The Phoenix Transformed                             Mercedes Lackey & James Mallory                               Oct 2008

Volume 3 of the Enduring Flame. I partially take back what I said about the previous book. Tiercel and Harrier are sort of stranded in the desert with some tribesman. It would seem that the main idea is to kill off as many tribesman as possible but there are still more. For the first two-thirds of the long book their main job is to complain about their circumstances. Only at the very end do they do anything and they seem to be amazed that anything happens. Correct, I am not fond of this book.

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Learning the World                Ken MacLeod                                   July 2006

When the book begins the year is 14,364 A.D. the date is 5/12 at 17:24.  The starship is named But the Sky, My Lady! The Sky! and it has been en-route for 4,000 years.  The ship is about 500 light years from earth and it is nearing a star system.  It would be a generation ship but human lifetimes have been extended so that they are almost unlimited.  In their exploration and colonization of stars there has never been a sentient species discovered.  This is about to change, the inhabitants of the second planet from this star have just spotted a new comet with a very strange orbit.  The book chronicles the life aboard the ship and on the planet from shortly before they become aware of each other through the through their mutual discoveries of each other over a 12 year time span.  At the end of this some of the humans continue on their way, some remain, primarily in the asteroid belt, and both humans and the inhabitants of the planet consider the other lights in the sky that are not stars, they seem to be products of intelligence.  A very strange book.  My first thought was "Huh?" but then it grew on me and became quite fascinating.  I will look for more books by MacLeod.

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Wicked    Gregory Maguire

The book chronicles the life and times of Elphaba of the House of Thropp, who would become known as the Wicked Witch of the West,  her sister Nessarose who would become the Eminence of the East, more commonly called the Wicked Witch of the East, and Glinda who was for a time Elphaba's roommate at Shiz University just outside of the Emerald City.  Glinda would later go on to rule Oz for a time but that happens later.

Elphaba was born in the outer reaches of Munchkinland to a fairly ineffectual minister and the daughter of the leader of the Munchkins.  It was a strange birth, she was green, had very sharp teeth, and was seemingly allergic or at least suffered great distress from coming in contact with water.  Other than these minor differences she had a relatively normal childhood.  She later had a brother and a sister although there was some concern about paternity.  She went to the major university, she was an adequate student, quite interested in biological studies, moderately proficient in magic even though it was not appropriate in religious circles.  She later became a somewhat ineffective political agitator and was forced to leave the Emerald City when her lover was killed by the police.  She then made her way to the Cloister of Saint Glinda where she stayed for some years and gave birth to her son.  She then traveled to the castle of her lover and lived there, trying to learn more magic, until Dorothy came.  The rest you probably know.

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Son of a Witch    Gregory Maguire

The sequel to Wicked.  My outlook on the world of Oz has been forever changed by these two books.  L. Frank Baum evidently had a much more interesting setting than we ever knew.  It's too bad that he never new about the "real" story of Oz.

Liir, the son of the Witch, is found mostly dead.  The book covers Liir's life from the death of the Witch, to his "accident" and recovery until he regains consciousness.  The story switches back and forth from before accident to after accident.  Then the two plot lines converge and we continue on until the birth of his daughter.  If you thought that The Wizard of Oz was a children's story, you were right.  These books look at Oz from the viewpoint of the politics surrounding this period in the life of Oz.  These books are for advanced children.  I enjoyed them very much.

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A Lion Among Men               Gregory Maguire                              Dec 2008

Volume Three in the series (Wicked Years).  The story of the (sometimes) Cowardly Lion.  His name is Brrr.  The book describes his early life (he was an experimental Animal in Shiz but Elphaba rescues him.  He travels all over Oz, we all know of his meeting with Dorothy, but we discover that the Wizard didn't really give him much courage, he just gave him a job as a spy.  He ends up at the Cloister of Saint Glinda (where Liir was born) and everything pretty much comes together while he is there.  Unfortunately as it ends two new story lines are created.  The further adventures of Brrr and the continuing search for Liir (and/or his daughter) by his (half?) sister.  I hope he writes the next book soon because I don't want to wait that long.  Wicked came out in 1995 and Son of a Witch came out in 2005.  Thats a long time between books.

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Acorna's Quest                       Anne McCaffrey and Margaret Ball   Aug 2006

A juvenile by a very good author and a collaborator.  Mix the unicorn legend in with science fiction and see what happens.  Acorna, the unicorn girl, has been found as an infant in a rescue pod by three asteroid miners.  She obviously comes from a high-tech civilization but it is unknown to humans.  They meet with a number of humans who wish to use and abuse her.  This book starts with Acorna as a very fast maturing "teenager" who still has the miners as her guardians and has also acquired two rich and powerful protectors.  Several members of Acorna's species have come to warn humanity of a large army of vicious invaders on the way to human occupied space. They set out to rescue her only to find that she is attempting to rescue a group of humans in trouble.  Acorna doesn't seem to need all that much rescuing but she does wish to meet her relatives.  The bad guys discover that humans can be rather nasty when defending their territory.  Not a tremendously exciting book but you can never tell when McCaffrey will come up with an interesting idea.

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Acorna's People                      Anne McCaffrey and Elizabeth Ann Scarborough   Sept 2006

Acorna has found her relatives and travels with her aunt to the current home planet of her people.  There she finds a stilted, tradition based culture that she doesn't fit in with very well.  Her aunt is sent on a mission to learn why the signals from some bases have ceased.

Another story line starts with Becker, a space junk collector, runs afoul of some of Acorna's enemies.  Being enemies of the same people, Becker and Acorna are destined to become friends.  Sure enough they join forces and with Hafiz (Acorna's foster parent) they rescue Acorna's aunt and others of her race who have been captured by the  evil parties.  They all travel back to narhii-Vhiliinyar for a joyful homecoming.  There it is pointed out to Acorna that the home world is the residence of the more traditional, tradition loving branch of her people, the more progressive are commonly found on other worlds and in space.  Acorna belongs with this second group.

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Acorna's World                       Anne McCaffrey and Elizabeth Ann Scarborough  
Acorna's Search                      Anne McCaffrey and Elizabeth Ann Scarborough  

Acorna's Rebels         Anne McCaffrey and Elizabeth Ann Scarborough  Sept 2006

Acorna is helping rebuild Vhiliinyar, the native planet of the Linyaari.  She is mourning her lifemate Aari who has disappeared while on a quest to find information about the origins of the Linyaari.  As a sort of vacation she and her friends decide to see if they can find Aari and solve the mystery of the Temple Cats, who mysteriously disappeared just before Vhiliinyar was destroyed.  After numerous adventures they partially solve the Temple Cat mystery, save the Temple Cats and the humans on their planet.  They still don't find Aari but they are finding more about why he vanished.  Still a juvenile series.

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Acorna's Triumph                    Anne McCaffrey and Elizabeth Ann Scarborough

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Catalyst                    Anne McCaffrey and Elizabeth Ann Scarborough                Mar 2010

A new series, "A Tale of the Barque Cats". It is not said in so many terms but it looks like an alien species came to visit ancient Egypt. They had space ships in the shape of pyramids and they took cats and perhaps some humans back with them and/or left their guests somewhere. The cats got smart and the humans are not important in this story.

In this story a sub-species of the domestic house cat has arisen and it is very useful in spotting problems in space ships. Two subplots, in the first a pregnant female cat is "catnapped" and one of her kittens is later recovered by the owner. But then the owner and kitten are captured by one of the "Egyptian" cats in space. The second subplot involves an evil politician who convinces the government to quarantine all animals being shipped. This doesn't work out well and the two subplots merge. Everything gets sorted out, many of the cats escape and go back to the "Egyptian" planet and our kitten and owner are making plans to go there.

Definitely a juvenile, both in planned audience and plot.

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Dragon's Kin                    Anne McCaffrey and Todd McCaffrey     Mar 2008
The book starts with a brief history of Pern to this point.
      8 Turns    From landfall to beginning of first pass (Turn - Pern for year)
    50 Turns    Length of first pass  (Pass - period of time during which Thread falls)
 200  Turns    Length of first interval
    50 Turns    Length of second pass
  200 Turns    Length of second interval
This book begins 16 Turns before the beginning of the third pass.

Kindan is the youngest son of a miner, a miner who is in charge of a watch-wher.  His father is killed in a mine accident and the wher dies in helping get several miners out.  As his father was a widower, his remaining siblings are fostered out and Kindan is apprenticed to the local Harper, Master Zist.  He and Kindan do fairly well for several months.


The Kindan is sent to "impress" a watch-wher and bring the egg back to the mine where it will be used in the mine.  He is successful and is responsible for its welfare.  He is befriended by a blind girl, Nuella, the daughter of the Chief Miner.  She helps him with the wher, especially with going into the mine as her blindness is much less of a problem in the dark.

Nuella shows a remarkable ability to get along with and work with the watch-wher.  She is asked to travel (by dragon back) to various holds to train wher-masters in a new technique that she discovered.  Just as she returns there is a cave-in at the mine.  She and Kindan's watch-wher rescue the trapped miners.  The watch-wher and Nuella bond and Kindan is accepted as a Harper.  Both Nuella and Kindan are pleased by this arrangement.

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Od Magic                     Patricia A. McKillip                         July 2006

Od is an ancient magician who started a school of Magic several hundred years ago.  Od wanders a lot and in her journeys she comes across a young untrained magician named Brenden Vetch.  He is very good with plants.  Od has been thinking about her school for some time and realizes that Brenden would be a perfect test for what may be going wrong at the school.  She sends him there as a gardener and at the same time he arrives, Od arrives disguised as a young but talented pupil.  With the unwitting help of a number of people including a young princess and others associated with the school and the palace the problems are discovered and the school and the kingdom are set back on a proper path.  The book is a little slow in getting where it is going but it is a pleasant way to spend an afternoon.

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The Devil's Eye                      Jack McDevitt                                   Dec 2008
            An Alex Benedict Novel

Alex Benedict, interstellar antiquities dealer, and his assistant, pilot, and overall girl Friday, Chase Kolpath are on vacation when they receive a cryptic message from a celebrated horror writer who has asked for help in some way and has transferred a very large sum of money to Alex.  They travel to the place the writer had been vacationing to try to determine what is going on.  There they travel around the planet, get captured by the bad guys, escape, fly a taxi into orbit, save the planet, prevent an interstellar war between humans and the other known space going species in this part of the Galaxy, and get hailed as heroes by both species.  And in the process Alex finds, keeps, and then sells a previously unknown volume of Churchill's history.  All in all a very profitable journey even if it did take several months more than planned.  A very nice book.

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Victory Conditions                  Elizabeth Moon                                Apr 2008

The final episode(?) of the Vatta's War series.  Kylara and Rafe are pretty much on their own.  Ky in command of her small but effective space force, Rafe as the President of the communications company following the injuries to his father.  They are both obviously too young to be in such command positions - it's just that no one else is qualified.  

Of course they prevail after suitable trials and tribulations.  A necessary and satisfying conclusion to the series but not as good as the other books.  Too much of a geo-political-economic analysis and not as much of a story about real people interacting.  The earlier books were more satisfying as the focus was much more on the main characters doing the things that made the difference.  In this book they set up the conditions and others did most of the exciting stuff.  And where this was not true, Rafe capturing the spy, you wonder, why was he doing this himself?  Shouldn't the most valuable player send someone else in instead of risking his life?  

I really enjoyed the series, this just happened to be the weakest book.

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Building Harlequin's Moon   Larry Niven and Brenda Cooper

The John Glenn, the first interstellar spaceship, as left Earth intending on traveling to a planet suitable for terraforming.  Enroute they encountered difficulties and were forced to stop at a star with very poor prospects.  They were forced to modify an existing moon to create the facilities needed to manufacture the needed quantities of antimatter so that they can resume their journey.  This is the story of Rachel, one of the first generation born on the newly terraformed moon.  She, and all those born with her and thereafter, were destined to become the workers who would build the infrastructure on the moon and then build the antimatter generator to supply fuel for the starship.  One might call them slave laborers.  This is the story of the conflict between the Earth Born and the Moon Born.  It recounts the origins of the conflict, the attempts at resolving the conflict, the emergencies and the political unification of the two groups.  It is a Larry Niven book – its good.

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Fleet of Worlds                      Larry Niven and Edward M. Lerner   Dec 2008
Juggler of Worlds                 Larry Niven and Edward M. Lerner   Dec 2008

These are two different aspects of the same story.  Each major section of both books is defined by the date of occurrence.  As examples the dates of the sections in Fleet of Worlds are 2197, 2650, 2650, 2650, and 2652.  The dates of the sections in Juggler of Worlds are 2637, 2641, 2645, 2645, 2648, 2650, 2651, 2652-53, 2654-55, 2656-57, 2658, 2659, and 2660.  In Fleet of Worlds we follow an expedition from Earth, which first sights the Fleet of Worlds - the home of the Puppeteers, is captured, and the crew and the frozen fetuses are enslaved by the Puppeteers.  Almost 500 years later three descendants rebel, discover the original Earth ship, and threatened the Puppeteers until they were allowed to take one  (NP4 or New Terra) of the six worlds and leave the Fleet so that they might follow their own destiny.

Juggler of Worlds bounces around much more.  It expands on a number of much earlier short segments by Larry Niven and puts them together in a common narrative.  Some of the major characters that appear are Sigmund Ausfaller (ARM agent), Julian Forward (Jinx Physicist), Gregory Pelton (wealthy industrialist), Beowulf Schaeffer (pilot), Carlos Wu (Earth Physicist), Nessus and Nike (both Puppeteers).  We follow the events surrounding the discovery of the Galactic Core Explosion, the withdrawal of General Products from Earth, more of the politics on Hearth (Puppeteers), Earth and several of the other worlds in Known Space, and the journey of Ausfaller and several people from NP4 to the Outsiders and the deal with the Outsiders, Puppeteers, and humans.  

I have never seen other books so intertwined as these two.  I am glad that I got both at the same time from the library.  I was very happy to see Niven creating more books in the Known Space universe.  This has been one of the best series in all of science fiction and it is continuing.  

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Three Hands for Scorpio   Andre Norton

There is trouble in the land.  The Lord and Lady are summoned to a meeting to discuss the matter.  The triplet daughters are left behind in the well defended castle.  They are kidnapped by evil magic while the rest o the castle sleeps in an unnatural slumber.  The captors, fearing pursuit and eventful capture lower the three girls into the strange underworld called the Dismals to die.  After a suitable number of adventures and with the assistance of a strange young man whom they don’t completely trust, they escape the Dismals.  They are united with their parents and with the additional help of some unexpected friends they solve the mystery of the Dismals and destroy the evil that has been stalking their land.  The book is suitable for rather dull, unimaginative subteen girls.  Nortons books have not been extremely intellectual bur have usually been entertaining.  I was disappointed.

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Temeraire                                Naomi Novik                                    Dec 2006

My previous book was House of Chairs, this is equally long and equally improbable but much more fun to read.  Ever since the Pern series dragons have been the BIG thing in fantasy-science fiction.  This is a historical novel set during the Napoleonic Wars.  A young British naval Captain captures a French ship that contains a large dragon egg.  Several days later the egg hatches and the Captain "impresses" the newly hatched dragon.  Since this is an "alternative history" dragons are relatively common and are used in European countries as an Air Force.  This is a package of three reasonable length novels packaged in one long book.  We follow Captain Laurence through his first few days with Temeraire, his training to be an aviator and acquiring a flight crew, a surprise trip to China to solve some diplomatic problems caused by the fact that Temeraire was originally given to Napoleon Bonaparte as a gift from the Chinese Emperor, and his flight back to Europe where he was forced into joining the Prussian Air Force.

The problems that I had with the book were that she seemed to run out of ideas during the Prussian campaign against Napoleon - it just seemed to drag and and the problems with the size and the physics of dragons.  Contrary to the opinions of many science fiction and fantasy authors size actually does matter.  Novik is proposing dragons that weigh up to 50 tons and carry as many as 300 combat troops.  The ability of such a creature to fly, breath, consume a reasonable amount of food, etc. seriously strains my credulity.  I enjoyed the story but a suspension of belief was necessary.

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Empire of Ivory                                Naomi Novik                                    Dec 2007
            Book 4 of the Temeraire Series

Straight continuation of the above series.  When we left book 3 Temeraire and a group of dragons had just left Europe for England and when book 4 starts they are still flying to England.  They make it to England to discover that the dragons have been struck with a serious illness (flu?).  They fight valiantly for a while but they gain intelligence that there might be a cure in Africa.  A small group of dragons sails (by ship) to the south of Africa, they find a cure but discover another culture of dragons in the middle of Africa who are hostile because of British slave trading.  They escape with sufficient cure (wouldn't want to give away plot elements) and the technology to create more.  After they return, the English dragons are recovering nicely, but they discover that the English high command has instituted a program of biological warfare against French dragons.  They take steps to rectify the situation.  Not a good move politically.

Again the plot moves very slowly, there are only a few major plot ideas with no significant subplots.  It just seems to plod and even the exciting parts are way too drawn out.  I will read the next book but I hope it gets better.  The publicist blurb in the back of the book says that she has optioned rights to Peter Jackson - Lord of the Rings movies - a movie would go much better.

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Victory of Eagles                    Naomi Novik                                     Oct 2008
            Book 5 of the Temeraire Series

Again, straight continuation of the above.  I am getting disappointed with the series.  Way too much chatter and not enough action.  From now on if there are more books in the series I will get them from the library before I spend money.  A disappointment.  

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Eldest                      Christopher Paolini                           Sept 2006

Second book of the Inheritance Series

Eragon and his dragon partner, Saphira, have survived and played a major part in saving the dwarf stronghold from the forces of the evil King Galbtorix.  He and a small group travel to the land of the elves where he is to complete his first training as a Dragon Rider.  Meanwhile his cousin, Roran, is being sought by minions of the King back in their home in Carvahall.  After the King's soldiers attack but are driven back Roran assumes leadership of the townspeople and leads them on a trek to Surda where they arrive just as the battle starts between the King's armies and the humans and dwarfs.  Roran and Eragon meet on the battlefield where the forces of the King are partially defeated.  When the book ends the King's army is retreating and the army of the Varden (humans, dwarfs, elves, and Dragon Rider) is trying to pull itself together after the fight.

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The Infinite Instant               Danielle L. Parker                 Feb 2010

Oh, Oh, I know the author! We have a novel set in the indefinite future. We have space travel to other star systems but this is very unimportant to the book. California just sank into the Pacific in "The Big One" and our heroine has a very powerful PSI power as well as a PhD in cyber sciences. She is working as a hi-priced private eye in a very mob dominated environment. Someone thinks that he needs her services but for some not too clear reason feels that he has to force her to work for him. This doesn't make a lot of sense but it does make for conflict. I was a little irritated when the book ends just when it appears that the heroine is about to take the trip of her life - or perhaps her last trip - but on the other hand that is how authors get you to buy the next book in the series. And I will read the next book.

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Into the Looking Glass            John Ringo & Travis S. Taylor        July 2008

The University of Central Florida appears to have been bombed, with a 60 kiloton blast, however it doesn't seem to be either a fusion or a fission bomb.  What gives?  When investigated there seems to be something in the crater, and then strange "insects?" start appearing in the crater.  They find a survivor, Mimi and her "pet" Tuffy.  The "insects" turn out to be rather nasty and begin killing people and they start showing up in lots of spots.  

The "something" in the crater turns out to be a two way portal to elsewhere - and elsewhere may be open space, a far off planet or even elsewhere on earth.  However there are Bad Guys in some of these locations, Good Guys in some other and its all very confusing.  With the help of some of the Good Guys our heros find a way of closing off the portals to the Bad Guys.  Definitely Space Opera stuff but fun reading.

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Vorpal Blade                John Ringo                      June 2008

Bill Weaver, PhD and SEAL Chief Adams are back again.  The submarine Nebraska has been converted into a sea and space ship with warp drive.  The bad guys are out there so we need to search them out.  With the addition of the newly created Space Marines out they go.  The fly leaf compares this to Heinlein, maybe not, but still a good book.  I will read the rest of the series.

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Manxome Foe                         John Ringo & Travis S. Taylor        July 2008

Next book in the series.  The Nebraska (renamed the Vorpal Blade) is back from her first mission and has been refurbished.  However one of the portal planets seems to have been attacked.  The Vorpal Blade is sent out on its second mission to find out what has happened.  They get to the planet, rescue a survivor, and discover evidence of a battle in space.  They rescue 3 survivors and then come across a large but disabled warship.  After some tense moments they decide that they are all "Good Guys" at just about the time that the "Bad Guys" come looking for them.  

A major battle occurs, the Vorpal Blade is very seriously damaged but with the help of their new friends the humans are successful.  Their new friends repair the Vorpal Blade and they return to Earth.  Their friends decide to use one of the planets discovered in the previous trip.  However - it appears that the Bad Guys will be arriving at Earth in about 18 to 20 years.  A wonderful new opportunity for the next book.  We also learn that the author(s) are frankophobes.

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Claws That Catch                   John Ringo & Travis S. Taylor        Mar 2009

The next installment of the series.  The Vorpal Blade was damaged much more than I realized from the previous book.  It has been almost completely rebuilt, redesigned, made much larger and more convenient and is being completely refurbished as the Vorpal Blade II.  Our main hero of this book, Two Gun, has been sent to Officers Candidate School, is a new Second Lieutenant, is struggling to learn his new duties, gets married as the book starts.  Almost the first half of the book is devoted to problems of officers and crew who have not served on the Vorpal Blade before this trip.  

The ship leaves earth and immediately has many problems with poor command decisions and about as soon as most of these are solved they discover a very strange system of planets around a star.  They find a very strange artifact in orbit around the star that seems to resemble a huge Christmas Tree.  In exploring it they discover a way of controlling the sun which at first seems to be directed at creating a light show using four large planets also in orbit around the star.  Then they discover that the Bad Guys have found the star and have even gotten forces inside the Christmas Tree.  In fighting these forces they discover that the infestation of mouse- or rat-like creatures that they have been struggling with in the Vorpal Blade II are actually very effective biological weapons against the Bad Guys.  Shortly after the Bad Guys are cleaned out of the Christmas Tree the main force of Bad Guys arrive in the star system.  During the early part of the fighting they discover that the "light show" controllers can be used as an extremely effective weapons system.  Between the Marines weapons, the rodent weapons, the "light show" weapon, and the fortuitous arrival of allies discovered in Manxome Foe they completely destroy the Bad Guy force.  

Again, a pretty right-wing leaning book but enjoyable.  It takes additional writing skills to come up with left leaning heroes.  Most of our concept of Hero, going back to Homer, comes out of a Strict Father tradition.  This series may have a book or two left in it but it feels like it is running out of steam.  

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The Last Colony                     John Scalzi                                        June 2007

The third in a trilogy of Old Man's War and The Ghost Brigades.  It is the continuing story of John Perry and his now wife Jane Sagan and daughter Zoë.  John and Jane have been mustered out of the Special Forces and are living on a colony, he as a village ombudsman and she as the village constable.  Then an old commander comes by to offer (insist) that they take leadership positions in a new colony.  They reluctantly agree.  After the normal difficulties of getting the supplies and colonists together they leave and arrive at their new colony world - except that it's the wrong world!

Interstellar, inter-race, inter-ethnic, and inter-being conflicts hit them from all sides and they find themselves in an inter-stellar war that is pitting more than 400 different races of intelligent beings against another large number with humans as a major partner.  If you look a little behind the story you can find interesting parallels with the political situation in America in the early 21^st century.  John is torn between siding with the government of the human side of the conflict and with the "other" side which he thinks is in the right.  The book doesn't come to complete closure but John, with the help of some unexpected allies, comes up with a novel solution which allows him to retire with honor, stick a finger in the eye of the government, and offer a possible solution whereby possibly 500 races of intelligent beings can get along without fighting.  

The author promises us that the trilogy (which started out to be a single book) ends here and that he is moving on to "explore other places and people."  We will see.  I certainly enjoyed all three books - the first two before I started my Reports.

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Star Wars:  Jedi Trial   (Clone Wars)   Davis Sherman & Dan Cragg

The Star Wars series started at a fairly low level and has declined ever since.  This book carries on the tradition.  Young Anakin Skywalker is sent out on an assignment.  His light saber performs admirably and the day is saved.  Anakin is awarded the rank of Jedi Knight.  I was lucky, it was a library book, I didn’t have to pay for it, I was able to return it.

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Coyote Frontier      Allen Steel

The third book in the Coyote trilogy.  Steel briefly refers to the precursor events, the religious takeover of America, the takeover of the first starship, the Alabama, the landing on Coyote, the attempted takeover of the planet by other starships from earth, and finally the consolidation of the settlements and businesses.  The current book really begins with the sighting of the exhaust plume of an arriving starship.

The starship was from the European Alliance and they want to start trade negotiations.  They also bring with them the equipment to build a starbridge, a wormhole tunneling device for travel between star systems.  After considerable debate the settlers of Coyote send the President travels back to Earth to discuss trade alliances.  In the over 200 years since the settlers had left Earth, the climate has tanked because of pollution caused global warming.  The ice caps have melted, sea levels are up flooding many populated areas, the Gulf Stream has reversed, Europe is cold, North America is very hot and dry, and the population of Earth is down to about 3 billion; in short a real mess.  Arrangements are reached but political difficulties force the visitors from Coyote to leave ahead of schedule.

Trade and immigration go well for a while but problems arise.  Environmental degradation sharply increases and some political attitudes from Earth begin to cause problems.  A mini-revolution takes place just as a second starship from the European Alliance shows up and attempts to take over the starbridge.  Through clever political maneuvering and good luck both threats are nullified.  After most of the after effects from the attempted invasion and revolution have worn off one final crisis occurs.  A vessel comes through the starbridge, but not from Earth.  It identifies itself as a shuttle from the first high speed starship to leave Earth which had been reported missing many years before.  When the shuttle lands it contains 3 survivors from the starship plus an ambassador from a non-human race.

Maybe Steele will expand his trilogy by adding an extra book or two?  He has just getting really well started with a new world and new opportunities for a brand new universe and he is done.  I hope not.

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More Than Human     Theodore Sturgeon   Science Fiction Classic

The story of a family, sort of.  Not your traditional family with a Mommy, Daddy, and the little children, but a family nevertheless.  It started with the Idiot, almost a feral human.  He met Alicia and their interaction had a profound effect on her, not him.  A poor farm family took him in. Janie, who is 5 meets twin girls who are 3.  When Janie runs away the twins go with her.  Janie and the twins find Alicia’s abandoned home and stay there until the food runs out.  The Idiot leave the farmer and builds himself a room in a cave, he runs into the three girls and takes them in.  The Idiot goes back to the farm.  The wife has died, the farmer is not coping, and the baby needs care.  The Idiot “fixes” the farmer and takes the baby with him.  After a time the Idiot remembers that the farmers pickup was stuck, Janie asks the baby and Baby tells the Idiot how to make a machine to get the pickup out of mud.  The Idiot brings home Gerry, an 8 year old escapee from an orphanage.  After the Idiot dies they all go to Alicia’s town home.  There is a long session with a psychiatrist.  After several years Janie goes in to rescue Hip Barrows from jail.  He is seriously mentally ill and in poor physical condition.  She nurses him back to health.  It turns out that Hip is/was a seriously brilliant engineer.  He found the anti-grav pickup and Gerry drove him mad.  Hip confronts Gerry and gives Gerry an ethical basis for action.  Gerry is reborn as an ethical being.

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Some of your Blood    Theodore Sturgeon   Science Fiction Classic

A very strange book.  The correspondence between a colonel and a sergeant.  It so happens that they are old friends and the sergeant, through the normal Army goof-up procedures is a clinical psychologist who didn’t get is officers rank.  It is about a soldier, probably in the Korean War, who presumably struck a major and was sent back to the states for psychiatric help.  The soldier grew up in an abusive home in Appalachia and was effected in rather strange ways.  A fascinating if somewhat gruesome book.

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Slan   A E van Vogt   Science Fiction Classic

Jommy Cross and his mother were walking down the street when she realized that they were being followed.  “Run, hide, they are coming!”, he ran as she led them away.  Jommy is 9, a Slan (the next step up in the evolution of humanity) and he is being hunted.  He is captured/rescued by an old woman who wants him for her own purposes.  He grows up in the underworld while his talents mature.  He recovers his fathers secret weapon, has many adventures, an grows up to attack the evil government that has attempted to kill his people.  A good example of the early Super Science science fiction.

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Heinlein: Off the Main Sequence      Ed. Andrew Wheeler         July 2006

A collection of Robert Heinlein's short stories that are not a part of his Future History series.  They were published between 1940 and 1959 in many different magazines.  Since these were stories that were not a part of his Future History and he often used pseudonyms.  This was sort of like going back in time.  My mother got me into reading and Heinlein was what I read, not only Heinlein but his novels were the high points.  I had read some of these in earlier collections but many were a first for me.  It was like a time machine back to when I was 10 to 12.  

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A Hole in Texas  Herman Wouk  (book on tape)

A mainstream book written by a mainstream author.  The plot of the book is a cross between a science fiction plot and a mainstream plot.  A good, modern science fiction author would not have wasted so much time explaining the details of the science.  As a science fiction reader I found the assumption of scientific illiteracy rather irritating.  I also found that the emotional level of the two major characters too childish.  They are both PhD's with children and they are acting like a pair of 9th graders on their first date.  The ending is a sort of “Physics Uber Alles” which I find totally unreasonable and only possible if you exhibit the “Physics Hubris” mentioned in the Nathan Spielberg & Byron D. Anderson book under Science.  Well worth reading (or listening to) but if particle physics isn’t your life you will probably get a little irritated.

Ps.  It seems that Fermi Lab is really close to the Higgs, the SSC and the dual linears of Stanford didn’t seem to be necessary.

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