fiction story of what might happen to a group of individuals if they were to live inside a self-contained (mostly) arcology in the midst of modern society. Modern society being one guessed at by the authors from the perspective of 1980. Keep that in mind.

I must preface this review with a rant to anyone who judges or reviews older books based solely on their own modern perceptions of society. If it is twenty or more years older than you, the author’s mind-set will not have existed in the same world you do. Adjust your pre-suppositions before reading. Think of the era 'in which it was written' along with the story itself.

IT IS NOW ON A DIFFERENT TIMELINE THAN YOU.

You cannot write a book about the future and get everything right. Also, you cannot read a book written thirty-six years ago and expect it to be a match for your current social setup anymore. When you choose to read a book this old, you must adjust your expectations and try to wrap your mind around the world as it was when it was written. If you cannot do that, then don't bother picking up any book older than 15 years. And, for that matter, skip science fiction altogether because it requires you to use your imagination, and sometimes (God forbid!) willingly suspend your disbelief and repress your 'triggers'. History happened whether you like it or not. You can’t read Shakespeare and judge his work to be crap because he comes across a misogynist to you. The same must (not optional) be applied to reading any work that was published some time ago.

This is one of those books.

Now I can get back to the review. I picked up 'Oath of Fealty' after a re-release of the e-book went on sale, and I realized it was a Niven/Pournelle that I had not yet read. If you have not read these two authors (collaboratively &/or individually) I feel both excited and sorry for you. You have some superb reading that you could tackle, but at the same time, a lot of it will be dated, like this book is, simply due to the passage of time. Go read them anyway!

This novel is of a near future (that spun off of the year 1980/81 when it was written). The setting is the city of Los Angeles. A riot destroyed a large portion of the city which consequently allowed the development of a corporately sponsored arcology. Todos Santos is a huge walled edifice, a skyscraper the size of a city, that stockholders may buy a share in and live their lives there. It is a place that is under nearly constant surveillance - including in apartments if needed for emergencies - that affords the occupants a premium on safety at the expense of privacy. Over time, this trade-off has become a non-issue for them. They have become used to it. Also, the corporate nature of the complex means that a distinct strata of individual privilege is present. This too is accepted by the residents as perfectly fine. Why do they think it’s fine? Because, simply put, the guards and the higher-ups technically work for them. People who have domestic servants don’t care if they know their comings and goings, right? The book’s title originates from a reporter character who does a documentary on the arcology and compares it to a feudal society. The residents have sworn an Oath of Fealty to the leader, granting him high privileges in exchange for protection.

Outside the walls of this community is the city of Los Angeles with its high crime-rates, poverty, and very jealous individuals in politics that resent the success of Todos Santos (and its independence, and their lack of influence on it, etc.) The arcology does not pay taxes to L.A. which was part of the deal at the start of its development, so this is really irksome for the politicians. The All Saints in the middle of the City of Angels is only for those who accept its constraints on the inside, and those on the outside mostly despise it, even though the symbiotic relationship that has developed also keeps industry and development flowing to them. The regular residents of Los Angeles feel this way too, but also want to be part of it at the same time. They want the benefits, but without the necessity of conformance.

Also, a militant faction of Eco Terrorists is seeking to disrupt - and destroy, if possible - the arcology. Despite the good the arcology has done for the environment, and how green it is (it is almost self-contained and recycles everything) they believe it (and other concept arcologies) to be a crime against humanity. Their socialist ideal is that the arcology takes from the poor and concentrates the riches of society in the hands of the privileged few. A very socialist dogma for the bad guys, certainly, which is to be expected from a book written at the tipping point of the cold war era from two authors with a conservative bent.

So, that's the setup of the novel. The characters are not deep. The novel was written to showcase the concept of this arcology idea. The plot was created to give the reader a way to learn about it. The characters were written around this plot to bring the story to life.

Even so, it works. The story is entertaining. You do have to read about eighty percent of it before it becomes a page turner, but still, I like some good world-building.

Probably the neatest thing I found in this novel was that some concepts of the science were spot on and didn't even click as 'futuristic' until I stopped and thought about what existed when it was written. Let me give some examples of things that happened in 1980/81, but were still futuristic to this book:

• Ronald Reagan was first elected as President of the United States.

• MS-DOS was released and used in IBM's new Personal Computer (PC)

Today, most of us have cell phones that are more powerful. The book mentions at one point using a data printout of a whopping 25 megabytes (staggering!) to delay the local police.

• NASA launched Columbia, the first Space Shuttle put into orbit.

Some of the residents of Todos Santos work from home with tele-operated devices that run machines in greater Los Angeles, and one even operates a bulldozer in a construction project on the moon.

• Rhodesia gained its independence and became the state of Zimbabwe.

Used as a plot device in the later book. Zimbabwe today is a collapsed failed society.

• Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back was released in theatres.

The book mentions Star War Episode VIII where a character mocks Han Solo’s science. We all know what really happened to Han in Episode VII!

Those are just a few things that jumped out at me.

Now, in this novel, Todos Santos is managed by several executives who are very good at their jobs. Part of their success stems from their ability to link with the central computer system via implant technology in their brains. This is a huge futuristic tech item, even for today. However, one of the benefits of this tech that was given was the ability of this computer system to keep track of everyone within the complex. It let the guards be able to track down and deliver messages to and from residents if needed. This was 'amazing' in regards to the book at the time it was published, but we all know that today we would not need guards to do that... we'd use our cell phones! Another advantage of the implants was the ability to mentally talk to other implant users via the computer. That’s pretty awesome, and still ‘advanced tech’ for today, but we can also send e-mail and text messages, so we are not that far off the mark.

Another idea in the book that has never taken root in today's world was making use of icebergs as a source of fresh drinking water. I don't know the feasibility of that particular idea is today, but I think the environmentalist would probably throw a fit about shrinking the ice shelf or stealing habitat from the polar bears or something. It would sure help with that drought in Cali though!

The mega city slide-walk moving from walking speed up to fifty MPH in graded strips would be a nightmare to implement as well. OSHA would have puppies and kittens at the mere thought of something like that being used by people. And the lawsuits when someone got hurt... I shudder to think.

The self-sufficient and self-contained arcology has also never been tried on this scale (to my knowledge), but I can say that I personally would not want to live in one. Then again, I wouldn’t want to be an Angelino in a crowded crime ridden cityscape either. I'll stick to the backwoods, thanks!

One last concept in the book (which is oddly coincidental to what is in the news at the time I write this review), touches on race relations of the time, but more specifically on the US versus THEM mentality. In this case Angelinos versus Saints. What is justice from the perspective of one group is often seen as the opposite of justice from the perspective of another. We have this same issue ongoing in America today. That seems not to have changed much in thirty-six years. That is sad, but also could be seen as a lesson that speaks to the failure of the more liberal ideas of crime and punishment in our society. A lack of respect for authority and the rights of others, along with a refusal to enforce effective punishment leads to tragedy and discontent for all. The book depicts a situation in which people committing a criminal act are killed, but those with tighter ties to them are convinced that they were the victims of the out-of-control authorities of the arcology. The arcology is just as adamant that they were defending themselves from harm. This is an eerie coincidence to what I have witnessed in the news recently. Thirty-six years is a long time to fail in the same way without trying something different. The differences of opinion continue, though, because those who support the liberal side believe we just need more of the same because we haven’t tried hard enough. Conversely, those on the other side of the spectrum have gotten to the point that they just don’t care. As in this novel, the only end result is a sharp divide in societies that cannot be effectively healed. Again, a sad thought.

Anyway, the science and social concepts explored in this book, including the idea of a separate culture developing inside the arcology itself, are very interesting. I don't know if all of it would go the way presented, but some of it undoubtedly would. I found the novel to be entertaining and mentally engaging, even if it is somewhat dated by its cold war era origins. I give it 3 stars and call it a Good Ole Read.

August 29, 2017

-Querer y no poder, mientras se juega con lo polémico.-

Género. Ciencia ficción.

Lo que nos cuenta. El libro Juramento de fidelidad (publicación original: Oath of Fealty, 1981) nos lleva hasta Todos Santos, una gigantesca construcción en la costa oeste de los Estados Unidos, a muy poca distancia de Los Ángeles, una moderna ciudad-estado próspera y avanzada, protegida por fuerzas de seguridad y cámaras que intentan evitar las amenazas de grupos terroristas y, también, la desconfianza envidiosa de otras estructuras sociales y políticas. Un incidente mortal generado por una amenaza que se demuestra falsa termina por tensar las cosas.

¿Quiere saber más de este libro, sin spoilers? Visite:

http://librosdeolethros.blogspot.com/...

June 24, 2017

The novel has a very interesting premise. A centrally controlled, almost police-state mega-gated-community created exclusively for a wealthy elite. Other than the interesting premise, the book has little to offer. It was first published in 1982 and suffers from many of the ailments of older-generation science fiction. The story is delivered mostly through dialogue in which characters with opposing views unnecessarily argue about something (or characters with similar views unnecessarily agree about something). Office romances which seem to have been cribbed straight out of a daytime soap. The tone hovers on the verge of didactic without openly crossing it. Evil poor people keep trying to break in and cause damage to the gated community because... well, because poor people are violent, savage and evil. The protagonists are self-sufficient, wealthy geniuses, misunderstood and demonized by a decaying society and opposed by a bureaucratic government (one of them is actually named Rand - yes, seriously). At the same time, token characters try to provide something of an opposing view: poor people are human too. And there's an African-American character in a high management position, but he really feels uncomfortable, and gets sent to Zimbabwe as a reward.

Two and one-quarter stars, but I have to make allowances for the dates of writing and publication, so rounded up to 3.

December 15, 2018

I have read a lot of science fiction about massive housing complexes, and all of them present them as dystopias, or at least an unpleasant thing that be borne due to other circumstances. Niven and Pournelle present a uniquely pleasant view of their arcology, Todos Santos in the Los Angeles area.

Some people like living in managed communities, some people don’t, and most people don’t care what choice others make.

The story, of course, is in the minority who do want to force other people’s choices, an eco-terrorist group called FROMATE, “Friends of Man and the Earth”, who don’t like that people in Todos Santos live outside a state of nature; and local politicians who don’t like that people in Todos Santos are mostly independent of local politicians.

The book was clearly written in the late seventies/early eighties; when they want to delay a police investigation, Todos Santos executives provide the information the police requested “at 300 baud”.

Some of the characters have near-24-hour network connections, and can thus access global information whenever they want. This, unsurprisingly to those of us in the era of iPhones and the Internet, completely changes how they communicate and interact with people around them.

This is probably the most interesting massive housing complex science fiction story I’ve read so far.

July 7, 2012

A utterly fantastic book when written, some of the technology is dated now. Niven and Pournelle didn't anticipate cordless phones--the guy with a 20-foot cord on his phone will ring true with my generation but baffle younger readers. It originated my favorite quote on people who kill themselves doing dumb things--I won't include it here, spoilers.

March 20, 2010

I was borderline between 2 and 3 stars on this title, in the end I went 3 because I have so thoroughly loved the previous Niven books I have read...

This was vaguely interesting at times, but mostly it was a long drawn out boring telling of a only slightly better premise.

I didnt like the lack of consistency in terms of the their little society. It was too idealized in many ways, and I think to bring that level of idealism home, they should have made it more sealed off from the rest of LA. The level of detachment present in the characters in this book was inconsistent with the lack of true isolation from the rest of LA.

I know people who live more isolated from their city in the real world, than the folks in this book. I guess, for me, it just didnt ring true, or leave me with a feeling of awe. I think to like a sci-fi book, one or both of those need to happen for me.

April 18, 2017

Oath of Fealty is one of the more interesting collaborations of Niven and Pournelle. It's speculative fiction, but the science is more sociological and political than physical. It's a very thoughtful and though-provoking novel, and though it may be a little dated now I still think it's relevant. The philosophy seemed to be a little too right-wing for sf fans of the day to feel comfortable with it, but the authors always made well-reasoned, convincing arguments. The catch-phrase of the book is: "Think of it as evolution in action," which I've often quoted in one situation or another over the years.

April 2, 2022

This one didn't hold up as well as the other early books by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. The characters were interesting, but some of the plot points remained unresolved at the end, and the various "resolutions" would have caused headaches lasting for years. For instance, the arcology has an odd idea of what a legal system is for, and wants results without effort and expense. Gee, how could that go wrong? One bright idea that they have is to brand criminals with tattoos in such a way that they would be immediately recognizable as criminals...which, of course, also makes them unlikely to ever get a non-criminal job, but hey, that's not the arcology's problem, right?

One of the themes running through this book is whether you could have an "elite" arcology within a major city without a toxic relationship between the two. By the end of the story, that was not really resolved, because the folks in the arcology did such a mixture of clever and horrific things. For instance, they used lethal means to defend their arcology from an apparent terrorist attack, and that's sort of okay, based on the various principles of self-defense that are a part of both culture and law. The problem was that their lethal means involved a fairly sloppy use of military nerve gas, and the fact that this was possibly illegal on several levels was never addressed. The legal crisis that results is "resolved" by staging a jailbreak. No, really, and it used one of the two science fictional elements of the story, a high-speed tunnel-boring machine that is somehow better and cheaper than the ones that exist in the real world. How it achieves the high-speed part is never explained in the story.

The other science fictional element in the story was a computer link that was expensive, but possible to install inside a person. Think of having Alexa inside your head. There are people who might want that, but it seemed to get used mainly to access data more quickly than other means would have achieved.

The characters...the good guys were interesting and well-developed. The bad guys were not. The reasons for building this arcology where it was turned into a somewhat interesting story, but the idea of having a gigantic shopping mall in what amounted to the basement of a huge, multi-story gated community seemed like it would create gigantic security problems.

So, I give it three stars for having some good characters, and some genuinely thought-provoking discussions about the relationship between communities. I can't give it any more than that because some of it just wasn't complete, and other parts aged very badly [like the scene where a character has thoughts that a sadistic female terrorist must be a lesbian, because...well, apparently because she's a sadistic female terrorist, because there's no actual reason given in the text of the story].

July 17, 2016

Is this Science Fiction? The (kindle) edition I bought shows some kind of rocket driven aircraft circling a futuristic landscape and it is in the Science Fiction section. But when I gave up reading (28%) it just seemed to be about the running of a monster office block. Ok it's really a monster but the comings and goings of the big cast of characters seemed to be mostly about office politics and city politics (Los Angeles to be precise). Not my sort of thing. I wouldn't give it a negative review - many people seem to like it, but the characters seem to be drawn from a management training manual and the attitudes of the authors to race and gender politics are from the 1950s (maybe a bit later).

October 16, 2013

Fast paced story set in an LA dominated by a new town / fort called Todos Santos which basically uses LA as a source of fuel for its 1/4 million inhabitants.

The story tackles issues like gated communities and ways of governing a city without being hectoring. The baddies were rather cartoonish which was the only downside. It was full of wonderful ideas and a good read.

May 21, 2020

Still readable after all these years, this is a hybrid novel, a mashup of 70s disaster porn and generation starship yarn. I probably liked it more than you would, but if you find a cheap copy, give it a try.

March 4, 2024

This novel is about an alternative way of living, apparently devised with the main objective of reducing the excessive crime rate in American cities. It has Niven in sociological mood, reminiscent of his short stories “Cloak of Anarchy” (1972) and “Flash Crowd” (1973). Pournelle, of course, carries on being Pournelle. As usual, they complement each other: Niven provides ideas and softens Pournelle’s abrasiveness, while Pournelle injects doses of urgent and ugly reality into Niven’s academic speculations.

I was 6 years late in reading it. Probably, at about the time it came out, I read an extract somewhere and decided that I wasn’t keen on it. Eventually I bought a cheap second-hand copy of it in Milan, and it wasn’t as bad as I expected.

It’s not one of Niven’s more enjoyable books, and it’s not on the scale of The Mote in God's Eye, but it’s readable, with plenty of ideas in it that somehow manage not to slow the pace. It reminded me that Niven can do things other than invent aliens.

The picture painted of the urban community of Todos Santos, near Los Angeles, is a fairly rosy one, but does indicate some substantial problem areas; and it’s not an evangelical book. The authors seem to be rather ambivalent about their creation; it’s a scheme they think could work in certain circumstances, and would probably suit some people but not others. I think relatively few readers will emerge from the book anxious to live in Todos Santos. However, some may find aspects of it intriguing, and perhaps even attractive (especially those who currently live in American cities). I think this sort of limited reaction is about what the authors intended.

Niven is a dilettante who plays with ideas as intellectual toys, without ever becoming committed to them or satisfied with them. He’s interested in Todos Santos, but he almost certainly wouldn’t live there himself. It’s probably not Pournelle’s style either; and if he’d really wanted to sell the idea, he'd have sold it harder.

So don’t expect to find your own utopia here. Just a passable story and a few things to think about.

The title, incidentally, seems to be an allusion to the fact that someone in the book describes Todos Santos as a feudal society; though this isn’t to be taken literally.

For myself, I could dispense with Pournelle—perhaps he writes as competently as Niven, in his own way, but his characters and the tone of his writing tend to be rather unpleasant. He has a cynical and unpopular attitude to life that he insists on forcing down people’s throats even though he knows they won’t like it; and his attitude to his opponents is one of contempt.

I don’t think I’ve reread the book since 1988. This review was drafted in 1987, and edited a little in 2024.

January 2, 2024

Wow, I sure seem to be writing a lot of 3-star reviews lately...

'Oath of Fealty' came to me via a recommendation claiming to be a list of the top 80's books that will be remembered. The idea of a society of people living in a largely economically and socially isolated environment isn't new, but the way it was spun out in this book, with its proximity to a large metropolitan city like LA is. And it's this proximity that creates the actual plot, since there's tensions between the two societies.

I found the tensions to be somewhat implausible, frankly. While the logic about how the arcology might siphon off some of the good things from LA might look reasonable on paper, I can't see the average person honestly caring that much, and certainly not enough to spawn terrorist activities. I know, I know, fanatics get spun up about the littlest things every day. Point taken. Still, it seemed like a weak plot point on which to base a book.

The characters weren't particularly interesting, nor well developed. There was no arc for any of them...they remained exactly who they were at the end of the story. It seemed like the point of the book was to make you ask philosophical questions, and if that was the case, I suppose it succeeds.

Other reviewers have mentioned their unhappiness with the way racial and gender issues were described, and as usual, I find that a pointless exercise when reading a book from 40 years ago. Truth be told, it's only been in the past decade (since social media really took off) that any of that has really been any different, so acting like people in 1980 were social savages is kinda silly. All those attitudes are still here, we're just all supposed to pretend like they're gone.

Ultimately, I read for enjoyment and escape, and neither of those were achieved with 'Oaths of Fealty'. I got through it, but it was like dry white toast.

February 8, 2022

A really interesting critique of corporate feudalism let down by a long, slow and unfocused third act.

I've noticed that a couple of reviewers on Goodreads managed to horribly misread this interesting SF parable as a right-wing novel, which it is not, in any way. Perhaps what confused them is that the tale it is told almost entirely from the POV of the antagonists - mainly the executive inhabitants of a giant corporate arcology which has come to dominate the Los Angeles skyline. Truth be told, this novel takes a pretty sharp look at their objectivist ideology, but without ever being didactic or simplistic, which is refreshing in the current political climate.

Designed by Tony Rand (geddit! ANNtony RAND), this giant, gated, surveillance-state community is both an asset and an affront to the impoverished city that surrounds it, attracting the unwelcome attention of jealous criminals and well intentioned radical protestors. The antagonists aren't thoughtless thought, many are fully aware that their tiny community only succeeds (and exists) by draining people and money from the city around it. And they wrestle with that fact, along with their own personal dilemmas and ambitions. The inciting event comes when a bunch of radical teens are gassed to death by the arcology's security team, while staging a mock terrorist attack, and one of them turns out to be the son of the local governor. So far so great, but then for some reason, having set up this brilliant, nuanced and interesting scenario, the plot just goes off the rails, and becomes an unreadable mix of implausible decisions and uninteresting personal stories. A huge shame, because in the first half I thought this was probably the second best Niven I'd read after Dream Park.

Read

December 26, 2022

Fast-paced near-future science fiction based on outdated tech

I loved this book when I read it in the mid-1980s, and again in the 1990s. The story was supposed to be set in the "near future". 40+ years after its publication: I’m not sure I’m going to be able to read it again.

Too much of the book hangs on technology that is SO many generations in the past. Examples: No wireless anything, no personal computers or internet, primitive security systems, no remote work or education (that I’ve found so far). One type of remotely controlling machinery is treated as brand new/novel. Granted, we don't have off-shore icebergs, and I haven't read much about brain implants to query & control mega-computers. But every time I run into a way-old tech underpinning, I’m distracted from the story. I had the same problem trying to watch old MacGyver episodes.

The book may not be a total waste. The story is well-written, and fast paced, like most of the books by this pair. The sociological & economic aspects of fitting an archology into a large city are still interesting. I think the legal issues might keep me reading. Lethal force used by a security force to protect critical infrastructure for thousands of people…how would that be received today? I don’t remember how or if public health systems affect the story. I’m not sure the racial sub-story would play out the same way today; that’s thought provoking.

I think this story would have held up better were it set further in the future with advances in communication, computers and work that showed up in other Niven & Pournelle novels.

June 23, 2024

The LA portrayed in this book is a dream compared the reality of LA in 2024. Not that the authors deserve any special credit for predicating what will happen to a city when you stop punishing criminals and tax your productive citizens to the edge of poverty.

Not that Todos Santos is some kind of libertarian utopia, if you think that then you weren't paying attention. The issue of residents having zero privacy in this corporate police state comes up in every chapter. And the hero of the story chief engineer Tony Rand makes frequent complaints about his employment contract being a form of slavery.

Although I would point out that the real hero of the story was the journalist Lunan. He figured out a way to thrive in the corrupt and degenerate environment of a socialist run city without compromising his principles. And at the end of the book when he is asked if he wants to live in Todos Santos he responds with a prompt "lol no".

Because the point of the book is not that everyone should aim to be like the executives of Todos Santos (that's the kind of shit Ayn Rand would write). The point of the book is that you need to live your own principles and leave other people alone. Don't attack people just because they are successful. Don't attack people just because they want to live differently. If you can put your envy and bigotry aside you might actually learn something, as the Canadian delegate did.

And whatever you think Rand meant by "throw them out the airlock", it does illustrate how the most minor and reasonable action of removing somebody from your property is a death sentence in another context like space.

March 25, 2023

There are some interesting ideas in this book. The story centers around an arcology near Los Angeles, which appears to be a kind of trial run for the internal logistics for a star ship (possibly a generation ship). The main plot deals with intrigue surrounding some activists who want to destroy the arcology and a legal drama stemming from that conflict, though I think the more interesting story is about how life in such an environment might affect human society and psychology. In that sense, the book is a kind of thought experiment in social science fiction. There is a phrase often repeated through the book, “think of it as evolution in action,” which at first is a callous comment about a person’s death, but later seems to take on another broader meaning about societal change.

On the down side, the plot does drag somewhat in the middle before picking up in the later chapters. Many of the characters feel flat, which is a common weakness I often find in Niven’s books. One of the more interesting characters, Preston, plays a central role in the plot, but unfortunately disappears from the narrative for a long stretch in the middle. I wish his actions and perspective had been explored in more depth.

Still, overall I enjoyed the book. As a side note, there is a brief reference to a character from “Star Wars Eight” named “Rip Mendez” who makes sarcastic comments about physics to Han Solo. I wish that character had actually been written into Star Wars.

August 7, 2023

There are some interesting ideas in this book. The story centers around an arcology near Los Angeles, which appears to be a kind of trial run for the internal logistics for a star ship (possibly a generation ship). The main plot deals with intrigue surrounding some activists who want to destroy the arcology and a legal drama stemming from that conflict, though I think the more interesting story is about how life in such an environment might affect human society and psychology. In that sense, the book is a kind of thought experiment in social science fiction. There is a phrase often repeated through the book, “think of it as evolution in action,” which at first is a callous comment about a person’s death, but later seems to take on another broader meaning about societal change.

On the down side, the plot does drag somewhat in the middle before picking up in the later chapters. Many of the characters feel flat, which is a common weakness I often find in Niven’s books. One of the more interesting characters, Preston, plays a central role in the plot, but unfortunately disappears from the narrative for a long stretch in the middle. I wish his actions and perspective had been explored in more depth.

Still, overall I enjoyed the book. As a side note, there is a brief reference to a character from “Star Wars Eight” named “Rip Mendez” who makes sarcastic comments about physics to Han Solo. I wish that character had actually been written into Star Wars.

January 5, 2022

My first impression of this book was that it was outdated science fiction that hasn’t held up well. And yet there is something powerful and thought-provoking in the plot.

Todos Santos is a vast protected community built by a huge corporation. Its goal is to protect those who live inside. In return, those who live inside must give up certain personal liberties and agree to be constantly surveilled. But the clean luxury of Todos Santos is so superior to the gritty crime-ridden horror of Los Angeles where Todos Santos exists that there is no dearth of people willing to toss aside their personal liberties to live there.

But the corporation that runs it is not without its enemies, and as secure as it is, the vast housing complex comes under attack by those on the outside who can’t qualify to live there. It’s an interesting look at the conflict between the haves and have-nots. There seems to be a serious Libertarian tone to this. We have similar things in our world today with the gentrifying of neighborhoods and the creation of gated communities. Full disclosure, I rent in one of those and offer neither apology nor regret for having made that decision several years ago. While much of this book is outdated, much of it is prescient in its portrayal of conflicts like those we see in our society today.

January 9, 2023

This book rides on the back of its cool central set piece, but is dragged down by a slow plot and terrible politics. The good stuff is mostly the worldbuilding about the Arcology the book is set in, Todos Santos. It's a gargantuan, mostly self-contained city state parked right in the middle of Los Angeles. Most of the characters are the top brass running it.

But oh, lord, the politics. The ecologist group that serves as the central antagonist, the FROMATES (Friends of Man and the Earth) are deplorable, misled thugs and idiots who are depicted as close to pure evil as you're going to get in a book written for adults. The big baddie of the whole book is a conniving sociology professor, for Christ's sake. Without spoiling anything, one of the recurring phrases in the book is "Think of it as Evolution in Action," as in those with opposing viewpoints to the authors aren't just wrong, they're safely ignored or overpowered and left behind by their superiors. The FROMATES' ideology isn't even elaborated in depth. They're pure strawmen.

The book is also dated in amusing ways, being written 40+ years ago. Some of the characters have brain/computer interfaces, but there are no smartphones or portable computers. Also, 24 Megabytes was treated like an astronomical amount of data. Quaint.

October 4, 2020

Oath of Fealty is a story focused on the theme of separated societies and the imbalance of resource, government and corporate corruption, and the price of surveillance and safety. There are many things this book gets right.. it gets you to thinking of how it can relate to the world we live in today (bravo 1981 material!) and the conundrums we all face as a society in the wake of civil unrest and loss of trust in others (Angelinos vs. Saints, City of Los Angeles vs. Todos Santos).

That being said, the writing does feel a bit dry and as the book concludes I felt there wasn't any particular resolution to the story. A lot of civil aspects were briefly touched upon that I wish were extrapolated more, particularly with the differing cultures of LA and TS. As this writing is the combined work of two authors, perhaps there were some aspects of the story they disagreed on that they ultimately left out?

However, all in all, I found this book to be a decent read but just don't be expecting an in-depth analysis of culture and character but more of government-company distrust and difference.

December 7, 2020

It seems inevitable now that 'exit' from our broken society will have to come in the form of localised succession. My suspicion is that we'll get there through the Guardianista elite increasingly making a subset of the cities designed for their lifestyles, while forcing others out... they'll modify the law to their perceived benefit, and some will then begin to worry about conserving that which has been created/saved. In this book Larry Niven lays out an alternative possibility: essentially the walled town writ large. Violence in Los Angeles gets so bad that a firestorm breaks out and burns down a swath of the city, within which a walled utopia gets built. The book spells out some of the tensions between the people of the city and the utopia. Honestly, the book would have been better without the attempts to make it sci-fi. We need authors to start exploring what happens once we start succeeding, because by the gods do we need to do so, and doing it in writing first would be a good way to (a) war game, (b) get the idea into more people's heads.

July 21, 2019

I have been wanting to read this for over 2 years and finally got to it and finished it on my vacation! It was even better than I thought it would be. It didn't have the feel of a novel written in the early '80s but there were a few things that dated it. Zimbabwe being a nice place in Africa to relocate and exile yourself to. Ha Ha! There were references to people and places like Paolo Soleri and Arcosanti that are real and still around

OK, great story and characters. A lot of issues are more relevant today than maybe back then. Near perfect pacing as well. Literally couldn't put this one down. If you like Niven, this is a must. If you never read him but like Scifi based in reality like say Arthur C. Clarke, then this is a good starting point. Also, there were several references to Robert A. Heilein that Surprised and delighted me. It doesn't appear that there's a sequel which is really disapointing.

July 10, 2020

So, I recently re-read this novel, after first reading everything Niven wrote back in junior high and high school. Compared to some of his more time-contextual fiction, this novel aged reasonably well. It helps to remember that it was a product of its time, with concepts like arcologies, earthships, and commercialized intentional communities very much at the forefront of public thought. It is a strange mix of a classic who-done-it story with a somewhat despondent vision of the corporate-dominated future. Very much a classic in its field, and influential in a large number of games (namely Shadowrun). Not his best, but far from his worst, and quite good background reading for those interested in early cyberpunk; many of the themes alluded to in this book make it into the writings of Gibson and Stephenson.