This is a group of lesser known science fiction stories, first published from the 1940s to the 1960s, by one of the all-time masters of the field, recently deceased. When writers like Asimov and Heinlein were hitting their stride, van Vogt was the pinnacle to which they aspired. When the first specialty book publishers were looking for material to republish after World War II, he was their first stop.
In this book, the last survivor of a spaceship that crash lands on Mars finds a deserted Martian village. Natives of the Andes Mountains are able to survive in the thin atmosphere of Mars, without pressure suits, to the great resentment of those born at sea level. A human and an ezwal, a large, blue, three-eyed being with the power of telepathic communication, crash land on a jungle planet and are forced to cooperate with each other to stay alive. This is despite the fact that the ezwal hates humans and would just as soon tear the human into lots of little pieces. A creature, actually the galaxy's greatest mathematician, is held in a huge vault on Mars, made of ultimate metal, and whose time-lock is keyed to the ultimate prime number.
These may not be classic, well-known stories, but they still run rings around most of what was, and is, in the Science Fiction section of the average chain bookstore.
Bios, Robert Charles Wilson, Tor, 1999
Defenders of the Five Realms, John Harris, Arcturus Press, 1999
Past Lives, Present Tense, Elizabeth Ann Scarborough (ed.), Ace Books, 1999
A Red Heart of Memories, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Ace Books, 1999
Starburst, Alfred Bester, Signet Books, 1958
Warriors of the Rainbow, A.D. Harvey, Bloomsbury USA, 2000
The Hanging Stones, Manly Wade Wellman, Berkley, 1982
Glory's War, Alfred Coppel, Tor Books, 1995
The Unicorn Sonata, Peter S. Beagle, Turner Publishing, 1996
The Silicon Dagger, Jack Williamson, Tor Books, 1999
The Blue Star, Fletcher Pratt, Ballantine, 1969
In the next century, humanity has colonized the solar system. Starflight is very expensive, so all attention is focused on the one earth-like planet found, a lush, tropical, jungle of a planet called Isis. It's a DNA treasure house, full of possible answers to questions about Earth's biology, with one large problem: every molecule is extremely toxic to humans. It's a constant Level Four "hot zone."
Into all of this comes Zoe Fisher, a young woman from Earth, literally cloned and raised to explore Isis. Earth has become a faction-ridden political hothouse, where certain Families have become the elite. Zoe comes with all sorts of new technology that is supposed to make exploring Isis safer and easier for humans. What nobody knows, including Zoe, is that some of that new technology is inside her.
Meantime, the research stations on Isis are under constant, and increasingly successful, attack from the native germs and microbes, forcing the humans to put up more bulkheads between them and the outside.
This story ends up rather sad and depressing, but it is still a wonderful piece of storytelling, with Wilson doing his usual excellent job.
The island of the Five Realms is invaded by the warlike dragon men on a trumped-up charge, with the natives being caught sleeping, literally. Garig, one of the kings, is captured by King Olgar, the leader of the invasion, and the other three retreat to consult with the fifth king. Known as Cob, he leads a mountainous place of constant, shifting mists called the Glens. Even though men of the Five Realms can leap from towers unharmed, and drink rivers dry, the forces of King Olgar are too much for them.
Their only hope is a highland lad named Ronan, who singlehandedly stops the advance of King Olgar, not by sorcery but by playing against Olgar's relentless ambitions. King Garig is rescued, and in thanks, offers Ronan the hand of his daughter, Princess Finsha, in marriage. She had been sent to a faraway castle with her own personal legion of bodyguards when trouble started brewing. No one realized that she had already given her heart to the Captain of the Guard. Ronan suddenly learns a lot about the human heart, and the things that others can do to it.
This book belongs somewhere in that large gray area of Pretty Good or Worth Reading. The story may be a little on the basic side, and is perhaps best for someone who is new to medieval fantasy stories.
It has been discovered that DNA is not only a complete record of a person's physical makeup, it also records their memories and personalities. Through a simple process, viable DNA, even from someone dead for hundreds of years, can be turned into a form that can be installed in another person. Sitting in front of what looks like an eye doctor's examination machine, the new DNA can be shot into a person's brain through the optic nerve. The two personalities ar then "supposed" to blend into one person. This group of science fiction stories look at the possibilities inherent in this process.
A couple of attempts are made to download Jesus Christ. A female religious revival singer who has lost the faith gets it back with the help of a 12th century female saint. Babe Ruth and a twentysomething software millionaire have different ideas about how to experience life. A domineering mother tries to revive her comatose daughter, who wants to explore Mars, with the help of explorer Meriwether Lewis, of Lewis and Clark fame. A feminist academic downloads Anne Boleyn, one of the wives of Henry the Eighth, and finds that Anne isn't quite the person in the history books. A basement scientist looks for help in his quest for a perpetual motion machine from Leonardo da Vinci.
These stories are quite good. The basic concept is intriguing, and the stories are well done, and less repetitive than one may think.
Matilda (Matt) Black spends her time traveling from place to place alone; she's never really alone because she has the ability to see other people's dreams and converse with inanimate objects like cars and trees. One day, she meets Edmund, a witch on a quest to help mankind, walking out of a wall (literally). He left his hometown rather abruptly, so Matt goes with him as he returns to take care of things.
They first visit a childhood friend named Nathan, who lives in an abandoned house. Actually, Nathan doesn't so much live there as haunt the place; he's a ghost. Later, they visit Abby, Edmund's sister, now married, and with a family. Abby is an artist who has always felt this "force" around her, but was never able to describe it or touch it. Matt is able to talk to it, and introduces it to Abby. Matt names it Gold; it is able to manifest itself as anything from a gold bracelet to a living, breathing person indistinguishable from a real human. Abby accepted Edmund's powers when they were younger, but she has a hard time with this.
Edmund feels compelled to make amends with Matt's father, a mean, sadistic type who has spent the past several years in a coma, courtesy of Edmund.
This is a better-than-first-rate piece of writing. It's an original work of genius, on the level of novels that come along only once every several years.
Included in this group of science fiction stories first published in the 1950s is the story of a man who flies a privately-built rocket ship to the moon. He doesn't realize that a chemical in his propulsion system, when it reacts with the atmosphere, causes a total, chain-reaction holocaust over the whole world. He returns a few days later as the Last Man on Earth. A man from 1950 comes into possession of an almanac from 1990 and has to deal with a man from the future who wants it back. A ten-year-old boy and his friends seem to have invented things like a disintegration beam, a matter-transmuter, and a way to build miniature androids. Everyone has heard of people who are accident prone; what if someone is good luck prone? In the 22nd century, America is in a state of Total War, and every citizen is made part of the war effort. The end of the war comes, not on the battlefield or the negotiating table, but, in a locked mental ward whose patients are able to disappear into worlds of their own imagination, practically at will.
These are not some average, lesser stories written just for the money. These are well-done, first-rate tales to which any author would be proud to affix their name. This group of stories is very interesting, and highly recommended.
A man is released from jail in near-future England and finds that Europe has been plunged into an endless winter. What's worse is that while he was jailed, his girlfriend died in a mysterious epidemic. She isn't exactly dead; she has been brought back to life, and her body is being used as a test bed for an artificial brain.
He kidnaps the creature that looks like his girlfriend from the research center where it is being monitored, and live together sort of happily while society falls apart around them. One night, the police come and take them away. They aren't under arrest for leaving the research center. The whales of the world have learned how to communicate with man, and told the governments of the world to put those two on a small boat and send them on a southwest course into the Atlantic Ocean - Or Else. After many years of losing the battle against humans, the animals have started to fight back, led by the whales, who have figured out how to mess with Earth's climate.
If nothing else, this story is appropriately strange. This novel is interesting, plausible, and very easy to read. Except for a feeling that the novel ended before the story ended (sequel?), this one is very much worth checking out.
Millionaire industrialist Noel Kottler plans to recreate Stonehenge, as it was several thousand years ago, on the top of Teatray Mountain and turn it into an amusement park. He also plans on hiring Silver John, half-troubadour, half-expert on local folklore, to sing for the tourists.
John doesn't much care for city folks like Kottler or for the whole theme park idea. The local wolf spirits are also not happy with the invasion of their mountain. John is a real threat to them, so his wife Evadare is kidnapped, and her release depends on his leaving Teatray Mountain. Once he is gone, scaring away the rest of the construction workers from the new Stonehenge will be easy. John is assisted by Esdras Hogue and Judge Keith Pursuivant, two others who know their way around the world of spirits and folklore. He goes off alone to find Evadare, and gets help from a very unexpected source.
Appalachian wizardry fantasy doesn't get much better than this. Wellman does an excellent job putting the reader right in the middle of the story. It's well done with just enough of an undercurrent of weird, and gets two strong thumbs up.
This far-future novel is about the descendants of two groups of colonists from Russia on Old Earth. The first group, looking for religious freedom, spent ten years in cold sleep before arriving on one of two planets orbiting around each other in the Ross 248 star system. They liked what they saw on Nineveh, and sent word home for another group of colonists. The ship carrying them was destroyed in a meteor storm in the Ross system, and the sleep capsules were launched into space, mostly landing on Nimrud, the second planet.
They built a society, of sorts, on the desolate, barren hunk of rock, and after some years, asked to take over some unoccupied land on Nineveh. The Ninevites said No; eventually Nimrud went to war over moving to Nineveh. Recurring every few years, it has gone on for over a century.
That is the situation facing Goldenwing Glory, the last of the great interstellar sailing ships. Sister to the ships that brought both sets of colonists from Earth, it is delivering an equipment order placed 200 years previously. Glory is asked to be the venue for peace talks; of course, both sides have other plans for the ship.
Coppel does an excellent job with the society building in this novel which is also a very good space opera. It's not a very fast-moving story, but it is very much worth the read.
Josephine "Joey" Rivera is your average thirteen-year-old resident of present-day West Los Angeles. A misfit in school but a born musician, she helps out at a dusty instrument-repair shop in exchange for music lessons from the elderly owner.
One day, a strange young man with pointed ears named Indigo enters the shop. He carries a horn the color of a conch shell, from which comes the most incredible music, enough to drive the owner, Mr Papas, almost to tears. The music stays with Joey until, late one night, she follows it down an ordinary street and finds herself in a land called Shei'rah. It's a place of satyrs, water nymphs, two-headed serpents, and Old Ones, unicorns whose music is the soul of Shei'rah. It's not all wonderful; there are perytons, small flying creatures with sharp teeth and nasty attitudes, and all of the unicorns are slowly going blind.
Joey stays for several days in Shei'rah, and finds that little, or no, time has passed in West Los Angeles. Because the border is stable, for now, Joey returns home. On her next visit, she brings her grandmother, whom she has broken out of her nursing home. Joey figures that if anyone can cure the unicorn's congenital blindness, her grandmother can.
This is a "quiet", young adult, society-building sort of story. Except for one fight sequence, there's no blood. This is an excellent novel for young people, or as an introduction to the "unicorns" sub-genre of fantasy.
Alden Kirk is an investigative journalist and author of Terror in America. It's a look at the rise of the Far Right and domestic militias brought about by rapid societal changes brought about by computer technology, and the erosion of personal liberties. Instead of writing about all of America, Kirk focused on one piece of rural Kentucky called McAdam County. He named names and held back nothing. For his trouble, Kirk received a letter bomb.
His brother, Clay Barstow, goes to McAdam County to find the identity of the bomber, to see about completing Kirk's unfinished sequel, and as an unofficial FBI agent. Kirk got wind of something Huge in the works, and considering the strength of the Far Right, the government is worried. Along the way, Barstow is falsely accused of a couple of murders and several acts of terrorism.
After being a published author for more than 70 years, one might wonder if Williamson has still "got it" as a science fiction writer. If this book is any indication, Williamson has still "got it", and then some. This is a well-done look at the battle between technology and individual rights and liberties; technology is winning. The author does a very good job at presenting the Far Right/militia view of the world. Strongly recommended.
This fantasy novel is set in a parallel world modeled on 1700's Austria; it's a quiet, conversation and society-building story as opposed to a blood-soaked sword and sorcery tale.
In this world, witchcraft works; the talent is passed from mother to daughter at the moment the daughter is no longer a virgin. The daughter's lover takes possession of a five-pointed talisman from the young witch, the blue star, and with it can read the true thoughts of anyone by looking into their eyes.
Rodvard is an ineffectual clerk in the government genealogical offices. He is part of a secret organization called Sons of the New Day, who want to destroy the whole corrupt Empire and build a totally new system in its place. He is pushed into seducing a virgin witch named Lalette, so he can use her Blue Star to enhance the group's political schemes.
Neither of them really care for the other. The whole affair quickly goes wrong, and they are both forced to flee an empire that barely tolerates witchcraft.
This is a quiet story, though not without its moments of adventure. It will take some effort on the part of the reader, but it is an excellent story, and very much worth reading.
