James Nicoll Reviews

Paul R. Ehrlich’s¹ 1968 The Population Bomb is an alarmist text on the dangers of unchecked population growth.

The Population Bomb (or at least the 1970 edition I found at Dana Porter Arts Library) begins with this straight-forward assertion.

The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate.

What reasoning led Ehrlich to this conclusion and what solutions did he propose?

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Cherie Dimaline’s 2017 The Marrow Thieves is a near-future science fiction novel.

The government of Canada’s Department of Oneirology has reopened the residential schools, this time as medical processing centres. First Nations people go in. Dreams and corpses come out. All that’s needed is suitable donors, people like Frenchy and his Anishnaabe kin.

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2020’s Tuyo is the first volume of Rachel Neumeier’s seven-book (so far) Tuyo secondary-world fantasy series.

Warleader Garoya of one of the Ugaro clans had thought it would be easy to raid the Lau; it wasn’t. The raiders must retreat. Garoya leaves his younger brother Ryo behind, as a tuyo. A tuyo is a prisoner handed over the enemy as a sacrifice.

Ryo is tied to a stake and left for the Lau.

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Yei Theodora Ozaki’s 1908 Japanese Fairy Tales is a collection of Japanese fairy tales, curated, translated, and amended for an English-speaking audience.

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L. Douglas Garrett, George Macdonald, and Steve Peterson’s¹ 1985 Danger International is a modern-day roleplaying game (modern per 1985), intended to cover adventures set ​“from 1945 to the year

2000 and beyond.” Published by Hero Games, Danger International (or ​“DI” as it was known to aficionados) is a descendent of the rules pioneered in 1981’s Champions.

And what did one find in the box? First, that there was no box. Danger International replaced the box sets of previous Hero Games, games with a 174-page perfect-bound text² (176 if you count the ads).

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Mildred Clingerman’s 1961 A Cupful of Space is a collection of speculative fiction short stories.

But first! Who was Mildred Clingerman and why would I suddenly decide to reread the earlier of her two collections?

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The Lies of the Ajungo is the first volume in Moses Ose Utomi’s debut novella; it is the first entry in his projected Forever Desert series.

Faced with an unending drought, the people of a desperate city accepted aid from the Ajungo Empire. The Empire provided just enough water to sustain life, or perhaps a smidgen less. There was, of course, a price.

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1985’s The Last Man on Earth was edited by Isaac Asimov, Martin H. Greenberg, & Charles G. Waugh. The theme uniting the anthology is straightforward and obvious from the title: each story focuses on the last man on Earth. Well, very nearly.

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The Memoirs of Lady Hyegyŏng: The Autobiographical Writings of a Crown Princess of Eighteenth-Century Korea is Lady Hyegyŏng’s account of her life as a Chosŏn crown princess. Translation (and commentary) is by JaHyun Kim Haboush.

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1956’s S‑F: The Year’s Greatest Science-Fiction and Fantasy was the first of twelve volumes in Judith Merril’s The Year’s Best SF anthology series.

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