James Nicoll Reviews

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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After Doomsday
Poul Anderson
Baen, 1986 [1961,1962]
209 pages

Synopsis: The U.S.S. Benjamin Franklin has returned from a three-year mission to the galactic core to find the Earth utterly lifeless, far beyond the current known abilities of humans. The obvious suspects are some species of intelligent extra-terrestrial, with whom the Earth has been in contact since the 1980s. There are a number of suspects in this SF mystery, from the imperialistic Kandemiri to some group of humans using extra-terrestrial technology.

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Oath of Fealty
Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle
Pocket Books, 1981
324 pages

Synopsis: Todos Santos is an arcology, a 1000-foot-tall city-building built in the ruins of a section of LA leveled in a riot. TS is the only successful arcology to date, but its economic success is accompanied by a mutually hostile relationship with LA, a terrorist problem and a markedly insular culture.

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Human to Human
Rebecca Ore
Tor, 1990
282 pages

Synopsis: Part three of a trilogy. Tom Gentry was a teenage ex-con, a no-hoper heading towards a life of crime. As Tom Red-Clay he works for the Federation of Sapient Planets and has ever since he was picked by them after he and his brother killed an FSP researcher disguised as a human covertly examining Earth. Tom’s brother is dead. Tom is married and has a kid.

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The Whole Man
John Brunner
Del Rey, 1964 [fix-up from 1958, 1959]
188 pages

Synopsis: During a period of civil unrest, Gerald Howson is born. He is terribly deformed and a bleeder, something his mother knew was possible, but she was more interested in using the pregnancy to blackmail Howson’s father into marrying her. The father is dead, and she is stuck with Gerald. Miss Howson briefly meets a UN Pacification Agency telepathist, Ilse Kronstadt, who is horrified at the mother’s priorities.

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Salvage and Destroy
Edward Llewellyn
DAW, 1984
256 pages

Synopsis: In the 1680s, an exploratory mission crewed by Ara, a race whose strong regard for the well-being of others is slowly exterminating them, discovered and surveyed Earth. During the survey, they discovered a group of humans trapped on a sand spit, cut off by high tide and about to be drowned. Rather than let intelligent beings die, the Ara rescued the humans and took them back with them to the Cluster, their home civilization. 300 odd years later, Earth is on the brink of self destruction and the Cluster humans, who have come to dominate the space trades, want to send a second mission to salvage what they can.

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