The Science Fiction Book Club Reviews Revisited: August 2001

[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

AMERICAN EMPIRE: BLOOD & IRON by Harry Turtledove

I missed this.

[Part of the 191 series, where the South wins the Civil War. Cast of thousands, world building of purest cardboard]


DESTINY by Elizabeth Haydon

And this.


TERRAFORMING EARTH by Jack Williamson (Alternate)

And this. Won the Hugo as I recall.


PROBABILITY SUN by Nancy Kress (Alternate)

And this.


STAR WARS: INCREDIBLE CROSS-SECTIONS by David West Reynolds
(Alternate)

Sounds like a vivisection book but I didn't see it and may be misjudging it.


THE COMPLETE ADVENTURES OF LUCKY STARR (6-in-1 of DAVID STARR: SPACE RANGER, LUCKY STARR AND THE PIRATES OF THE ASTEROIDS, LUCKY STARR AND THE OCEANS OF VENUS, LUCKY STARR AND THE BIG SUN OF MERCURY, LUCKY STARR AND THE MOONS OF JUPITER, and LUCKY STARR AND THE RINGS OF SATURN) by Isaac Asimov (Alternate)

Read them but subsequently forgot them.

[I think they were supposed to be adventurtainment, where each book conveyed some information about the various planets. Since these are old books - pre-space flight, I think - I expect they are very, very dated in that respect]




Year's Best Fantasy ed. David G. Hartwell & Kathryn Cramer
(HarperCollins/Eos 0-380-81840-X, Jul 2001, $7.50, 492pp, pb);

+ xiii o Introduction o David G. Hartwell & Kathryn Cramer o in
+ 1 o Everything Changes o John Sullivan o ss Adventures of
Sword & Sorcery #7, 2000
+ 12 o A Troll Story: Lessons in What Matters, No. 1 o Nicola
Griffith o ss Realms of Fantasy Jun, 2000
+ 30 o The Face of Sekt [Magravandias Chronicles] o Storm
Constantine o nv Graven Images, ed. Nancy Kilpatrick & Thomas
S. Roche, Ace, 2000
+ 54 o Chanterelle o Brian Stableford o nv Black Heart, Ivory
Bones, ed. Ellen Datlow & Terri Windling, Avon, 2000
+ 89 o Path of the Dragon [Song of Fire and Ice] o George R. R.
Martin o na Asimov's Dec, 2000
+ 143 o The Raggle Taggle Gypsy-O o Michael Swanwick o ss Tales
of Old Earth, Frog, Ltd., 2000
+ 162 o Ebb Tide o Sarah Singleton o ss Interzone Nov, 2000
+ 179 o The Hunger of the Leaves o Joel Lane o ss Swords
Against the Millennium, ed. Mike Chinn, Alchemy
Press/Saladoth Productions, 2000
+ 189 o Greedy Choke Puppy o Nalo Hopkinson o ss Dark Matter,
ed. Sheree R. Thomas, Warner Aspect, 2000
+ 202 o The Golem o Naomi Kritzer o ss Realms of Fantasy Dec,
2000
+ 223 o The Devil Disinvests o Scott Bradfield o ss F&SF
Oct/Nov, 2000
+ 230 o A Serpent in Eden o Simon Brown & Alison Tokley o ss
Eidolon #29/30, 2000
+ 240 o Wrong Dreaming o Kain Massin o ss On Spec Fll, 2000
+ 257 o Mom and Dad at the Home Front o Sherwood Smith o ss
Realms of Fantasy Aug, 2000
+ 270 o The Fey o Renee Bennett o ss MZBFM Sum, 2000
+ 278 o Golden Bell, Seven, and the Marquis of Zeng o Richard
Parks o nv Black Gate Spr, 2001
+ 304 o Making a Noise in This World o Charles de Lint o nv
Warrior Fantastic, ed. Martin H. Greenberg & John Helfers,
DAW, 2000
+ 327 o Magic, Maples, and Maryanne o Robert Sheckley o ss F&SF
Oct/Nov, 2000
+ 342 o The Prophecies at Newfane Asylum o Don Webb o ss
Interzone Mar, 2000
+ 354 o The Window o Zoran Zivkovic o ss Interzone Feb, 2000
+ 369 o And Still She Sleeps o Greg Costikyan o nv Black Heart,
Ivory Bones, ed. Ellen Datlow & Terri Windling, Avon, 2000
+ 397 o The Walking Sticks o Gene Wolfe o ss, 2000
+ 410 o Debt of Bones [Sword of Truth] o Terry Goodkind o na
Legends: Eleven New Works by the Masters of Modern Fantasy,
ed. Robert Silverberg, Tor, 1998


I missed this as well.


THE GAMBLER'S FORTUNE by Juliet E. McKenna (Alternate)

I missed this.


GULLIBLE'S TRAVELS (2-in-1 of FOOLS ERRANT and FOOL ME TWICE) by Matthew Hughes (Alternate)

And this.

[Since corrected: the first about a young and spoiled ne'er do well who send off on an errand that will offer him many opportunities to narrowly skirt death. The second offers more adventures for Fildor and his uncle the Archon.

I like Hughes fiction, which has sometimes -well, pretty much every time - been compared to Jack Vance's to the point I think at least one person thought these were intended as prequels to the Dying Earth]



ELMINSTER IN HELL by Ed Greenwood (Altiverse)

And this.

[It's a D&D tie-in. Greenwood played a role in TSR's collapse in that how he was treated by them was symptomatic of what killed the company - when fans asked for his books in particular, TSR reacted hostilely because they felt customers should be loyal to the company, not authors who could well go down the road to another publisher. As I recall, they dropped his scheduled hardcover for one by an author nobody asked about who could be relied on to be too unsuccessful to consider leaving.

I saw a very serious young man loading up on D&D novels yesterday]


THE HOBBIT (comics adaptation) illustrated by David Wentzel; adapted by Chuck Dixon with Sean Deming (Altiverse)

I missed this but Chuck Dixon would not have been high on my list of candidates for a comic book adaptation of _The Hobbit_.


PLANET OF THE APES by William T. Quick (Altiverse)

Novelization of the remake of an old film based on a novel by Pierre Boule, I think.

Comments

[seth ellis (from livejournal.com)]

I read and enjoyed a couple of Lucky Starr books in my twenties. The editions I found were re-issues, with new forwards by Asimov apologizing that the science had been realistic at the time. When I read them, I thought that both the science in the books, and the attitude in the forward that the reader was supposed to take them seriously as science, were equally quaint. That might be a sign of a generational shift in attitudes towards the solar system, or maybe it's just me.

[kla10.livejournal.com]

>TSR's collapse

I'm guessing something like this is what drove Dave Trampier to leave the industry.

[londonkds.livejournal.com]

The "Incredible Cross-Sections" book is one of the Dorling Kindersley Star Wars tie-ins that killed Dorling Kindersley when they massively overestimated demand and wasted huge amounts of money printing stuff that went straight into remainder shops. It's gone down in history as one of the most notable disproofs of "nobody ever went bust through underestimating the taste of the public".

[roseembolism.livejournal.com]

As a former mechanIcal drafter I have a strange fascination with books that do science fictional technical illustrations. But I seriously don't think that's a common interest.

[bruce munro (from livejournal.com)]

The cast of "Blood and Iron" was pretty cardboard, too...

[dbdatvic.livejournal.com]

The Haydon was the third in her initial trilogy dealing with the folks who had gone Through the Center of the World and Time by accident. The trilogy continued a while later, and is currently on book 7, I think.

--Dave