James Nicoll Reviews

1978’s Well of Shiuan is the second volume in C. J. Cherryh’s Morgaine series.

Jherun faces two pressing challenges. Her immediate concern is that she does not want to be married off. In her culture, marriage is a test to see how much work a woman can do before dying of childbirth. Her longer-term concern is rising sea levels. For reasons that are poorly understood, the oceans are inexorably rising. One day, not so long from now, all terrestrial life on her planet will drown.

She is out barrow-robbing when she encounters a stranger. Not someone from another domain or another continent; he’s from another world.

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1969’s The Warlock in Spite of Himself is the debut¹ volume in Christopher Stasheff’s subseries focusing on Rod Gallowglass (subseries because it also features in a greater, more wide-ranging series).

Having overthrown the Proletarian Eclectic State of Terra (PEST), the Decentralized Democratic Tribunal (DDT) established the Society for Conversion of Extraterrestrial Nascent Totalitarianisms (SCENT) to seek out and liberate worlds from dictatorships. Aristocratic Rod Gallowglass is a SCENT agent.

Accompanied by his faithful robot Fess (short for Faithful Cybernetic Companion), Rod infiltrates the backwater world Graymarye, determined to deliver to its clearly subjugated population the democracy they would want if only they knew what was good for them.

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Poul Anderson’s 1974 A Midsummer Tempest is an alternate-history fantasy novel.

Lights up on a familiar scene. The Royalists are trounced by the Roundheads at the Battle of Marston Moor. Royalist commander Prince Rupert flees the debacle but is captured by Shelgrave’s forces. While capture does set-up a meet-cute between Rupert and his captor’s niece Jennifer Alayne, it seems the end of Rupert’s career is at hand.

Despite similarities, there is a crucial difference between this Battle of Marston Moor and the one we know. In this world, William Shakespeare is not the great playwright. He is the Great Historian, whose works record events that actually happened.

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1976’s The Dragon and the George is the first volume in Gordon R. Dickson’s secondary-world fantasy Dragon Knight series.

Jim Eckert’s quest to marry fiancée Angie Farrell faces a number of seemingly insurmountable obstacles, most of which boil down to ​“insufficient income.” Even if they were to combine their resources, medieval historian Jim’s instructor salary and laboratory assistant Angie’s wage wouldn’t pay the rent on the cheapest trailer park domicile in Minneapolis¹. If they cannot afford to combine households, how can they possibly get married?

Psychology graduate student Grottwold, rival for Angie’s heart, provides a solution of sorts when Grottwold inadvertently teleports Angie to another universe. No Angie, no marriage, no need to look for a better job for Jim. Problem solved!

Jim does not see it that way.

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Richard A. Lupoff’s 1978 Space War Blues is a military science fiction novel (more on that later). A fix-up, it incorporates material previously published in Again, Dangerous Visions (more on that later), and various volumes of New Dimensions, Amazing Magazine, and Heavy Metal. The Dell edition includes introductions from Harlan-Ellison-superfan Harlan Ellison and Richard A. Lupoff (and oh yes, more on that later).

Fast interstellar ships allowed the people of Earth to spread out to a plethora of habitable worlds. Every community could have a planet of its own!

Now, one might think this would mean an end to war. That sunny view fails to take into account that the core value that defines N’Alabama is white supremacy. Confident in their inherent superiority over black people, N’Alabama resolves to defeat and conquer N’Haiti.

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Steve Jackson’s 1977’s Melee, 1978’s Wizard, and 1980’s In the Labyrinth are three games that together form The Fantasy Trip tabletop roleplaying system. Originally published by Metagaming, these games languished out of print for decades before Steve Jackson Games acquired the rights and reprinted them.

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Wizard is the middle volume in John Varley’s near-future Gaea Trilogy. In stark contrast to industry practice, the trilogy consists of exactly three novels.

Chris Minor and Robin the Nine-Fingered both have genetic diseases that, while quite different, may have the same cure. All the Earthman and spacewoman need do is appeal to God and pray for mercy. Or rather, appeal to a god: Gaea, a 1,300-km diameter living, intelligent torus orbiting Saturn. Having complete command of matters biological — at least within the torus — altering genes is a trivial task for the ancient being.

Convincing Gaea to perform a cure will be trickier.

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Barry N. Malzberg and Bill Pronzini’s 1979 The End of Summer: Science Fiction of the Fifties is an anthology of what the editors regarded as the better science fiction of the 1950s. The End of Summer: Science Fiction of the Fifties was also published as The Fifties: The End of Summer.

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1966’s Too Many Magicians is Randall Garrett’s¹ sole novel-length Lord Darcy work. The Lord Darcy works were alternate-history fantasy cozy police procedurals.

In a world in which Richard the Lion-Hearted lived thirteen years longer, a world in which magic was codified in the 14^th century, a world in which the Angevin Empire is a great power, Lord Darcy serves as Chief Investigator for the Duke of Normandy, solving crimes with remarkable powers of observation and deduction. His latest case may prove a difficult one, as the primary suspect appears to be his dutiful sorcerer associate, Master Sean O’Lochlainn.

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Greg Bear’s 1979 Hegira is a stand-alone far-future megastructure science fiction novel. Hegira was Bear’s debut novel.

A structure far larger than fabled Earth, Hegira is home to a multitude of human cultures. In other contexts, worlds of Hegira’s scale might have ensured that communities diverged radically from each other. Hegira has obelisks, which have made all the difference.

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