James Nicoll Reviews

Stellar 7

edited by Judy-Lynn del Rey

Del Rey (August 1981)

213 pages ($2.50)

Weird. Only eight months between S6 and S7, plus the price *dropped* by twenty-five cents.

Cover art is an uninspired piece by David Mattingly and if it illustrates a particular story, I am not sure which one it is. Shows a space ship or flying city, with a non-destructive glowing beam between it and a mountain top tower and several flying men with jet packs in the foreground. Use of colours reminds me a little of Foss.

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Stellar 6

edited by Judy-Lynn del Rey

Del Rey (January 1981)

186 pages ($2.75)

Whoa! Big bounce in price there between S5 and S6. Wonder what drove it.

Another thing to note is there is one price, the [Canadian] dollar and US dollar having roughly the same value (The Canadian was actually worth more than the US in the 1970s for a bit. Bad for exports).

[written before BushCo trashed the US dollar, which caused a lot of heartache up here for export-oriented companies]

The cover is a competent bit of art illustrating the poem by the artist, Robert Zend.

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Stellar 5

edited by Judy-Lynn del Rey

Del Rey (May 1980)

246 pages ($2.50)

The cover is Darrel K. Sweet illustration for the Hogan story. Not bad, although his spaceships look too slabby for my taste.

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Stellar 4

edited by Judy-Lynn del Rey

Del Rey (May 1978)

230 pages ($1.95)

The cover shows an alien crying what appear to be tears of blood, while holding a cup. Art by H.R. Dongen. Illustrates the Tiptree story but as art doesn’t work for me.

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Stellar 3

edited by Judy-Lynn del Rey 

Del Rey (October 1977)

244 pages ($1.95)

Man, look at those prices rocket up…

Cover art by Darrell Sweet, who seems to have gotten out all the pastels for this one. Illustrates a scene from ​“Chasing Shadows”.

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Stellar 2

Edited by Judy-Lynn del Rey

Ballantine (February 1976)

209 pages ($1.50)

The cover shows a centauroid in formal dress of the early 1900s as it might be adapted to that shape of body. Credited to the Brothers Hildebrant. The cover layout adapts the form all the following books will have.

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Stellar 1

edited by Judy-Lynn del Rey

Ballantine (1974)

216 pages ($1.25)

The cover art is uncredited as far as I can tell and consists of a generic SFnal background with large metal 1s everywhere. The look of the book is utterly unlike the rest of the series.

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Cradle of Saturn

James P. Hogan

Baen Books [1999]

421 pages

I’m a die-hard hard SF fan. HSF has never been an especially large genre and to read any amount of it, I have had to develop a certain ability to forge my way through seemingly endless crap to get my HSF fix, which is why I was able to finish James Hogan’s Cradle of Saturn . Hogan’s grasp on certain aspects of physics has never been the firmest [The orbital mechanics in his first novel, Inherit the Stars are dodgy at best] but he used to turn out readable pulp, something one could happily read sitting in the back of an old van, listening to Ian and Sylvia 8‑tracks.

It’s not uncommon for older writers to get fixated on one issue at the cost of their fiction or to suffer a general decline in their ability to write, perhaps due to age, illness or even burnout. Mr. Hogan has apparently fallen victim to both: he has become an ardent Velikovskyite and his prose has declined as well. This means that not only is the book filled with crack-pottery, it is filled with badly written crackpottery.

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The Jupiter Theft

Donald Moffitt

Del Rey [1977]

374 pages

Synopsis: In the latter half of the 21^st century, the two super-powers, China and the USA, are preparing a joint crewed mission to Jupiter. Already hampered by attempts by the communist government of China and the post ACWII authoritarian government of the US to spy on each other, the mission and all of humanity are apparently threatened with extinction as a powerful x‑ray source is detected headed towards the solar system at near light speed. The x‑ray source slows and goes into orbit around Jupiter. A probe gets a brief glimpse of the visitor before being fried by an energy beam: Jupiter has a new Earth-sized moon which is orbited by obvious artifacts.

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Space Viking

H. Beam Piper

Ace Books [1963]

243 pages

Synopsis: The Federation has fallen, civilization collapsed and high technology is preserved on only a few worlds, among them the Sword Worlds, home of the Star Vikings, who prey on weaker worlds as their namesakes preyed on weaker communities in Europe. On one such Sword World, Gram, Lucas Trask, a noble, gets married. Less than an hour after his wedding to Elaine Karvall, Trask is badly wounded and his new wife is killed by Andray Dunnan, a mad would-be suitor of Elaine’s. Dunnan escapes immediate vengeance by fleeing Gram, stealing the starship Enterprise [no relation]. Trask, who up until now has seen the activities of the Star Vikings as draining the Sword Worlds of vital skilled labour, no longer cares about the larger picture and only wants revenge. He stakes his holding to pay for a new ship, the Nemesis and sets out to find and kill Dunnan.

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