James Nicoll Reviews

27 reviews, 12 1/2 written or edited by women, 13 1/2 by men, 1 by Other.

46% F, 50% M, 4% O. 

Read more ➤

Which will take me 14 days because of course I still have the Heinlein reviews to post.

It’s in honour of Cuban missile crisis, which to be honest I don’t really remember because I was very young at the time. As confrontations between the US and SU that could have led to a nuclear go, it was nowhere near as risky as stuff like Able Archer or the 1983 Soviet nuclear false alarm incident because the nuclear arsenals were much smaller then (and strongly favoured the US) but it definitely would been bad for Europe. I was living in London, somewhere near where the region dominated by collapsing buildings due to a 1 MT strike gives way to third degree burns and for me it’s always been the iconic near-miss nuclear war.

For reasons I don’t understand, stories about the immediate aftermath of a nuclear war tend to be by men, while women prefer to look at the long term consequences. Even Connie Willis’s ​“A Letter from the Clearies” is set long enough after the war that the new way of clinging to life has set in, although soon enough after the war the war and all it cost people still looms over them. I have no explanation for this, and am not even sure if there really is a such a difference or if this is just a side-effect of biases in my library.

So!

BOOM TODAY! AND TOMORROW AND TOMORROW AND TOMORROW,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

Read more ➤

Days put to no good use: 1, 4, 6, 13, 20, 22 and 23. Even granting a day off a week, that’s three days wasted. Although actually there was at least one SFBC book in there. And 2 for RT. Let’s add those…

 T F M Mu  JDN 23 11 12  SFBC 1 1  RT 2 2  Total 26 13 13 

(does a little jig)

Read more ➤

If I can work out how to fund it, once the Heinlein juvenile series is over, an Andre Norton one will replace it. I’m thinking of using the fifty titles Ace always listed near the Heinlein juveniles.

Read more ➤

Read more ➤

Welcome to my new site! After 5071 paid reviews, I have decided to have my own site entirely devoted to reviews of books worthy of attention for reasons good and bad. This is that site.

Read more ➤

From 1947 to 1958, Robert Heinlein wrote a series of science fiction novels aimed at the young men of America. Aided in this effort by editor Alice Dalgliesh, whose efforts to shape Heinlein’s books into something suitable for their intended market Heinlein was not entirely appreciative of, he wrote what are for many people of a certain age one of the great series in science fiction. For many writers it is a model seared into their brains, although not one many authors can successfully emulate¹. Indeed, the reasonable reaction to the announcement by a once-favoured author that he (it’s almost always a he, and almost always of a certain age) is going to try his hand at this Heinlein Juvenile thing is lamentation and despair, as the results are hardly ever any good and the effect on the author often corrosive.

Read more ➤