James Nicoll Reviews

The Wanting of Levine

Michael Halberstam

Berkley Books [1978]

458 pages

Synopsis: it’s 1988, the decline of the US has proceeded ever further, and the popular President¹ Bigelow has declined to stand for re-election. Senator Rackey looks likely to get the Democratic Party nomination until he murders his wife. This is eventually seen as an unsurmountable barrier to election and so his supporters must look around for someone else to run. A.L. Levine, who has worked for the Democratic Party for years, accidentally has his name added to a list of possibles the party wants to test for political viability. He tests very strongly and eventually gets the green light to vie for the position of Democratic candidate for the President and subsequently, if he wins, to run for President against the Republican candidate.

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The Taking of Satcon Station

Barney Cohen and Jim Baen

Tor Books [1982]

287 pages

Synopsis: Bockhorn is a field agent for MA&P, one of the big space carriers. Part of his job is hunting down contract runaways and as the book opens, he is called to Satcon Station to look for Lauren Potter whose boss, T.J. Janes, claims may have run off. Investigation shows that Potter is in another station with a hard man named Cobb. Bockhorn catches up with them and decides that All Is Not As It Seems. More investigations lead him to discover that T.J and Potter were lesbian lovers, that big money is involved somehow, that someone else is tracking Cobb and Potter and eventually that someone has shot off Cobb's face. Hijinks ensue.

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The Godwhale

T.J. Bass
Ballantine Books [1974]
281 pages

Synopsis: Larry Dever, several centuries in the future on an Earth with about 35 billion people, manages to get himself badly injured on a vacation. Too severely damaged for the technology of the day to cure completely [Having been more or less cut in two], he opts for Temporary Suspension, hoping to be woken in a future era with the ability to make him whole again. He is revived a few centuries later but while the method exists to give him a whole body, the method [raising a clone and using it for parts] seems unethical to him and re-opts for TS, missing a chance to join a seeding mission to Procyon.

Two thousand years pass. The Earth is occupied by the Hive, a world city covering all of the land and filled with 3.5 trillion four-toed nebbishes, the malnourished and degenerate descendants of current day humanity. The Hive has no room for useless people like Larry and it re-awakens him in order to urge him to commit suicide.

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Casey Agonistes
Richard McKenna
Ace [1978]
212 pages

This is a collection of science fiction and fantasy short stories by McKenna. There are five stories and an introduction by Damon Knight. Descriptions do no justice to the stories.

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War Games
Karl Hansen
Playboy Paperback Science Fiction [1981]
288 pages

Synopsis: The setting is the solar system sometime in the future. Biotechnology allows the adaptation of life, including human life, to harsh and exotic environments. Accordingly, Titan has been the target of ecopoeisis and have a rich and varied native ecosystem, including tweaked humans, nicknamed ​‘elves’ by the Terran humans. The elves are oppressed by the decadent Terran Empire and the guerrilla war between elves and humans forms the background of the story.

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A Fond Farewell to Dying

Syd Logsdon

Timescape Pocket Science Fiction [1981]

206 pages

Synopsis: Two centuries after a massive nuclear war which destroyed the Western Powers, the Soviet Union and China, changed the climate so that the icecaps melted and stunted the birthrates of the world due to radiation- induced sterility, India and itslarge Moslem neighbor Medina have become the new superpowers.

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First Citizen
Thomas T. Thomas
Baen Books, 1987
373 pages

Synopsis: The rise of James Corbin to power during the fall of the American Republic, with strong parallels to the rise of Julius Caesar.

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Make Room! Make Room!
Harry Harrison
Berkley, 1966
224 pages

Synopsis: It is 1999. NYC has 35 million people [although the back cover of my copy says it has 40 million people], about 5x times what it has in our time. Even America is suffering under the burden of overpopulation with 350 million people [An excess of 72 million over the actual value in 1999] and all the predictions of Paul Ehrlich [who wrote the introduction for my edition] have come true. This is not terribly surprising, as this book is an exploration of the consequences of those predictions coming true.

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Timescape
Gregory Benford
Pocket Books, 1981
366 pages

Synopsis: There are two eras covered in Timescape: the UK, 1998 and the US, 1962 – 1963.

The world in 1998 is deeply screwed: a chemical used in agriculture turns out to have an entirely unsuspected ability to reproduce, killing vast number of the fish in the sea. The UK is in another economic downturn and the World Council is pulling funding from many nonessential avenues of research.

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“A Martian Odyssey” [1934]26 pages
​“Valley of Dreams” [1934]24 pages
[From The Best of Stanley G. Weinbaum ]
Stanley G. Weinbaum
Ballantine 1974

Synopsis: Jarvis and several companions are the first men on Mars. Jarvis has just returned from an unplanned forced march from where his atomic plane stopped working and recounting his tale.

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