James Nicoll Reviews

City
Clifford Simak
Ace 1976 [1946]
30 pages

Synopsis: The age of the city has come to an end, killed by cheap atomic power, the family helicopter and tank farms. Only a few people stick around in the remains of the cities, conservatives, politicians and rural refugees from the collapse of old-style farming.

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After Things Fell Apart
Ron Goulart
Ace, 1970
189 pages

It would have been funny to have some extremely raunchy sex-SF in this spot. I don’t seem to own any.

Synopsis: Jim Haley is an agent of the Private Investigation Office in San Francisco (or ​‘Frisco’, as the young folks call it in ATFA) Enclave some years after the collapse of the USA and an abortive Chinese invasion. A terrorist called Lady Day and her gang of mankillers is kidnapping prominent men in the SFE region and killing them. The PIO wants this to stop and Haley is sent to look into a lead out of SFE, into the jumble of microstates surrounding SFE.

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Omnilingual (from the collection Federation )
H. Beam Piper
Ace 1981
54 pages

That 1981 is very misleading: Omnilingual dates from much earlier. For some reason, Federation doesn’t give the details of prior publication. IMS Baen was running Ace’s SF line at that point and insufficient notation of prior publication used to drive me up the wall when Baen Books started out. I think it came out in 1957 in ASF.

Synopsis: Near the end of the twentieth century (Carr gives the year as 54 AE, AE = 1945), a post-Atomic War Earth is unified under the Federation. Advanced and wealthy, the Federation is funding interplanetary exploration. Omnilingual takes place on Mars where a fair-sized group of archaeologists are exploring the ruins left by a very recently extinct race of intelligent Martians. Mars is a dying planet, past the point of non-technological occupation by humanoid species, with the richest life found in the ancient seabeds, where depth and scaleheight give the animals enough air to breath.

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Ecotopia
Ernest Callenbach
Bantam Books, 1975
213 pages

Synopsis: It’s 1999, almost twenty years since the USA’s Pacific Northwest split off from the USA, beginning a period of noncommunication between Ecotopia [as the PNW calls itself] and the USA which makes the current situation between Cuba and the USA look like a torrid love affair. Journalist William Weston is one of the first Americans to venture into Ecotopia since the secession, ostensibly to report on conditions there but also on a covert mission from the US President to feel out the possibility of readmitting the split away states into the Union.

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The Far Call
Gordon R. Dickson
Dell, 1977 [1973]
414 pages

Synopsis: A six-nation joint project to put a team of men on Mars is about to come to fruition. Jens Wylie, Undersecretary for the Development of Space, tries to warn the powers that be that the astronauts are overscheduled and is ignored. A low level engineer tries to warn of a worrying increase in problems in the twin space- craft’s laser communication systems and is ignored on the grounds that while problems increased, they are well within spec. Gervais, an Air Force Intel type is keeping an eye on Jens, among other people, and is increasingly unhappy with a colleague’s inability to do his job.

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The Harvest
Robert Charles Wilson
Bantam Spectra
438 pages

Synopsis: A large alien artifact goes into orbit around the Earth, where it apparently does nothing for a year. Rumours start that the leaders of various government have been in contact with the Artifact. A coup is put into motion in the US, although the President manages to bluff the would-be junta into delaying for a few days. Doctor Matt Wheeler learns that the blood work on patients going to his hospital is very strange, so peculiar the patients should be extremely dead. Finally, the entire world falls into a deep sleep for over a day. In their sleep, they all dream that they are asked if they want to live. The ones who say yes will be given a form of immortality. About one in ten thousand say no.

The book follows two sets of people who say no, a large one from Matt’s town, including Matt, and a smaller one centred on a mad military fellow named Tyler.

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Alongside Night
J. Neil Schulman
Ace, 1979
280 pages

Synopsis: It’s 2001. The inflation of the 1970s never stopped but only go worse, driven by the destructive polices of the self-serving statists running America. This is not a universal problem: EUCOMTO, akin to our EU, is on the Gold Standard [sf/x chorus of angels] and the Eurofranc is solid as a rock, so solid the USG has made possession of it in the US illegal. Inflation is over 2000% per year and coffee cost $500.00 a cup.

[That last would have me in the streets waving a gun, albeit very slowly].

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The Moon Goddess and the Son
Donald Kingsbury
Baen Books, 1987
471 pages

Synopsis: Boy, this is a hard one to sum up quickly. The following does not do the book justice:

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Dover Beach
Richard Bowker
Spectra 1987
265 pages

Technically, this is set as late as 2010 but 10 meg HD were standard equipment 22 years earlier.

Synopsis: 22 years after a limited nuclear war devastated the US, young Wally Sands is trying to set himself up as a private eye. Postwar Boston has little demand for detectives, and he does no business until Dr Charles Winfield hires him to find Professor Cornwall. Winfield believes Cornwall cloned himself pre-war and that Winfield is the clone.

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Vertigo
Bob Shaw
Ace, 1979
236 pages

Synopsis: Rob Hasson is an air-cop, one of the much-disliked policemen whose job it is to police the sky now that contra-grav devices have put the power of flight into everyone’s hands. Prior to the book’s beginning he nearly died at the hands of an idiot teenager with mob connections. He lived but the teenager died, and Hasson’s superiors want him to finish his recovery well away from England to reduce the odds that he will be killed by vengeful relatives. To that end, Hassen is visiting a Canadian policeman named Al Werry.

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