It has been several years since the last time Ben
Bova chronicled the exploits of his eternal warrior, Orion. He has
returned to the character in Orion
and King Arthur, a retelling of the story of Camelot which adds a
later to the traditional tale by allowing Orion to discover the
mechanizations of the futuristic beings who are attempting to control
the path the world’s history takes.
Although most of Bova’s story follows the
traditional path, providing some insight into the “behind the
scenes” activities and motivations for Merlin, the Lady of the Lake,
and Morganna, it begins by placing both Orion and a young Arthur at
Hrothgar’s court in Beowulf before following Orion and Arthur several
years later as Arthur collects his earliest knights, including Kay, Bors,
Gawain, and Lancelot. The
action then skips several years to show the end of Arthur’s reign as
Modred seeks to overthrow his father and Orion must try to rescue Arthur
from his predetermined death. The action takes in most of the high
points of the traditional Arthur story, yet focuses more on Orion and
his view of what is happening.
In previous novels, Bova has depicted Orion as the
unwilling tool of the nearly godlike Aten, fighting against his creator
in an attempt to bring his own morality to the situations for which Aten
seeks his own resolution. Despite
Orion’s rebelliousness, Aten continues to reincarnate his creation,
although the situation is not quite that simple, as Orion finally learns
in Orion and King Arthur.
Orion is also able to use the support of his lover, Anya, who is
one of Aten’s peers but frequently opposes his goals and uses Orion in
her own ways. Through the course of the novel, Orion learns more about
his creator, Anya, and a couple of other gods who make appearances, as
his own grasp on his abilities grows beyond those originally given to
him by Aten.
One of the stranger aspects of Orion and King Arthur is
that although Orion's does not remember specifics and often comments
that his memory is wiped between each of the missions Aten sends him on,
he can remember pieces of his history, recounting to the reader, when
appropriate, his adventures in other periods, some of which are in the
past for him, such as his adventures with Alexander the Great, and
others are set chronological later than Arthur's reign. Bova never
offers a rationale for this discrepancy, however as Orion is undergoing
a change and expansion of his abilities throughout the course of the
novel, it may be a side effect. Orion's increased abilities also set the
character up for additional books in the series, indicating new life in
this character who was introduced twenty-four years ago and who has been
in abeyance for the last seventeen.
Had Bova merely written his story about Arthur and
his knights, there would have been little to distinguish it from so many
other re-tellings of the matter of Britain. The addition of Orion
and the gods with with whom he must contend offers a different look at
Arthur's struggles. Bova creates an intriguing chessboard on which
humans are the pieces, and while there appears to be an overall
predetermined destiny for mankind, Bova introduces the possibility that
through human agency, or at least through the agency of some
individuals, that predestiny can be subverted.
