I first read Coyote Horizon, then Coyote, then Coyote Frontier, now I'm working on Coyote Rising. Totally the wrong order but who cares!I confess. I'm a science fiction/space exploration/interstellar travel nerd.
Everyone seems to equate Steele with Robert Heinlein, author of the Dune series. Sorry, but I haven't read those, but I did see part of the movie which appeared rather lame, but that's probably got nothing to do with the books.
One intriguing story from Coyote is about the guy who woke up from bio-stasis (suspended animation sleep-state) about 215 years earlier than the rest of the crew on the starship. He lived the next 32 years alone on the starship Alabama, trying not to go crazy. After going through almost all of the smuggled booze on board, and consuming about 20% of the food stores, he finally had an accident and fell down a passageway ladder. A bot picked up his body and jettisoned it through the air lock. When the remaining crew woke up years later they had to piece together what happened.
Turns out that what saved the man's sanity was the arts. He decided to start writing a book. Eventually he moved from writing to drawing and painting. In the end, he had covered the ship's interior with colourful illustrations and murals about his story. The thing I like about this is that the arts gave him a means of occupying his mind, and expressing himself, at a level other than human conversation. Art kept him sane like nothing else could.
With no one to talk to, what can a man's mind do? Arts fills the black hole of a man's mind, at least partly.
