The Science Fiction Book Club Reviews Revisited: 1984 (fourth quarter)

[james_davis_nicoll]

Lists courtesy of Andrew Wheeler.

Contents for anthologies and omnibuses from the Locus Index
to Science Fiction.

www.locusmag.com/index/



October THE WAR AGAINST THE CHTORR: INVASION (2-in-1 of A MATTER FOR MEN and
A DAY FOR DAMNATION) by David Gerrold

Ah, this series started with such promise.

[For a flag-waving tale of self-pitying American exceptionalism, I mean]

After a non-nuclear but major conflict that the USA lost, plague comes to the world. Just as the survivors are getting back on their feet it becomes obvious that the Earth is being invaded by an alien ecosystem. Who is behind this and whether it makes any sense to credit the events to intelligent entities is not clear. Our young hero gets dragged into service against the alien lifeforms, often as an expendable crew member.

Clearly written with RAH in mind [; I believe there's even an annoying Lazarus Long stand in]. Details of the alien ecology are interesting. The series has never been resolved, so don't start it thinking that any sort of closure is going to happen. As far as I recall, there are *no* sympathetic non-American characters but to balance that the protagonist is a jerk who Learns Better But Forgets Everything He Learned By the Beginning of the Next Book.


THE PRACTICE EFFECT by David Brin

A minor comic novel in which a person from our world finds himself in one where entropy apparently works in reverse. [...] Not my thing.



DAUGHTER OF REGALS AND OTHER TALES by Stephen R. Donaldson
(Alternate)

I missed this.


THE DRAGON WAITING by John M. Ford (Alternate)

An alternate history set in a world where vampirism exists and has had a significant effect on world history. Unfortunately it has been so long since I read it that is about all I do recall of it.


Special Cycle #1

Deathbird Stories Harlan Ellison (Harper & Row, 1975, hc)

+ o Introduction: Oblations at Alien Altars
+ o The Whimper of Whipped Dogs
+ o Along the Scenic Route ["Dogfight on 101"]
+ o On the Downhill Side
+ o O Ye of Little Faith
+ o Neon
+ o Basilisk
+ o Pretty Maggie Moneyeyes
+ o Corpse
+ o Shattered Like a Glass Goblin
+ o Delusion for a Dragon Slayer
+ o The Face of Helene Bournouw
+ o Bleeding Stones
+ o At the Mouse Circus
+ o The Place with No Name
+ o Paingod
+ o Ernest and the Machine God
+ o Rock God
+ o Adrift Just Off the Islets of Langerhans: Latitude 38° 54'
N, Longitude 77° 00' 13" W
+ o The Deathbird


I still don't think I am the one to discuss Ellison, although some of these are very good.

I must admit to lingering Anthology Fatigue from reading The Essential Ellison in 2001. There's something about huge single author anthologies I find quite tiring (In the case of the Tor Clarke, because it sprains my wrists to hold the tome up). That is not a criticism of the contents.


DARKOVER LANDFALL by Marion Zimmer Bradley

I missed this.

Fall THE BOOK OF LOST TALES, PART ONE by J.R.R. Tolkien

And this.


CLAY'S ARK by Octavia Butler

I am not sure what the formal name of the series is but this is one in the sequence Wild Seed, Mind of my Mind and Patternmaster.
This book explains how the Clayark disease came to Earth and how it spread, reducing civilization to small enclaves in seas of animalistic barbarity. Decently written but not my favourite of the sequence.


VOYAGER IN NIGHT by C.J. Cherryh (Alternate)

I think I missed this one.


FUZZIES AND OTHER PEOPLE by H. Beam Piper (Alternate)

Either I never read this or it left no impression on me.


November WEST OF EDEN by Harry Harrison

First in a series about intelligent dinosaurs confronting intelligent mammals as (I think) an ice age looms. Pedestrian fare that did not entice me into buying the books that followed.


HEECHEE RENDEZVOUS by Frederik Pohl

Indifferent sequel to Gateway and Beyond the Blue Event
Horizon. Robin has a change of venue, as I recall and various interesting
questions get dull answers.


THE WANDERING UNICORN by Manuel Mujica Lainez (Alternate)

Never even heard of this.


December CROSS-CURRENTS (3-in-1 of STORM SEASON, THE FACE OF CHAOS and WINGS
OF OMEN) edited by Robert Lynn Asprin and Lynn Abbey

Here are the contents lists for two of these:

Storm Season ed. Robert Lynn Asprin (Ace 0-441-78710-X, Oct '82,
$2.95, 305pp, pb) [*Thieves' World]; Thieves' World #4.

+ o Editor's Note o Robert Lynn Asprin o pr
+ 1 o Storm Season Introduction o Robert Lynn Asprin o in
+ 9 o Exercise in Pain o Robert Lynn Asprin o nv *
+ 37 o Downwind o C. J. Cherryh o nv *
+ 87 o A Fugitive Art o Diana L. Paxson o nv *
+ 127 o Steel o Lynn Abbey o na *
+ 192 o Wizard Weather o Janet Morris o na *
+ 254 o Godson o Andrew J. Offutt o nv *
+ 299 o Epilog o Robert Lynn Asprin o aw *


The Face of Chaos ed. Robert Lynn Asprin & Lynn Abbey (Ace
0-441-22549-7, Oct '83, $2.95, 242pp, pb) [*Thieves' World];
Thieves' World #5.

+ 1 o Introduction o Robert Lynn Asprin o in
+ 9 o High Moon o Janet Morris o na *
+ 65 o Necromant o C. J. Cherryh o nv *
+ 115 o The Art of Alliance o Robert Lynn Asprin o ss *
+ 135 o The Corners of Memory o Lynn Abbey o nv *
+ 175 o Votary o David Drake o nv *
+ 211 o Mirror Image o Diana L. Paxson o nv *



I assume the missing one is also yet another Thieves World shared world anthology.


GODS OF THE GREATAWAY by Michael Coney

Missed this.


THE SHATTERED WORLD by Michael Reaves (Alternate)

And this.

[No, this is the one where the magic war blew the world into many habitable pieces, greatly annoying the demons who used to live at the core, right?]


STAR TREK: MY ENEMY, MY ALLY by Diane Duane (Alternate)

I did not read this.

Comments

[davidgoldfarb.livejournal.com]

I believe the Octavia Butler books are called "The Patternist series".

The Dragon Waiting is worth a re-read if you haven't done so between when you wrote this and the present.

[tool-of-satan.livejournal.com]

The Dragon Waiting is worth a re-read if you haven't done so between when you wrote this and the present.

+1

[seth ellis (from livejournal.com)]

The Wandering Unicorn is an Argentinian novel adapting the medieval legend of Melusine. I thought it was great when I read it in college, but I haven't read it since.

Lainez was one of Jorge Luis Borges' favorite fantasists, I believe.

[agharta75.livejournal.com]

There will be no Chtorr book #5. The Chtorr won and wiped out all life on earth, including the narrator. The end.

"Heechee Rendezvous" : unfortunately poor Robin is just a copy of himself in this one.

"Voyager in Night" : spaceship crew captured by Really Really Weird aliens who, to show their weirdness, use punctuation marks as names.
(This is better than it sounds.)

"The Dragon Waiting" : just try finding a copy of this today. Make a will, everyone!

"Book of Lost Tales" : draft 1 of what became The Silmarillion. JRRT scholars only.

[tool-of-satan.livejournal.com]

"The Dragon Waiting" : just try finding a copy of this today. Make a will, everyone!

It's not that hard to find a copy (yet). E.g., see here (http://www.bookfinder.com/search/?ac=sl&st=sl&ref=bf_s2_a1_t1_1&qi=KfFDLrKMDFEv8zb6xgWuR,M,izo_6162321428_1:90:1079&bq=author%3Djohn%2520m%2520ford%26title%3Ddragon%2520waiting). But yeah, wills are a good idea.

[tekalynn.livejournal.com]

I spent much of "Voyager in Night" trying to work out how I'd read it aloud. I came up with a separate click or vocalization for each entity.

If I ever did record an audio version, my facial muscles would be very sore.

[(Anonymous)]

I actually read "The Shattered World", back when. It's one of the first midlist fantasies to show significant influence from D&D. (Person who is about to start typing "Quag Keep", please stop. I said /one of/ the first.) I remember it as being not very good.

The Practice Effect is slight but clever. Brin was, in retrospect, one of those One Good Decade authors and we're well into it here.

"Pedestrian" is indeed a good word for West of Eden. For some reason it got a major marketing push from the publisher -- split cover with great art, slathered with admiring quotes, etc. etc. No idea why. Had Harrison been a major commercial success at some point?

Darkover Landfall is one of those books that reads very, very differently if you know about MZB's personal life. "Well, yes, he's a pedophile (and a murderer) but it's not his fault! and he's actually a very sympathetic character who's going to end up being hugely influential."



Doug M.

[(Anonymous)]

IIRC "West of Eden" sold very well, over 500,000 for each volume, well beyond anything else Harrison had ever written. Harrison claimed to have put a lot of time into it and I did like the first volume more than you or James did.

I didn't abandon that series, but about 2/3 of the way through the third Chtorr book I decided I'd had enough and swore not to read a fourth (was there a fourth?). They were the first SF books I ever sold.

I was a graduate student when I read "The Practice Effect" and remember it as the only moderately realistic portrayal of grad school in SF (I was wrong, since "At the Mountains of Madness" did a pretty good job fifty years earlier).

I thought "The shattered world" was an amusing diversion, worth my time reading. If there was a sequel I didn't buy it, though.

William Hyde

[chrysostom476.livejournal.com]

West of Eden definitely shows a lot of time spent on RESEARCH - it's got appendices about the biology and such. It just wasn't a very interesting STORY.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Ellison's notice at the beginning of Deathbird Stories, warning you not to read the stories in one sitting lest their emotional effect be too intense, seemed just a little too precious.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

...That said, "Adrift..." is a classic of weirdness and "The Deathbird" does pack a pretty good punch.

[tekalynn.livejournal.com]

The Daughter of Regals anthology was about the time I started going off Donaldson's writing.

Is that the anthology that included a particularly disturbing story about a terrifying worm thingy that starts crawling up a guy's leg while he's holding a sharp knife? Yeah, I think it is.

[dbdatvic.livejournal.com]

Fuzzies and Other People is Piper's second sequel to Little Fuzzy; the original issue is resolved but more have arisen and are dealt with.

Gods of the Greataway is the sequel to The Celestial Steam Locomotive; worth putting them together in your to-read pile.

My Enemy,_My Ally is Duane's first book in the Kirk-and-Romulans series. Worth putting near the top of your to-read pile.

--Dave, very near