Ellison Wonderland, Harlan Ellison, Signet, 1974
The New Adam, Stanley G. Weinbaum, Avon, 1969
Waterdance, Anne Logston, Ace Books, 1999
Maureen Birnbaum: Barbarian Swordsperson, George Alec Effinger, Guild America Books, 1993
The Wood Beyond the World, William Morris, Ballantine, 1969
Red Spider White Web, Misha, Wordcraft of Oregon, 1999
Timeshare, Joshua Dann, Ace Books, 1997
Not of Woman Born, Constance Ash (ed.), ROC Books, 1999
Darwinia, Robert Charles Wilson, Tor, 1998
Lifeburst, Jack Williamson, Del Rey Books, 1984
The Engines of Dawn, Paul Cook, ROC Books, 1999
Legends: Tales From the Eternal Archives #1, Margaret Weis (ed.), DAW Books, 1999
Bible Stories for Adults, James Morrow , Harcourt Brace, 1996
Protektor, Charles Platt, Avonova, 1996
Hellspark, Janet Kagan, Meisha Merlin Publishing, 1998
Jirel of Joiry, C.L. Moore, Ace Books, 1977
Will Fight Evil for Food, Atk Butterfly, Oak Tree Publishing, 1999
The New Adam, Stanley G. Weinbaum, Avon, 1969
Waterdance, Anne Logston, Ace Books, 1999
Maureen Birnbaum: Barbarian Swordsperson, George Alec Effinger, Guild America Books, 1993
The Wood Beyond the World, William Morris, Ballantine, 1969
Red Spider White Web, Misha, Wordcraft of Oregon, 1999
Timeshare, Joshua Dann, Ace Books, 1997
Not of Woman Born, Constance Ash (ed.), ROC Books, 1999
Darwinia, Robert Charles Wilson, Tor, 1998
Lifeburst, Jack Williamson, Del Rey Books, 1984
The Engines of Dawn, Paul Cook, ROC Books, 1999
Legends: Tales From the Eternal Archives #1, Margaret Weis (ed.), DAW Books, 1999
Bible Stories for Adults, James Morrow, Harcourt Brace, 1996
Protektor, Charles Platt, Avonova, 1996
Hellspark, Janet Kagan, Meisha Merlin Publishing, 1998
Jirel of Joiry, C.L. Moore, Ace Books, 1977
Will Fight Evil for Food, Atk Butterfly, Oak Tree Publishing, 1999
First published in the 1930s, this is the story of Edmund Hall, superman. He's not a superman in the sense of a caped crime fighter, but a superman in the sense of his intellect being so far off the scale as to make the rest of us look like neanderthals.
Born to average, middle class parents, Edmund's mother died in childbirth. As Edmund sails through school, he begins to notice that there is something different about him. It could be the fact that he never has to study, it could be the six fingers on each hand, or maybe it's the extra brain in his head that allows him to literally talk to himself.
After his father dies, Edmund sets up a laboratory in the family house to start unlocking the secrets of everything. The royalties from the development of a vacuum tube that will work for seven years keeps him financially comfortable. After years of experiments, Edmund hires an old high school nemesis, Paul Varney, to take him to the bars, the nightclubs, the places where people congregate, an area of life that is uncharted territory for Edmund. There he runs into, and eventually marries, a childhood friend named Evanne. She shows him the passion in life, but is nowhere near him intellectually.
Perhaps this book is best as an example of 1930s science fiction. It's very much a psychological sort of novel, and I couldn't really get involved with the characters. This one can be skipped.
Peri is the impetuous daughter of High Lady Kayli of the land of Agrond. It's no surprise that Peri has picked up some of her mother's talent in the areas of magic and sorcery. The problem for Peri is that she would much rather be known as someone who knows how to handle a sword.
One night, while accompanying her father on an official trip, Peri comes across an injured person being held captive by a group of very nasty people called bone hunters. She rescues him, only to find that he is from a neighboring land called Sarkond. She has been taught all her life that everyone, and everything, from Sarkond is to be avoided at all costs.
Instead of killing the Sarkond, named Atheris, which is Peri's first thought, they have the now upset bone hunters to deal with. They enter Sarkond and join a religious pilgrimage, which, for Peri, is traveling in the wrong direction. Atheris is a heretic with a price on his head, and if peri is recognized as not being from Sarkond, her life expectancy will be very short.
This novel is somewhere in the realm of pretty good. It's easy to read, and contains enough sorcery for everyone, but, ultimately, I found it to be nothing too special.
Maureen "Muffy" Birnbaum is your average prep-school senior from the suburbs of New York City. One day, she is skiing down a Vermont mountain, wearing the latest from L.L. Bean, when, suddenly, she has this weird feeling, and finds herself on the Mars of Edgar Rice Burroughs. This very handsome prince, who happens to speak English, was having a hard time fighting this hideous monster, so Muffy grabs a sword and lends a hand. After the monster is vanquished, she returns to Earth and tells the story to Bitsy Spiegelman, her best friend. Muffy plans to return to this handsome prince, but keeps missing the mark.
She becomes the queen of a group of apes, again speaking English, at the Earth's Core. She becomes involved in a warped version of the Civi War 800 years in the future. In a London shopping mall called Sherwood Forest, Muffy takes part in a clothes shopping contest against Maid Marian, with Robin Hood and Little John as judges. She finds herself in the middle of Isaac Asimov's classic story "Nightfall". (It takes place on a planet with six suns. Every 2000 years, all of the suns set on the same day, plunging the civilization into chaos. On this day, five of the suns have set and the sixth is about to set.)
For a look at some famous science fiction series from a very different perspective, definitely check this out. It's well worth reading.
Walter is a young man who lives in the seaport town of Langton. Married to a nagging, complaining wife, Walter's father gives him permission to get on a ship and live somewhere else, ending the marriage. At the seaport, just before leaving, Walter sees a troll leading a young woman, and a stately, well-dressed woman, obviously a queen.
After several months away from home, Walter runs into an old friend who tells him that his father has died. On his way home, Walter's ship is blown off course. It docks in this strange land where an old man lives alone between mountains and the sea. Walter is in an exploring mood. After walking for several days over the mountains, he finds a great castle with the same troll, maiden and queen. After several adventures, and after the troll and queen die under less than clear circumstances, Walter takes the maiden back to the lands of Christendom. On their way, they find this other civilization living in the mountains whose throne is empty. With no male heirs nearby, Walter is tested to see if he is worthy of becoming king.
The story may seem kind of simple, but this is highly recommended for another reason. First published in the 1890s, thi is The First major fantasy novel set totally in a world of the author's imagination. In a way, everyone who has ever written a fantasy novel, from Tolkien to terry Brooks, owes a debt to this book.
The sealed city of Mickey-san is a reasonably nice place to live. Crime and pollution are unknown. The sky is still blue. The major industry is entertainment. The grim underside of the city, literally and figuratively, is in subterranean tunnels collectively called Dogton. It's a dirty, garish sort of place. Surrounding it all is a grim and violent area called Ded-Tek. The major occupation of its inhabitants is staying alive.
In Ded-Tek are Tommy Uchida, thought of by some as a god, who is too smart for his artificially enhanced body, and Kumo, an artist living by her wits.
It is a place of fifteen-minute viruses, a blistering sun requiring that everyone be masked, police "wire-dogs", off beat cult groups, and there is also a murderer on the loose.
This is a very stark novel, at times maybe too stark. There is a strong feeling of disease and garbage everywhere. Perhaps a way to think of this story is having the feeling of a cyberpunk novel, but light on the 'cyber' part. It may not be an easy read, but for something very different, this one is well worth reading.
In 2006, America has generally fallen apart. Bankruptcies are everywhere, colleges are closing, and political correctness is out of control. Through a very exclusive travel agency called Timeshare Unlimited, people can travel back in time to earlier in the twentieth century, for a short or long vacation. John surrey, an ex-L.A. cop, goes after those who want to stay permanently in the past.
On his first trip, to 1940 Hollywood, he becomes friends with John Wayne and Humphrey Bogart, gets a bit part in The Maltese Falcon, and falls for an up-and-coming actress named Althea Rowland. The attraction is very mutual.
Having studied World War II, Surrey says, perhaps, more than he should about what is, and will be, going on in Europe. He attracts the attention of high-level people on both sides.
He decides to stay in 1940, and marry Althea, who is heading to Europe, even though he knows she'll be dead in a few months. That is, until he gets yanked back to 2006 by Cornelia, his boss.
This one is very good. It's well done, easy to read, enjoyable and with good characters, too.
This group of science fiction stories gives various, and unique, answers to the question Where Did I Come From?
One story is about a woman wrestling with the decision whether or not to have a child, grown in an artificial womb, go through a genetic process that will give him or her virtual immortality. Because of restrictive immigration laws, a young Mexican woman, studying in the US, is forced, on her 21st birthday, to choose Mexican or American citizenship. If she chooses Mexican citizenship, travel north over the border is then forbidden. An obsolete religious sect turns to cloning to create new members. Pre-programmed copies of the same person are claerks at a shopping mall, until one of them decides to break the mold. An Alaskan sled dog racer still uses "real" dogs, when everyone else goes with cloned canines. A woman scientist sends 31 identical clones into the world with predetermined destinies. What happens if all of them rebel against that predetermination and against the woman who created them?
These stories are excellent. In a time when Where Did I Come From? is a multiple choice question, this is a good place to get a glimpse at the answers.
One day in 1912, Europe disappears. It is replaced by thick jungle, full of plants and animals not native to earth.
Several years later, a major expedition is planned up the Rhine river as far as possible by boat, and then by foot to the Alps. Guilford Law, a young American, joins the expedition as official photographer for the National Geographic Society. Many months later, after everyone has given up on the expedition, and Guilford's wife has moved to Australia, thinking him dead, Guilford emerges from the jungle as the only survivor of the expedition.
Guilford meets a ghost/double of himself in an army uniform with tales of another earth where Europe has just finished a world war. The double tells Guilford of a galactic-scale Archive of all the intelligent civilizations that is under attack from within. Everyone in the new Europe, called Darwinia, has been enlisted in battle on one side or the other.
This one is in a class by itself. If I could, I would give it three thumbs up. I thoroughly enjoyed this superior piece of writing.
The Seekers were cyborg war machines in a war eons ago. They subsisted on a diet of heavy metals, the more radioactive, the better, and destroyed all life in their paths, including their creators. Now a pregnant Seeker has made a nest in the solar system's asteroid belt.
Meantime, in the mid 2100s, Earth is totally ruled by the Sun Corporation. There are two kinds of people on Earth: those who have been genetically tested on their ability to withstand long periods in outer space, and those who are not so lucky.
Quin Dain is one of the unlucky ones. Having spent his whole life at a research station on an asteroid in the Oort Cloud, far beyond Pluto, he wants nothing more than to actually walk on Earth. One of the factions fighting for control of the Sun Corporation is totally convinced there is no such thing as aliens, so the research station is closed. The people there decide to go it alone, and send Quin to Earth to bring back a new type of fusion engine to power the station.
Williamson has been publishing for more than 70 (that's right, 70) years, so he really knows how to tell a story. This is a strong, well done and quite satisfying novel.
For hundreds of years, man has traveled the stars with the help of Engines from an alien race called the Enamorati. As part of the arrangement, the Enamorati jealously gaurd the secret of their Engines.
One day, Eos University, built inside a hollowed out asteroid, comes out of hyperspace, stranding it with a failed Engine. One of the effects of Engine travel on humans is called the Ennui. It isn't so much a sickness as a general lack of initiative. Students from the Physics Department start their own unofficial investigation, even going into the Enamorati section of the ship, off limits to humans. There they find signs of what looks like an Enamorati civil war.
While the Engine is being replaced with another from the Enamorati home world, a nearly religious process also off limits to humans, a group of students from the Archaeology Department travel to a nearby earth-like planet. Amid the ruins of ancient cities, they find some Very Interesting Things about the Enamorati and their Engines.
I really liked this novel. It works as space opera and as a conspiracy story. The climax was also noticeably above average.
The Eternal Archives are the repository for all that has ever happened on Earth, the myths, stories and legends that have formed our destiny. Now the doors have been opened, and the tales can be retold.
This all-original fantasy anthology covers much of human history, from ancient Egypt to the present. Genghis Khan was rolling through China like a steam roller, until he was taken to a land beyond human understanding. The Egyptian Pharaoh Khafre decreed that a giant sandstone mound in the desert should be carved into the shape of a god, but which god would be so immortalized? Also included is a different view of the legend of King Solomon involving one baby claimed by two women. During a tunnel clearing contest through a mountain, John Henry, the steel-driving man, descends into Hell to rescue the son of the man who designed and built it (Hell, that is). Another story is about the capture of Billy The Kid by an old friend, now a sheriff. Monsters in the present-day Chicago sewer system engage in a sort of natural population control above ground.
I enjoyed these stories. There's something here for everyone, along with the potential for this to be better than the average fantasy anthology series.
This group of stories could be thought of as religion through satire. A woman gives birth to, not just a globe, but , a fully functional ecosystem, with oceans, weather and dinosaurs. A man suffering from Multiple Personality Disorder has not just a couple, or a couple of dozen, personalities, but millions. The personalities are forming countries and war has just been declared. Another story looks at the Unknown Soldier memorial at Arlington Cemetery from the point of view of the person in the casket. God. living anonymously in the penthouse of a giant skyscraper, gives mankind a new plague. A planet full of androids base an entire religion around Darwin's Origin of the Species. Another story is about a present-day version of slavery. Job is back on a modern dung heap, and he wants a rematch with God.
I really liked these stories. Morrow knows how far to take the satire without going too far. These are different, humorous, well done and highly recommended.
The pleasure plant of Agroima is the place where citizens of the 100,000-planet Protektorate go to party and otherwise let themselves go in all senses of the term. That is, until someone sends a very contagious virus into the system which causes, for instance, the lights to go out, and burning debris from mid-air crashes to rain down on the ground. Protektor Tom McCray, a sort of interplanetary troubleshooter with total authority, has very little time to find the source.
The Protektorate is the sort of place where citizens are biologically immortal, there is no need for anyone to work, and samrt machines fulfill every need, breeding the independence out of humanity. The planet is quarantined, to prevent the virus from spreading to other planets, leaving McCray on his own. Not completely alone, for he does get help from Eva Kurimoto, a local reporter.
Set in the 2600s, when everyone has bio-implants of some sort, this novel is especially recommended for those who can't get enough cyberpunk in their daily reading. It's also recommended for those who like good writing and a good mystery.
During a survey of the newly discovered planet of Lassti, one member of the survey team, named Oloitokitok, is found dead under mysterious circumstances. The team had found a native species, called sprookjes, that lokk like something like a blue heron that walks upright, and was trying to determine whether or not they were intelligent. A lot of people, especially the group that wants the planet for development, have a stake in the answer. Was one of the survey team, a group from several different planets, responsible? Was one of the sprookjes to blame?
Into all this comes Tocohl, a Hellspark trader. After being attacked during a religious festival on another planet, and going before a judge, she gets roped into going to Lassti to see if she can find an answer to both questions. She doesn't go out of her way to tell them that she isn't exactly a judge (the only people authorized to make such decisions). Anyway, she does her best to negotiate a cultural mine field, solve a murder, and decide what makes a species "intelligent".
This is an excellent novel. Kagan does a very good job with alien culture/sociology, it's a good mystery, and an all around interesting story. It may not be the easiest read in the world, but it is very much worth it.
This series of fantasy stories, first published in the 1930s, is about the head warrior (for want of a better term) at Castle Joiry, a person who is very fearless and handy with a sword, and has led troops into battle many times. Oh, and Jirel is also a woman.
In one story, Castle Joiry has fallen, and Jirel is captured. She swears eternal hostility against Guillaume, the leader of the enemy troops, in terms that would surprise even a hardened warrior. She escapes from captivity, and through a secret passge beneath the deepest dungeons of Castle Joiry, descends into Hell itself to search for the Ultimate Weapon to use against Guillaume. In another story, Guillaume's soul cries out to Jirel for mercy, because of the way he was killed, so Jirel returns to hell to release him. A further story is about a solo journey by Jirel to a land that is found only at sunset, a place that is violently haunted at night, a place of marshes and quicksand, to search through the ruins of a castle for a thing for which men have searched for hundreds of years that will buy the lives of twenty of her men in captivity, a place with the fitting name of Hellsgarde.
These stories are masterful. No matter when they were first published, swashbuckling fantasy stories with plenty of sorcery do not get much better than this.
This is the story of Jake Mordant, a private eye in Spaceport City, at least until the aliens came. They though the best way to make friends with humans was to solve crimes (even domestic surveillance cases), which reduced Jake's workload to nearly zero. But Jake, his beautiful blonde secretary Sherry, and his ex-wife Connie, do manage enough work to keep away the bill collector, just barely.
Along with Aaannnkkk, an alien whose ship crashed on Earth, and is saving money for an interstellar cab ride back home, the trio have plenty of adventures. Much of the book takes place at a nudist club, which is just fine for Jake, because he is one of those who usually has One Thing On His Mind. On one occasion, he is called to the club because Pan is playing his magic flute, and the women at the club can't stop dancing. Jake gets turned into various things, including a dragois, an elfis (half elf, half Elvis impersonator) and Santa Claus. Jake investigates the disappearance of a gargoyle from the top of a building, and finds it alive, and not in a good mood. A group of people at a Demons & Dragons convention are suddenly transported to France, far in the past. The nudist club is also attacked by bikers and satanists.
This is quite a change of pace novel. It's a quick read, it's humorous (a la Douglas Adams or Terry Pratchett), it has something for everyone and it's quite well done. (This is an electronic book, not a regular bound book. All the details can be found at www.previewbooks.com.)End of Issue 9