The Science Fiction Book Club Reviews Revisited: 1981 (fourth quarter)

[james_davis_nicoll]

List courtesy of Andrew Wheeler.

Contents from Contento.

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snip dead links
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October THE MINERVAN EXPERIMENT (3-in-1 of INHERIT THE STARS, THE GENTLE
GIANTS OF GANYMEDE and GIANTS' STAR) by James P. Hogan

In the first, the corpse of a homo sapiens sapiens turns up on the Moon. What makes it interesting is that it is 50,000 years old and the novel details how this mystery is solved.

OK, bad biology (Points for realizing HSS couldn't evolve on two planets at once), bad physics (even this early, the rot was visible) and characters that would have to strain to become two-dimensional but I still liked it when I was a teen.

In the second, we meet the aliens whose activities umpty million years ago led to us and to the destruction of the 4th Planet. I don't remember much about this one.

In the third, it turns out the aliens' pet humans are not nice people and that terrestrial humanity has been on the receiving end of the pet humans' Dirty Tricks department for millennia. It's interesting to see a Hogan willing to pay lip service to rationality, but don't get used to it. By his latest fix-up, it's intelligent design and woo-woo physics all the way down.


THE COOL WAR by Frederik Pohl

I remember this as one of Pohl's best. I had intended to reread this last night but my copy is missing (I have lost to date about six copies of this book). In _The Cool War_, nations are not friends and yet they are unwilling to go toe to toe militarily, except for Israel's contamination of the Arab oil fields. Rather than open warfare, nations engage in an ongoing process of petty sabotage.

[No idea how this has aged]

CLASH OF THE TITANS by Alan Dean Foster (Alternate)

Novelization of the movie, I suppose. I never saw either version.


Fall TOMORROW'S HERITAGE by Juanita Coulson

I think this is book one of an SF Family Saga series, following one family across decades as humanity expands into the universe. Didn't work for me at the time but most family sagas don't.


SUNWAIFS by Sydney J. Van Scyoc

Never saw this.


WINDHAVEN by George R.R. Martin & Lisa Tuttle (Alternate)

This is a fix-up, I believe, about a girl of no particular family who wants to become one of the flyers who enjoy exalted status on her world. Large portions of the background (In particular how the world came to be settled) make no sense but it is still an engaging book.

November THE WORLD OF TIERS (5-in-2 of THE MAKER OF UNIVERSES, THE GATES OF
CREATION, A PRIVATE COSMOS, BEHIND THE WALLS OF TERRA and THE LAVALITE
WORLD) by Philip Jose Farmer

I read none of these.


THE SILVER METAL LOVER by Tanith Lee

Nor this, I think.

[I have no excuse for not having read more of Lee than I have]


FORERUNNER by Andre Norton (Alternate)

Nor this, although it would seem to be one of her SF novels.

[Young girl decides to have life of adventure, reconnecting with lost heritage in process]

December GOD EMPEROR OF DUNE by Frank Herbert

Unfortunately I did read this, after reading the subsequent book and coming to the (incorrect) conclusion that certain events must be explained in GEoD. Wrong! Nothing happens in GEoD except the GE falls down and it takes him what seemed like thousands of pages to do so.



Flashing Swords! #5: Demons and Daggers ed. Lin Carter (Dell
0-440-12590-1, Dec '81, $2.50, 250pp, pb)

+ ix o Where Magic Reigns o Lin Carter o in
+ 11 o Tower of Ice o Roger Zelazny o na *
+ 82 o A Thief in Korianth o C. J. Cherryh o nv *
+ 131 o Parting Gifts o Diane Duane o nv *
+ 180 o A Dealing with Demons o Craig Shaw Gardner o nv *
+ 217 o The Dry Season o Tanith Lee o nv *


I read none of these, not being a S&S fan nor even much of a fantasy fan. I do wonder what killed S&S.

[I since became a S&S fan but I still have not read this]


Shatterday Harlan Ellison (Houghton Mifflin, 1980, hc)

+ o Introduction: Mortal Dreads o in
+ o Jeffty Is Five o ss F&SF Jul '77
+ o How's the Night Life on Cissalda? o ss Chrysalis, ed. Roy
Torgeson, Zebra, 1977; Heavy Metal Nov '77
+ o Flop Sweat o ss Heavy Metal Mar '79
+ o Would You Do It For a Penny? o Harlan Ellison & Haskell
Barkin o ss Playboy Oct '67
+ o The Man Who Was Heavily into Revenge o ss Analog Aug '78
+ o Shoppe Keeper o ss The Arts and Beyond, ed. Thomas F.
Monteleone, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1977
+ o All the Lies That Are My Life o na Underwood-Miller:
Columbia, PA Oct '80
+ o Django o ss Galileo #6 '78
+ o Count the Clock That Tells the Time o ss Omni Dec '78
+ o In the Fourth Year of the War o ss Midnight Sun #5 '79
+ o Alive and Well and on a Friendless Voyage o ss F&SF Jul '77
+ o All the Birds Come Home to Roost o ss Playboy Mar '79
+ o Opium o ss Shayol #2 '78
+ o The Other Eye of Polyphemus o ss Cosmos SF&F Magazine Nov
'77
+ o The Executioner of the Malformed Children o ss Iguanacon
Program Book, 1978
+ o Shatterday o ss Gallery Sep '75; Science Fiction Monthly v2
#8 '75


"Jeffty" is justly famous. The rest I don't seem to have read and remembered.

Comments

[oh6]

"How's the Nightlife on Cissalda?" is hilarious, despite dealing with aliens from another dimension who seduce humanity into extinction.

"The Man Who Was Heavily into Revenge" is pretty much a revenge fantasy, with the entire world acting upon the target.

"Shoppe Keeper" is more or less about why someone would run one of those magic shops that show up periodically in fantasy stories.

"All the Lies That Are My Life" is pretty much a meditation on literary ego, rivalry, and jealousy. Both the principal characters are writers, one very successful, one less so.

The first paragraph of "In the Fourth Year of the War" pretty much tells the whole story, i.e. about someone being taken over by the spirit or whatever of a killer.

"Alive and Well and on a Friendless Voyage" has a series of brief stories about various people's transgressions, on what amounts to a hellbound train.

"All the Birds Come Home to Roost" has the protagonist encountering their exes in reverse order, which is a cause of some anxiety due to the anticipation of one ex their relationship with whom ended very badly.

"Opium" has an attempted suicide visited by a series of cheering hallucinations.

"The Executioner of the Malformed Children" is a pretty straightforward story of psychic child soldiers with a rather disappointing twist at the end.

"Shatterday" has the protagonist displaced by a doppelganger of some kind.

[martin-wisse.livejournal.com]

Jeffty is a vile, vile story, as I explain here.

[dsrtao]

You might enjoy PJF's World of Tiers books; they're lightweight adventure stories with many a cliffhanger and sudden shocking revelation... until near the end, when it just peters off as PJF loses interest and drops it for twenty years between volumes.

[(Anonymous)]

I read the fourth book first, which may be why I think the series remains good for the first four books. I did not like the fifth much, but on a reread (as usual) I liked it well enough.

Reading it from the start I got tired of the omnicompetent PJF character, but still enjoyed the series. Luckily there's a whole book without him.

William Hyde

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

THE COOL WAR by Frederik Pohl
[...] Rather than open warfare, nations engage in an ongoing process of petty sabotage.

[No idea how this has aged]

Haven't reread it in a long time, but its central idea is going strong. Entire think-tanks have been built upon "low-intensity warfare." I have no idea whether these people revere Pohl as a prophet.

[owlmirror36.livejournal.com]

Huh.

Looking at "petty sabotage" (as "warfare by other means") made me think of Stuxnet.

I wonder if one of those think-tanks bears some responsibility for that?

I

[(Anonymous)]

I recally enjoyed The Cool War, too. Part of it was published in IASFM just before I started reading that magazine - it was still "Topic A" in the letter column in the first issues I received.

Ellison's "Shatterday" was made into an episode of the 1980s version of "The Twilight Zone" with a young Bruce Willis as the lead.

[(Anonymous)]

With Hogan I started as I meant to go on, and never read this trilogy. It was unintentional, but fortunate. Mind you, I do have it, owing to the negative option and my carelessness.

"The Cool War" starts with a mention that the protagonist has just married (as the minister, that is) two men. A "the door dilated" moment. Perhaps once in a while SF really is ahead of its time.

"The Silver Metal Lover" was my last attempt to read Tanith Lee. It's a slim volume, but I did not finish it.

Apparently S.J. Van Scyoc was much more prolific than I thought. I've always found that her books have a certain charm.

If "The Dry Season" is the story I think it is (50-50 chance) then this is something by Tanith Lee that I liked.

"World of the Tiers" is just good fun.

William Hyde

[erikagillian.livejournal.com]

I must say I think Ellison does think up good titles. I still have this one, maybe I'll try reading it again.

Silver Metal Lover was an easy Lee to read. I liked it a lot the first time, and liked it the second but not enough to try the sequel so far.

[carbonel]

[Windhaven] is a fix-up, I believe, about a girl of no particular family who wants to become one of the flyers who enjoy exalted status on her world.

Not exactly. She's already a flyer, and she's from a family of flyers. But there are strict rules for how the wings (always in short supply) are handed down, and they're supposed to go to her younger brother when he comes of age. But he doesn't want to be a flyer, and she manages to change things so the wings are passed by challenge rather than automatically.

That's the first story; the rest of the book is about how the world changes as the result of that decision.

I still have trouble believing the wings would work as described, but I loved the book when I first read it.