The Science Fiction Book Club Reviews Revisited: 1983 (fourth quarter)

[james_davis_nicoll]

List courtesy of Andrew Wheeler.

Contents from Contento.

No attempt to avoid spoilers will be made.

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snip dead links

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[I seem to have misplaced the third quarter of 1983]

October CHRISTINE by Stephen King

A young man buys a car that turns out to be sentient, jealous and a casual killer. When will people learn not to buy American cars made on a Monday or Friday? The tragic events in this book wouldn't have happened if he'd bought a Bricklin.


The Winds of Change and Other Stories Isaac Asimov (Doubleday
0-385-18099-3, Mar '83, $15.95, 269pp, hc)

+ xiii o Introduction o in
+ 1 o About Nothing o vi, 1975; originally appeared on a story
postcard in Great Britain.
+ 3 o A Perfect Fit o ss, 1981
+ 12 o Belief o nv Astounding Oct '53
+ 46 o Death of a Foy o vi F&SF Oct '80
+ 49 o Fair Exchange? o ss Asimov's SF Adventure Magazine Fll
'78
+ 61 o For the Birds o ss IASFM May '80
+ 72 o Found! o ss Omni Oct '78
+ 88 o Good Taste o ss Apocalypse Press, 1976
+ 108 o How It Happened o vi Asimov's SF Adventure Magazine Spr
'79
+ 111 o Ideas Die Hard o ss Galaxy Oct '57
+ 130 o Ignition Point! o ss Finding the Right Speaker, 1981
+ 138 o It Is Coming o ss, 1979
+ 154 o The Last Answer o ss Analog Jan '80
+ 163 o The Last Shuttle o ss Today Apr 10 '81
+ 168 o Lest We Remember o nv IASFM Feb 15 '82
+ 198 o Nothing for Nothing o ss IASFM Feb '79
+ 210 o One Night of Song o ss F&SF Apr '82
+ 217 o The Smile That Loses o ss F&SF Nov '82
+ 227 o Sure Thing o vi IASFM Sum '77
+ 230 o To Tell at a Glance o nv The Saturday Evening Post Feb
'77; complete version.
+ 254 o The Winds of Change o ss Speculations, ed. Isaac Asimov
& Alice Laurance, Houghton Mifflin, 1982

This seems to consist mostly of late period Asimov and so I seem to have missed most of these.

Anyone know who Alice Laurance is?


THE VOID CAPTAIN'S TALE by Norman Spinrad (Alternate)

This is the story of a starship captain (In this universe, FTL requires sex so I can't understand why this hasn't become a movie). Spinrad plays around a little with language. Not his best but as I said in the Novels of thread, if you liked Appleseed you might like this.

[Given that I said would rather be beaten with barbed wire than reread Clute's Appleseed again, perhaps I am not being maximally positive wrt The Void Captain's Tale.

THE TWILIGHT ZONE COMPANION by Marc Scott Zicree (Alternate)

I imagine the title is self-descriptive but I never saw it.


Special Cycle #1 BUG JACK BARRON by Norman Spinrad

Reprint of one of Spinrad's earlier novels, this pits a shock-jock media ranter against evil rich people who are trying to extend their lives by harvesting organs from black children.


THREE HEARTS AND THREE LIONS by Poul Anderson

One of Anderson's better fantasies, in this an Allied soldier in WWII is catapulted from our world to a fantasy world after a near death experience. His new location is also suffering from a crisis analogous to WWII so he pitches in on the Right Side.


Fall WHITE GOLD WIELDER by Stephen R. Donaldson

I didn't read this.


THE EYE OF THE QUEEN by Phillip Mann

For some reason, I have bounced off of every Mann I have attempted to read.


THE BOOK OF VALE by Nancy Springer (Alternate)

Missed this.


STAR TREK: YESTERDAY'S SON by A.C. Crispin (Alternate)

And avoided this. Media tie-in.

November ARAFEL'S SAGA by C.J. Cherryh

I not only did not read this, until now I never heard of it.


MILLENNIUM by John Varley

An unfortunate expansion of the short work "Air Raid", this is what happens when an investigator becomes aware of oddities in a wreck site caused by the kidnapping of doomed passengers for use in far future extra-solar colonies.

It does have the occasional nice moment (a discussion of the implications of a survivable nuclear war) but on the whole does not add much of value for the length and worse has a final chapter in which we discover God was making the plot work.



THE CASTLE OF THE OTTER by Gene Wolfe (Alternate)

I think this got its title from a mangled announcement in Locus. Never read it, though.


December OATH OF THE RENUNCIATES (2-in-1 of THE SHATTERED CHAIN and THENDARA
HOUSE) by Marion Zimmer Bradley

Didn't read either of these.

[Probably did when Andrew was sending me Darkover novels but I don't remember this pair]


GODS OF RIVERWORLD by Philip Jose Farmer

I hope I didn't read this.

[If I did, thank you sweet amnesia]


THE HIGH KINGS by Joy Chant (Alternate)

I missed this.

WARGAMES by David Bischoff (Alternate)

And this. I wonder if it is related to the movie of the same name?

Comments

[dsrtao]

yes, Bischoff did a novelization of the movie.

[seawasp]

The Bischoff is indeed the tie-in for the movie War Games.

[agharta75.livejournal.com]

"Christine": ugh. King's first real miss. And worse was to come ...

"Castle of the Otter" is various short pieces about or related to "The Book Of The New Sun". It was reprinted as half of "Castle of Days". Necessary if you're a Wolfe fanatic.

"Gods of Riverworld" does not exist.

I had the Joy Chant book once, but don't remember anything about it. Celtic myth, maybe?

[neowolf2.livejournal.com]

"Gods of Riverworld" does not exist.

Ah, like the inexplicably nonexistent second Highlander movie!

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Yesterday's Son was kind of classic fan fiction --- remember that time Spock and McCoy were stranded in the distant past of a doomed planet [1] and Spock contracted Neaderthal-Vulcanism and got all crushy on the local scantily-dressed woman? What if they had a kid and now he's brought to the present? --- although competently done. It had a much more interesting sequel maybe a decade later, when Crispin was more experienced and better able to turn a classic fan fiction idea into something bigger.

[1] Seriously, in the episode the Enterprise popped in three hours before the scheduled supernova to, what, point and laugh at the doomed? Since there's almost nobody left on the planet I guess that population disappearance what they hoped to investigate, although three hours doesn't seem like enough time to do the needed research. Fortunately, they got lucky.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

and got all crushy on the local scantily-dressed woman

Played by Mariette Hartley, if I recall correctly. Is the child fascinated by Polaroid cameras and The Rockford Files?

[kithrup.livejournal.com]

Is the child fascinated by Polaroid cameras and The Rockford Files?

Who isn't?

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Anyone under the age of 40, for one.

[zxhrue.livejournal.com]

dunno about the rockford files, but polaroid has been making a comeback in precisely that demographic. both as various apps to make your digital shot look like a polaroid print, as well as at least one printer dock that you can put your smartphone onto to capture and then print an actual polaroid print, and actual polaroid-ish cameras.

[tool-of-satan.livejournal.com]

ISFDB says that Arafel's Saga is an omnibus of The Dreamstone and The Tree of Swords and Jewels.

[dbdatvic.livejournal.com]

In which case James should probably put it/them on his huge to-read-after-work list... Somewhat different from much other Cherryh, these two are medium-dark epic fantasy in elder times - told from the POV of one of the fey. (Sort of Elricish but even more out of touch with how hu-mans actually work. (The fey lady, not the author.)) I liked them a lot, but have not been able to make myself finish (or start) most other Cherryh, especially her interminable space-economic-opera series.

--Dave

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

The Asimov collection, I mentioned earlier when "The Winds of Change" appeared in another collection; I've read it, but it was not very memorable. In a couple of these stories, Asimov is playing around with O'Neill-style space colonies, for what I think was the first time; I recall that in some of his nonfiction essays he was quite taken with the idea.