Which books/covers/authors in the post intrigue you? Which have you read? Disliked? Enjoyed?
1. In Alien Flesh, Gregory Benford (1986)
From the back cover: “A journey into the depts of space and time by Gregory Benford, winner of the Nebula Award.”
Contents: “In Alien Flesh” (1978), “Time Shards” (1979), “Redeemer” (1979), “Snatching the Bot” (1977), “Relativistic Effects” (1982), “Nooncoming” (1978), “To the Storming Gulf” (1985), “White Creatures” (1975), “Me/Days” (1984), “Of Space/Time and the River” (1985), “Exposures” (1981), “Time’s Rub” (1984), “Doing Lennon” (1975).
Initial Thoughts: While I’ve only reviewed two of Benford’s stories on the site (both co-written with Eklund), I remember reading Timescape (1980) and Heart of a Comet (1986) (with David Brin) before I started my site. I look forward to exploring more of his short fiction.
2. The Man Who Wanted Stars, Dean McLaughlin (1965)
From the back cover: “THE TAUNTING STARS… One man on all Earth still believed in spaceflight. One man knew the burning urgency of mankind’s next great step into the unknown.
He wanted the stars–and even the stars mocked him.
He sacrificed everything he had to keep the spark of an idea alive–and when that wasn’t enough, he sacrificed everything his friends had, too.
His fight went on for weary decades, making him something more than human–and something less…
His name was Joe Webber. This is his story.
This is the first appearance in book form of The Man Who Wanted Stars, a science-fiction novel of first-rank importance.”
Initial Thoughts: I’ve not read anything by Dean McLaughlin. I’ve heard his work described as Libertarian in bent, which one can gather from the back cover blurb. I assume this style of SF is what Musk and his ilk get high off of.
3. The Windhover Tapes: An Image of Voices, Warren Norwood (1982)
From the back cover: “Journey across the wide reaches of space with roving diplomat Gerard Manley and his sentient starship Windhover, into danger and adventure on a half-dozen far-flung alien worlds. Wildly imaginative and witty, picaresque and poignant, AN IMAGE OPF VOICES is the first in a spellbinding new series of a man on a pilgrimage in search of himself.”
Initial Thoughts: I know little about Norwood or his science fiction. I’m all for SF about sentient spaceships!
4. Cry Wolf, Aileen La Tourette (1986)
From the back cover: “Curie has inherited one world and created another. A survivor of the nuclear holocaust, and venerated by the inhabitants of the new world, she protects them from the knowledge of the old, which only she now possesses. But there is one face, Sophia’s, that shows no awe, no gratitude. Instead, her eyes say, ‘We know nothing. But you do.’ In response to her challenge, Curie recognises that she must tell at last the story of the world that destroyed itself–the story of her own mother, Bee Fairchild, who cried wolf at Greenham Common; the story of her sisters and their attempt to use the ancient charm of story-telling, Scheherazade-like, to forestall annihilation. Now Curie is the only Mother let to face the fact that her denial of a knowledge of evil also means denying a knowledge of good. In Cry Wolf, a novel of present and future worlds, Aileen La Tourette displays her remarkable gifts as a storyteller to explore the dangers of lying and those of truth, and the hazards of dreaming in a world fraught with the most concrete dangers.”
Initial Thoughts: I know little about the author or her sole SF novel. SF Encyclopedia writes the following: “however, [Cry Wolf] essays a somewhat jumbled moral scan of the events leading up to a nuclear Holocaust in language both too ornately self-referential and too abstract to convey much of the subsequent shattered world as it attempts to sort truth from myth and to build anew.” Not a positive assessment! I am always willing to explore. The cover is hideous… alas.
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