When a Crime Writer Turns to SciFi: Saturn Run

Saturn Run - John Sandford and Ctein

Spotting it was a happy accident, on the order of the discovery of penicillin – maybe even better. The deck of photographs of Saturn, taken at half-hour intervals by a telescope in Earth orbit, shouldn’t have shown anything interesting – but they did! A gigantic ship had entered our Solar System from interstellar space, decelerating to a halt in the sixth planet’s ring system. And although the ship soon departed without ever bothering to visit Earth, that planet’s two major powers immediately started a race to get to the tiny moonlet the ship had visited and collect the “alien tech” that surely must be there. 

The Chinese repurposed a Mars colony ship they’d been building while the Americans looked around and decided their only option was to de-orbit their space station, tack on some monster thrusters, and head out on a round trip several billion miles in length. Whoever got there first, was the assumption, would control technology at least a century ahead of anything we already had.

And so the race was on: it was a lot like the 1979 outlaw cross-country race immortalized in “Cannonball Run,” except this time the contestants found themselves on a Saturn Run. 

Long-time crime writer John Sandford (author of twenty-seven [insert adjective] Prey novels and eight starring Virgil Flowers) teamed up with a prolific photographer and speculative fiction type known simply as Ctein to write Saturn Run.  SciFi fans may be taken aback somewhat to learn that what starts out as one more run-of-the-mill “first contact” novel in the style of Childhood’s End or V is suddenly stopped in its tracks by the departure of the unknown aliens. As a result, the novel ultimately becomes a more realistic – though perhaps less thrilling – novel of human conflict overlain by a thick veneer of technology.


Some aspects of Saturn Run bear a striking resemblance to Seven Eves, the space opera published five months before it by Neal Stephenson. On the techie side, both feature heavy doses of orbital mechanics and both strive to avoid relying on the so-called “wantum mechanics” that prominently features in fiction like Star Trek (“We can disrupt the graviton wave if we reconfigure the diffuser disk to transmit tachyon bursts…”). Apparently, a backlash against minor scientific booboos in recent big-screen epics has made writers sensitive to science fact (too bad freelancers aren’t so inclined). What’s either very interesting or a little eerie is both novels’ use of the space station as an impromptu space ship. Weird…

Perhaps because of the authors’ efforts to stay scientifically accurate (whatever happened to the willing suspension of disbelief?), the novel reminds this reader of an airline pilot’s description of his job: “Hours of boredom interrupted by moments of sheer terror.” Sandford and Ctein (we assume he’s some guy – his author photo bears a striking resemblance to Gandalf – who simply swapped the S on his surname for a C) work hard to make the long, boring journey to Saturn (seven months) more interesting by adding a little romance, the obligatory interpersonal conflict, and the expected dirty tricks. It isn’t until the last few chapters that the action ramps up, and even then it’s rather understated.

Readers expecting an interplanetary version of Lucas Davenport or Virgil Flowers will be disappointed; there’s no detecting at all (the good guys don’t even hunt for the obligatory Chinese spy on the USSS Richard M. Nixon at any point). Except that it takes place in space and there’s no way to call for backup or for some deus ex machina to put in an appearance, this could be any novel taking place just about anywhere. Despite all that, Saturn Run turns out to be relatively good – not great, just good.

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