Gabriella White, a brilliant neurologist and scientist who’s searching for a cure to Alzheimer’s, is at the very end of the funding for her research project. In her frustration, she recklessly pushes the power for her lab equipment, a neural stimulation system, to the maximum … and accidentally finds herself in her husband Paul’s body in their nearby house, holding their beloved 11-month-old daughter, who they call Kat or Kitten. Shocked, Gabby drops Kat back into her crib and runs back to the lab, where she finds her own body in a comatose state. She’s not at all sure whether she’ll be able to switch her consciousness from Paul’s body back to hers.
In the very next chapter, it’s twenty-five years later, and it’s clear that Gabby’s botched experiment, now called “flash” technology, has completely transformed our world, in both good ways and bad. When a flash takes place, the flasher’s original body is unresponsive and the flashee’s mind essentially checks out completely during the entire time the flash is taking place, and has no recollection of any events that happened while the other person’s mind was controlling their body. A young woman named Annami is venturing into the illegal world of darkshare, where you let an anonymous person renting your body for a period of time in exchange for a cash payment. Annami knows that the person renting her body can use it for almost anything — sex, crimes, even murder — the only limitation being that if her body is killed, the person whose mind is in her body will also die. It’s one of the two immutable Rules of flashing (the other is that your mind always needs to return to your original body before jumping to a new body).
Annami is driven by a compelling need to earn a massive sum of money quickly for a secret purpose. At the same time, she’s hiding from a gang led by a man called Bleeder, who have been searching for her for several years. To make matters worse, Annami’s first darkshare goes south in a big way: instead of her body being returned to the den where she started, she wakes up in a strange room soaked in blood, next to a dead body, with a killer in the process of breaking into the room to take her out.
Anyoneis the second novel by Charles Soule, a comic book writer whose first novel, The Oracle Year, also featured a fascinating science fiction premise, a suspenseful plot, and a brisk pace. Anyone is a dual timeline novel that shifts between Gabby’s story in our present day and Annami’s in the future (eventually, of course, the loop is closed and the threads converge). Under the contract she signed, any invention Gabby comes up with is owned by Gray Hendricks, the private investor (read: ver y rich loan shark) who funded her research, but Gabby completely mistrusts what Hendricks will do with her invention if he finds out about it. So she lies about what she’s found to her manager at Hendricks Capital, trying to hide her invention, but it’s clear that somewhere between now and twenty-five years from now, something goes wrong with Gabby’s plan. As a result, reading Gabby’s part of the plot felt very much like waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Like Blake Crouch’s Recursion, Anyone is a suspenseful SF thriller about a mind-altering, world-changing technology, with lots of twists and turns in the plot. Anyone does lag somewhat in the middle, but overall it’s an exciting story that sucked me in for an entire evening and into the late night, until I was finished with the book. The characterization felt more successful than in The Oracle Year, although Soule still has a penchant for greedy, soulless villains. Anyone also contains more significant racial and sexual diversity; it feels natural and melds well with the plot (which isn’t always the case). My main complaint is that Anyone didn’t quite stick the ending, which is abrupt and has some major logical holes in it.
Anyone has a deeper side as well, exploring themes like privacy, greed, and individual identity. Soule also put some serious thought into how this flash technology might change our world: migrant work, surgery and military operations are transformed by the ability to put an expert into someone else’s body on the other side of the world; people rent celebrities’ bodies for a brief thrill; and it’s easy to take a vacation in a distant land in someone else’s body. There’s also the dark underbelly: international prostitution is made ridiculously easy, darksharing is another form of selling yourself, and there’s the lurking risk of body-snatching (both temporary and permanent).
Soule asserts that there have been positive effects on our world as well, like correcting climate change, but never really explains how that particular phenomenon occurred. I did really enjoy a brief segue into how the world of sports is transformed by the ability to feature exhibition matches between old, retired superstars who are playing their sport in a younger athlete’s body.
Overall, Anyone is an intense and absorbing techno-thriller that balances oppression and darkness with sympathetic main characters and a hopeful outlook.
I received an ARC of Anyone from HarperCollins and Wunderkind PR for review. Thanks so much!...more
3.5 stars. This collection of ten SF/fantasy short stories by Kevin Kuhn has a distinctly retro, Twilight Zone type of vibe to it. They're not overall3.5 stars. This collection of ten SF/fantasy short stories by Kevin Kuhn has a distinctly retro, Twilight Zone type of vibe to it. They're not overall as dark as the title led me to believe, but they do tend to go for the slightly (or sometimes more than slightly) disturbing twist.
There's a lot of variation in subject matter here: accidentally switching places with near-counterpart people from almost-parallel worlds; a huge brain - surely dead! - found on an alien world (that one really reminded me of a 50's horror film!); a ruthless artificial intelligence that has taken over human society; a grandmother's box of memorabilia that pulls the holder into the memories of the person who owned the object; a lonesome pair of people trying to terraform a planet, where one person becomes concerned that the other is systematically murdering the crew from their spaceship. And more.
"Teach a Man to Fish" may have been the darkest one, about a grim mining planet where the one bright spot in the miners' lives is a tasty meal of an alien, tentacled creature every ten days. "For the Hive" could give it a run for its money, though.
I enjoyed "The Case Against Humanity," in which aliens argue whether the entire human race should be summarily executed or given another chance, with its ratlike protagonist desperately pulling out all of our accomplishments to try to convince the judges. (It took me a few seconds to figure out what the masterpiece song was; that was pretty amusing.) My favorite story was the last one, "Sally Ann, Queen of the Galaxy," with its simultaneously innocent and determined twelve-year-old protagonist.
A lot of the story concepts here aren't the freshest - they felt like stories I would have read back in the 70's or 80's, with some fairly familiar themes to anyone who's read a lot of science fiction and fantasy. The stories are well-written (no grammar/punctuation type of errors that I noticed, which is an easy thing to have happen in indie publishing), straightforward and clear in style, and not overly complex. Overall I enjoyed it.
Disclaimer: Kevin and I are GR friends, though I don't know him well. I received a free copy of this ebook from him for review....more
Chinese science fiction author Cixin Liu has had a successful career in China for many years, winning China’Review first posted on Fantasy Literature:
Chinese science fiction author Cixin Liu has had a successful career in China for many years, winning China’s prestigious Galaxy Award nine times. But it wasn’t until 2014, when his 2007 novel The Three-Body Problem was first published in English, that he became well-known outside of Asia. Since then, some of his earlier novels, like Ball Lightning (originally published in China in 2004), have been translated and published in English. This one, Supernova Era (published in October 2019, originally published in 2003 in Chinese, but written even earlier, in 1989) is one of Liu’s earliest works. a stand-alone novel in which a natural disaster leaves the children of Earth alone and in charge of everything, from transportation to weapons of mass destruction.
Sometime in the near future, a massive star only eight light years away from Earth, previously hidden from our view by a cloud of cosmic dust, explodes into a supernova. When the high-energy particles and electromagnetic radiation from the so-called Dead Star hit Earth eight years later, it briefly lights up the entire sky before leaving behind a rosette-shaped nebula that can be seen day and night. It also leaves a dose of radiation that, humans soon figure out, has irreversibly damaged the chromosomes of all humans over the age of thirteen, who will die in ten to twelve months. But in younger children and, apparently, all plants and animals, the damaged chromosomes will repair themselves and there will be no short- or long-term ill effects.
The first chapter of Supernova Era, which relates all of the scientific details relating to the supernova, is the only real hard science portion of the novel. The remainder is a social science novel, exploring the ways in which societies and individuals react to the pending death of all the older teens and adults, desperately trying to pass on their knowledge and skills to the children, and the events that occur — and their effects on various nation’s societies and on our world generally — once the adults have died and the children are in charge.
In fact, the hard science underlying Supernova Era is improbable, if not impossible, and difficult to swallow. A near-Earth supernova would in fact be disastrous, but the likely effects would be severe damage to the ozone layer, our atmosphere, and the ocean. This is the first and largest of the novel’s improbabilities that you just need to roll with, and I had a difficult time with it. I’d be reading along and every so often my brain would interrupt my reading to ask, what about all the animals? Why aren’t there any mutations? Aren’t children’s cells actually MORE susceptible to radiation damage than adults’? (Yes, in fact they are.) But I believe the real answer is, Liu just wanted to tell a story where children have to take over the running of society, worldwide. And with that story he succeeds quite well.
In many ways Supernova Era is an allegorical type of tale. It was inspired, per Liu’s afterword, by the Tiananmen Square protests in June of 1989 and by a dream he had that same night of children marching to war under a blinding blue light. Liu compares humanity to orphans who are unable to find their parents’ hands, groping in the “endless darkness of the cosmos.” Despite a (perhaps unwarranted) optimistic conclusion, much of Supernova Era is quite grim. War is treated like an Olympic contest, with a motto of “Sharper, Fiercer, Deadlier,” a result of our videogame-influenced age. The children who lead nations display the stereotypical weaknesses of their culture: Americans are violent and inclined to escalate conflict; the Vietnamese prime minister proposes that the war games include a “guerrilla war” contest (he’s voted down by the other nations’ representatives); Japanese children kill whales indiscriminately, using depth charges.
Supernova Era lacks the intense creativity of The Three-Body Problem and is a more typical science fiction tale. It was early days yet in Liu’s writing career, and that shows. On the positive side, if you had difficulty following the REMEMBRANCE OF EARTH’S PAST trilogy, this one is much easier to comprehend. Liu spins an interesting tale here, with ample food for thought.
Initial comments: ARC received from publisher ... well, actually it's on sale as of today, so I guess it's not an ARC any longer. RC? :) Cixin Liu had such fascinating ideas in The Three-Body Problem that I'm really interested to see what he has to say in this one....more
A person — whose name and gender are never specified, because that person is “you” — wakes up, al3.5 stars. Review first posted on Fantasy Literature:
A person — whose name and gender are never specified, because that person is “you” — wakes up, alone in a room. You’re blind and in intense pain, and at first you remember nothing at all of your past. You only hear one person, Dr. Anne Kuhn, who instructs you through a speaker: testing you mentally, badgering you to exercise, and, little by little, giving you bits of information about your past life and about why you are where you are now. Gradually it becomes clear that something disastrous has happened.
The Last Conversation is an odd but compelling and ominous science fiction novella from Paul Tremblay. It’s reminiscent of a Twilight Zone episode: strange, somber and slightly horrific in a slow-burn way, with a surprising reveal at the end (or perhaps not so surprising to a perceptive reader; there are some clues as to where this story is heading, though I didn’t guess it myself).
Telling a story in second person — presumably to increase readers’ perception that they’re in the place of the main character — is a tricky thing to pull off well. Combined with the fact that the main character’s name is never given and there’s just a blank line in the text every time Anne speaks their name, it added to the general sense of unease. Perhaps that was intentional on Tremblay’s part; in which case, mission accomplished.
The Last Conversation is a slower-paced work that steadily and inexorably moves toward its disturbing conclusion. Given the main character’s lack of memory and needing to relearn many physical and manual skills from scratch, Tremblay’s approach does make some sense, and the pacing didn’t drag enough to bother me because this was such a quick read. Still, it’s a good thing this is a short novella; if it were longer I think it would have collapsed under its own weight.
The ending was a decent payoff, although it raised several unanswered questions. Anne’s motivations for their final, key conversation are somewhat murky, and the underlying science that is critical to the plot is extremely hand-wavey.
The Last Conversation is part of the FORWARD collection proposed and curated by Blake Crouch. It’s a set of six stand-alone novellas, each by a different author, that explore the “effects of a pivotal technological moment.” The authors are Crouch, N.K. Jemisin, Veronica Roth, Amor Towles, Tremblay and Andy Weir. The individual novellas are reasonably priced and available in ebook and audio form individually or as a set.
Note: Some of the GR reviews give away the twist, so if you're planning to read this, you may want to avoid the reviews until you're done....more
Well, this read was actually a pleasant surprise for me. I thought Veronica Roth's DIVERGENT trilogy went off the rails in the second book, and I neveWell, this read was actually a pleasant surprise for me. I thought Veronica Roth's DIVERGENT trilogy went off the rails in the second book, and I never even read the controversial third book. But this contemplative, melancholic novella was really well done.
An asteroid is about to crash into the earth, and it's a worldwide extinction event - the asteroid has been appropriately named Finis. Humanity has known this was coming for over 20 years (the asteroid did a few flybys first) and somehow everyone has managed to leave Earth for another planet (how exactly this was pulled off is never explained, which I thought was a big hole in the story).
The only remaining people are a group of scientists who are finishing up the collection and cataloging of various plants and animals. They're planning to take off in their two spaceship "Arks" just a few days before Finis hits. But Sarah, a horticulturist, isn't planning to get on the Ark, because of complicated Reasons.
Ark won't be to every reader's taste (the GR reviews are all over the map). There's a lot - maybe too much - talk about plants generally and orchids in particular. But if you're in the mood for a thoughtful, slower-paced SF novella, you might enjoy this one.
It asks more questions than it answers and ends on a somewhat unresolved note, but from a literary point of view I think this story is head and shouldIt asks more questions than it answers and ends on a somewhat unresolved note, but from a literary point of view I think this story is head and shoulders above the others I’ve read so far in this FORWARD collection of SF novellas (4 down, 2 to go). It’s about genetic engineering gone too far, but it’s also about relationships and self-knowledge.
Now excuse me while I go off and think about this some more. Full review to come....more
2.5 stars. Dazzling science can't make up for a mundane plot. Full review first posted on Fantasy Literature:
Nick Chen is an IT guy on a mission: when2.5 stars. Dazzling science can't make up for a mundane plot. Full review first posted on Fantasy Literature:
Nick Chen is an IT guy on a mission: when quantum computers become available to consumers, he tries to convince the managers at the Babylon Hotel and Casino where he works to shut down their keno lounge, knowing that quantum computers can quickly crack the random-number generators of the keno game system. When he fails to persuade them, he uses his override passwords to shut down the keno game, which quickly gets the attention of Edwin Rutledge, the head of the casino. Eventually convinced by Chen’s arguments, Rutledge authorizes Chen to buy the casino its own quantum computer for $300,000 (“We fight quantum with quantum”).
A couple of days later, a new QuanaTech quantum computer is delivered and installed by a salesman, Chen sets up airtight security systems around it, and all is now well with the Babylon keno game … or, perhaps not. It turns out that the QuanaTech salesman is married to a brilliant physicist, who has an idea for an ingenious way to game the system.
Andy Weir is still riding on the coattails of The Martian's fame, but I’m getting dubious that he’ll ever recapture that same magic. Randomize doesn’t do it. Weir tries to dazzle your eyes with lots of geeky science talk about quantum computing and pseudorandom number generation and entangled qbits, and how that would affect the massive Las Vegas gambling industry. But once you clear away all the sparkly physics details, at its heart this is just a heist story, and not a particularly compelling one.
Weir does give his characters a few memorable characteristics: Rutledge is deeply status-conscious and mistrusts anyone who won’t drink with him; the QuanaTech salesman and his wife, Prashant and Sumi Singh, are an Indian couple in an arranged marriage that has worked out rather well, but they want to escape their financial worries; Nick Chen is a nerd who cares about his new quantum computer more than his co-workers’ — or his own — comfort. However, the characterization feels perfunctory; with the exception of Sumi, the characters are all readily recognizable types. The heist plan is overly-complex from a physics point of view but the actual execution of the plan is so simple as to be an eyebrow-raiser. The ending of this novella was amusing but underwhelming.
Randomize is part of the FORWARD collection proposed and curated by Blake Crouch. It’s a set of six stand-alone novellas, each by a different author, that explore the “effects of a pivotal technological moment.” The authors are Crouch, N.K. Jemisin, Veronica Roth, Amor Towles, Paul Tremblay and Andy Weir. The individual novellas are reasonably priced and available in ebook and audio form individually or as a set....more
3.75 stars. Review first posted on Fantasy Literature:
A single spaceman arrives on Earth (which he calls “Tellus,” a Latin word similar to Terra) on a3.75 stars. Review first posted on Fantasy Literature:
A single spaceman arrives on Earth (which he calls “Tellus,” a Latin word similar to Terra) on an important mission from a far-off planet that was colonized by a group of rich white men who left Earth centuries ago. The spaceman, as well as the collective AI that was implanted in his brain and constantly speaks to him in his mind, expected to find a world completely barren of life, decimated by climate change and toxic pollution. What they actually find is far different, and both the man and his chatty AI have huge problems adjusting to this new reality.
But can the man still fulfill his mission? If he succeeds, he’s been promised a beautiful pale (read: Aryan) skin when he returns home. On his planet, everyone except those in the highest class of society wears a featureless, high-tech artificial skin called a composite. But this man’s composite has the ability, in an emergency, to turn into human skin … though not exactly the skin he’s been promised.
Emergency Skin, a science fiction novella by the highly-talented N.K. Jemisin, is cleverly told, with a timely and crowd-pleasing message (at least, the more liberal part of the crowd). It’s written in an unusual, slightly tricky style that takes a little getting used to. Primarily the narrative voice is that of the collective AI talking to the space traveler in his mind, and you also see what Earth’s inhabitants are saying to the spaceman. But Jemisin skips over what the man actually is saying back to them, so you have to do a healthy amount of reading between the lines.
The AI in the man’s brain incessantly badgers, instructs and indoctrinates the man (or at least tries to). The AI is described as a “dynamic-matrix consensus intelligence encapsulating the ideals and blessed rationality of our Founders”: essentially, it’s deep-coded with their planet’s social philosophy, and its one-sided dialogue is highly revealing about their society.
Emergency Skin is a hopeful book, and I loved that about it. It’s strongly anti-prejudice — in stark contrast to the spaceman’s society — and pro-socialism — also in contrast to his society. This novella is fundamentally message fiction that doesn’t care at all to be subtle about its message. On a personal level I’m dubious about the idea(view spoiler)[ that socialism is a system that could save the planet and its ecology and form the basis of a utopian society if the selfish, sexist and otherwise horribly prejudiced men in power would go away (hide spoiler)], but you can’t argue that this story doesn’t have a point of view. Given Jemisin’s past conflicts with Vox Day, I like to think she had great fun picturing Day, Trump and all their ilk jumping on a spaceship (taking as many of Earth’s resources with them as they possibly could, of course) and how that would play out. I had fun reading it, and I think most others will too.
Emergency Skin is part of the FORWARD collection proposed and curated by Blake Crouch. It’s a set of six stand-alone novellas, each by a different author, that explore the “resounding effects of a pivotal technological moment.” The other authors are Crouch, Veronica Roth, Amor Towles (author of A Gentleman in Moscow), Paul Tremblay and Andy Weir. You can buy the individual novellas in ebook form for $1.99 each or $5.94 for the whole set. I’ve bought the set and am looking forward to reading the rest....more
A strong 4 stars for this SF novella that examines the issues with AI. Full review first posted on FantasyLiterature.com:
A woman steals a Maserati andA strong 4 stars for this SF novella that examines the issues with AI. Full review first posted on FantasyLiterature.com:
A woman steals a Maserati and takes off for a mansion north of San Francisco, on a remote stretch of Highway 1 on the coast of California. Another person, Riley, follows her into the home and up to a bathroom, where a man in the tub is dying of knife wounds. As Riley pursues the woman, the tension is offset somewhat by feeling that something about the scene is off. A smell is described as “almost right.” The woman that Riley is chasing, Maxine or “Max,” speaks in toddler-like language.
Riley, the VP of Non-Player Character (NPC) Development for a video game developer, realizes that Max, a minor video character in a virtual reality game, isn’t accepting the role of murder victim to her occult-obsessed husband within the game. Instead, after being murdered 2,039 times by her husband during the development of the Lost Coast game, Max has decided to resist her fate and is trying to escape the confines of the VR game’s map. Somehow Max has developed self-awareness. The question is, what to do about it?
Summer Frost is an intriguing novella about the development of artificial intelligence by Blake Crouch, author of the WAYWARD PINES trilogy and Recursion. It’s a speedy read, about 75 pages, that kept me glued to my chair as I read it in a single sitting. Riley and the principal of WorldPlay, Brian Brite, agree that Max needs to be digitally contained so as not to escape their control. But within those confines, there’s a lot of room for Max to develop their intelligence and capabilities (Max chooses the singular “they” pronoun, rejecting a gendered identity), and an overarching concern about whether Max’s values will align with humanity’s.
Riley is a sympathetic, workaholic main character who becomes overly attached to the AI Max. It has a realistic effect on Riley and her family: her wife Meredith feels jealous of Max, and Riley and Meredith are growing more distant as Riley pours her heart, time and mind into her work and relationship with Max.
I … turn onto my side with my back to Meredith’s back, three feet of demilitarized space between us in the bed, but our hearts infinitely further apart.
The handling of some of the gender-related issues felt a bit clunky; though it’s a highly timely topic, there’s more discussion of what Max is and is not from a gender point of view than seemed really relevant to the plot and Max’s nature as an AI. On the other hand, there’s a vaguely foreboding feeling to the whole story that did work well: can a human trust an AI that’s rapidly becoming more powerful and knowledgeable? And what can you do to make sure humans are safe if the AI escapes its artificial confines?
These are questions worth examining, and Crouch handles it deftly and in a way that surprised me in the end. I love the evocative title of this novella, and how Crouch also introduces the thought experiment Roko’s basilisk into Summer Frost, which lends itself well to the plot. Summer Frost is part of the FORWARD collection proposed and curated by Crouch. It’s a set of six stand-alone novellas, each by a different author, that explore the “effects of a pivotal technological moment.” The authors are Crouch, N.K. Jemisin, Veronica Roth, Amor Towles, Paul Tremblay and Andy Weir. The individual novellas are reasonably priced and available in ebook and audio form individually or as a set.
Content notes: a handful of scattered F-bombs....more
4.5 stars for Brandon Sanderson's latest novel, which is on sale now! Review first posted on Fantasy Literature:
“A hero doesn’t choose her trials.”
Spe4.5 stars for Brandon Sanderson's latest novel, which is on sale now! Review first posted on Fantasy Literature:
“A hero doesn’t choose her trials.”
Spensa can’t help but hear her Gran-Gran’s voice saying these words to her every time Spensa balks at a new trouble in her life. And Spensa — a magnet for trouble — has plenty of occasions to remember these words.
In Starsight, the sequel to Brandon Sanderson’s young adult science fiction novel Skyward, the few humans who remain have been trapped on the barren planet of Detritus for several decades, with alien guardians who frequently attack the human colony with their fighter spaceships, preventing them from leaving Detritus. Spensa is a hot-headed young fighter pilot who revels in the space battles with the alien Krell, and lately she’s been pushing the envelope in those battles, in the hope that getting herself into deadly danger will trigger her latent cytonic ability, allowing her to hyperjump or teleport herself and her ship through space … and possibly open up a way for the humans to escape Detritus.
Thanks in part to Spensa’s ability to “hear” the aliens’ remote commands, the humans have been able to push the boundaries of the battle out farther from the planet itself. So when a small single alien spaceship of unknown design appears by their space defense platforms, Spensa is sent to intercept it. She finds the ship is already damaged and its pilot is injured. Before the pilot sinks into a coma, she gives Spensa a warning, combined with a plea to go to a huge deep-space station called Starsight. This may be the opportunity the humans have been looking for to steal the aliens’ hyperdrive technology, but the risks are as immense as the potential rewards.
I liked Skyward, but I think Starsight is a more unique and engaging novel. Starsight took a sharp turn in a new direction early on, and Sanderson throws in several game-changer developments throughout the novel, keeping both Spensa and the reader on their toes. It wasn’t at all the sequel I expected, and I enjoyed it all the more because of that. Spensa’s horizons and the worldbuilding in this universe both expand exponentially. Starsight is not just a place, it’s also a description of the visions Spensa sees when she’s in the nowhere of hyperspace: stars that are also eyes, focusing their malevolent view on Spensa. Those hate-filled eyes turn out to be significant to both the past and present events.
Spensa is slowly learning to curb her more reckless impulses and play better with others … well, at least some of the time. If I have a complaint about this novel, it’s that Spensa’s inner thoughts, and the frequent dogmatic declarations she makes to herself about the evils of certain alien individuals and their society, telegraph fairly clearly that Spensa is going to be slapped with a reason to re-examine her internal presumptions and prejudices. Still, I found these perspective changes truly touching when they occurred.
This theme of self-examination and personal identity is reflected in several different characters, particularly M-Bot, Spensa’s AI companion that drives her spaceship. M-Bot is still funny in that annoying way, but he’s also an artificial intelligence having an existential crisis, which adds an interesting flavor to the story. Even the surprisingly delightful Doomslug turns out to be far important than she first appeared.
There are a few interludes in between chapters, featuring some familiar secondary characters, that begin as fairly simple fleshing out of their characters and the world of Detritus, but end in a significant discovery that will almost certainly play a key role in the next book in the SKYWARD series. Between that and the rather cliffhangerish ending of Starsight, I’m searching for a way to teleport myself into the future and get a copy of the next book in this series now rather than in 2021!
Prior comments: If you liked Skyward, I think Starsight is even better! So many gamechangers here, and they’re just so much fun. I have to say the blurb for this is about the most non-informative blurb I've ever seen (it basically just recaps the first book) ... but there are Reasons for that, and I want to honor that by not giving away too much about the plot. But Doomslug turns out to be important, which warms my cold tired heart. M-Bot is a key player as well, and still funny in that annoying way, but he's also an AI having an existential crisis, which added an interesting flavor to the story. And Spensa finds out that you can't just rely on your initial impressions of individuals and their societies, and also that prejudices - both against or in favor of someone - can lead you astray.
Thanks so much to Penguin Random House for sending me the ARC!
Initial post: I just opened a package with the hardback ARC of this book!! I love it when the books sent to me that I didn't request are actually things I really want to read. And this immediately solves my "what to read next" question. :)...more
Semiosis is a science fiction novel with an appealing hook: what if space-faring humanity found 3.25 stars. Review first posted on Fantasy Literature:
Semiosis is a science fiction novel with an appealing hook: what if space-faring humanity found a world where plants are intelligent — in some cases arguably more intelligent than humans — and can communicate in their own unique ways? In the latter half of the 21st century, a group of fifty idealistic humans leave Earth, which is beset by a global warming crisis and social problems, to settle another planet far away, which they name Pax. Two problems: first, human nature being what it is, it’s hard to create and maintain a utopian society. And second, the plants on Pax are intelligent and have their own ideas about the proper relationship between plants and their “animals.” It’s a fascinating idea, especially when the narrative shifts to a plant’s point of view.
The first half of Semiosis skips fairly quickly through the years and different generations of humans on Pax. Each generation has its own narrator, who represents the shifting points of view of the human colony. The first generation is particularly confused, as the same type of plants produce fruit that is sometimes poisonous to humans and sometimes not. Nineteen lives are lost, taking the colony down to a mere thirty-one lives, before they begin to adjust to the unexpected reality of intelligent (and sometimes hostile) plant life on Pax.
The ideas Sue Burke explores are provocative: she has pertinent commentaries about human prejudices and fears, group dynamics, and how we interact with each other and with other species based on our preconceptions. The importance of the planet’s ecosystem and a healthy respect for all elements of nature is repeatedly emphasized. I thought the ideas somewhat exceeded Burke’s ability to tell a story. Her writing style is competent, but not particularly inspired.
The snow vines … had realized that we were like the fippokats and used us like them, giving us healthy or poisonous fruit. But the west vine had attacked our fields. It had noticed how we differed from fippokats, that we were farmers, and it had developed a plan that required conspicuous effort on its part. Creative, original ideas and perseverance were signs of intelligence — real intelligence, insightful. It had weighed possible courses of action, then chosen one.
The repeated shifts to new generations, with almost an entirely new cast of characters coming on stage about every forty pages, also made it more difficult for me to connect with the story. But at about the halfway point, Burke stops skipping forward and focuses in on the events that occur about a hundred years after the humans arrive on Pax, as a new and unexpected set of difficulties pops up. One particularly intelligent plant, manipulative but largely benevolent in its nature, becomes a key character. From this point forward, Semiosis gradually grew on me.
In Semiosis, Burke creates an unusual alien world, and combines it with some interesting adventures as well as insights into human (and plant) nature. The story of Pax and the often fraught interactions of different groups continues in the sequel, Interference (where - surprise! - there's a whole new cast of characters ... but a couple of familiar ones)....more
Huh. I think I get why Ilona Andrews abandoned this starter to a new series. It has some pretty disturbing elements, and it’s got about a million surfHuh. I think I get why Ilona Andrews abandoned this starter to a new series. It has some pretty disturbing elements, and it’s got about a million surface details but nothing that really sticks. It’s like the proverbial river that’s a mile wide and an inch deep.
Karina Tucker is a widowed mother of a young daughter, Emily. While driving Emily and a few other kids home from from a field trip they make a quick stop at a building because Jacob HAS to use the restroom. It's an ugly, somehow menacing building (Karina! just send Jacob into the bushes with some tissues!).
And from there Karina (and Emily) are involuntarily pulled into a weird, deadly dimension. With lots of men - also menacing, but hot, so ... The few women are just there for backdrop. It's all about the alpha guys here.
Will Karina be able to overcome a bad start (seriously, a really, REALLY bad start) and control her density destiny? (view spoiler)[C'mon, it's an Ilona Andrews book! (hide spoiler)] Will the rapey man have a good heart and Reasons for how he acts? Who cares?
I’d only recommend it if you’re an Ilona Andrews completist and not too picky about your urban fantasy.
Full review to come.
Content notes: Lots of language, violence, kidnapping, assault ... but no sex....more
If you liked the first Bobiverse book, We Are Legion, this is pretty much more of the same thing. And after a bit of a bumpy start, I really did have If you liked the first Bobiverse book, We Are Legion, this is pretty much more of the same thing. And after a bit of a bumpy start, I really did have a good ride with it ... enough that I immediately bought the third book. Got to see what happens with the Others, aka The Worst Space Aliens Ever!
A few days in the life of a seedy, superpowered hitman.
Spector pushed his horrific pain inside the man’s mind. The agony of Spector’s own death from
A few days in the life of a seedy, superpowered hitman.
Spector pushed his horrific pain inside the man’s mind. The agony of Spector’s own death from the black queen took hold. The man’s eyes rolled up in his head and there was a fresh corpse on the floor seconds later.
So this happens, a lot.
James “Demise” Spector wanders New York City, striking down people who irritate him (which happens quite often) as well as those he’s paid to kill, and takes up with an unusual “joker.”
The story is about as aimless as Spector himself. I think this Tor short story will mostly appeal to Wild Cards universe fans who are already attached to Spector.
3.33 stars. (Yeah, I’m a little torn about this one.) Full review, first posted on Fantasy Literature:
Blake Crouch wraps up the WAYWARD PINES trilogy 3.33 stars. (Yeah, I’m a little torn about this one.) Full review, first posted on Fantasy Literature:
Blake Crouch wraps up the WAYWARD PINES trilogy here in The Last Town. If you haven’t read the prior two books, Pines and Wayward, be warned that here there be spoilers, as well as monsters and a bloodbath.
David Pilcher was a visionary man, convinced that the town of Wayward Pines, Idaho would be a new Eden, a place where people could start over again. The sign outside of town even proclaims “WELCOME TO WAYWARD PINES — WHERE PARADISE IS HOME”! Though Pilcher was right in many ways, life there was far more difficult and dangerous than he foresaw. Between that and Pilcher’s mania for control, Wayward Pines has been more of a prison for its inhabitants, with terrible secrets that Pilcher and his crew are determined to keep from the townspeople, though it’s for their own good, he assures the new sheriff, Ethan Burke.
Pilcher’s mania for control and blind obedience have turned him from a visionary to a would-be god. When Ethan rebelled and broke the huge secret to the entire town at the end of Wayward, Pilcher flew into a rage and remotely opened the gates of the high, electrified fence that surrounds the town. Now the intelligent, deadly creatures — called aberrations or “abbies” — that live outside of the town have invaded en masse, slaughtering as many people as they can.
Do you remember those nightmares you used to have when you were a kid, where monsters were chasing you and you couldn’t get away (probably frozen in fear) and they just kept coming and coming? The Last Town is kind of like that. The prior books in the WAYWARD PINES series had a distinct element of horror along with the mystery and science fiction, but The Last Town ratchets up the horror element several notches. Most of the book is a series of nightmarish scenes, with hideous abbies chasing — and eating — the people living in Wayward Pines. The aftermath is interesting, but you have to wade through copious amounts of gore to get there. And it’s not just the abbies spreading death and destruction; Pilcher may be a megalomaniac with a God complex, but the balance of power is still with him and his loyal followers.
The Last Town ends with another twist. Conceptually I thought the final twist was a great idea, but it required a little too much suspension of disbelief (specifically, relating to the timeline and available technology) to really work for me. Rather like this whole WAYWARD PINES series, in fact. It’s an imaginative wild ride with some fascinating twists and turns, but several of the details and key plot points don’t make much sense on closer examination....more
Holy freaking cliffhangers, Batman! Good thing I had book 3 in hand. 3.75 stars. Review first posted on Fantasy Literature:
Wayward, the second book inHoly freaking cliffhangers, Batman! Good thing I had book 3 in hand. 3.75 stars. Review first posted on Fantasy Literature:
Wayward, the second book in Blake Crouch’s WAYWARD PINES trilogy, picks up right where book 1, Pines, left off. I’ll avoid THE major spoiler for Pines, but minor ones are inevitable, and if there was ever a series where you absolutely need to read the books in order, this one is it. Ethan Burke is the newly-minted sheriff of the small town of Wayward Pines, Idaho (population 461), the prior sheriff having come to an eyebrow-raising end (after reading a few of the flashback scenes in Wayward, one becomes more sympathetic to the urge to dispose of former sheriff, Pope).
Having survived a life-and-death battle with The Powers That Be that control all aspects of life in Wayward Pines, been reunited with his wife Theresa and son Ben, and gotten an explanation of the massive secret explaining the strangeness of life in this small town, Ethan is in a more cooperative mode with the people in charge … well, kind of. Life in picturesque Wayward Pines is so much like a prison camp, with constant video and audio surveillance, strict rules about how to behave and what not to say, and secrets that Dr. Pilcher and his enforcers will kill to protect.
Ethan’s in on the secrets now, but he’s having trouble keeping them. In particular, Theresa is quietly insistent about being told what’s really going on. And now, as sheriff, he’s expected to be an enforcer of the rules and secrecy. His orders include being ordered to spy on a group that’s rebelling against the rules, which includes Kate Hewson, his former Secret Service partner with whom he had an intense affair in his past life. He’s also investigating the violent death of a young woman, and Kate and the rebel group are prime suspects.
Wayward doesn’t have nearly as strong of a mystery element as the first book, Pines, but the suspense factor is still high. Ethan’s investigation of the murder and the rebel group, and his own resistance to the deeply problematic aspects of life in Wayward Pines, are leading him to a crisis point. Crouch weaves in multiple flashbacks from Dr. Pilcher’s prior life, which shed light on his motivations and character, as well as those of the people he’s surrounded himself with.
A new subplot follows the adventures of Tobias, a man who’s been exploring the country for many miles around Wayward Pines for the last couple of years, nearly dying many times. Now Tobias is on his way back to Wayward Pines and the woman he loves. Tobias’s story turns out to be far more relevant than I first expected. Though life for everyone in Wayward Pines is far different now, people’s past behavior and decisions tend to catch up with them.
One of my few reservations about Pines was the necessity for the prison camp type of treatment of the town’s innocent and confused inhabitants. Wayward explains the reasons behind it, which is helpful in one sense but not in another, since it involves a megalomaniac mastermind — a character I’ve met a few too many times in literature.
Wayward is a fast-paced SF novel that makes up in tension what it lacks in depth. It ends with a huge cliffhanger; I strongly advise having The Last Town on your e-reader or nightstand ready to start as soon as you finish this one!...more
This VORKOSIGAN SAGA novella is a blast from the past, accompanied by a large dose of radiation. AfteFinal review, first posted on Fantasy Literature:
This VORKOSIGAN SAGA novella is a blast from the past, accompanied by a large dose of radiation. After Lois McMaster Bujold apparently wrapped up this long-running series in 2016 with Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen, she returned once again to her immensely popular series with this brief novella, backtracking in the series timeline to just a few years after Miles Vorkosigan’s marriage to Ekaterin, when their oldest children, twins Sasha and Helen, are toddlers.
In The Flowers of Vashnoi, told from Ekaterin’s point of view, she, Miles, and Enrique Borgos — a brilliant but odd scientist who we first met in A Civil Campaign — are beginning the process of trying to reclaim a large section of their land that was radiation-poisoned in the Cetagandan war eighty years ago. Enrique has bioengineered the infamous butterbugs from A Civil Campaign, creating a variant they call “radbugs” that eat irradiated soil, regurgitate concentrated heavy metals, and excrete clean, fertile soil. They’ve even engineered the 2½ inch long radbugs to have a flower-like yellow radiation symbol on their backs that glows more brightly as the bugs become increasingly radioactive through their diet, as a warning sign to those who handle the bugs. When the radbugs start disappearing, Ekaterin and Enrique investigate on their own and stumble into something wholly unexpected.
I wouldn’t recommend The Flowers of Vashnoi to anyone just beginning with the VORKOSIGAN SAGA series. As fantastic as the series is, this is definitely not the place to start with it. (I recommend starting with Shards of Honour.) For one thing, this novella relies on familiarity with characters and events from several prior books. For another, its main character is Ekaterin rather than the more vividly-drawn and compelling Miles or his mother Cordelia. Ekaterin is quieter but firm-minded, thoughtful and compassionate. It’s fitting that this story is told from her point of view, which we don’t often see in the series. (Miles puts in appearances at the beginning and end of this story.)
The Flowers of Vashnoi is both a somber and a hopeful tale. There’s the tragedy of the lost city of Vorkosigan Vashnoi, where hundreds of thousands of lives were lost in the Cetagandan bombing and its aftermath, and the still-blighted lands that slowly poison anyone who goes there. We also get a glimpse of the old-school hardline Barrayaran attitude toward anyone who has a physical disability or mutation. At the same time, there’s an encouraging vision of what the future might hold, and characters who have the power and will to work toward a better world.
It blends into an overall tone of cautious optimism, a dream of a world where flowers — both the vegetative and the human kinds of flowers — can, once again, blossom in Vashnoi.
Initial post: How did I miss that this Vorkosigan Saga novella was published last year? More Vorkosigan stories, cheers! I just coughed up my $3.99 and put this on my Read Immediately If Not Sooner list. :)...more
Orson Scott Card‘s ENDERVERSE has grown to sixteen novels and counting, along with several novell3.5 stars. Review first posted on Fantasy Literature:
Orson Scott Card‘s ENDERVERSE has grown to sixteen novels and counting, along with several novellas and short stories, since he published Ender's Game in 1985 (or if you want to go back even further, since the original “Ender’s Game” short story was published in Analog magazine in 1977). Andrew Wiggin, or Ender, is the main character in only a few of these works; others focus on his brother Peter Wiggin, Ender’s protégé Bean, and other new or secondary characters from Ender’s Game. Which brings us to Mazer Rackham, the half-Māori war hero who plays a brief but pivotal role in Ender’s Game.
In 2012, Card, along with co-author Aaron Johnston, began writing prequels to the original ENDER series, beginning with Earth Unaware, set almost a century before Ender’s Game. Mazer Rackham is a key character in this series, but shares the stage with many others, particularly Victor Delgado, a space-born mechanic; Bingwen, a brilliant young Chinese boy training as a soldier to fight the alien Formics; and Lem Jukes, immensely wealthy son and heir of the first Hegemon.
I mention this background because, although The Swarm is designated as the first volume in the SECOND FORMIC WAR trilogy, readers should really consider it the fourth book in the prequel novels about the original Formic attacks on Earth. It’s possible to start your prequel reading with The Swarm, but the events and characters are so closely connected to the FIRST FORMIC WAR trilogy (Earth Unaware, Earth Afire and Earth Awakens) that I really can’t recommend beginning with The Swarm.
After barely beating off the Formics who invaded Earth in the First Formic War, the people of Earth have reorganized themselves politically and militarily, knowing that a larger invasion of Formics is inevitable. Lem Jukes’ father Ukko has become the Hegemon, a type of prime minister over the entire planet, and he’s been joined by a Polemarch, chief over the new International Fleet, and a Strategos, in charge of the defense of our solar system. As Victor and his shipmates discover a second invasion of Formics gearing up, hidden among the asteroids in our solar system, Mazer battles his superior officer’s greed and corruption that have resulted in punitive court-martial proceedings against Mazer. Meanwhile, Bingwen and other Chinese orphan boys are being whipped into soldiers by the merciless and driven Captain Li, who knows that their small size may make them invaluable warriors if humans need to battle Formics in their underground tunnels.
The plot of The Swarm is complex, jumping between these and other characters’ points of view. One of the more fascinating, and appalling, characters is Khalid, a murderous Somalian space pirate, whose brief subplot makes for compelling reading. (There will certainly be more to come from Khalid.) There’s also Wila, a young Thai biochemist who takes a lot of heat for her Buddhist-inspired empathy toward the Hive Queen of the Formics, but whose scientific and philosophical insights may lead to key breakthroughs in defending against them. Overall it’s a typical Card cast of characters: incredibly bright, precocious children; idealistic fighters for freedom; and the corrupt, self-centered people who stand in their way.
The theme of deadly alien threat, counter-balanced with the grave problems caused by human selfishness and greed, plays out throughout The Swarm. For my money, Card and Johnston are taking much too long to spin out this tale, when you consider not just the 500+ pages in this novel but all of the other books you need to read to get the entire story. But all in all, it’s a well-told tale if you like SF space operas and you’re a fan of Orson Scott Card’s ENDERVERSE books. If you haven’t already read Ender’s Game, I strongly recommend that you start there, then read my favorite book in the entire series, Speaker for the Dead, and then decide from there if you want to get deeper into the ENDERVERSE. The SECOND FORMIC WAR series continues with The Hive, just published in June 2019. It’s on my short list for upcoming reads!
Initial post. OSC's publicist sent me a copy of his latest Enderverse novel, The Hive, and since I hadn't read the first book in that series (this one, The Swarm) and I hate trying to jump into series mid-stream, I dutifully trotted off to the library and checked out this book. What I didn't realize at the time was that I didn't go back far enough....more
The Weapon Makers, a 1943 SF novel currently nominated for a 1944 Retro Hugo award, is the sequel3.5 stars. Review first posted on Fantasy Literature:
The Weapon Makers, a 1943 SF novel currently nominated for a 1944 Retro Hugo award, is the sequel to the better-known The Weapon Shops of Isher. As discussed in my review of The Weapon Shops of Isher, A.E. van Vogt was fond of creating fix-up novels based on his earlier works, and the creation and publication history of both of these novels in his EMPIRE OF ISHER duology is complicated. The Weapon Shops of Isher, was published in its final form in 1951, several years after The Weapon Makers, but The Weapon Makers is set several years after The Weapon Shops of Isher,. It may help to keep in mind that about half of The Weapon Shops of Isher, comes from two short stories published in 1941 and 1942. For its part, The Weapon Makers was first published in serialized form in Astounding magazine in 1943, then printed in book form in 1947, then substantially revised by van Vogt and republished in 1952. (This publication history makes my head spin.) I think it’s advisable to read The Weapon Shops of Isher, first, so you’re grounded in the world of the Empire of Isher, but it’s not strictly necessary, plot-wise.
At any rate, this story begins about seven years after the events in The Weapon Shops of Isher, (we know this because the Empress Innelda, who was 25 years old in the first book, is now 32). One of the weapon shop organization’s executives, Robert Hedrock, has been a spy in the Empress’ palace for the past six months. Hedrock is Earth’s only immortal man, a secret he’s never told anyone. He’s about 2500 years old but looks like a man in his prime.
One of Hedrock’s secret weapons is a “spy ray” machine, and using it he finds out that the Empress ― who’s treated him very favorably in the past six months ― has just ordered him to be arrested after their lunch in a few hours and then immediately hanged. Despite the personal danger, Hedrock decides to stay in the palace and try to brazen it out. It works, at least partially, but it seems a lucky break for Hedrock when a weapon shop carplane whisks him away from the palace after lunch.
It’s not actually so lucky, though: the High Council of Weapon Makers, a group of thirty men who run the weapon shops organization, has convened to put him on trial on the spot. Hedrock is under grave suspicion because the Council has realized that he’s not the person they originally believed him to be. Their sentence is immediate death, and that sentence is a lot more dangerous coming from the Weapon Makers than from the Empress.
From here Hedrock plunges into a dizzying series of adventures, including trying to save the world’s first and only interstellar spaceship, which the Empress is intent on destroying to protect her regime; first contact with an alien race, which has questionable intentions toward humanity; avoiding capture by the Weapon Makers; stomping around the country in giant form (seriously!); and a little bit of time travel. The plot is definitely imaginative but rather disjointed. Van Vogt claimed that many of his story ideas came from his dreams (during his active writing years he reportedly would wake every ninety minutes to write down ideas from his dreams), and after reading The Weapon Makers, I believe it.
Empress Innelda is a strong-willed, vividly-drawn character here and in The Weapon Shops of Isher,, but makes some odd choices in this book regarding love, marriage and motherhood. This development was probably generally satisfying to readers when this book was published 65 or 75 years ago, but (though I’m all for marriage and parenthood) the way she acts seems quite out of character. For their part, the weapon shop personnel in this story are far less altruistic than they seemed in the first book, and more inclined to take offensive action against perceived threats like Hedrock and the Empress, but that plot development makes much more sense and works well.
Van Vogt found some fascinating ways to work time travel into the plots of his EMPIRE OF ISHER books, but the science in The Weapon Makers ― spy rays! A countless variety of rings for Hedrock’s fingers that allow him to teleport and do other incredible stunts! Aliens with amazing mind-over-matter powers! ― is definitely of the handwavy, soft science variety. This is an imaginative novel with an intricate plot, but it doesn’t cohere as well, or impress me as much, as The Weapon Shops of Isher,. It’s worth reading, though, if you enjoyed the first book....more
A science fiction classic from 1951, or from the 1940s, depending on how you slice it. :) Review first posted on Fantasy Literature:
I first came acrosA science fiction classic from 1951, or from the 1940s, depending on how you slice it. :) Review first posted on Fantasy Literature:
I first came across the 1942 short story “The Weapon Shop” by A.E. van Vogt in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame: Volume One, 1929-1964, a fantastic collection of some of the best short fiction from the pre-Nebula years that was instrumental in shaping my taste for science fiction when I was an impressionable teen. A few years later I came across the full-length novel The Weapon Shops of Isher in the two-volume collection A Treasury of Great Science Fiction, edited by Anthony Boucher, and was surprised to see that the short story I’d enjoyed was actually part of a much longer work that was far more complex and appealing to me.
What had actually happened, though I didn’t know it at the time, was that van Vogt had taken three of his shorter works that had been published in science fiction magazines in the 1940s ― the above-mentioned “The Weapon Shop,” “The Seesaw” from 1941, and “The Weapon Shops of Isher” from 1949 ― and combined them into the “fix-up” novel The Weapon Shops of Isher. (Reportedly, van Vogt even coined the term “fix-up”; certainly he was enthusiastic about the process of combining and reworking his earlier stories.)
As a result, The Weapon Shops of Isher is a wide-ranging novel with multiple plot threads and characters. Seven thousand years in the future, Earth is ruled by the Empress Innelda, an intelligent, rather despotic young ruler who is the latest descendant of the long-reigning House of Isher. For the last couple of thousand years, the monarchy’s tendency toward tyranny has been checked by the Weapon Shops, where anyone (except government agents) can get a super-high-tech weapon to use for self-defense.
In this setting there are three interlocking plotlines, logically enough, since this novel is composed of three shorter works. In the first, Chris McAllister, a reporter, enters a weapon shop that suddenly appeared in his town in the year 1951 and is instantly transported to the time period that the shop came from, some 7,000 years in the future. The weapon shop’s owner and his daughter soon realize that McAllister and the shop are seesawing in time because of an energy weapon being turned on the shop by the Empress. Because of the huge mass differential, McAllister is swinging back and forth far further in time than the shop … and it’s only getting worse. Not to mention he’s building up a massive charge of energy in his body, with no safe way to discharge it.
The second plot thread follows Fara Clark, an older man who’s extremely set in his authoritarian attitudes toward his family and his devotion to the Empress. His harshness has alienated his 23-year-old son Cayle. Fara despises the weapon shops and their philosophical views that set them in opposition to the Empress, but when Fara’s repair shop business and livelihood are ruined by a ruthless corporation, he may have nowhere else to turn.
The third (and most interesting, at least to me) plotline follows Cayle Clark as he escapes his village, intent on making it in the big city, Imperial City. He’s hampered by his small-town habits and lack of sophistication, but on the plus side he has immense “callidetic” (PSI) mental powers and has gained the interest of Lucy Rall, a young woman who works at the weapon shop and has Connections. But Cayle’s mental powers may cause him trouble as well as helping him out, especially when he gets carried away with his lucky streak and wins far too much money in a gambling palace. The owners of the establishment are not at all amused, and they have ways of making people like him pay.
One of the secondary characters is a man named Robert Hedrock who, through an accident of some kind about 2500 years earlier, is now Earth’s sole immortal man (something he keeps secret), and who is a key executive within the weapon shops organization. Hedrock’s immortality is oddly handwaved in The Weapon Shops of Isher, but he takes center stage in its sequel, The Weapon Makers, which was first published in serialized form in Astounding magazine in 1943, but is set several years later than this novel.
I originally read back The Weapon Shops of Isher in the 80s and enjoyed it hugely. It has some strikingly imaginative ideas and ― what is more surprising ― characters who are actually memorable (something that can’t be taken for granted in classic SF). On reread, I can see that some aspects of it are dated: Fara Clark’s dismissive treatment of his wife and adult son seem very mid-20th century, though arguably it could remain a small-town attitude in the far future. Though most of the power players in this world are men, the Empress wields impressive power and Lucy Rall takes a fairly active role in directing her own and Cayle’s lives. Van Vogt is also patently enthused about the Second Amendment; the weapon shops’ slogan is “The right to buy weapons is the right to be free.” It’s a measured take on the right to bear arms, however: the shops’ high-tech weapons can only be used only by the buyer, and only for self-defense and approved hunting.
You can see the seams where van Vogt melded together the three novellas, but the plot threads all weave together fairly well in the end. The Weapon Shops of Isher is one of the better science fiction novels from its era; I recommend it to readers who are fond of Golden Age SF. Both this novel and its sequel, the Retro Hugo-nominated The Weapon Makers, are available on Kindle for a reasonable price (currently $3.99 each)....more
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