James Nicoll Reviews

Couriers de Bois Are We

The Search for Zei / The Hand of Zei (Krishna, volume 3)

By L. Sprague de Camp

5 Jan, 2020

**Because My Tears Are Delicious To You**

9 comments

L. Sprague de Camp’s 1963 The Search for Zei / The Hand of Zei is the Ace Double edition of the second book in de Camp’s Krishna planetary adventure series.

Krishna! Exotic planet of adventure! A place that has little day-to-day relevance to ghostwriter Dirk Barnevelt, living as he does a life of quiet oppression under the iron rule of his mother on Earth, twelve light-years away. The closest Barnevelt gets to adventure is writing up the exploits of interplanetary explorer Igor Shtain.

Then Shtain vanishes.

(On the one hand, spoilers; on the other, this book is ancient.)

A Bird Without a Song

Of Wars, and Memories, and Starlight

By Aliette de Bodard

3 Jan, 2020

**Doing What the WFC Cannot Do**

0 comments

Aliette de Bodard’s 2019 Of Wars, and Memories, and Starlight is a collection of science fiction and fantasy stories. The science fiction stories are set in her alternate history, the Universe of Xuya (in which North American colonization was first settled by Asians), while the fantasies are set in her Dominion of the Fallen, in which Paris is recovering from a war between fallen angels.

The title is apt.

Catch My Eye

2020 Vision

Edited by Jerry Pournelle

1 Jan, 2020

**Because My Tears Are Delicious To You**

7 comments

Jerry Pournelle’s 1974 2020 Vision is a themed science fiction anthology. That theme is “life in the year 2020.”