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james_davis_nicollLists courtesy of Andrew Wheeler.
Contents for anthologies and omnibuses from the Locus Index
to Science Fiction www.locusmag.com/index/
April
THE SUMMER QUEEN by Joan D. Vinge
This is a sequel to The Snow Queen and to World's End,
in which the rediscovery of FTL by means other than diving into black holes has astropolitical implications. I didn't like this as much as The Snow Queen, in part because it felt like some of the book was there to explain apparent plot holes in The Snow Queen
MOVING PICTURES by Terry Pratchett
The motion picture industry comes to Diskworld.
A massive, massive 'eh' from me.
CRISIS ON DOONA by Anne McCaffrey and Jody Lynn Nye (Alternate)
I never saw this. A novel by the same name appeared in the 1970s with only McCaffrey's name on it, so I wonder what Nye added?
THE DRAGON ON THE BORDER by Gordon R. Dickson (Alternate)
Missed this.
MODERN CLASSICS OF SCIENCE FICTION edited by Gardner Dozois
(Alternate)
26 SF stories published since 1955. No contents list that i
can find.
[
1 • Preface (The Legend Book of Science Fiction) • (1991) • essay by Gardner Dozois
7 • The Country of the Kind • (1956) • shortstory by Damon Knight
22 • Aristotle and the Gun • (1958) • novelette by L. Sprague de Camp
59 • The Other Celia • (1957) • shortstory by Theodore Sturgeon
78 • Casey Agonistes • (1958) • shortstory by Richard McKenna [as by Richard M. McKenna ]
90 • Mother Hitton's Littul Kittons • [The Instrumentality of Mankind] • (1961) • novelette by Cordwainer Smith
116 • The Moon Moth • (1961) • novelette by Jack Vance
157 • The Golden Horn • [Tales of a Darkening World] • (1962) • novelette by Edgar Pangborn
196 • The Lady Margaret • [Pavane] • (1966) • novelette by Keith Roberts (variant of The Lady Anne)
238 • This Moment of the Storm • (1966) • novelette by Roger Zelazny
273 • Narrow Valley • (1966) • shortstory by R. A. Lafferty
287 • Driftglass • (1967) • shortstory by Samuel R. Delany
309 • The Worm That Flies • (1968) • shortstory by Brian W. Aldiss
331 • The Fifth Head of Cerberus • (1972) • novella by Gene Wolfe
397 • Nobody's Home • (1972) • shortstory by Joanna Russ
416 • Her Smoke Rose Up Forever • (1974) • novelette by James Tiptree, Jr.
437 • The Barrow • (1976) • shortstory by Ursula K. Le Guin
447 • Particle Theory • (1977) • shortstory by Edward Bryant
472 • The Ugly Chickens • (1980) • novelette by Howard Waldrop
499 • Going Under • (1981) • novelette by Jack Dann [as by Jack M. Dann ]
521 • Salvador • (1984) • shortstory by Lucius Shepard
543 • Pretty Boy Crossover • (1986) • shortstory by Pat Cadigan
557 • The Pure Product • (1986) • novelette by John Kessel
580 • The Winter Market • (1985) • novelette by William Gibson
603 • Chance • (1986) • novelette by Connie Willis
637 • The Edge of the World • (1989) • shortstory by Michael Swanwick
654 • Dori Bangs • (1989) • shortstory by Bruce Sterling
671 • Afterword (The Legend Book of Science Fiction) • (1991) • essay by Gardner Dozois ]
A fair number of titles I know *of* in there. Curse my plebian tastes]
OUR ANGRY EARTH by Isaac Asimov and Frederik Pohl (Alternate)
Apparently this is 'associational nonfiction' detailing a plan to save Earth.
Earth doesn't need saving. Come back in hundred million years when everything we've done is a smear between sedimentary layers and the planet will be just fine, thank you. The selection of species will have changed some, though.
[I've using "a smear between sedimentary layers" since no later than 2001?]
FINAL BLACKOUT by L. Ron Hubbard (Alternate)
Missed this as well, although I am pretty sure it is a reprint of a fairly old book that predates LRon's invention of Dianetics.
May
THE DRAGON REBORN by Robert Jordan
No idea.
[Wheel of Time?]
The Complete Stories, Volume 2 Isaac Asimov (Doubleday Foundation
0-385-42078-1, Apr '92 [Mar '92], $14.00, 550pp, tp, cover by
Barclay Shaw)
Comments re dimly remembered stories
+ vii o Introduction o in
+ 1 o Not Final! o ss Astounding Oct '41
+ 16 o The Hazing o ss Thrilling Wonder Stories Oct '42
+ 30 o Death Sentence o ss Astounding Nov '43
+ 45 o Blind Alley o ss Astounding Mar '45
+ 65 o Evidence [Susan Calvin (Robot)] o ss Astounding Sep '46
+ 85 o The Red Queen's Race o nv Astounding Jan '49
+ 105 o Day of the Hunters o ss Future Nov '50
+ 112 o The Deep o ss Galaxy Dec '52
+ 129 o The Martian Way o na Galaxy Nov '52
A Terrestrial politician [a thinly disguised McCarthy, I believe] drums up support by claiming that the water exported from Earth in one form or another will cause H20 shortages. Plucky Martian colonists find a solution to the proposed reduction in water shipments to Mars.
This definitely has its moments.
+ 166 o The Monkey's Finger o ss Startling Stories Feb '53
+ 175 o The Singing Bell [Wendell Urth] o ss F&SF Jan '55
A Wendell Urth mystery whose resolution no doubt angered someone's insurance company.
You know, since the Sci Channel has time to make garbage shows like Dune or the I Talk to Dead People show, it might be nice of them to try an Urth series, with decent writers and actors (One might hope for Maury Chaykin as Urthe but for various reasons I expect that won't happen).
+ 189 o The Talking Stone [Wendell Urth] o ss F&SF Oct '55
Another Urthe mystery.
+ 205 o Each an Explorer o ss Future #30 '56
+ 217 o Let's Get Together o ss Infinity Science Fiction Feb
'57
+ 231 o Pâté de Foie Gras o ss Astounding Sep '56
+ 244 o Galley Slave [Susan Calvin (Robot)] o nv Galaxy Dec '57
+ 272 o Lenny [Susan Calvin (Robot)] o ss Infinity Science
Fiction Jan '58
+ 284 o A Loint of Paw o vi F&SF Aug '57
No idea, but I bet it ends with a stupid pun.
+ 286 o A Statue for Father o ss Satellite Feb '59
+ 292 o Anniversary [Brandon, Shea & Moore] o ss Amazing Mar
'59
+ 306 o Obituary o ss F&SF Aug '59
+ 320 o Rain, Rain, Go Away o ss Fantastic Universe Sep '59
+ 327 o Star Light ["Starlight!"] o ss Scientific American Oct
'62
+ 331 o Founding Father o ss Galaxy Oct '65
+ 337 o The Key [Wendell Urth] o nv F&SF Oct '66
+ 362 o The Billiard Ball o nv If Mar '67
A device that removes inertia turns out to have undesirable applications in the field of murder.
[ http://what-if.xkcd.com/1/ ]
+ 377 o Exile to Hell o ss Analog May '68
+ 381 o Key Item o vi F&SF Jul '68
+ 384 o Feminine Intuition [Susan Calvin (Robot)] o nv F&SF Oct
'69
+ 403 o The Greatest Asset o ss Analog Jan '72
+ 409 o Mirror Image [Elijah (Lije) Baley] o ss Analog May '72
+ 422 o Take a Match o ss New Dimensions II, ed. Robert
Silverberg, Doubleday, 1972
+ 437 o Light Verse o ss The Saturday Evening Post Sep '73
+ 441 o Stranger in Paradise o nv Worlds of If May/Jun '74
+ 463 o --That Thou Art Mindful of Him! o nv F&SF May '74
+ 483 o The Life and Times of Multivac o ss The New York Times
Jan '75
+ 492 o The Bicentennial Man o nv Stellar #2, ed. Judy-Lynn del
Rey, Ballantine, 1976
The story of a robot who wanted to be a man, in which we learn that to be truly human is to embrace death. Hrm.
+ 524 o Marching In o ss High Fidelity Apr '76
+ 530 o Old-Fashioned o ss Bell Telephone Magazine Feb '76
+ 538 o The Tercentenary Incident o ss EQMM Aug '76
A FIRE UPON THE DEEP by Vernor Vinge (Alternate)
In a galaxy divided into Zones whose distinguishing feature is how well computation and those phenomena dependent on computation, like thought, works, archaeologists engaged in the risky exploration of artifacts manufactured by entities incomparably more advanced than humans open the wrong box and release a monster. Dealing with the so-called Blight involves a chase across the galaxy down to the depths near where FTL ceases to work, negotiations between human children and group-minded primitives, undesired knowledge and death on a biblical scale.
Decent enough read, although I wish the Net of a Million Lies did not so closely resemble the Net of 1990.
SERPENT MAGE by Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman (Alternate)
Never read it.
FUTURECRIME edited by Cynthia Manson and Charles Ardai (Alternate)
[
Introduction (Futurecrime: An Anthology of the Shape of Crime to Come) • essay by Charles Ardai and Cynthia Manson
1 • Show Biz • (1959) • shortstory by Robert Bloch
11 • The Incorporated • (1985) • shortstory by John Shirley
33 • Dogwalker • (1989) • novelette by Orson Scott Card
67 • Mech • shortstory by C. J. Cherryh
87 • The Tercentenary Incident • (1976) • shortstory by Isaac Asimov
107 • One-Shot • (1991) • shortstory by Lawrence Watt-Evans
111 • A Kind of Murder • [Teleportation] • (1974) • shortstory by Larry Niven
131 • VRM-547 • (1990) • shortstory by W. R. Thompson
147 • The Not-So-Big Sleep • (1990) • shortstory by Terry Black
157 • I Always Do What Teddy Says • (1965) • shortstory by Harry Harrison
171 • Lay Your Head on My Pilose • shortstory by Alan Dean Foster
189 • The Barbie Murders • [Anna-Louise Bach] • (1978) • novelette by John Varley
225 • The Energies of Love • (1989) • shortstory by Kathe Koja
243 • Ryerson's Fate • (1989) • novelette by Doug Larsen
291 • The World as We Know It • [Budayeen] • novelette by George Alec Effinger
Some memoriable material in here: the Niven is a sort of Niven he doesn't write anymore, and is about the mundane consequences of extraordinary technology. The Barbie Murders is about finding a killer in a community that frowns on deviation and I think the Harrison is about a malign teddy bear]
THE EYE OF THE WORLD by Robert Jordan (Alternate)
The first Wheel of Time novel, which I bounced off of, saving myself no end of money and time.
[Not having read most of them made the reading the one I was sent in the '00s interesting, as it was not intended as a stand alone]
THE GREAT HUNT by Robert Jordan (Alternate)
A sequel to the above.
THE FANTASY ART TECHNIQUES OF TIM HILDEBRANDT by Jack E. Norton
(Alternate)
Missed this.
June
ALL THE WEYRS OF PERN by Anne McCaffrey
I didn't read this.
EXILE by Michael P. Kube-McDowell
Set on an alien world settled by humans in possession of an unfortunate culture. I'd like to call the locals primitive but as I recall they did have advanced technology, even if their grasp of the ideas behind it was a little shaky. As so often happens in SF, the comfortable life of the powers that be is due to be disrupted.
FLYING DUTCH by Tom Holt (Alternate)
A comic fantasy novel about the Flying Dutchman and the real reason why the crew stays at sea. A little like a Pratchett novel, if Pratchett was a much less talented writer.
Murasaki ed. Robert Silverberg & Martin H. Greenberg (Bantam Spectra
0-553-08229-9, May '92 [Apr '92], $20.00, 290pp, hc, cover by
Stephen Youll)
+ vii o Introduction o Robert Silverberg o in
+ 1 o The Treasures of Chujo o Frederik Pohl o na *
+ 38 o Genji o David Brin o na *
+ 70 o Language o Poul Anderson o na *
+ 100 o World Vast, World Various o Gregory Benford o na *
+ 140 o A Plague of Conscience o Greg Bear o na *
+ 186 o Birthing Pool o Nancy Kress o na *
+ 231 o Appendix A: Design for Two Worlds o Poul Anderson o ar
*
+ 259 o Appendix B: Murasaki's Worlds o Frederik Pohl o ar *
to crib from one of my own reviews:
Synopsis: In the not too distant future, a pair of life bearing worlds have been detected in a nearby solar system. This collection details the exploration of the Genji-Chujo worlds.
In _The Treasures of Chujo_, [Pohl] Kammer, the terminally ill ship's engineer of the first ship to the Murasaki system, manages to talk his way onto the first exploratory trip to Chujo, the smaller of the two worlds. There he encounters both non-intelligent and intelligent natives and some evidence of their past glories on this dying world. His encounter with the natives separates him from his crew mates, who like the reader are left with the impression Kammer is dead. The ship returns to the solar system to avoid the Japanese ship soon arriving and to get the chance to be the first ones selling samples from the system.
In _World Vast, World Various_ [Benford], the Japanese explore Chujo in more detail. They manage to provoke a lethal response from the non-intelligent natives ["troll"] by tampering with native relics but are otherwise ignored. They observe some peculiar behavior by the intelligent natives, including flight using living gas-bag organisms.
[Was this reminiscent of the Medea stuff?]
In _Genji_, [Brin], the focus shifts to the larger of the two worlds, Genji. The natives here, unrelated to the Chujoians, are quite friendly and open to contact. Archaeological evidence eventually reveals that the apparent coincidence of Genji's recent industrial revolution and the human one is not so coincidental as it appears: the Genjians have undergone many cycles of civilization, each time undermining their environment's ability to support them and collapsing back into low population level barbarism. In a
parallel story line, the human quest of xeno-sushi and the Genjian desire to make the humans happy leads to the extermination of a local species.
In _A Plague of Conscience_, [Bear] the wine-skin plague has decimated the human population of the Murasaki system. A religious group from Earth was even more unlucky, losing 90% to the plague. Kammer turns up again, transformed by the Chujoian and possibly the source of both the plague and its cure. In an attempt to forestall cultural contamination by the religious group, a rationalist named Philby brings Kammer to the village on Genji where religious leader Carnot is. Kammer realises that the Genjians are killing another life form known as a carpet whale: this sends him into a rage and he condemns the village. The village, which was expecting some form of judgement for reasons not explained in this story, then kill Kammer and Carnot.
In _Language_, [Anderson] a hermit-researcher is contacted by Byrne, a female representative of the authorities. The researcher, Holden, is actively hostile to the Genjian natives, going to some length to protect the carpet whales, who may be intelligent and their young, who are intelligent, from the Genjians. This culminates in Bryne sinking a ship and killing a native crewman and will probably lead to a trial of Holden for murder, at which Bryne plans to testify in his defence, believing the need to protect the carpet whales is important.
In _Birthing Pool_, [Kress] a young girl is miserable, threatened with being taken "home" to Earth by her mother, despite having been born on Genji. At the same time, many peculiar events occur while lines of research suddenly pay off. It is revealed that the reason for the cyclic nature of the Genji civilizations is due to tampering by the natives of Chujo, who are attempting
to make things right. The wrongs of the past are corrected without human intervention but the little girl gets to stay on Genji.
[Of course she does. Colonial kids who doesn't want to go to Earth is a Thing in SF]
Two appendixes detail the Murasaki system, one by Poul Anderson and one by Fred Pohl.
This is an adequate collection. The story by Pohl is good, the Anderson and Brin adequate, the Benford and Bear dull and the Kress not good at all. I will admit up front I am not a fan of Kress' SF in general, finding it dull and populated mostly by whiners, snobs and parasites but _Birthing Pool_ suffers from a number of additional problems: she doesn't seem to have read the background very well, leading to contradictions with other stories [One of the glaring ones being a person on a thick-atmosphere world orbiting a dim
red dwarf having thick sunburns] and all the answers are more or less handed to the characters, perhaps to underline the moral about how completely irrelevent the humans are to the Genji-Chujo system. Her story is at least mercifully short. Anderson's story is perhaps too short, ending too abruptly for my taste.
Anderson's essay is competent, reminding me of a similar essay he did for the Cleopatra collection many years ago. I can't remember and don't have a copy to check but I -think- he may have also done something for the Medea: Harlan's World collection in the 1970s [Well, the -stories- were written in the 1970s. The collection came out in the 1980s, atypically delayed for an Ellison project]. Pohl's essay is also competent, and both essays are interesting examples of world building. That said, I'd rather see the group build worlds on their own, rather than being shackled together like this. I am not sure how many authors can usefully collaborate but I think it is
fewer than seven.
TAKE BACK PLENTY by Colin Greenland (Alternate)
Tedious space opera about the taking of a space station of sorts from aliens.
[I have read later material by Greenland that makes me suspect I may have misread this. Need to reread it. Probably never will]
Summer
THE LARK AND THE WREN by Mercedes Lackey
Missed this.
STAR WARS: DARK FORCE RISING by Timothy Zahn
And this.
MISTRESS OF THE EMPIRE by Raymond E. Feist and Janny Wurts
(Alternate)
And this.
COLD AS ICE by Charles Sheffield (Alternate)
Set after a catastrophic war between Earth and its colonies, a conflict the Earth won for sufficiently high body count values of won, this among other things is the story of some survivors of one battle.
A bit pedestrian and I would be very surprised if we could have an Earth/Space War as early as in this book but worth taking a look at.
DRAGONS IN THE STARS by Jeffrey A. Carver (Alternate)
Missed this.
CITY OF TRUTH by James Morrow (Alternate)
And I think I missed this as well. I could have sworn it came out in the 1980s, though.
OUTNUMBERING THE DEAD by Frederik Pohl (Alternate)
No idea what this. I thought I knew of everything by Pohl.
Contents for anthologies and omnibuses from the Locus Index
to Science Fiction www.locusmag.com/index/
April
THE SUMMER QUEEN by Joan D. Vinge
This is a sequel to The Snow Queen and to World's End,
in which the rediscovery of FTL by means other than diving into black holes has astropolitical implications. I didn't like this as much as The Snow Queen, in part because it felt like some of the book was there to explain apparent plot holes in The Snow Queen
MOVING PICTURES by Terry Pratchett
The motion picture industry comes to Diskworld.
A massive, massive 'eh' from me.
CRISIS ON DOONA by Anne McCaffrey and Jody Lynn Nye (Alternate)
I never saw this. A novel by the same name appeared in the 1970s with only McCaffrey's name on it, so I wonder what Nye added?
THE DRAGON ON THE BORDER by Gordon R. Dickson (Alternate)
Missed this.
MODERN CLASSICS OF SCIENCE FICTION edited by Gardner Dozois
(Alternate)
26 SF stories published since 1955. No contents list that i
can find.
[
1 • Preface (The Legend Book of Science Fiction) • (1991) • essay by Gardner Dozois
7 • The Country of the Kind • (1956) • shortstory by Damon Knight
22 • Aristotle and the Gun • (1958) • novelette by L. Sprague de Camp
59 • The Other Celia • (1957) • shortstory by Theodore Sturgeon
78 • Casey Agonistes • (1958) • shortstory by Richard McKenna [as by Richard M. McKenna ]
90 • Mother Hitton's Littul Kittons • [The Instrumentality of Mankind] • (1961) • novelette by Cordwainer Smith
116 • The Moon Moth • (1961) • novelette by Jack Vance
157 • The Golden Horn • [Tales of a Darkening World] • (1962) • novelette by Edgar Pangborn
196 • The Lady Margaret • [Pavane] • (1966) • novelette by Keith Roberts (variant of The Lady Anne)
238 • This Moment of the Storm • (1966) • novelette by Roger Zelazny
273 • Narrow Valley • (1966) • shortstory by R. A. Lafferty
287 • Driftglass • (1967) • shortstory by Samuel R. Delany
309 • The Worm That Flies • (1968) • shortstory by Brian W. Aldiss
331 • The Fifth Head of Cerberus • (1972) • novella by Gene Wolfe
397 • Nobody's Home • (1972) • shortstory by Joanna Russ
416 • Her Smoke Rose Up Forever • (1974) • novelette by James Tiptree, Jr.
437 • The Barrow • (1976) • shortstory by Ursula K. Le Guin
447 • Particle Theory • (1977) • shortstory by Edward Bryant
472 • The Ugly Chickens • (1980) • novelette by Howard Waldrop
499 • Going Under • (1981) • novelette by Jack Dann [as by Jack M. Dann ]
521 • Salvador • (1984) • shortstory by Lucius Shepard
543 • Pretty Boy Crossover • (1986) • shortstory by Pat Cadigan
557 • The Pure Product • (1986) • novelette by John Kessel
580 • The Winter Market • (1985) • novelette by William Gibson
603 • Chance • (1986) • novelette by Connie Willis
637 • The Edge of the World • (1989) • shortstory by Michael Swanwick
654 • Dori Bangs • (1989) • shortstory by Bruce Sterling
671 • Afterword (The Legend Book of Science Fiction) • (1991) • essay by Gardner Dozois ]
A fair number of titles I know *of* in there. Curse my plebian tastes]
OUR ANGRY EARTH by Isaac Asimov and Frederik Pohl (Alternate)
Apparently this is 'associational nonfiction' detailing a plan to save Earth.
Earth doesn't need saving. Come back in hundred million years when everything we've done is a smear between sedimentary layers and the planet will be just fine, thank you. The selection of species will have changed some, though.
[I've using "a smear between sedimentary layers" since no later than 2001?]
FINAL BLACKOUT by L. Ron Hubbard (Alternate)
Missed this as well, although I am pretty sure it is a reprint of a fairly old book that predates LRon's invention of Dianetics.
May
THE DRAGON REBORN by Robert Jordan
No idea.
[Wheel of Time?]
The Complete Stories, Volume 2 Isaac Asimov (Doubleday Foundation
0-385-42078-1, Apr '92 [Mar '92], $14.00, 550pp, tp, cover by
Barclay Shaw)
Comments re dimly remembered stories
+ vii o Introduction o in
+ 1 o Not Final! o ss Astounding Oct '41
+ 16 o The Hazing o ss Thrilling Wonder Stories Oct '42
+ 30 o Death Sentence o ss Astounding Nov '43
+ 45 o Blind Alley o ss Astounding Mar '45
+ 65 o Evidence [Susan Calvin (Robot)] o ss Astounding Sep '46
+ 85 o The Red Queen's Race o nv Astounding Jan '49
+ 105 o Day of the Hunters o ss Future Nov '50
+ 112 o The Deep o ss Galaxy Dec '52
+ 129 o The Martian Way o na Galaxy Nov '52
A Terrestrial politician [a thinly disguised McCarthy, I believe] drums up support by claiming that the water exported from Earth in one form or another will cause H20 shortages. Plucky Martian colonists find a solution to the proposed reduction in water shipments to Mars.
This definitely has its moments.
+ 166 o The Monkey's Finger o ss Startling Stories Feb '53
+ 175 o The Singing Bell [Wendell Urth] o ss F&SF Jan '55
A Wendell Urth mystery whose resolution no doubt angered someone's insurance company.
You know, since the Sci Channel has time to make garbage shows like Dune or the I Talk to Dead People show, it might be nice of them to try an Urth series, with decent writers and actors (One might hope for Maury Chaykin as Urthe but for various reasons I expect that won't happen).
+ 189 o The Talking Stone [Wendell Urth] o ss F&SF Oct '55
Another Urthe mystery.
+ 205 o Each an Explorer o ss Future #30 '56
+ 217 o Let's Get Together o ss Infinity Science Fiction Feb
'57
+ 231 o Pâté de Foie Gras o ss Astounding Sep '56
+ 244 o Galley Slave [Susan Calvin (Robot)] o nv Galaxy Dec '57
+ 272 o Lenny [Susan Calvin (Robot)] o ss Infinity Science
Fiction Jan '58
+ 284 o A Loint of Paw o vi F&SF Aug '57
No idea, but I bet it ends with a stupid pun.
+ 286 o A Statue for Father o ss Satellite Feb '59
+ 292 o Anniversary [Brandon, Shea & Moore] o ss Amazing Mar
'59
+ 306 o Obituary o ss F&SF Aug '59
+ 320 o Rain, Rain, Go Away o ss Fantastic Universe Sep '59
+ 327 o Star Light ["Starlight!"] o ss Scientific American Oct
'62
+ 331 o Founding Father o ss Galaxy Oct '65
+ 337 o The Key [Wendell Urth] o nv F&SF Oct '66
+ 362 o The Billiard Ball o nv If Mar '67
A device that removes inertia turns out to have undesirable applications in the field of murder.
[ http://what-if.xkcd.com/1/ ]
+ 377 o Exile to Hell o ss Analog May '68
+ 381 o Key Item o vi F&SF Jul '68
+ 384 o Feminine Intuition [Susan Calvin (Robot)] o nv F&SF Oct
'69
+ 403 o The Greatest Asset o ss Analog Jan '72
+ 409 o Mirror Image [Elijah (Lije) Baley] o ss Analog May '72
+ 422 o Take a Match o ss New Dimensions II, ed. Robert
Silverberg, Doubleday, 1972
+ 437 o Light Verse o ss The Saturday Evening Post Sep '73
+ 441 o Stranger in Paradise o nv Worlds of If May/Jun '74
+ 463 o --That Thou Art Mindful of Him! o nv F&SF May '74
+ 483 o The Life and Times of Multivac o ss The New York Times
Jan '75
+ 492 o The Bicentennial Man o nv Stellar #2, ed. Judy-Lynn del
Rey, Ballantine, 1976
The story of a robot who wanted to be a man, in which we learn that to be truly human is to embrace death. Hrm.
+ 524 o Marching In o ss High Fidelity Apr '76
+ 530 o Old-Fashioned o ss Bell Telephone Magazine Feb '76
+ 538 o The Tercentenary Incident o ss EQMM Aug '76
A FIRE UPON THE DEEP by Vernor Vinge (Alternate)
In a galaxy divided into Zones whose distinguishing feature is how well computation and those phenomena dependent on computation, like thought, works, archaeologists engaged in the risky exploration of artifacts manufactured by entities incomparably more advanced than humans open the wrong box and release a monster. Dealing with the so-called Blight involves a chase across the galaxy down to the depths near where FTL ceases to work, negotiations between human children and group-minded primitives, undesired knowledge and death on a biblical scale.
Decent enough read, although I wish the Net of a Million Lies did not so closely resemble the Net of 1990.
SERPENT MAGE by Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman (Alternate)
Never read it.
FUTURECRIME edited by Cynthia Manson and Charles Ardai (Alternate)
[
Introduction (Futurecrime: An Anthology of the Shape of Crime to Come) • essay by Charles Ardai and Cynthia Manson
1 • Show Biz • (1959) • shortstory by Robert Bloch
11 • The Incorporated • (1985) • shortstory by John Shirley
33 • Dogwalker • (1989) • novelette by Orson Scott Card
67 • Mech • shortstory by C. J. Cherryh
87 • The Tercentenary Incident • (1976) • shortstory by Isaac Asimov
107 • One-Shot • (1991) • shortstory by Lawrence Watt-Evans
111 • A Kind of Murder • [Teleportation] • (1974) • shortstory by Larry Niven
131 • VRM-547 • (1990) • shortstory by W. R. Thompson
147 • The Not-So-Big Sleep • (1990) • shortstory by Terry Black
157 • I Always Do What Teddy Says • (1965) • shortstory by Harry Harrison
171 • Lay Your Head on My Pilose • shortstory by Alan Dean Foster
189 • The Barbie Murders • [Anna-Louise Bach] • (1978) • novelette by John Varley
225 • The Energies of Love • (1989) • shortstory by Kathe Koja
243 • Ryerson's Fate • (1989) • novelette by Doug Larsen
291 • The World as We Know It • [Budayeen] • novelette by George Alec Effinger
Some memoriable material in here: the Niven is a sort of Niven he doesn't write anymore, and is about the mundane consequences of extraordinary technology. The Barbie Murders is about finding a killer in a community that frowns on deviation and I think the Harrison is about a malign teddy bear]
THE EYE OF THE WORLD by Robert Jordan (Alternate)
The first Wheel of Time novel, which I bounced off of, saving myself no end of money and time.
[Not having read most of them made the reading the one I was sent in the '00s interesting, as it was not intended as a stand alone]
THE GREAT HUNT by Robert Jordan (Alternate)
A sequel to the above.
THE FANTASY ART TECHNIQUES OF TIM HILDEBRANDT by Jack E. Norton
(Alternate)
Missed this.
June
ALL THE WEYRS OF PERN by Anne McCaffrey
I didn't read this.
EXILE by Michael P. Kube-McDowell
Set on an alien world settled by humans in possession of an unfortunate culture. I'd like to call the locals primitive but as I recall they did have advanced technology, even if their grasp of the ideas behind it was a little shaky. As so often happens in SF, the comfortable life of the powers that be is due to be disrupted.
FLYING DUTCH by Tom Holt (Alternate)
A comic fantasy novel about the Flying Dutchman and the real reason why the crew stays at sea. A little like a Pratchett novel, if Pratchett was a much less talented writer.
Murasaki ed. Robert Silverberg & Martin H. Greenberg (Bantam Spectra
0-553-08229-9, May '92 [Apr '92], $20.00, 290pp, hc, cover by
Stephen Youll)
+ vii o Introduction o Robert Silverberg o in
+ 1 o The Treasures of Chujo o Frederik Pohl o na *
+ 38 o Genji o David Brin o na *
+ 70 o Language o Poul Anderson o na *
+ 100 o World Vast, World Various o Gregory Benford o na *
+ 140 o A Plague of Conscience o Greg Bear o na *
+ 186 o Birthing Pool o Nancy Kress o na *
+ 231 o Appendix A: Design for Two Worlds o Poul Anderson o ar
*
+ 259 o Appendix B: Murasaki's Worlds o Frederik Pohl o ar *
to crib from one of my own reviews:
Synopsis: In the not too distant future, a pair of life bearing worlds have been detected in a nearby solar system. This collection details the exploration of the Genji-Chujo worlds.
In _The Treasures of Chujo_, [Pohl] Kammer, the terminally ill ship's engineer of the first ship to the Murasaki system, manages to talk his way onto the first exploratory trip to Chujo, the smaller of the two worlds. There he encounters both non-intelligent and intelligent natives and some evidence of their past glories on this dying world. His encounter with the natives separates him from his crew mates, who like the reader are left with the impression Kammer is dead. The ship returns to the solar system to avoid the Japanese ship soon arriving and to get the chance to be the first ones selling samples from the system.
In _World Vast, World Various_ [Benford], the Japanese explore Chujo in more detail. They manage to provoke a lethal response from the non-intelligent natives ["troll"] by tampering with native relics but are otherwise ignored. They observe some peculiar behavior by the intelligent natives, including flight using living gas-bag organisms.
[Was this reminiscent of the Medea stuff?]
In _Genji_, [Brin], the focus shifts to the larger of the two worlds, Genji. The natives here, unrelated to the Chujoians, are quite friendly and open to contact. Archaeological evidence eventually reveals that the apparent coincidence of Genji's recent industrial revolution and the human one is not so coincidental as it appears: the Genjians have undergone many cycles of civilization, each time undermining their environment's ability to support them and collapsing back into low population level barbarism. In a
parallel story line, the human quest of xeno-sushi and the Genjian desire to make the humans happy leads to the extermination of a local species.
In _A Plague of Conscience_, [Bear] the wine-skin plague has decimated the human population of the Murasaki system. A religious group from Earth was even more unlucky, losing 90% to the plague. Kammer turns up again, transformed by the Chujoian and possibly the source of both the plague and its cure. In an attempt to forestall cultural contamination by the religious group, a rationalist named Philby brings Kammer to the village on Genji where religious leader Carnot is. Kammer realises that the Genjians are killing another life form known as a carpet whale: this sends him into a rage and he condemns the village. The village, which was expecting some form of judgement for reasons not explained in this story, then kill Kammer and Carnot.
In _Language_, [Anderson] a hermit-researcher is contacted by Byrne, a female representative of the authorities. The researcher, Holden, is actively hostile to the Genjian natives, going to some length to protect the carpet whales, who may be intelligent and their young, who are intelligent, from the Genjians. This culminates in Bryne sinking a ship and killing a native crewman and will probably lead to a trial of Holden for murder, at which Bryne plans to testify in his defence, believing the need to protect the carpet whales is important.
In _Birthing Pool_, [Kress] a young girl is miserable, threatened with being taken "home" to Earth by her mother, despite having been born on Genji. At the same time, many peculiar events occur while lines of research suddenly pay off. It is revealed that the reason for the cyclic nature of the Genji civilizations is due to tampering by the natives of Chujo, who are attempting
to make things right. The wrongs of the past are corrected without human intervention but the little girl gets to stay on Genji.
[Of course she does. Colonial kids who doesn't want to go to Earth is a Thing in SF]
Two appendixes detail the Murasaki system, one by Poul Anderson and one by Fred Pohl.
This is an adequate collection. The story by Pohl is good, the Anderson and Brin adequate, the Benford and Bear dull and the Kress not good at all. I will admit up front I am not a fan of Kress' SF in general, finding it dull and populated mostly by whiners, snobs and parasites but _Birthing Pool_ suffers from a number of additional problems: she doesn't seem to have read the background very well, leading to contradictions with other stories [One of the glaring ones being a person on a thick-atmosphere world orbiting a dim
red dwarf having thick sunburns] and all the answers are more or less handed to the characters, perhaps to underline the moral about how completely irrelevent the humans are to the Genji-Chujo system. Her story is at least mercifully short. Anderson's story is perhaps too short, ending too abruptly for my taste.
Anderson's essay is competent, reminding me of a similar essay he did for the Cleopatra collection many years ago. I can't remember and don't have a copy to check but I -think- he may have also done something for the Medea: Harlan's World collection in the 1970s [Well, the -stories- were written in the 1970s. The collection came out in the 1980s, atypically delayed for an Ellison project]. Pohl's essay is also competent, and both essays are interesting examples of world building. That said, I'd rather see the group build worlds on their own, rather than being shackled together like this. I am not sure how many authors can usefully collaborate but I think it is
fewer than seven.
TAKE BACK PLENTY by Colin Greenland (Alternate)
Tedious space opera about the taking of a space station of sorts from aliens.
[I have read later material by Greenland that makes me suspect I may have misread this. Need to reread it. Probably never will]
Summer
THE LARK AND THE WREN by Mercedes Lackey
Missed this.
STAR WARS: DARK FORCE RISING by Timothy Zahn
And this.
MISTRESS OF THE EMPIRE by Raymond E. Feist and Janny Wurts
(Alternate)
And this.
COLD AS ICE by Charles Sheffield (Alternate)
Set after a catastrophic war between Earth and its colonies, a conflict the Earth won for sufficiently high body count values of won, this among other things is the story of some survivors of one battle.
A bit pedestrian and I would be very surprised if we could have an Earth/Space War as early as in this book but worth taking a look at.
DRAGONS IN THE STARS by Jeffrey A. Carver (Alternate)
Missed this.
CITY OF TRUTH by James Morrow (Alternate)
And I think I missed this as well. I could have sworn it came out in the 1980s, though.
OUTNUMBERING THE DEAD by Frederik Pohl (Alternate)
No idea what this. I thought I knew of everything by Pohl.
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no subject
Date: 2013-10-15 08:14 pm (UTC)"Nobody's Home" involves someone who is merely smart trying to fit into a society where the average person is a genius by today's standards.
I'm pretty sure I've read "Going Under" but I recall very little of it.
"The Winter Market" follows an editor at a dream recording studio, decompressing and reminiscing after his star performer, a seriously (terminally?) ill woman, has elected to continue her career as an AI construct.
I recall "Let's Get Together" as being a pretty uninteresting story but was intrigued at the idea of a matter-to-energy conversion bomb.
"Pâté de Foie Gras" is an odd little story about the discovery of a goose that somehow, non-magically, lays golden eggs.
I think I remember the punchline of "A Loint of Paw" but I don't remember the story either.
The Net in A Fire Upon the Deep is badly dated and no mistake, which is too bad, since it was a lot of fun.
I'm pretty sure I read "The Incorporated" but my only impression of it at this point is that corporations, given a mile, unsurprisingly take a parsec.
I've read a novella "Outnumbering the Dead" which tours a trillion-person-earth where they've discovered immortality, from the viewpoint of a dying actor for whom the treatment didn't work.
Re: The Science Fiction Book Club Reviews Revisited: 1992 (second quarter)
Date: 2013-10-15 11:03 pm (UTC)STAR WARS: DARK FORCE RISING by Timothy Zahn is the 2nd volume of the Thrawn trilogy (of which Heir to the Empire is the first). Thrawn is an intelligent antagonist.
THE LARK AND THE WREN is the first volume of what appears to be a fantasy trilogy, but which I think is more of a soft science fiction trilogy with something *like* magic - from the background detail within it, the planet in question had interstellar travel etc at one time, but the part of the planet we see is now at a much lower level of technology. (Not all of it, though. At least one non-human species has lots of tech, impressive urban civilization, and a *much* higher standard of living.) The tech isn't the focus of this particular story, but is more noticeable in later volumes.
no subject
Date: 2013-10-15 07:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-10-15 08:00 pm (UTC)"+ 284 o A Loint of Paw o vi F&SF Aug '57 No idea, but I bet it ends with a stupid pun."
"A niche in time, saves Stein" - how did you guess.
"The motion picture industry comes to Diskworld.
A massive, massive 'eh' from me."
A bad review of this (by Disch I think) kept me from reading Pratchett for years...
"I think the Harrison is about a malign teddy bear"
Kind of - in a world where talking teddy bears implant moral programming into children, a bear whose anti-murder lesson is deliberately redacted allows a child capable of killing to grow up.
no subject
Date: 2013-10-16 10:31 am (UTC)IMS the point of the title is that in 2700 (or whenever it is), thanks to immortality there are umpty billion people alive, and this is a figure larger than all the humans who ever lived and died before immortality was a thing.
Otherwise, I don't remember it as memorable, if that makes sense.
Doug M.
no subject
Date: 2013-10-15 08:05 pm (UTC)Among the Asimovs, I've always found ``The Red Queen's Race'' to be an underrated piece. FBI-ish types investigate what appears to be a plan to alter history so as to keep ancient Rome from falling and thus wipe centuries of misery and poverty out of (western) civilization; its success is disputable.
``The Greatest Asset'' is a slight but also, I think, underrated short in which a revered figure attempts to correct how history's mangled his one great quote.
``Obituary'' really should have been Asimov's spec script for the old radio series Suspense, as it details a man who figures to use a semi-functional time machine to pull of a great media hoax with the aid of his browbeaten wife.
``Stranger In Paradise'' is a bit combining autism research and (human) space exploration in the post-population-catastrophe Earth. It feels strangely un-Asimovian to me. Very 70s but also interesting for that. (I think this is also one of the earlier appearances of autism as a subject for science fiction writing, as opposed to the genre's favorite alternate-mental-state of synesthesia; I am quite willing to admit I'm wrong given evidence.)
``Take A Match'' is about getting a hyperjump-driven spaceship out of a nebula that has all this annoying chemistry in it, complicated by the tetchy politics of hyperjump operators. As will happen in Asimov stories the hero is a guy who knows a little bit about all kinds of science but nothing too deeply, and who's also willing to take the fall for being the hero.
no subject
Date: 2013-10-16 02:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-10-15 09:37 pm (UTC)The Dragon Reborn was indeed Wheel of Time.
no subject
Date: 2013-10-16 12:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-10-16 02:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-10-23 09:33 pm (UTC)[The Wheel of Time is finished now, if some day you want to spend two weeks reading it...]
The McCaffrey was more on Pern, unsurprisingly. The Lackey - ...huh. I don't own it. Hold on... yes I do, I had it filed under "Bardic Voices". Fixed. Bard-based fantasy. Mistress of the Empire was the triumphant conclusion of that land-across-the-Rift-from-Midkemia trilogy. Dragons in the Stars appears to be #4 in the Star Riggers universe, of which I own #3-6 and currently recall nothing about.
--Dave, helpfully