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james_davis_nicollLists courtesy of Andrew Wheeler
July TITAN by John Varley
This is the first in a trilogy, although unlike modern trilogies Varley slips up and gives his story a beginning, middle and end. American astronauts on a mission to Saturn discover a large object in orbit around that world. The object is a biological habitat and the astronauts soon find themselves captured by it and transformed without their knowledge or permission. Several of the characters then explore the habitat, which is eldery and suffering from a civil war of sorts.
I liked this one. My first year English prof *hated* it. I really should reread it sometime.
[Interesting that Varley had absolutely no idea the number of known moons for Saturn was about to soar]
LEVIATHAN'S DEEP by Jayge Carr
I didn't read this.
August
The Best Science Fiction of the Year # 8 ed. Terry Carr (Ballantine,
Jul '79, pb)
+ o Introduction o Terry Carr o in
+ o The Barbie Murders o John Varley o nv IASFM Jan/Feb '78
+ o A Hiss of Dragon o Gregory Benford & Marc Laidlaw o nv Omni
Dec '78
+ o Black Glass o Fritz Leiber o nv Andromeda 3, ed. Peter
Weston, London: Futura, 1978
+ o To Bring in the Steel o Donald Kingsbury o nv Analog Jul
'78
+ o The Very Slow Time Machine o Ian Watson o nv Anticipations,
ed. Christopher Priest, Scribner's, 1978
+ o Devil You Don't Know o Dean Ing o nv Analog Jan '78
+ o Count the Clock That Tells the Time o Harlan Ellison o ss
Omni Dec '78
+ o View from a Height o Joan D. Vinge o ss Analog Jun '78
+ o The Morphology of the Kirkham Wreck o Hilbert Schenck o nv
F&SF Sep '78
+ o Vermeer's Window o Gordon Eklund o ss Universe 8, ed. Terry
Carr, Doubleday, 1978
+ o The Man Who Had No Idea o Thomas M. Disch o nv F&SF Oct '78
+ o Death Therapy o James Patrick Kelly o nv F&SF Jul '78
+ o Recommended Reading--1978 o Terry Carr o bi
+ o The Science Fiction Year o Charles N. Brown o ar
The Varley is a murder mystery set in a community where everyone looks as similar as possible to each other (and I think won Varley a nasty-gram from Mattel when his anthology of the same title was published). The Benford and Laidlaw is a story of genegeneered animals on a low mass world. The Kingsbury is one of the novellas he used to produce at about one a year. The Watson is, as the title indicates, about a very slow time machine (-1 day per day, I think). The Vinge is about the sort of person who would willingly take a one way trip to infrastellar space and the rest I forget. It seems to have been a pretty good collection, though.
[Well, "willingly" may be overstating it. Hard to believe that a human and their life support would mass less than a reliable computer]
HAN SOLO AT STARS' END by Brian Daley
Or this. Pity Daley died so young.
THE HOUR OF THE DRAGON by Robert E. Howard (Alternate)
THE PEOPLE OF THE BLACK CIRCLE by Robert E. Howard (Alternate)
RED NAILS by Robert E. Howard (Alternate)
Nor any of these, although a Howard I read recently (In the
Mammoth Book of Fantasy, maybe) was better than I was expecting.
September JEM by Frederik Pohl
This is one of my favourite Pohls. It supposes a 2020s where the world is divided into three camps (Nations with surpluses of Oil, Food and People) and where while starflight is available (to anyone who can pony up the cash) it has not made a critical difference in the state of the world. The discovery of a habitable planet with three native intelligent races provokes a space race that proves to be the 21st Century version of the Archduke Ferdinand's assassination.
MASTERS OF EVERON by Gordon R. Dickson
This I read but retained not a word. I think I have it in an Ace edition with awful interior artwork. I have no idea why SF and gaming are so accepting of work that looks like someone's kid brother did it on the cheap.
One of the worst offenders I have seen was an already fairly unsubtle Witch World book where the old woman who starts off as a mentor and ends as an enemy is generally drawn glaring malevolently at the two protagonists.
ALIEN by Alan Dean Foster (Alternate)
This is ADF's novelization of the movie of the same name. A crew of a space ship answer what they think is an SOS signal and end up, due to deliberately flawed procedure, as snacks for a monster not esp limited by conservation of mass or inhibited by foreign biochemistries.
July TITAN by John Varley
This is the first in a trilogy, although unlike modern trilogies Varley slips up and gives his story a beginning, middle and end. American astronauts on a mission to Saturn discover a large object in orbit around that world. The object is a biological habitat and the astronauts soon find themselves captured by it and transformed without their knowledge or permission. Several of the characters then explore the habitat, which is eldery and suffering from a civil war of sorts.
I liked this one. My first year English prof *hated* it. I really should reread it sometime.
[Interesting that Varley had absolutely no idea the number of known moons for Saturn was about to soar]
LEVIATHAN'S DEEP by Jayge Carr
I didn't read this.
August
The Best Science Fiction of the Year # 8 ed. Terry Carr (Ballantine,
Jul '79, pb)
+ o Introduction o Terry Carr o in
+ o The Barbie Murders o John Varley o nv IASFM Jan/Feb '78
+ o A Hiss of Dragon o Gregory Benford & Marc Laidlaw o nv Omni
Dec '78
+ o Black Glass o Fritz Leiber o nv Andromeda 3, ed. Peter
Weston, London: Futura, 1978
+ o To Bring in the Steel o Donald Kingsbury o nv Analog Jul
'78
+ o The Very Slow Time Machine o Ian Watson o nv Anticipations,
ed. Christopher Priest, Scribner's, 1978
+ o Devil You Don't Know o Dean Ing o nv Analog Jan '78
+ o Count the Clock That Tells the Time o Harlan Ellison o ss
Omni Dec '78
+ o View from a Height o Joan D. Vinge o ss Analog Jun '78
+ o The Morphology of the Kirkham Wreck o Hilbert Schenck o nv
F&SF Sep '78
+ o Vermeer's Window o Gordon Eklund o ss Universe 8, ed. Terry
Carr, Doubleday, 1978
+ o The Man Who Had No Idea o Thomas M. Disch o nv F&SF Oct '78
+ o Death Therapy o James Patrick Kelly o nv F&SF Jul '78
+ o Recommended Reading--1978 o Terry Carr o bi
+ o The Science Fiction Year o Charles N. Brown o ar
The Varley is a murder mystery set in a community where everyone looks as similar as possible to each other (and I think won Varley a nasty-gram from Mattel when his anthology of the same title was published). The Benford and Laidlaw is a story of genegeneered animals on a low mass world. The Kingsbury is one of the novellas he used to produce at about one a year. The Watson is, as the title indicates, about a very slow time machine (-1 day per day, I think). The Vinge is about the sort of person who would willingly take a one way trip to infrastellar space and the rest I forget. It seems to have been a pretty good collection, though.
[Well, "willingly" may be overstating it. Hard to believe that a human and their life support would mass less than a reliable computer]
HAN SOLO AT STARS' END by Brian Daley
Or this. Pity Daley died so young.
THE HOUR OF THE DRAGON by Robert E. Howard (Alternate)
THE PEOPLE OF THE BLACK CIRCLE by Robert E. Howard (Alternate)
RED NAILS by Robert E. Howard (Alternate)
Nor any of these, although a Howard I read recently (In the
Mammoth Book of Fantasy, maybe) was better than I was expecting.
September JEM by Frederik Pohl
This is one of my favourite Pohls. It supposes a 2020s where the world is divided into three camps (Nations with surpluses of Oil, Food and People) and where while starflight is available (to anyone who can pony up the cash) it has not made a critical difference in the state of the world. The discovery of a habitable planet with three native intelligent races provokes a space race that proves to be the 21st Century version of the Archduke Ferdinand's assassination.
MASTERS OF EVERON by Gordon R. Dickson
This I read but retained not a word. I think I have it in an Ace edition with awful interior artwork. I have no idea why SF and gaming are so accepting of work that looks like someone's kid brother did it on the cheap.
One of the worst offenders I have seen was an already fairly unsubtle Witch World book where the old woman who starts off as a mentor and ends as an enemy is generally drawn glaring malevolently at the two protagonists.
ALIEN by Alan Dean Foster (Alternate)
This is ADF's novelization of the movie of the same name. A crew of a space ship answer what they think is an SOS signal and end up, due to deliberately flawed procedure, as snacks for a monster not esp limited by conservation of mass or inhibited by foreign biochemistries.
