There's some A-format goodness for the discerning genre fiction fan.
Starting at the bottom, it's another collaboration between Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. I did enjoy Lucifer's Hammer last year, which was a romp unnecessarily blighted by right wing and racist asides. Footfall apparently is of a similar cast, except our beautiful green Earth gets assailed by elephantine aliens. I'm sure there will be absurd moments, but nothing can top their Lucifer silliness of having a throwaway character surfing a mile-high tsunami.
Adam Roberts's Salt isn't only the newest book in this selection, it's his debut novel! To be honest, I don't know much about it. Except it's well thought of. A colony ship treks across space to a new Earth, and finds a stark, eerily beautiful world. Unfortunately, old rivalries are no respecters of new beginnings and the cracks in the mission soon show. Up next is Jody Scott's I, Vampire in the classic Women's Press line. The sequel to Passing for Human, which I also have, this features a vampire called O'Blivion who strikes up a relationship with Virginia Woolf. Who is really a dolphin-like alien, and adventures ensue. Sounds weird in a fantastically good way.
Next up is the don, Robert Silverberg. I've got loads of his books but, to date, have only read two of his novels. I'll keep collecting them though. The people of the 25th century are fed up with a crowded, hungry Earth, and have decided to chance on happiness by skipping back in time. More aposite now than the publication date (1967), seeing as too much politics plucks at the nostalgia strings. Clifford Simak's City is probably his best known, and is often considered his best book. The human race has either died out or fled the Earth for the stars, and we didn't take our best friends with us. Abandoned to fend for themselves among our ruins, a new civilisation starts its rise - a society of very good boys.
I recently had my first encounter with AE van Vogt, he of Voyage of the Space Beagle fame, and his Darkness on Diamondia didn't land with me. But his early work is generally considered first rate, among which is the second of his Weapons books, The Weapon Makers. The blurb promises a titanic galaxy-spanning scrap, and the hype suggests some of the best writing in genre sf. Something to look forward to. Richard Cowper (pronounced Cooper)'s Time Out of Mind is a story of future drugs cops, illicit substances that give users the power to teleport objects, and a conspiracy by a "fascist megalomaniac" to use all this for evil. What japes.
Final two. I recently enjoyed M John Harrison's Light, an underappreciated and seldom-acknowledged space opera. And here we have a collection of his early short fiction. One of the stories recounts the adventures of a galactic pimp. I'm sure the old beards of hard SF would not have approved. And as coincidence would have it, the final title in this wee haul comes from Arthur C Clarke. In The Songs of Distant Earth, our pearl of a planet has been consumed by a nova, and the colony ship Magellan is all that's left. We're off to find a new home, then. We happen upon the friendly aliens of the planet Thalassa but - oh no - some interspecies intimacy brings issues to light.
These are my recent pick ups. What about yours?
1 comment:
I thought Footfall was one of their better collaborations, although in my opinion The Mote in God's Eye is probably the best thing they wrote together as well as being the least politically and morally offensive.
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