The Science Fiction Book Club Reviews Revisited: August 2000

[james_davis_nicoll]

Lists courtesy of Andrew Wheeler.

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


AUGUST


HUNTED by James Alan Gardner

Another charming SF novel from JAG, this time concerning the sole survivor of a ship whose crew apparently ran afoul of the mechanisms the advanced races have in place to prevent dangerous non-sentients from getting out of their current systems.


MARROW by Robert Reed

El thuddo. Big slower than light ship passes by, humans occupy it, not much happens, James stopped reading.



The Vampire Sextette ed. Marvin Kaye (SFBC #05549, Aug 2000, $12.98,
416pp, hc, cover by Luis Royo)

+ vii o Introduction: The Erotic Myth of Blood o Marvin Kaye o
in *
+ 1 o The Other Side of Midnight [Dracula; Johnny Alucard] o
Kim Newman o na *
+ 96 o Some Velvet Morning o Nancy Collins o nv *
+ 138 o Sheena o Brian Stableford o na *
+ 207 o Vanilla Blood o S. P. Somtow o na *
+ 255 o In the Face of Death o Chelsea Quinn Yarbro o na *
+ 325 o The Isle Is Full of Noises o Tanith Lee o na *

I missed this.


ACORNA'S WORLD by Anne McCaffrey and Elizabeth Ann Scarborough
(Alternate)

And this.


Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African
Diaspora ed. Sheree R. Thomas (Warner Aspect 0-446-52583-9, Jul
2000, $24.95, 427pp, hc, cover by Franco Accornero)

+ ix o Introduction: Looking for the Invisible o Sheree R.
Thomas o in *
+ o Fiction
+ 1 o Sister Lilith o Honorée Fanonne Jeffers o ss *
+ 5 o The Comet o W. E. B. Du Bois o ss Darkwater: Voices from
the Veil, 1920
+ 19 o Chicago 1927 o Jewelle Gomez o ss *
+ 35 o Black No More [from Black No More: Being an Account of
the Strange and Wonderful Workings of Science in the Land of
the Free, A.D. 1993-1940] o George S. Schuyler o ex New York
& London: Macmillan, 1931
+ 51 o separation anxiety o Evie Shockley o ss *
+ 69 o Tasting Songs o Leone Ross o ss *
+ 86 o Can You Wear My Eyes o Kalamu ya Salaam o ss *
+ 91 o Like Daughter o Tananarive Due o ss *
+ 103 o Greedy Choke Puppy o Nalo Hopkinson o ss *
+ 113 o Rhythm Travel o Amiri Baraka o vi Fertile Ground:
Memories & Visions, Runagate Press, 1996
+ 116 o Buddy Bolden o Kalamu ya Salaam o ss Fertile Ground:
Memories & Visions, Runagate Press, 1996
+ 124 o Aye, and Gomorrah... o Samuel R. Delany o ss Dangerous
Visions, ed. Harlan Ellison, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1967
+ 134 o Ganger (Ball Lightning) o Nalo Hopkinson o ss *
+ 152 o The Becoming o Akua Lezli Hope o ss *
+ 158 o The Goophered Grapevine o Charles W. Chesnutt o ss
Atlantic Monthly Aug, 1887
+ 171 o The Evening and the Morning and the Night o Octavia E.
Butler o nv Omni May '87
+ 195 o Afterword o Octavia E. Butler o aw Bloodchild and Other
Stories, Four Walls Eight Windows, 1996
+ 197 o Twice, at Once, Separated o Linda Addison o ss *
+ 210 o Gimmile's Songs o Charles R. Saunders o ss Sword and
Sorceress #1, ed. Marion Zimmer Bradley, DAW, 1984
+ 226 o At the Huts of Ajala o Nisi Shawl o ss *
+ 235 o The Woman in the Wall o Steven Barnes o nv *
+ 260 o Ark of Bones o Henry Dumas o ss Ark of Bones and Other
Stories, Random House, 1974
+ 273 o Butta's Backyard Barbecue o Tony Medina o vi *
+ 275 o Future Christmas [from The Terrible Twos] o Ishmael
Reed o ex, 1982
+ 290 o At Life's Limits o Kiini Ibura Salaam o nv *
+ 312 o The African Origins of UFOs o Anthony Joseph o ex *
+ 319 o The Astral Visitor Delta Blues o Robert Feming o ss *
+ 326 o The Space Traders o Derrick Bell o nv Faces at the
Bottom of the Well, Basic Books, 1992
+ 356 o The Pretended o Darryl A. Smith o ss *
+ 372 o Hussy Strutt o Ama Patterson o ss *
+ o Essays
+ 383 o Racism and Science Fiction o Samuel R. Delany o ar The
New York Review of Science Fiction Aug '98
+ 398 o Why Blacks Should Read (and Write) Science Fiction o
Charles R. Saunders o ar *
+ 405 o Black to the Future o Walter Mosley o ar The New York
Times Nov 30 '99
+ 408 o Yet Do I Wonder o Paul D. Miller o ss The Village
Voice, 1994; revised.
+ 415 o The Monophobic Response o Octavia E. Butler o ss
Journeys, 1995
+ 417 o Contributors o Misc. Material o bg

I remember liking this but remember very few actual details. It seems to me hard to reconcile SRD's account of why _Nova_ got rejected by Analog with Analog's use of _Border, Breed nor Birth_ and _Black Man's Burden_.

(My working hypothesis is that whatever Campbell said to SRD, Campbell was fine with the very occasional lead who was black, as long as the writer wasn't)



ANIMIST by Eve Forward (Alternate)

I missed this.



WIT'CH WAR by James Clemens (Alternate)

Is this as bad as that ' leads me to expect?


FORESTS OF THE HEART by Charles de Lint (Alternate)

[I apparently didn't review this in the original, probably because I did not read it]

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I don't think it will be long before the word "charming" is universally seen as a negative. So I'm not clear whether you liked the Garner or not though I tend to the latter. I am totally unfamiliar with his work, if you did like this book, is it a decent place to start?

William Hyde

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

My feeling on Gardner's books, based on three or four in this setting --- which I heard somewhere started life as a Star Trek parody and then got made over by being treated seriously --- is that they play with a number of intriguing ideas (the core one, that interstellar travel is forbidden to ``dangerous non-sentients'', those who would kill sentients) and plays them out well, but there's at least one major bit of direct gruesomeness. Sometimes that's implied by the premise, sometimes, it just feels like put in to be gruesome.

(Sometimes whether it's implied or slapped on is ambiguous. There's one book set in a small corner of Earth where the locals swap between being male and female each year until they reach adulthood and settle down on one; the gruesomeness comes from the way by which this is done. Since Gardner decided how the technology would do it, is that an essential consequence of the premise or is it put in for effect's sake?)

[awesomeaud.livejournal.com]

"is it a decent place to start?"

I really suggest you start with the first one; "Expendable".


Re: "Wit'ch War"
An unnecessary apostrophe in a title is usually a bad sign.

[dbdatvic.livejournal.com]

Well, "not much happens" doesn't cover the whole book; a few thousand years (and many fewer pages) later, an Epic Discovery is made near the middle of the ship. (The Great Ship is big enough that even determined exploration crews would take a Very Long Time to track through it all.) Consequences occur, a minor disaster intervenes, an enforced wait passes, and things get sorta cosmic-scale for a bit.

I enjoy the Great Ship stories, and the contrast of the far-future "human" race and their incredible amount of built-in immortality-design to today's pu-ny hu-mons reading it... and of course, like James himself, this vastly increases the amount and kinds of Adventures they can survive having.

The Clemens is not as bad as you might think. It may not be, how does your language put it, "good" either, though.

--Dave