James Nicoll Reviews

Originally published as Starman’s Son, 2250 A.D., Norton’s first science fiction novel has been also titled Daybreak — 2250 A.D. (the version I have) and Starman’s Son. Ace seems to have preferred the Daybreak variant and I think it is because they were worried readers might be misled by the title. This is not a world where young men [1] find their destinies between the stars. It is one where they struggle to find a better way of life on the radioactive ruins of Earth.

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Although 1992’s Ammonite¹, winner of the Lambda and Tiptree awards link], was not Nicola Griffith’s debut, most of her short fiction to that date had been published in David Pringles’ Interzone, which, despite efforts on my part, I have never been able to find on this side of the Atlantic (not even the issue in which my work turned out — to my surprise—to have appeared). For people like me, for whom Pringles were unpalatable snacks in tubes, this novel would have been the first time we encountered Griffith. It was a strong debut.

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The shared world anthology Dreaming 2074: A Utopia Created by French Luxury puts its central conceit right there in the subtitle. Commissioned by the Comité Colbert — ​“78 firms from the French luxury sector and 14 cultural institutions, which have joined together through common values” — the anthology (comprising short stories and other works) uses a shared universe to paint a picture of a 2074 that has weathered calamity to become a world materially and culturally superior to our own. 

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2004’s Banner of Souls’ distant future features Martian warriors, malevolent ghosts, and kappa. Despite these fantasy elements, it amuses me to point out that this is a hard SF novel, if weighed on the same balance that declares Ringworld or Pandora’s Star to be hard SF. 

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1971’s The Eppleton Hall: Being a True and Faithful Narrative of the Remarkable Voyage of the Last Tyne River Steam Sidewheel Paddle Tug Afloat — Newcastle-upon-Tyne to San Francisco, 1969 – 1970 delivers exactly what it promises in the title. However, despite the title’s remarkable lack of brevity, it neglects to mention that the Eppleton Hall’s voyage came exactly 150 years after the first paddlewheel crossed the Atlantic (a feat performed by the Savannah in 1819).

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