In Second Chance, David D. Levine uses a story about the first slower-than-light trip to Tau Ceti to explore religious, racial, and gender issues. Chaz, the first-person narrator, began the trip as an aging cloned body. Evidently, his old body died along the way, but his new body does not have his complete package of memories. He has become an egotistical, homophobic idiot in a gender-diverse village.
He is isolated from his crewmates, almost shunned. And he deserves to be. He is one of the most unlikable narrators I have encountered since Dostoyevsky’s Underground Man. His crewmates are no prizes, either. Such unpleasantness has cost Levine the good opinion of many readers, but they miss the point. Levine wants us to ask ourselves if flawed, unheroic people can face an existential crisis and act together to save us all. ( )

Set in a maybe (?) not very distant future (it is never clear), this novella tells the story of the crew of a mission to a distant star, the first mission to another star in human History.

The narrator is the last of the crew members who awakes at the end of the journey and he fills the story with his moral and religious points of view. Suffice to say that I didn't sympathize with him very much and I wondered all the time how such a bigot could have been chosen for a mission like that. Yeah, we all need second chances but not when so much money and effort is put in sending something/someone to space.

I don't think I would have finished if it had been longer. My main drive to keep reading was discovering if this character was like this for some reason other than to expose this views or if it was meant as an interesting character that evolved. Well, the character evolved but was not very interesting in the end. ( )

Novella length story about interstellar exploration that I enjoyed reading all in one evening (kept me up way too late). Most of the story is about the interaction between the characters based on their various incarnations. It did raise a few interesting questions that could come out of this type of arrangements. ( )

David Levine attempts to turn a story about mankind's first voyage to the stars into a moral parable about forgiveness, personal growth, and, of course, second chances. It is, ultimately, weakened by a complete lack of meaningful characterization and some dubious plot decisions. Spoilers ahead.

The main thing that bugs me about this short story is the complete lack of characterization. I can describe all non-POV characters with two words, and the POV character barely scrapes three ("black, religious, conservative").

Among other major issues, Neru's motivation for "viving" Chaz was lame and really very weird for a story set in some prospective future. She really needed another black face, even if it happened to be the face of a bigot who in another incarnation had earned a death sentence from the rest of the crew? I wouldn't think well of that kind of logic in anyone, especially someone selected through such a rigorous process to be the leader of such a prestigious expedition.

I also think Levine really wimped out on the forgiveness of Chaz. While it made for some interesting reading, themes of forgiveness and second chances are really much more compelling when the character actually transgressed, remembers having transgressed, and can reasonably learn from his transgression. Instead Chaz is just guilty enough to be persecuted for it, and just innocent enough to have no idea why, even though he is still a religiously-motivated bigot.

I didn't hate the whole thing, however; I thought the treatment of the science involved was more realistic and well-considered than in most science fiction literature, and I enjoyed the overarching plotline involving the loss of communication with Earth. That was nicely played, but does not ultimately make up for the utter lack of effective and believable characterization or coherent thematic construction. ( )

Disclaimer: I received this book from LibraryThing's Early Reviewer program in exchange for a fair and honest review.

Second Chance by David D. Levine started off strong but in the end left me wanting, the story might do better expanded from novella to novel and the plot more fully developed. ( )