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james_davis_nicollList courtesy of Andrew Wheeler.
Contents from Contento.
* * *
snip dead links
* * *
April DOWNBELOW STATION by C.J. Cherryh
This is a large (by the standards of 1981) novel about politics and warfare in Cherryh's Union/Alliance universe, mostly set in the space station orbiting Pell (I think), the life-bearing world orbiting Tau Ceti. It won the HUGO but I found it a real slog when I first read it, perhaps due to the relative lack of sympathetic characters and some clumsy info-dumping near the beginning. The aliens are not very, either, and I could never figure out how they made money off the star stations before FTL was developed.
[The more detail provided about Union, the less sense it makes. It has a total population maybe equal to New Zealand, scattered across many systems in communities the size of towns for the most part but somehow it's a superpower equal to Old Earth, with billions of people in a developed economy in a biosphere that won't kill them]
The Last Defender of Camelot Roger Zelazny (Pocket 0-671-41773-8, Dec
'80, $2.50, 308pp, pb)
+ 1 o Introduction o in
+ 4 o Passion Play o vi Amazing Aug '62
+ 9 o Horseman! o vi Fantastic Aug '62
+ 12 o The Stainless Steel Leech [as by Harrison Denmark] o ss
Amazing Apr '63
+ 17 o A Thing of Terrible Beauty [as by Harrison Denmark] o ss
Fantastic Apr '63
+ 22 o He Who Shapes o na Amazing Jan '65 (+1); ; expanded to
The Dream Master., New York: Ace, 1966
+ 113 o Comes Now the Power o ss Magazine of Horror Win '66
+ 119 o Auto-da-Fé o ss Dangerous Visions, ed. Harlan Ellison,
Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1967
+ 125 o Damnation Alley o na Galaxy Oct '67
+ 209 o For a Breath I Tarry o nv New Worlds Mar '66
+ 245 o The Engine at Heartspring's Center o ss Analog Jul '74
+ 254 o The Game of Blood and Dust o ss Galaxy Apr '75
+ 258 o No Award o ss The Saturday Evening Post Jan '77
+ 267 o Is There a Demon Lover in the House? o ss Heavy Metal
Sep '77
+ 271 o The Last Defender of Camelot o nv Asimov's SF Adventure
Magazine Sum '79
+ 294 o Stand Pat, Ruby Stone o ss Destinies Nov '78
+ 303 o Halfjack o ss Omni Jun '79
I remember this as one of the few Zelazny works I was enthusiastic about, which makes me wonder why I can only remember one story of these, the title story, a modern Arthurian story.
[Seriously, I cannot remember Zelazny for the life of me and I have a decent memory for narrative]
DI FATE'S CATALOG OF SCIENCE FICTION HARDWARE by Vincent Di Fate and
Ian Summers (Alternate)
Presumably an art book by one of the worst artists to get regular work in SF.
May
The Arbor House Treasury of Great Science Fiction Short Novels ed.
Robert Silverberg & Martin H. Greenberg (Arbor House, 1980,
753pp, hc)
+ o Introduction o Robert Silverberg & Martin H. Greenberg o in
+ 1 o Beyond Bedlam o Wyman Guin o na Galaxy Aug '51
+ 51 o Equinoctial o John Varley o na Ascents of Wonder, ed.
David Gerrold, Popular Library, 1977
+ 95 o By His Bootstraps [as by Anson MacDonald] o Robert A.
Heinlein o na Astounding Oct '41
+ 144 o The Golden Helix o Theodore Sturgeon o na Thrilling
Wonder Stories Sum '54
+ 194 o Born With the Dead o Robert Silverberg o na F&SF Apr
'74
+ 256 o Second Game o Charles V. De Vet & Katherine MacLean o
nv Astounding Mar '58
+ 295 o The Dead Past o Isaac Asimov o nv Astounding Apr '56
+ 338 o The Road to the Sea ["Seeker of the Sphinx"] o Arthur
C. Clarke o nv Two Complete Science-Adventure Books Spr '51
+ 382 o The Star Pit o Samuel R. Delany o na Worlds of Tomorrow
Feb '67
+ 438 o Giant Killer o A. Bertram Chandler o nv Astounding Oct
'45
+ 482 o A Case of Conscience o James Blish o na If Sep '53
+ 537 o Dio o Damon Knight o nv Infinity Science Fiction Sep
'57
+ 570 o Houston, Houston, Do You Read? o James Tiptree, Jr. o
na Aurora: Beyond Equality, ed. Vonda McIntyre & Susan
Anderson, Fawcett, 1976
+ 620 o On the Storm Planet o Cordwainer Smith o na Galaxy Feb
'65
+ 691 o The Miracle-Workers o Jack Vance o na Astounding Jul
'58
Of these the only one I am sure is previously unmentioned that I recall is the Tiptree, which lands a group of unsympathetic male astronauts in a future with no men and no great need for them. It has a happy ending of sorts.
AFTER DARK by Manly Wade Wellman
No idea.
Spring TO THE STARS (3-in-1 of HOMEWORLD, WHEELWORLD and STARWORLD) by Harry
Harrison
Remember the food-riots of the 1990s and the way oil ran out soon after? Well, in this series because of events like that an unsympathetic cabal has taken over Earth and later its interstellar colonies. One fellow gets on the wrong side of the government and spends the series overthrowing it, as I recall. This is pretty dire stuff, standard Harrison.
As I recall, he and Dickson also used a similar justification for the return to aristocracy in The Lifeboat.
[Wouldn't that sort of crisis kind of preclude interstellar empires? Notice if the Starchild Trilogy comes up I am not nearly so hard on it and The Plan of Man was using pretty much the same reason to conquer the accessible universe]
THE WORLD AND THORINN by Damon Knight
I missed this.
BEYOND REJECTION by Justin Leiber (Alternate)
One of the few novels written by the son of Fritz Leiber. If memory serves this is about a fellow who wakes up to discover he is in a female body and how he deals with it. Not horrifically awful but also not very good.
June DREAM PARK by Larry Niven and Steven Barnes
The roleplaying games that were around in 1981 involved paper and dice and anyone with ten bucks could afford to play. This hi-tech version requires expensive equipment and so is only open to the rich and the very talented. Eh. There's a murder mystery which is solved in a manner that should have all those rich people suing Dream Park into non-existence.
TOO LONG A SACRIFICE by Mildred Downey Broxon
Something about Ireland and the modern day violence there. When *will* Celt-on-Celt violence end? Excuse me while I go pummel a Belgae.
[I am in no way an extremist but I would not be terribly averse to an automatic death penalty for North American authors writing fiction set in Ireland]
KINGDOM OF SUMMER by Gilliam Bradshaw (Alternate)
I never read this.
UNACCOMPANIED SONATA AND OTHER STORIES by Orson Scott Card
+ o Tin Men o pm The Anthology of Speculative Poetry Feb, ed.
Robert Frazier, 1980
+ o Introduction: An Open Letter to the Author o Ben Bova o in
+ o Ender's Game o na Analog Aug '77
+ o Kingsmeat o ss Analog Yearbook, ed. Ben Bova, Baronet, 1978
+ o Deep Breathing Exercises o ss Omni Jul '79
+ o Closing the Timelid o ss F&SF Dec '79
+ o I Put My Blue Genes On o ss Analog Aug '78
+ o Eumenides in the Fourth Floor Lavatory o nv Chrysalis 4,
ed. Roy Torgeson, Zebra, 1979
+ o Mortal Gods o ss F&SF Jan '79
+ o Quietus o ss Omni Aug '79
+ o The Monkeys Thought 'Twas All in Fun o nv Analog May '79
+ o The Porcelain Salamander o ss *
+ o Unaccompanied Sonata o ss Omni Mar '79
And I seem to have missed this as well since it is not in my
library.
[Actually, I could swear I had this. Maybe I lost it?
Ender's Game everyone knows. Kingsmeat is about a kapo who is unsympathetically treated by fellow former prisoners after their alien oppressors are overthrown. Don't recall the others, cannot be bothered to go up and look]
Contents from Contento.
* * *
snip dead links
* * *
April DOWNBELOW STATION by C.J. Cherryh
This is a large (by the standards of 1981) novel about politics and warfare in Cherryh's Union/Alliance universe, mostly set in the space station orbiting Pell (I think), the life-bearing world orbiting Tau Ceti. It won the HUGO but I found it a real slog when I first read it, perhaps due to the relative lack of sympathetic characters and some clumsy info-dumping near the beginning. The aliens are not very, either, and I could never figure out how they made money off the star stations before FTL was developed.
[The more detail provided about Union, the less sense it makes. It has a total population maybe equal to New Zealand, scattered across many systems in communities the size of towns for the most part but somehow it's a superpower equal to Old Earth, with billions of people in a developed economy in a biosphere that won't kill them]
The Last Defender of Camelot Roger Zelazny (Pocket 0-671-41773-8, Dec
'80, $2.50, 308pp, pb)
+ 1 o Introduction o in
+ 4 o Passion Play o vi Amazing Aug '62
+ 9 o Horseman! o vi Fantastic Aug '62
+ 12 o The Stainless Steel Leech [as by Harrison Denmark] o ss
Amazing Apr '63
+ 17 o A Thing of Terrible Beauty [as by Harrison Denmark] o ss
Fantastic Apr '63
+ 22 o He Who Shapes o na Amazing Jan '65 (+1); ; expanded to
The Dream Master., New York: Ace, 1966
+ 113 o Comes Now the Power o ss Magazine of Horror Win '66
+ 119 o Auto-da-Fé o ss Dangerous Visions, ed. Harlan Ellison,
Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1967
+ 125 o Damnation Alley o na Galaxy Oct '67
+ 209 o For a Breath I Tarry o nv New Worlds Mar '66
+ 245 o The Engine at Heartspring's Center o ss Analog Jul '74
+ 254 o The Game of Blood and Dust o ss Galaxy Apr '75
+ 258 o No Award o ss The Saturday Evening Post Jan '77
+ 267 o Is There a Demon Lover in the House? o ss Heavy Metal
Sep '77
+ 271 o The Last Defender of Camelot o nv Asimov's SF Adventure
Magazine Sum '79
+ 294 o Stand Pat, Ruby Stone o ss Destinies Nov '78
+ 303 o Halfjack o ss Omni Jun '79
I remember this as one of the few Zelazny works I was enthusiastic about, which makes me wonder why I can only remember one story of these, the title story, a modern Arthurian story.
[Seriously, I cannot remember Zelazny for the life of me and I have a decent memory for narrative]
DI FATE'S CATALOG OF SCIENCE FICTION HARDWARE by Vincent Di Fate and
Ian Summers (Alternate)
Presumably an art book by one of the worst artists to get regular work in SF.
May
The Arbor House Treasury of Great Science Fiction Short Novels ed.
Robert Silverberg & Martin H. Greenberg (Arbor House, 1980,
753pp, hc)
+ o Introduction o Robert Silverberg & Martin H. Greenberg o in
+ 1 o Beyond Bedlam o Wyman Guin o na Galaxy Aug '51
+ 51 o Equinoctial o John Varley o na Ascents of Wonder, ed.
David Gerrold, Popular Library, 1977
+ 95 o By His Bootstraps [as by Anson MacDonald] o Robert A.
Heinlein o na Astounding Oct '41
+ 144 o The Golden Helix o Theodore Sturgeon o na Thrilling
Wonder Stories Sum '54
+ 194 o Born With the Dead o Robert Silverberg o na F&SF Apr
'74
+ 256 o Second Game o Charles V. De Vet & Katherine MacLean o
nv Astounding Mar '58
+ 295 o The Dead Past o Isaac Asimov o nv Astounding Apr '56
+ 338 o The Road to the Sea ["Seeker of the Sphinx"] o Arthur
C. Clarke o nv Two Complete Science-Adventure Books Spr '51
+ 382 o The Star Pit o Samuel R. Delany o na Worlds of Tomorrow
Feb '67
+ 438 o Giant Killer o A. Bertram Chandler o nv Astounding Oct
'45
+ 482 o A Case of Conscience o James Blish o na If Sep '53
+ 537 o Dio o Damon Knight o nv Infinity Science Fiction Sep
'57
+ 570 o Houston, Houston, Do You Read? o James Tiptree, Jr. o
na Aurora: Beyond Equality, ed. Vonda McIntyre & Susan
Anderson, Fawcett, 1976
+ 620 o On the Storm Planet o Cordwainer Smith o na Galaxy Feb
'65
+ 691 o The Miracle-Workers o Jack Vance o na Astounding Jul
'58
Of these the only one I am sure is previously unmentioned that I recall is the Tiptree, which lands a group of unsympathetic male astronauts in a future with no men and no great need for them. It has a happy ending of sorts.
AFTER DARK by Manly Wade Wellman
No idea.
Spring TO THE STARS (3-in-1 of HOMEWORLD, WHEELWORLD and STARWORLD) by Harry
Harrison
Remember the food-riots of the 1990s and the way oil ran out soon after? Well, in this series because of events like that an unsympathetic cabal has taken over Earth and later its interstellar colonies. One fellow gets on the wrong side of the government and spends the series overthrowing it, as I recall. This is pretty dire stuff, standard Harrison.
As I recall, he and Dickson also used a similar justification for the return to aristocracy in The Lifeboat.
[Wouldn't that sort of crisis kind of preclude interstellar empires? Notice if the Starchild Trilogy comes up I am not nearly so hard on it and The Plan of Man was using pretty much the same reason to conquer the accessible universe]
THE WORLD AND THORINN by Damon Knight
I missed this.
BEYOND REJECTION by Justin Leiber (Alternate)
One of the few novels written by the son of Fritz Leiber. If memory serves this is about a fellow who wakes up to discover he is in a female body and how he deals with it. Not horrifically awful but also not very good.
June DREAM PARK by Larry Niven and Steven Barnes
The roleplaying games that were around in 1981 involved paper and dice and anyone with ten bucks could afford to play. This hi-tech version requires expensive equipment and so is only open to the rich and the very talented. Eh. There's a murder mystery which is solved in a manner that should have all those rich people suing Dream Park into non-existence.
TOO LONG A SACRIFICE by Mildred Downey Broxon
Something about Ireland and the modern day violence there. When *will* Celt-on-Celt violence end? Excuse me while I go pummel a Belgae.
[I am in no way an extremist but I would not be terribly averse to an automatic death penalty for North American authors writing fiction set in Ireland]
KINGDOM OF SUMMER by Gilliam Bradshaw (Alternate)
I never read this.
UNACCOMPANIED SONATA AND OTHER STORIES by Orson Scott Card
+ o Tin Men o pm The Anthology of Speculative Poetry Feb, ed.
Robert Frazier, 1980
+ o Introduction: An Open Letter to the Author o Ben Bova o in
+ o Ender's Game o na Analog Aug '77
+ o Kingsmeat o ss Analog Yearbook, ed. Ben Bova, Baronet, 1978
+ o Deep Breathing Exercises o ss Omni Jul '79
+ o Closing the Timelid o ss F&SF Dec '79
+ o I Put My Blue Genes On o ss Analog Aug '78
+ o Eumenides in the Fourth Floor Lavatory o nv Chrysalis 4,
ed. Roy Torgeson, Zebra, 1979
+ o Mortal Gods o ss F&SF Jan '79
+ o Quietus o ss Omni Aug '79
+ o The Monkeys Thought 'Twas All in Fun o nv Analog May '79
+ o The Porcelain Salamander o ss *
+ o Unaccompanied Sonata o ss Omni Mar '79
And I seem to have missed this as well since it is not in my
library.
[Actually, I could swear I had this. Maybe I lost it?
Ender's Game everyone knows. Kingsmeat is about a kapo who is unsympathetically treated by fellow former prisoners after their alien oppressors are overthrown. Don't recall the others, cannot be bothered to go up and look]
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no subject
Date: 2013-08-06 05:19 am (UTC)I remember the core AD&D books from that era totaling $35 or so--about what they cost used now, actually. You could technically play with just the $10 PHB, but most everybody wanted the DMG and Monster Manual as well. Boxed game sets (Gamma World, Traveller, etc.) seemed to run around $15-$20, too.