Bander Snatch by Kevin O'Donnell, Jr.

[james_davis_nicoll]

Bander Snatch by Kevin O'Donnell, Jr.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

The idea that people from the periphery of civilization may have skills the civilized lack is

a big part of character generation in 2300 CE.

[estrevan]

There’s an interesting tension between the old SF tropes of “hardy neo-barbarians on the periphery preserving the old skills” and “new technologies developed in secret on the periphery away from Those Darn Bureaucrats”, which you could see as an attempt to reinvent white flight and gated communities as the myth of the frontier.

There’s probably an argument about the role of John W Campbell-style mutants - the superintelligent and/or psychic kind - in reconciling the contradictions too.

[jreynolds197]

I read KO'D's second novel Mayflies, and it put me off of him for good.

Harry Turtledove mentioned on twitter that KO'D was a good person, but smoked himself into an early grave.

[james_davis_nicoll]

Mayflies is hands down KO'D's worst novel. Just terrible.

[voidampersand]

When I started going to cons, I spent a huge number of hours hanging out with Kevin in the bar. He was very friendly and easy-going. I have come to realize that politically he was more conservative than me, but somehow that never came up in our many conversations.

The SFWA volunteer recognition award is named after him. I would prefer to be in the timeline where they couldn't do that because he is still alive.

[cyphomandra]

I really liked Kevin O’Donnell’s McGill Feighan series (which I wish he’d been able to finish) and ORA:CLE, but never read any others - I did track down a copy of Mayflies but couldn’t get into it.