It seems appropriate to finish this week's postings with one on a novel by the third of the classic triad of the Golden Age – Arthur C. Clarke. The City and the Stars is a revised, expanded version of an earlier Clarke story, Against the Fall of Night. It is one of the most far-future stories told, set one billion years in the future. The story begins in the beautiful and apparently eternal, self-renewing city of Diaspar, a city which has endured for most of that billion years, ever new, ever perfect. [ Continue reading... ]
On My Shelves: Double Star
January 22, 2014 By Leave a Comment
Written by Robert A. Heinlein at the apex of his powers, Double Star is in my view one of his best novels. It takes a fairly well-worn plot – the actor who must, for some vitally important reason, impersonate a famous man well enough to fool that man's own associates – puts it IN SPAAAACE!, and adds in some of the most vivid characters Heinlein ever drew to produce an absolute masterpiece. Lorenzo Smythe ("The Great Lorenzo") is an actor of prodigious skill and talent but, as we can tell by reading between the [ Continue reading... ]
On My Shelves: The Caves of Steel
January 20, 2014 By Leave a Comment
As I mentioned in my general Asimov post, a common accusation towards Asimov was that he didn't really write characters, but more shaped pieces to support his plots or story ideas. In general, this is a fairly accurate descrition, though it's not exactly a negative thing; much of what Asimov wrote didn't need characters as such, because many of his stories were stories of ideas – ranging from SF stories that were nothing but a setup for a bad pun to what-ifs to mysteries based on logic which wouldn't vary much no matter which [ Continue reading... ]
On My Shelves: The Witches of Karres
January 17, 2014 By Leave a Comment
While I've discussed James Schmitz in general elsewhere, some of his works warrant individual discussion,and this is one of the best. The Witches of Karres is undoubtedly James Schmitz' best-known work, and certainly deserves its fame. Originally a short story (basically the initial portion of the novel), many fans consider the novel to be a somewhat lesser work than the shorter version, but I don't agree. The Witches of Karres is a … peculiar work. It's not quite like any other story I've ever read, [ Continue reading... ]
Demons of the Past: Revelation — Prologue and Chapter One
December 25, 2013 By Leave a Comment
For Christmas I think I'll give you all a little treat -- the beginning of a space opera trilogy currently being shopped around by my agent, titled Demons of the Past. Happy Holidays! ----- Prologue: The Atlantaean Empire was falling. It was a colossal empire, stretching across uncounted millions of worlds from one side of the barred-spiral that would one day be called the Milky Way to the other, one hundred thousand light-years and more under a single, never-changing dynasty for as many years of [ Continue reading... ]
On My Shelves: Have Spacesuit, Will Travel
December 23, 2013 By Leave a Comment
I have previously discussed Heinlein in general, but quite a few of his book are worth specific discussion. Have Spacesuit, Will Travel is one of Robert Heinlein's "juvenile" novels, written for a younger audience and published by Scribner's. All of the juveniles were written during what I consider Heinlein's peak years; his writing in these books is invariably tight, engaging, and fast-moving, even when nothing active is apparently happening. Of the juveniles, I (and many others) tend to put two consistently [ Continue reading... ]
On My Shelves: King Khan
December 16, 2013 By Leave a Comment
King Khan is a novel by Harry Connolly, author of Child of Fire and other stories in the Twenty Palaces universe. I've reviewed Child of Fire elsewhere, and as I said there it was an excellent read, but riding my tolerance for dark material closely, presenting a gritty, horrific universe where even the protagonist can't avoid getting his hands … and the rest of him… dirty in more ways than one. King Khan is almost the polar opposite of the Twenty Palaces universe. While Harry's deft mastery of language is still [ Continue reading... ]
On My Shelves: Kon-Tiki
December 9, 2013 By 3 Comments
Once upon a time, there was a Norwegian adventurer and would-be anthropologist who noted some strange parallels between the language and culture of various Polynesian islands and certain languages and cultures on the coast of South America. Thor Heyerdahl came up with a crazy theory: maybe the Polynesian islands were settled, not from Asia, but from the Americas! There were many reasons people argued against this idea, although there were certain appealing elements of the theory. However, from the point of view of [ Continue reading... ]
On My Shelves: The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet
December 6, 2013 By 4 Comments
I first came across the Mushroom Planet books many years ago, when I was still near the target age. I was fascinated by them, drawn into a world that seemed to blend mundanity, magic, and science in an impossible brew that still, somehow, managed to work. Once I became a parent, eventually I hunted down the first book for my own children. The first of Eleanor Cameron's Mushroom Planet books, The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet still casts a spell many years after its first publication. David and Chuck, two best [ Continue reading... ]
On My Shelves: Child of Fire
December 2, 2013 By 2 Comments
Harry Connolly, under the handle of "burger_eater", has been a Livejournal friend of mine for a while. I got and read the first of his Twenty Palaces novels, Child of Fire, not long after it came out, and was pleasantly surprised. The following article takes a lot from my original Amazon review but adds some new pieces. Very simple spoiler-free summary: Despite the typical urban-fantasy setup (world like ours, secret magical background, first-person narrator), Child of Fire manages some highly inventive twists on both the [ Continue reading... ]
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