Psychohistorical Crisis by Donald Kingsbury

[james_davis_nicoll]

Convicted and executed for an unspeakable crime, Eron Osa must now determine what he will do with the rest of his life.

Psychohistorical Crisis by Donald Kingsbury

Comments

[kithrup]

I read this and enjoyed it, for the most part anyway. And then, shortly after that, WorldCon in San Jose, where I met Kingsbury! And he promptly kicked a friend's toddler in the head. THIS WAS NOT ON PURPOSE! He was falling asleep in a chair in a common area, and my friend and I were discussing the book, her child was playing on the ground, and his let slipped. He was utterly mortified, but we both assured him the child was fine.

Anyway, my strongest memory of Donald Kingsbury is that.

I thought I'd seen an announcement a few years ago that he'd passed.

[james_davis_nicoll]

I've seen people assert that he died but I cannot find a date for his death. SFE, Wikipedia, ISFDB all have a birth-date but not a death date. There was a discussion of his death on his FB page, which has not been shuttered despite his having not posted to it in years, but nobody is sure what month or year he died and nobody can point to an obituary.

[(Anonymous)]

Eron is Egon in several places. I heard Kingsbury speak at Chicon 2000, where I learned that he really believed the non-concensus theory about the origins of units of length

[austin_dern]

Sorry, I just noticed this. Non-consensus theory about the origins of units of length? That sounds like an intriguing story.

[patrick_morris_miller]

It at least used to be discussed on his web site, in all its 1995 web design (engineering undergraduate impenetrableness and eyesore color scheme) glory.

[(Anonymous)]

Ancients understood that pendulums period depended on length and angle, and set their units based on periods derived from the sidereal period of the Earth

[bolindbergh]

You could ask Spectrum Literary Agency if they know anything. They still claim to represent him (not his estate).

[james_davis_nicoll]

Huh. They don't appear to do email.

[patrick_morris_miller]

At one time, I entertained thoughts of posting (on the first day of the fourth month of whatever year I got around to it) a review of The Finger Pointing Solward (as well as A Method for Madness and one or two other titles I do not currently recall damn you brain). It would not have looked much like "The Cauldron", allegedly an excerpt from Kingsbury's work in progress, apparently only published in an anthology of Canadian SF which I went to the trouble of acquiring with other people's money. It was readable but not memorable.

[austin_dern]

I remember well reading this, and liking the setting, and enjoying the plot, and nothing about what was in it besides the fun of matching up references to Asimov's Trilogy and, I think, some of the Empire novels.

Have been realizing at this stage in your life life that maybe I'm just not good at reading fiction, or at least not new fiction.

[glaurung]

Re: the last footnote threatening to review the moon goddess and the son: you reviewed that in 2000, as I learned when I searched for reviews of it to jog my memory of the book, which as best I can tell, i either never read in my misspent youth, or abandoned partway through as far worse than the novella which it expanded.

[chrysostom]

Maybe James thinks that "Mists of Time" reviews don't count?

(it's here, incidentally: https://jamesdavisnicoll.com/mists-of-time/xxiii-the-moon-goddess-and-the-son-by-donald-kingsbury-1987)

[james_davis_nicoll]

Sorry for the delay. Internet was down.

Yeah, I count all the pre-JNR reviews as their own thing.

[jsburbidge]

I read this in MMPB when it came out and remember thinking that it was much, much better than all the late Asimov Foundation continuations, and more in keeping with the original trilogy.

[(Anonymous)]

And it makes the Mule's powers much more believable

[carbonel]

I have (or had; I may have destashed) an ARC of this book. I tried it a couple of times because I liked his two previous books, but I bogged down both times.

(Yes, The Moon Goddess and the Sun isn't a particularly good book, but there was something so hopeful about it that I reread it several times back when.)