Smudge Marks & Engel Werks Inside GMT Flash of Steel Playing at the World Dyson’s Dodecahedron Quest for Fun! Bruce Heard and New Stories Fantasy Cafe Lynn’s Book Blog Sitrep Hex and Violence Banzai!! Dungeon Fantastic Ravens N’ Pennies Let’s GURPS The Collaborative Gamer Don’t Forget Your BootsDuane’s second Romulan (excuse me: Rihannsu) novel is also, or maybe more of, a follow up to Spock’s World. Like that book, which dived into the history of the most prominent member of the Federation after Earth, every other chapter[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
The professional fan fiction of Star Trek novels are useful for finding new authors, and the biggest find I’ve ever had from them is Diane Duane, who had written many very good books outside that universe. This is where I[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
A Fire Upon the Deep is an important novel that SF fans really should read. I think, like Niven’s Ringworld, it’s a flawed book with really good ideas. Like Ringworld, it also has a much better sequel. The original book[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
David Weber is a good author with a few glaring weaknesses. Sadly, all of that is readily apparent in this novel. The basic setup is that humanity gets to the stars, runs into an alien race apparently intent on wiping[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Well, this is different… and yet familiar. The broad action and wider themes of Defense of the Fiddler are fairly familiar Military SF. However, this is done in a script format. Beyond the oddness of that choice in general, there’s[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
This is yet another indication that I need to pay more attention to book review blogs. I picked this up because of an interesting post on one, and am very happy with the result. I doubt I would have come[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
This is… almost a novella collection; the third story is notably shorter, but the other three reach into novella length. The four stories all deal with the ‘dreamers’ of Ty-Kry: Women who can dream and, through a device, share those[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
This old Ace collection of Andre Norton stories is not aptly named. There’s not a lot of sorcery to be had, high or otherwise, and certainly, it’s never called such. As usual for a collection, it is bookended by the[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Okay, I have some problems with the basic premises here. Technology for scanning your personality, your soul, and imprinting it on a disposable clay-like… ‘golem’ who is effectively a mental duplicate of you, is so cheap that sending it out[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Catseye features Norton’s usual broader theme of the main character finding his place in the world, but isn’t really a coming-of-age story like many of her books. In fact, Troy Horan doesn’t need to be exiled or otherwise lost to[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…