Electronic OtherRealms #13 March, 1987 Part 2 Books Received Avon Fantasy Abbey, Lynn. Unicorn & Dragon, 230 pages, February, 1987, $5.95 trade paperback. Feisner, Esther M. The Witchwood Cradle, 241 pages, March, 1987, $3.50. Avon Science Fiction Moorcock, Michael. The Cornelius Chronicles Vol III., 341 pages, February, 1987, $3.50. Moorcock, Michael. Breakfast in the Ruins, 172 pages, 1971, $3.50. Slonczewski, Joan. A Door Into Ocean, 406 pages, February, 1987, $3.95. A second novel. Williams, Michael Lindsay. FTL: Further Than Life, 327 pages, March, 1987, $3.50. Bantam Books Bradbury, Ray. Death is a Lonely Business, February, 1987, 216 pages, $3.95. A murder mystery from one of the greats of the genre. Geary, Patricia. Living in Ether, 214 pages, March, 1987, $3.50. A First Novel. Bantam Fantasy Feist, Raymond. A Darkness at Sethanon, February, 1987, 430 pages, $3.95. Concludes the Riftwar Saga. Reviewed in OtherRealms #8 [***+] Bantam Science Fiction Benford, Gregory and Brin, David. Heart of the Comet, 477 pages, March, 1987, $4.50. Brin, David. The River of Time, 295 pages, February, 1987, $3.50. Harrison, Harry. To the Stars, 472 pages, March, 1987, $4.95. Combined edition of the novels Homeworld, Wheelworld, and Starworld. Starblaze Graphics Abbey, Lynn. Thieves' World Graphic #4, 64 pages 8 1/2" x 11" b&w trade paperback, January, 1987. Fourth graphic adaptation of the Thieves' World environment. Art by Tim Sale. Asprin, Robert and Foglio, Phil. Myth Adventures Two, 110 pages, $12.95, 8 1/2 x 11" 4 color trade paperback. Issues five through eight of the Warp B&W Myth Adventures compiled and colored by Phil Foglio. St. Martin's Press Longyear, Barry B. Sea of Glass, 375 pages, February, 1987, $18.95. Tor Adventure Marsh, Geoffrey. The King of Satan's Eyes, 281 pages, $3.50, February, 1987. Tor Fantasy Bailey, Robin W. Frost, 208 pages, 1983, $2.95. Volume 1 of the Saga of Frost. First Tor printing. Fenn, Lionel. Web of Defeat, 284 pages, February, 1987, $2.95. Sequel to Blood River Down, second volume in the Search for the White Duck series. Tepper, Sheri S. Northshore, 248 pages, shipping March 23, 1987, $14.95 hardcover. First volume of The Awakeners series. Wagner, Karl, editor. Echoes of Valor, 286 pages, February, 1987, $2.95. Includes stories by Howard, Leiber, and Kuttner. Tor Fiction Maxin, John R. Time out of Mind, 511 pages, February, 1987, $4.50. Tor Horror Grant, Charles L. The Hour of the Oxrun Dead. 284 pages, February, 1987, $3.50. Jeter, K. W. Dark Seeker. 317 pages, February, 1987, $3.95. Laymon, Richard. Tread Softly, 311 pages, February, 1987, $3.95. Tor Science Fiction Card, Orson Scott. Speaker for the Dead, 415 pages, February, 1987, $3.95. Odds-on favorite for 1986 Hugo and Nebula, now in paperback. Carver, Jeffrey. The Rapture Effect, February 27, 1987, 371 pages, $18.95 hardcover. Tor Suspense Hoyt, Richard. The Manna Enzyme, 308 pages, February, 1987, $3.95. Peters, Elizabeth. Die for Love, 274 pages, February, 1987, $3.50 Pico Reviews The Amsirs and the Iron Thorn by A.J. Budrys [] An unfortunate piece of hackwork trash that should never have been printed, a shame from the author of such a masterpiece as The Falling Torch. We all have our off days. The dreary tale of a young man in a genetic experiment on Mars in the far future, filled with what must have seemed cool, Salingeresque wisecracking at the time but which today just reads like a third-rate detective novel. Bad dialogue, bad characterization, bad plot, bad atmosphere, bad description, and bad narration. --Davis Tucker ihnp4!druri!dht Beyond Apollo by Barry Malzberg [****] Re-reading a book usually, for me, is a disappointing experience. Not in this case, however, depth sometimes requires more introspection. This is one of Malzberg's best works, and is a definite must read for anyone who wants to understand the best of the New Wave. A mad spaceman is the lone survivor of a failed two man expedition to Venus. We are put inside his mind as he lies, disassociates, fantasizes, and chews the fat with himself. A fantastic exploration of altered mental states and their effect upon the outside world. Well written, experimental even now, and very expressive. Malzberg is one of those writers who has a definite, singular style, his and no one else's. --Davis Tucker ihnp4!druri!dht Bio of a Space Tyrant V: Statesman by Piers Anthony [**] The latest and final entry in Piers Anthony's Bio of a Space Tyrant series continues the story of Hope Hubris, the Tyrant of Jupiter. It follows his final days as he pursues his dream of launching man into interstellar space. In this book, Anthony's analogies to political situations on current day Earth are not only obvious, the author bludgeons us over the head with them. While the story flows smoothly enough, the solutions to purportedly complex issues are pat and unsatisfying. Readers who have followed this series from its inception will enjoy this entry as well, even though it is weaker than the other books. Anthony has done a competent if uninspired job of concluding a strong series. Some readers may be annoyed that provisions for further stories are made at the end, but this appears to be standard practice in todays publishing world. Only to be read by readers of the first 4 books in the series. --Peter Rubinstein Boating for Beginners by Jeanette Winterson [*****] Methuen, 3.50 pounds, 1985. This is supposedly the true story of Noah's flood. Like the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, it may be inaccurate, but anything this good has got to be definitively inaccurate. Winterson presents Bunny Mix (the greatest romantic novelist of all time), an orange elemental (who constantly annoys Doris the cleaner), Gloria Munde (who leaves her slightly eccentric mother to work in Noah's household), as well as the more well-known characters from the biblical version of the story. She reveals how the creator was created, how Noah started his religious cult and why he was upset by the sight of Black Forest Gateau, how the first hamburger chain began, the state of pre-flood psychoanalytic techniques, and why Noah chose to write his story instead of this version. Hilarious. --Dave Berry db@itspna.ed.ac.uk Book Reviewing edited by Sylvia E. Kamerman. [***] 215p. 1978. $12.00. The Writer, Inc. Comprising 21 chapters by nationally known editors and reviewers, this book explains, clearly and concisely, how to write various kinds of book reviews. It also tells how to get advance information about forthcoming books and how to request review copies from publishers. Equally important, it gives advice on how to get reviews accepted and published in a local or regional publication. Its eclectic presentation of theory and practice provides a valuable introduction to the reviewer's craft. --Jim Day JimDay.Pasa@Xerox.COM Boxen: The Imaginary World of the Young C.S. Lewis Edited by Walter Hooper [***-] A Harvest/HBJ Book (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich) $4.95 ISBN 0-15-614000-4 Long before Narnia, there was Boxen. When he was a child, Lewis and his older brother played in imaginary countries: CSL's was Animal-Land, and has brother's was India. Hooper has selected the best of the texts from young CSL's notebooks and presented us an idea of what Narnia might have been like if Lewis had never returned to Christianity. Lewis wrote this material from age (roughly) eight to twelve, but it reads less like the work of a schoolchild than of an incredibly naive and just slightly dyslexic old man. --Dan'l Danehy Oakes ptsfa!pbhyc!djo Broken Symmetries by Paul Pruess [***+] Pocket Books, $3.95, 1983, 370 pages In the near future, a trillion-volt accelerator in Hawaii is producing mysterious particles called I-particles, which are constructed from the newly discovered inside quark (i-quark). Peter Slater is a snobbish theoretician who becomes entangled in the web of espionage surrounding this powerful new substance. There's also some interesting diversions into Japanese culture. Good hardcore SF, plot ok, characterization kind of weak. I enjoyed it. --Brian Yost bellcore!motown!bty!yost Circuit by Melinda Snodgrass [****+] Berkeley Books, $2.95, 1986, 232 pages In an effort to regain control of Earth's rebellious space colonies, the President of the United States appoints his friend Cabot Huntington as the chief justice of the newly created Fifteenth Circuit Court. Cab goes to space as the President's puppet, but after the USSR nukes a rebel Soviet moon colony--with the President's cooperation--Cab must either join the rebels' fight for freedom, or throw away what's left of his own self respect. An excellent novel, I highly recommend it. --Brian Yost motown!bty!yost Companions on the Road by Tanith Lee [***+] Bantam 12397-0 1.95 Probably out of print, but I found this little gem on a used bookstore shelf. It is actually two stories, the title story and "The Winter Players." Both stories show Lee at her best, with all the power she has for telling, good, solid stories that captivate all the old, archetypical fears and loves of folk tales and fairy tales. The first is about three men in the sacking of the newly defeated city of a demon king. They steal a chalice from the grounds, and the curse upon the thing catches up with them. The second is almost impossible to summarize, but involves a priestess, magic of will, werewolves, an evil spirit and time travel; and it is a tribute to her powers of storytelling that this story not only works but is unforgettable. --Liralen Li li@vlsi.cs.washington.edu Crash by J. G. Ballard [*****] Probably the most disturbing novel ever written by this admittedly disturbing author. It deals with autoeroticism in its literal sense--modern man's love affair with the automobile, his flirtations with imminent death, his rendezvous with traffic interchanges. The primary theme is that of car crash as sexual act, and we follow his insane but lucid protagonist on a harrowing journey through abandoned car parks, junkyards, deliberate accidents, ambulance chases, and sexual fascination with Elizabeth Taylor. This is one of the most important works of the 1960's, perhaps of the modern era, and deserves to be ranked with Burroughs' Naked Lunch and Burgess' A Clockwork Orange for its sheer power and visceral punch, combined with feverish intellectual fascination. The images of semen and crunched dashboard, orgasm and illegal right turn, dismemberment and love, lust and a steering wheel column through the chest, all of them combine into a masterful exploration of insanity and sex. Pornographic in the real sense, obscene in its truthfulness, desperate in its unfolding. Not for everyone. --Davis Tucker Cybernetic Samurai by Victor Milan [***+] Ace Science Fiction 0-441-13234-0 3.50 It was the afternoon after my last final, my brain was fried and I wanted some easy reading, something fun and irreverent and somewhat silly, so I picked up this book from the title and the back cover. I was in for an amazing surprise. For the first few chapters I was really impressed with the wealth and detail of scientific backing that Milan put into this book. It contains the first explanation for artificial intelligence that I've ever been able to suspend disbelief for. Then, as I read further and further into it, I became more impressed with the development of Tokugawa, the created artificial intelligence; however, the development of the flesh and blood characters lacked quite a bit. Finally, at the end, it hit me that I'd been reading a classical tragedy. Very heavy stuff, and the truly amazing thing was that Milan had done such a thorough job of it that I hadn't even minded reading it while set for something completely different. I recommend it highly for someone who is in the mood for a true tragedy that is set in a hard SF period. --Liralen Li li@vlsi.cs.washington.edu Daughter of Regals & Other Tales by Stephen R. Donaldson [***+] Del Rey, 1984, 337 pp, $14.95 Daughter of Regals is a collection unrelated short stories. The stories cover both fantasy and SF, but the entire work is more fantasy. There is also a social fiction/horror story (Bradbury-ish style). All of the stories are simple and fun to read, though I don't expect any of them to stick in my mind like a great story does. The only disappointment is Gilden-Fire, which is a chapter that was removed from the first Thomas Covenant series because of size. By itself Gilden-Fire had no appeal to me, but it might be much more enjoyable if read as a chapter in its proper place in the Thomas Covenant series. --Jim Winner winner@cua.bitnet The Dispossessed by Ursula K. LeGuin [*****] This is probably my all-time favorite. It tells the story of Shevek, an emissary from the anarchistic world of Annares, and his adventure to Urras, the propertarian parent world of Annares. Alternating between his present life on Urras and his upbringing on Annares, Le Guin contrasts the two drastically different cultures, uncovering the good and bad qualities of each. In the process, of course, one gets a new perspective on our own society. This book is bound to hit you where you live. 1974 Nebula and Hugo Winner. --Brian Yost bellcore!motown!bty!yost Dr. Who: Search for the Doctor by David Martin [] Ballantine Books Find Your Fate series, $2.50 Written in second person, this is a book-adventure. You read the story, make a decision and the story continues based upon your (limited) decisions. Aimed at the 8--12 year old audience, and not very well done. --chuq von rospach Enterprise: the First Adventure by Vonda McIntyre [***] Pocket Books, $3.95, 1986, 371 pages I generally steer clear of Star Trek novels, but this one looked interesting. And even though the plot was ludicrous--the Enterprise has to transport a vaudeville show to various starbases--I liked the book. They meet up with some interesting aliens and, of course, some Klingons. Kirk starts off on the wrong foot with everybody, and has to win their loyalty by the end of the story. McIntyre does an admirable job of staying within the strict guidelines of the Star Trek universe. --Brian Yost bellcore!motown!bty!yost Gilpin's Space by Reginald Bretnor [***] Ace, 1986 218pp An eccentric scientist discovers a faster-than-light drive that can be manufactured cheaply--and just in time, too. Authoritarian governments are gaining power all over the world, and this will be the last chance for freedom lovers to escape their clutches. The story is told first person in 3 parts, and the middle third lags since the character telling the story doesn't seem very involved. The extra star is for those readers who enjoy books about space as the next open frontier for freedom seekers. --Chris Hibbert Hibbert.pa@Xerox.COM The Imperial Stars edited by Jerry Pournelle [] I'm not going to pick on Pournelle's politics, or his bludgeoning attempt to cram disparate stories into some great Neolithic framework proving his point that yes, might does make right (or whatever point he's trying to prove--I confess that sometimes his logic confuses the hell out of me). No, the problem with this anthology is that he chose terrible stories, with a few exceptions, to prove his thesis that the natural state of man and his government is empire. Bad stories by mediocre authors, bad stories by great authors, with only a few occasional romping, rollicking good reads among them. The ground that he covers has been done far, far better by Brian Aldiss in his anthology of space opera, Galactic Empires; in fact, he includes one of Aldiss' best choices - Poul Anderson's The Star Plunderers. It's all been done before, and better, and certainly without as much rabid right-wing political filler as this - too many times I found myself saying, "let's get on with it, Jer." Too much deification of John W. Campbell. Too much 40's-50's space opera for a book put together in the 80's (it wasn't sold as a history of science fiction). Not radical enough--Pournelle usually gets me really pissed off, but here it's pretty ho-hum stuff. Too much repetition. --Davis Tucker Involution Ocean by Bruce Sterling [***] Sterling's first novel, it deals with a strange world of a dust sea and giant "whales" that are hunted for food by the inhabitants. As with much of his later works, Sterling throws away more great story ideas than many writers use over and over again; his imaginative potential is giant. While suffering from many of the common problems of first novels, especially a poorly-worked-out ending, the world of Nullaqua and his drug-addicted protagonist are very well-drawn and compelling. Especially good is his character of the captain of the whaling ship, Captain Desperandum, a man who is 400 years old and not a little bit insane. Any similarities to Moby Dick and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea are purely intentional. --Davis Tucker ihnp4!druri!dht The Ladies of Mandrigyn by Barbara Hambly [****] Del Rey Fantasy 345-30919-7 2.95 Here Captain Sun Wolf, the captain of a mercenary troop, is kidnapped by the women of a captured city and told by them that he must train them well enough to free their men and homes or else die by slow poison. The grit, intelligence and sheer desperation that made it possible to steal the captain from the midst of his men, are the character traits of the women of the city. This book follows their adventures as well as the adventures of the captain's second-in-command as she tries to find her captain. Yup, she, and an amazing she at that. Once again, Hambly draws characters more concerned with their reality than the legends that have grown up about them. And she gives a story that is as filled with the perils and absurdities of the politics that crop up whenever a group of people must live together as it is with physical dangers. --Liralen Li li@vlsi.cs.washington.edu Law and the Writer Edited by Kirk Polking and Leonard S. Meranus [****] Writer's Digest books, $10.95. A technical discussion of the laws affecting writers, with an emphasis on Copyright law. Includes the complete text of the 1978 Copyright law. --chuq von rospach Magician by Raymond E. Feist [***] Granada, 2.95 pounds, 1983. A long book, using stock fantasy characters, about a war between worlds. Feist does it better than most, but I don't see why Chuq raves about it. --Dave Berry db@itspna.ed.ac.uk The Meaning of Liff by Douglas Adams & John Lloyd [] Harmony books, $8.95 hardback. This book will change your life says the cover copy. Not likely. An attempt to cash in on the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Universe series, this is little more than an attempt to make up silly sounding words with sillier sounding definitions. Few of them are the least bit funny, unfortunately. --chuq von rospach The Mirror of Her Dreams by Stephen R. Donaldson [****] Del Rey, 1986. 642 pp. $19.95 Mordant is a land beset by enemy swords and renegade imagery. (Imagery is the sorcerous art of calling up an image in a mirror and then making it real.) Geraden is an apprentice imager sent into a mirror to bring back the champion who can save Mordant. Instead he returns with Terisa Morgan, whom he has interrupted in the midst of yet another evening spent looking at her apartment walls. Some of the ideas developed in the Covenant trilogies are expanded here. Covenant didn't believe in the reality of his surroundings. He wouldn't have clapped if Tinker Bell had been lying bleeding at his feet. Morgan's problem is more common, though potentially as dangerous: she doesn't believe in her own reality. She wouldn't clap because she wouldn't believe it would do any good. Donaldson's writing is much better than in his Covenant trilogies, cleaner and not cluttered with sesquipedalian words he neglected to look up in the dictionary. But along with the extravagance of language, he has abandoned extravagance of imagination. The plot has no surprises. None. Although Morgan's viewpoint is maintained throughout, we probably know or suspect much more than she does by the end of the book--because we've read more fantasy and science fiction than she has. The book is worth reading, but it probably wouldn't hurt to wait for the paperback. It will be concluded in the sequel, "A Man Rides Through." --Dani Zweig haste#@andrew.cmu.edu Myth Adventures Two by Robert Asprin and Phil Foglio [***+] Starblaze Graphics, $12.95 (8 1/2 x 11 four color trade paperback) A colorized version of issues four through eight of the Warp B&W Myth Adventures comic book. If you haven't seen the material before (it is available in many different forms) a lot of fun. --chuq von rospach The Nagasaki Vector by L. Neil Smith [**+] Del Rey, 1983, 242 pp, $2.75 (paper) The Nagasaki Vector is a story about a Space Cowboy time traveler who gets hijacked. The story then follows him as he escapes from the hijackers and tries to get his time machine back. Unlike most time travel novels, very little of this book deals with past historical events, but further explanation would spoil part of the book for those who don't catch on very early in the book. The book is full of puns and one-liners as can be seen from titles of the chapters. The puns are not as clever as Piers Anthony's Xanth books, but there also aren't as many (thankfully). I eventually got tired of the space cowboy campy humor of the book, but reading the first chapter (11 pages) should give you a feel for what you in for in the rest of the book. -Jim Winner winner@cua.bitnet The New World: An Epic Poem by Frederick Turner [****] Princeton University Press, 1985. 182 pp. $9.95 The world of the 24th century is not portrayed as a background for the story told by this poem. Rather, the poem is primarily about that new world, and it is an optimistic one. The story itself is heavily mythologized. There has been serious resource depletion, but not holocaust. Several social and historical pendulums have swung backwards, but the changes constitute progress in a different direction, not retreat. Science, philosophy and art have not stood still. The poem is not Utopian. The society to which we are most attracted, that of the "Free Counties," visibly bears the seeds of its own demise. The work is an epic poem because it has to be one. The task it accomplishes could not have been done successfully in prose. The work passes two other crucial test, as well. The poetic format makes reading easier, rather than harder. And it is good poetry, in a very old tradition. --Dani Zweig haste#@andrew.cmu.edu Pilgerman by Russel Hoban [****] A very strange work by the author of Riddley Walker. At times it reads like a travelogue of Renaissance Europe and the Middle East, at other times it is a classic medieval morality play, at other times a rumination on what it means to be a Jew. Extremely well-written, if a bit dense, but if you like Gene Wolfe you ought to like this, too -- a very good example of the best of what science fiction can offer, though it can't really be considered science fiction of any recognizable sort. There are some fantastic narrative passages in this, some beautiful dialogue and comments, and despite its extremely horrific beginning this book turns out to be almost pastoral. One great passage on how it is sex that is responsible for war is worth the price of the book (because without sex there would be no cannon fodder, no generals, no horses to pull the cannons...) Hoban has defied the repetition of theme that so often occurs with writing of this style, and wanders into some definitely heavy territory without being pedantic or obtuse. Yet another one to watch. --Davis Tucker ihnp4!druri!dht Quarreling, They Met the Dragon by Sharon Baker [****] Avon Books, $2.95, 1984. The story of a slave-prostitute boy who runs away with a barbarian prince from the North, with the aim of reaching the safety of the off-worlders' spaceport. Mostly about their journey, during which they fall in love, with flashbacks of the slave's earlier life, and a strong ending. The theme of the book is how people can relish in servitude, but as a case study rather than a polemic for or against this attitude. The endpiece suggests that the author did a considerable amount of research for this topic. She handles sex & love well; the book steers clear both of pornographic explicitness and of idealized emotions, and it has some wonderful masochist images. (Not for people offended by non-conventional sex). --Dave Berry db@itspna.ed.ac.uk The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta by Mario Vargas Llosa [****] Set in Lima, Peru in the near-future, this is about a writer writing a novel about a real-life Trotskyist revolutionary of the 1950's, trying to gather facts amid chaos and armed insurrection, amid invasion by foreign countries and unpredictable cruelty by fellow Peruvians. It sounds dull and pedantic and cloyingly self-referential, but Llosa is one of the masters of South American fiction and the way he mixes reality and myth, truth and fiction, is fascinating and vibrant. This book is flesh-and-blood alive, with a great story of a bungled revolutionary attempt in the past, fear of the future in the present, and uncertainty of results in the future. It breathes righteous indignation in the same moment as it exhales wise resignation. Llosa is a marvellous writer and a sensitive observer of what is to come, and of what has passed and how that affects us. --Davis Tucker ihnp4!druri!dht Requiem for a Ruler of Worlds by Brian Daley [**+] Del Rey paperback, 1985, 290 pages, $3.50 It's hard to write a humorous murder mystery, SF or no. Daley's effort is commendable, but it lacks punch in both the mystery and humor departments. A murdered ruler's will contains a mysterious inheritance for an Earthman, Hobart Floyt. To get him safely to the world where he will collect his inheritance, Earth government blackmails an experienced spacer, Alacrity Fitzhugh. This unlikely duo passes through a series of encounters on their way to collecting the inheritance. The plotting is a little weak; it's obvious from the start that Daley is trying to set up for an open-ended series of adventures. Along the way, several interesting characters get dropped. The main duo are likeable enough, but are not well-developed. They do not have the life that, say, Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser have. All in all, Requiem is a good light read, but is not particularly memorable. --Alan Wexelblat wex@mcc.com Seeds of War by Kevin Randle and Robert Cornett [***-] Seeds of War describes the first interstellar conflict the Earth has engaged in. The plot moves quickly, doing an acceptable job of allowing the reader to overlook some of the more glaring gaps in the story's logic. The authors use descriptions of a single scene from the point of view of several of the protagonists effectively in order to establish a feeling of realism. Overall, the book is moderately entertaining, but bears a number of striking similarities to the far superior Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein. Still, it will make good reading for the reader who like militarily oriented novels. --Peter Rubinstein The Silent Tower by Barbara Hambly [**] Del Rey Fantasy 345-33764-6 3.95 An interesting premise, combining the wizardry of magic with the wizardry of computers; however, this book fell flat for me. The characters were not nearly as convincing as in Dragonsbane, they almost all took themselves far too seriously, and the only one that seemed to have any handle on reality was called insane by everyone, including himself. Also, Joanna, the lady that was the first chosen of all the programmers on this Earth, was having problems with one of the more basic data structures designed for a computer! The storyline seemed composed mostly of running up and down the countryside for long stretches of time. Finally, just when I thought the book was going to end with Joanna not being quite as stupid as she had been acting, I get a page that says there is another book. It's not all bad, the background for the characters is pretty convincing, there are entertaining spots, and the basis for the interaction of magic and machine is fascinating; however, I'd recommend getting it second hand. --Liralen Li li@vlsi.cs.washington.edu So You Want to be a Wizard by Diane Duane [*****] Dell, 1986. 226 pp. $2.75. This was written as a children's book; the five stars mark this as the most entertaining of light reading. The book is clearly by the author of The Door into Fire. We are living in a world beset by death and entropy, and it is the task of wizards to deal with this fact as best they can. This is the tale of thirteen-year-old Nita, newly recruited by her wizard's manual. With Kit, another novice wizard, she must venture into an alternate Manhattan, where predatory checker cabs patrol the streets (alternate?) and even the fire hydrants will attack the unwary. A sequel, Deep Wizardry, is still in hardcover. It's even better. --Dani Zweig haste#@andrew.cmu.edu Starburst by Frederik Pohl [*] Del Rey (SF Book Club), 1982, 219 pp. The basic story line for this book is that a scientist convinces the US government to send a group of four couples to a newly discovered planet in orbit around Alpha Centauri where they will refuel for their trip home. The main problem with this book is that I found myself waiting for the characters to die (obviously a possibility on a 20 year journey). Eventually I became tolerant and slightly interested in two or the main characters (one of them had to die first). The first character I really liked showed up around page 155, by which time I was willing to accept any method the author wanted to use to kill off the main characters. --Jim Winner winner@cua.bitnet Sword-dancer by Jennifer Roberson [****-] Daw Fantasy $3.50 A really good book, strong writing, with very strong characters, and an adventure that is both action-packed and developmental to both the main characters. Like Hambley's later works, there is a closer look at the pains and realities of actual adventuring, and the prices that are more than mere lives or limbs. I think that this book helps to make a new trend in fantasy, where all isn't just wish-fullfillment, where the bad guys might not be so bad and the good guys aren't so pure. And I think that the field is going to get more and more interesting for it. --Liralen Li li@vlsi.cs.washington.edu Teckla by Stephen Brust [***] Teckla is the third of Stephen Brust's novels set in the world of the Dragaeran Empire, the first two being Yendi and Jhereg. While the novel can be read on its own with a certain degree of enjoyment, it is highly recommended that either or both of the first two be read first. Teckla lacks some of the power and pace of its predecessors, partially due to its more complex subject matter. Brust convincingly depicts the main character going through a painful voyage of self discovery. The author manages to avoid the all too common mistake of supplying simplistic solutions or sudden changes in character to resolve problems. While a departure from the first two fast paced, action packed entries in this series, Teckla is well worth reading for its well executed interweaving of characters and subtle changes in the main character's perspectives on the motivations of the other characters. --Peter Rubinstein The Wardove by L. Neil Smith [***] Berkley, 1986 223pp. This is a murder mystery set on a spaceship carrying a rock band on its tour to raise money for the volunteer forces defending our arm of the galaxy from the armies of the authoritarian government of the neighboring galactic cluster. The protagonist is a detective in the non-coercive "government" of the society our solar system adheres to. If you haven't noticed yet, anti-authoritarian politics is paramount here. As a detective story, it comes off pretty well (presuming you don't mind bumbling detectives.) The science fiction is there mostly as backdrop, providing credible historical reasons for the politics of the society. The nuances of the factions are sometimes hard to follow, but the glossary gives enough detail to get you through. --Chris Hibbert Hibbert.pa@Xerox.COM Wild Cards edited by George R. R. Martin [****] Bantam Books, $3.95 Bantam's entry in the Shared World Anthology fad, this is a well done series that tells about the time just after a virus that manipulates genetic material has been unleashed on the country. Pays a lot of tribute to the superhero genre in comics, and the editing is done so well that a single person could have written the entire book. --chuq von rospach The Word for World is Forest by Ursula K. LeGuin [****] 169pp; 1972 Berkeley A colony of Terrans, believing in their own manifest destiny, ignore the signs of culture in a peaceful alien race. The natives suffer enslavement for awhile, but eventually overcome their pacifism in order to deal with the violent intruders. LeGuin does an excellent job of introducing us to the gentle aliens and their society. Some of her humans are caricatures, but how else can you portray a closed-minded bigot? --Hibbert.pa@Xerox.COM Wrack & Roll by Bradley Denton [***] Questar Science Fiction, 406 pages, $3.50 This is another alternate universe story, where Roosevelt choked to death on a chicken bone in '33. It's packaged as schlock, but deserves better. The writing is moderately good, where he works at it. Minor characters (well, everybody but the protagonists) are a bit stiff. The story line--that The Music can save the world--also requires some heavy belief suspension, which costs it a '+'. --Mike Meyer mwm@berkeley.edu OtherRealms #13 March, 1987 Copyright 1987 by Chuq Von Rospach. All Rights Reserved. OtherRealms may be reproduced only for non-commercial purposes. With the exception of excerpts used for promotional purposes, no part of OtherRealms may be re-published without permission.