The Science Fiction Book Club Reviews Revisited: 1999 (January)

[james_davis_nicoll]

ength has forced me to go to month by month.

Lists courtesy of Andrew Wheeler.

Contents for anthologies and omnibuses from the Locus Index to Science Fiction www.locusmag.com/index/

Here be spoilers.


1999
JANUARY


THE LAST DRAGONLORD by Joanne Bertin

I missed this.


GREEN RIDER by Kristen Britain

And this.


MOONSEED by Stephen Baxter

This was a diaster novel of average quality, which is to say infinitely better than Baxter's Titan. Some mechanism whose exact nature I forget (although the vector is an Apollo sample) threatens to destroy Earth. As one might expect with Baxter, the solution to humanity's problem is to leave Earth. Coincidentally, the Moon proves to be remarkably easy to terraform.

[And although billions of people die, they didn't live in space and so can hardly be said to be human.


The story requires nothing from the Moon to ever have been blasted off by an impact and sent in the direction of Earth. This is my incredulous expression]


ECHOES OF HONOR by David Weber (Alternate)

I missed this.


BEHOLDER'S EYE by Julie S. Czerneda (Alternate)

And this.


THE CHILDREN STAR by Joan Slonczewski (Alternate)

And I think I read this but the only part that I remember is the protagonist, having figured out what to do about the microscopic entities colonizing his body, discovering that to the Nth generation little guys his body is now the Old Country, from which they will not leave without a fight.


THE DRAGON IN LYONESSE by Gordon R. Dickson (Alternate)

Missed this. Another _Dragon and the George_ story?


THE SILVER WOLF by Alice Borchardt (Alternate)

Missed this.


THE HIGH HOUSE by James Stoddard (Alternate)

Missed this.



COLLECTOR'S ISSUE #2

THE COMPLEAT DYING EARTH (4-in-1 of THE DYING EARTH, THE EYES OF THE OVERWORLD, CUGEL THE CLEVER and RHIALTO THE MARVELOUS) by Jack Vance

And I have missed all of these, including TDE.

[I don't think that's true, actually. I don't recall it but I am pretty sure I have read The Dying Earth]


SNOW CRASH by Neal Stevenson

This can be read as a piss-take on the standard icons of cyberpunk, beginning with the ultrakewl dude who is a pizza delivery boy for the mob. I remember really liking this at the time, and it was good enough to make me buy everything by NS on sight (I think Quicksilver has cured me of that). Unlike later novels by Stevenson, this one even has a plot, of sorts.


This might be the most recent SF novel I have read where Julian Jaynes' theories play a major role.


VALENTINE OF MAJIPOOR (3-in-1 of LORD VALENTINE'S CASTLE, MAJIPOOR CHRONICLES and VALENTINE PONTIFEX) by Robert Silverberg (Alternate)

It's been too long since I read LVC so no comment.


First Contacts: The Essential Murray Leinster Murray Leinster (NESFA Press 0-915368-67-6, Aug '98, $25.00, 464pp, hc, cover by
Hannibal King); Collection of 24 stories, two original,
including the Hugo-winning "Exploration Team". Introduction by
Hal Clement. Edited by Joe Rico. Order from NESFA Press, PO Box
809, Framingham MA 01701; add $2.00 postage.

+ 13 o Will o Hal Clement o in * [Will F. Jenkins]
+ 17 o Editor's Introduction o Joe Rico o in
+ 19 o A Logic Named Joe [as by Will F. Jenkins] o ss
Astounding Mar '46

Notable as being one of the few stories to predict something like the web, where any answer to any question might be found.


+ 33 o If You Was a Moklin o nv Galaxy Sep '51
+ 49 o The Ethical Equations o ss Astounding Jun '45
+ 63 o Keyhole o ss Thrilling Wonder Stories Dec '51
+ 77 o Doomsday Deferred [as by Will F. Jenkins] o ss The
Saturday Evening Post Sep 24 '49
+ 85 o First Contact o nv Astounding May '45
+ 109 o Nobody Saw the Ship o ss Future May/Jun '50
+ 123 o Pipeline to Pluto o ss Astounding Aug '45
+ 133 o The Lonely Planet o nv Thrilling Wonder Stories Dec '49
+ 157 o De Profundis o ss Thrilling Wonder Stories Win '45
+ 167 o The Power o ss Astounding Sep '45
+ 181 o The Castaway o nv Universe Jun '53
+ 201 o The Strange Case of John Kingman o ss Astounding May
'48
+ 213 o Proxima Centauri o na Astounding Mar '35

Humans travel to PC, where the natives are distintly unfriendly. Features one of my least favourite devices from a safety point of view, the total conversion process that is contagious to any nearby matter.

+ 251 o The Fourth-Dimensional Demonstrator o ss Astounding Dec
'35
+ 261 o Sam, This Is You o nv Galaxy May '55
+ 277 o Sidewise in Time o na Astounding Jun '34
+ 315 o Scrimshaw o ss Astounding Sep '55
+ 327 o Symbiosis [as by Will F. Jenkins] o ss Colliers Jun 14
'47
+ 339 o Cure for a Ylith o ss Startling Stories Nov '49
+ 353 o Plague on Kryder II [Calhoun (Med Service)] o na Analog
Dec '64
+ 385 o Exploration Team [Colonial Survey] o nv Astounding Mar
'56
+ 419 o Introduction to the Unpublished Stories o Joe Rico o si
*
+ 421 o The Great Catastrophe o nv *
+ 461 o To All Fat Policemen o ss *

In general, most of these stand up. Perhaps a little old-fashioned by current standards; not terribly surprising, given that Leinster was born in the 19th century.


The Good Stuff ed. Gardner Dozois (SFBC #02879, Jan '99 [Feb '99],
$15.98, 982pp, hc, cover by Vincent Di Fate); Omnibus of two SF
anthologies: The Good Old Stuff (Griffin 1998) and The Good New
Stuff (Griffin 1999). This special SFBC edition has ISBN
0-7394-0044-4; it lacks a price and has the SFBC number on the
back jacket.

+ 1 o The Good Old Stuff o an Griffin, 1998
+ 9 o Preface o Gardner Dozois o pr
+ 19 o The Rull [Rulls] o A. E. van Vogt o nv Astounding May
'48
+ 45 o Second Night of Summer [Vegan Agents] o James H. Schmitz
o ss Galaxy Dec '50
+ 70 o The Galton Whistle ["Ultrasonic God"; Viagens] o L.
Sprague de Camp o nv Future Jul '51
+ 93 o The New Prime ["Brain of the Galaxy"] o Jack Vance o nv
Worlds Beyond Feb '51
+ 116 o That Share of Glory o C. M. Kornbluth o nv Astounding
Jan '52
+ 145 o The Last Days of Shandakor o Leigh Brackett o nv
Startling Stories Apr '52
+ 173 o Exploration Team [Colonial Survey] o Murray Leinster o
nv Astounding Mar '56
+ 215 o The Sky People o Poul Anderson o nv F&SF Mar '59
+ 254 o The Man in the Mailbag o Gordon R. Dickson o nv Galaxy
Apr '59
+ 281 o Mother Hitton's Littul Kittons o Cordwainer Smith o nv
Galaxy Jun '61
+ 302 o A Kind of Artistry o Brian W. Aldiss o nv F&SF Oct '62
+ 325 o Gunpowder God [Kalvan; Paratime Police] o H. Beam Piper
o na Analog Nov '64
+ 368 o Semley's Necklace ["The Dowry of Angyar"] o Ursula K.
Le Guin o ss Amazing Sep '64
+ 386 o Moon Duel o Fritz Leiber o ss If Sep '65
+ 397 o The Doors of His Face, the Lamps of His Mouth o Roger
Zelazny o nv F&SF Mar '65
+ 428 o Mother in the Sky with Diamonds o James Tiptree, Jr. o
nv Galaxy Mar '71
+ 453 o Recommended Reading o Misc. Material o ms
+ 457 o The Good New Stuff o an Griffin, 1999
+ 463 o Preface o Gardner Dozois o pr
+ 469 o Goodbye, Robinson Crusoe o John Varley o nv IASFM Spr
'77
+ 497 o The Way of Cross and Dragon o George R. R. Martin o nv
Omni Jun '79
+ 515 o Swarm [Mechanist-Shapers] o Bruce Sterling o nv F&SF
Apr '82
+ 540 o The Blind Minotaur o Michael Swanwick o ss Amazing Mar
'85
+ 556 o The Blabber o Vernor Vinge o na Threats...And Other
Promises, Baen, 1988
+ 611 o The Return of the Kangaroo Rex [Mama Jason] o Janet
Kagan o nv IASFM Oct '89
+ 645 o Prayers on the Wind o Walter Jon Williams o na When the
Music's Over, ed. Lewis Shiner, Bantam Spectra, 1991
+ 686 o The Missionary's Child o Maureen F. McHugh o nv IASFM
Oct '92
+ 710 o Poles Apart [Trimus] o G. David Nordley o na Analog
mid-Dec '92
+ 753 o Guest of Honor o Robert Reed o nv F&SF Jun '93
+ 783 o Flowering Mandrake o George Turner o nv Alien Shores,
ed. Peter McNamara & Margaret Winch, Aphelion Publications,
1994
+ 820 o Cilia-of-Gold [Xeelee] o Stephen Baxter o nv Asimov's
Aug '94
+ 844 o Gone to Glory o R. Garcia y Robertson o nv F&SF Jul '95
+ 870 o A Dry, Quiet War o Tony Daniel o nv Asimov's Jun '96
+ 891 o All Tomorrow's Parties o Paul J. McAuley o ss Interzone
May '97
+ 907 o Escape Route [Night's Dawn] o Peter F. Hamilton o na
Interzone Jul '97
+ 956 o The Eye of God o Mary Rosenblum o nv Asimov's Mar '98

Notable stories, new and old. I've had the anthologies in my TBR pile for ages.

[yeah, eyeballing that doesn't hint at a great f/t]


GATEWAY by Frederik Pohl (Alternate)

This is the story, told in flashback during therapy, of a troubled young man who uses a lottery ticket to join in the great star race, using a recently discovered asteroid full of alien starships. Since no user manuals are handy and the humans have no idea how the ships work, the casualty rate is rather large but the money keeps people coming.

Well, I liked it, but of course they had me with the Berkey cover. Each sequel is progressively less interesting, alas.


THE MOON AND THE SUN by Vonda N. McIntyre (Alternate)

All I recall is this was unreadable and I think set in France of the Sun King?



THE TOUGH GUIDE TO FANTASYLAND by Diana Wynne Jones (Flyer)

A somewhat unkind tour through the cliches of Extruded Fantasy Product. Fun stuff but it would have helped if I had read more Lackey before reading this.


ICON by Frank Frazetta (Flyer)

An art book?

Comments

[oh6]

I think "Nobody Saw the Ship" involves an alien who is scoping out Earth as a source of some vital life-force or other, or maybe just brains. Earth is saved by the extraordinary circumstance of harbouring insects, which crawl into the alien's ship and mess it up. Reading this as a kid, I found the bit with the insects hilarious; I don't know if I would now.

[kithrup.livejournal.com]

MOONSEED by Stephen Baxter

So.... something from the moon wipes out billions of people, and the solution is to ... live on the moon?

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

The Moon was already contaminated by explodium so it's already undergone the reaction.

[autopope.livejournal.com]

I remember MOONSEED for several reasons ...

a) The End Of The World breaks out less than a mile from my home, at a location I'm familiar with.

b) At one point before TEOTW, $PROTAGONIST goes into a pub and orders a pint of real ale of a kind that simply wouldn't be available in Edinburgh other than at a beer festival because it's an English regional speciality and Scottish beer styles are different. (Like ordering a Belgian beer in Bavaria, or vice versa.)

c) His description of the meltdown of the Torness nuclear reactor is frankly implausible, if you've ever had a chance to crawl around on top of one of the two reactors in the building while it's running. Or driven past the bloody thing on the A1 and noticed that it doesn't have a containment dome, isn't a PWR, and then done enough research to realize that AGRs Don't Fail That Way (it's kind of a second/third generation Magnox design, using supercritical CO2 as coolant rather than light or heavy water (also, wikipedia is wrong about the tertiary shutdown mechanism using boron balls having been "proposed": I saw the thing with my own eyes)).

There Are Other Errors In This Hard-SF Novel Which Cause Me To Foam At The Mouth And Type In Capitalized Words. But they all vanish into insignificance compared to the lithobraking scene near the end.

[srogerscat.livejournal.com]

I'd like to give a shout-out in general for Murray Leinster.

A shout-out in specific to Tough Guide to FantasyLand. Should be required reading for any fantasy author wannabe, or Game Master, for that matter.

[(Anonymous)]

As I recall, Tough Guide is dedicated to Hannah Shapero, who wrote an essay on hair and eye color codes in fantasy.

[seth ellis (from livejournal.com)]

I thought Snow Crash had a great first chapter, and sloped gradually downhill from there. Stephenson's continuing problem is that, at a point in the book when he ought to be working out the consequences of the ideas he's already set up, he keeps piling on new ideas as they occur to him. These ideas in particular, well, his conception of ancient Babylon is idiosyncratic.

I have the Vance collection. The first book was an elegant entertainment, and the second was one of the most horrifyingly nihilistic books I've ever read, especially given its cool, distant tone. If I'm remembering correctly, every single female character is raped and either murdered or left for dead, sometimes by the protagonist. You could read it as a savage indictment of the sword-and-sorcery genre; I don't know if Vance intended it that way, but I hope so, because otherwise there isn't much excuse for it. It took me a while to go back to Vance after that.

I have very fond feelings about Gateway, mostly because it's one of my father's favorite books.

[jsburbidge.livejournal.com]

The High House was billed as an homage to the old Ballantine Adult Fantasy books (probably Dunsany more than anything else). Young man finds that he's basically the hereditary warden of the multiverse, which manifests as a house, screws stuff up when young, and has to recover his father's keys from Chestertonian anarchists. Fun but not deep. There was a sequel, and the author says he's finished a third book which he is now trying to place with a publisher via an agent.

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

Collier's? The Saturday Evening Post? So Leinster managed to "break into the slicks."

Another surprising discovery: The SFBC sometimes sells NESFA Press books. Cool.

[(Anonymous)]

I re-read that earlier this year. It is indeed fun, though this time I couldn't help noticing how male-dominated it is. There's a stereotypical wicked step-mother, an anima-menace, and that's about it for female characters with significant page time and any effect on the plot.

-- Paul Clarke

[(Anonymous)]

"ECHOES OF HONOR by David Weber (Alternate)

I missed this."

Pity. You'd have loved the bit where Honor sneaks up on an enemy fleet by using her near-million-ton starship's thrusters to keep the acceleration down to 100g or so.

-- Paul Clarke

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

I bailed after whichever book it was where it was a plot point crew could get away with court martial level offenses if Honor liked them.

[agharta75.livejournal.com]

That's "sold" :-(

(under the current regime, it's comics tie-ins and vampire novels all the way)

[agharta75.livejournal.com]

The McIntyre won a Nebula. (Is it any good? )

[agharta75.livejournal.com]

For some reason, when I first encountered Murray Leinster (at about age 13) I thought he was Jewish. That was before I learned "Leinster" was in Ireland.

[graydon saunders (from livejournal.com)]

Something which is actually true in navies with "Master after God" Captaincy models.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

I have not read it in so long my opinion has stale-dated.

[seth ellis (from livejournal.com)]

I thought it was fine but not memorable. I was quite surprised to learn later it had won an award.

Also too long for its story, but I think that about practically everything.

[agharta75.livejournal.com]

I just looked up Jo Walton's recap of 1998. Man, did the novels of that year suck.

[scott-sanford.livejournal.com]

Yeah, Weber should have asked someone how many G's a human can actually take; it's not as if this has not been investigated. For what it's worth, I'm pretty sure "twenty gravities for thirty minutes" is not within the survivability envelope.

Also, why do their ships even have attitude thrusters that can push the whole ship at twenty gravities, anyway?

[(Anonymous)]

Jormungandr makes up for great deal whenever he has a line.

[(Anonymous)]

Agreed about The Eyes of the Overworld; I was in high school when I read it, and it really chilled me. Kept hoping for some truly horrifying nemesis to catch up with Cugel before the end of the book.

[(Anonymous)]

They don't: they have thrusters capable of pushing the whole ship at 150g instead. And "internal grav plates" that can reduce the felt effect to 5g, so the survivability is less of an issue. I was more wondering how stealthy you could really be while accelerating 800,000 tons at 1500 m/s.

-- Paul Clarke

[roseembolism.livejournal.com]

I suppose if you have artificial gravity and reactionless thrusters. it's not a problem. I recall in Niven's Known Space series some starships could hit 30 Gs, useful since hyperspace couldn't be entered safely closer then the near Oort Cloud.

[tekalynn.livejournal.com]

I liked it enough to get my own copy, once I had read it from the library, but evidently not enough to read it ever again, for some weird reason.

[nathan helfinstine (from livejournal.com)]

You're still going to hit relatavistic velocities quite quickly, at which point you should be detectable from the effects you are having on the diffuse interplanetary gas.

[awesomeaud.livejournal.com]

THE SILVER WOLF by Alice Borchardt was quite good. Ms Borchardt was Anne Rice's sister, if you care about that sort of thing. Unfortunately, she died in 2007.

[scott-sanford.livejournal.com]

They could in theory, particularly inside a General Products hull, but at least one story involved the plot point that getting up to high relativistic velocities was not something ships were normally designed to do. Of course, Niven characters with FTL systems don't need those speeds.

[roseembolism.livejournal.com]

At 300 m/s acceleration, I get 250 hours to get to 90% lightspeed, which is the range where the fun relativistic stuff happens. Dang. I thought it would take longer than 10 days. And then again, even at 1G, that's only about two months.

So according to my Ringworld rpg book (still the best done SF rpg ever made),the safe limit for Sol system is 7 billion kilometers. So at 30G that's a little over two days. Of course a cautious Belter will leave a hefty safety margin, so 3 days.

And I tried doing the energy requirements for a 1000 ton ship. Ouch.

I'm glad I did these calculations, because for my current project I have starships that use to accelerate at tens of Gs, and have to go to the outer system to jump. I was thinking weeks of travel, but it actually looks like a couple of days. I was thinking of changing it, but I actually like the element of limited time to respond to intruders it creates. Planetary defenses would have limited time to decide whether arrivals would be welcome visitors or attackers trying for a KT event. Likely the response to any arrival on a direct intercept course for an important installation would be to give one warning, and then attack.

Hmm. I like this.

[roseembolism.livejournal.com]

The main thing with Known Space stories is one has to plod through normal space to get to the point where one can plod through hyperspace. If it normally takes 13 dys to get to Alpha Centauri, then whether it takes 2 days to get to the hyperspace limit or 10 days actually means something. If you're talking about the 133 days in hyperspace to say, Margrave, it's less of an issue.

Of course one thing that occurred to me in looking at Known Space is that it's too small. It's supposed to be a bubble about 50 LY in diameter, but given some of the travel times for early exploration, I would expect the scope of Known Space to be at least twice that- heck, with stasis fields, it would be easy for humans to be bumping up to the Ringworld. I suppose part of this is I'm skeptical that so many stars near Sol would have habitable planets.

Can you tell I've spent to much time thinking about this?

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the big obstacle to fast relativistic interstellar travel is really the energy involved, not so much the time required to get up to an interesting speed at a reasonable acceleration. If you have some magical free source of acceleration, a lot of things become possible.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

...The thing that really brings it home is that the energy-to-rest-mass ratio is exactly the same as the time dilation factor (up to an overall c^2). Want to benefit from time being slowed down by a hundred? Fine, your ship will need to have a total energy of 100 times mc^2. And then, of course, there's whatever extra you have to spend with whatever propulsion method you're using.

[dbdatvic.livejournal.com]

The Britain was the first novel of, so far, four, about a medieval-type-fantasy setting with King's Riders as messengers, an ancient hidden evil or two, and gradual discovery and exploration of the stuff from Olden Tymes that really sorta needed longer-surviving documentation. Liked.

The Dickson: yes, it was. As Noted On The Tin.

I have an odd fondness for Vance's Cugel stories (especially since when I started reading them I think only the first two books were out). Michael Shea also wrote a sequel, flavored greatly by his own setting with layers of underworld and demons, which I like - A Quest for Simbilis; he then took off in that setting on his own with _Nifft the Lean_ and _The Mines of Behemoth_.

--Dave