James Nicoll Reviews

Poul Anderson’s 1965 Agent of the Terran Empire is a collection of Dominic Flandry stories. Agent can be designated the first Flandry collection¹. That is at least open to question and might well be wrong.

Dominic Flandry! A man as skilled with a blaster as he is with subterfuge, a man as profoundly depressed at the state of the decadent Terran Empire as he is unable to imagine better alternatives. A man who can therefore be depended upon to do the necessary thing, even when it is the wrong thing, because the only other options are worse.

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Monica Hughes’ 1975 Crisis on Conshelf Ten is the first volume in her Conshelf near-future young-adult science fiction Conshelf Ten duology.

Kepler Masterman, son of Moon Governor Masterman, accompanies his father to Earth. Kepler’s father intends to plead the Moon’s case for national recognition. Kepler being fifteen, he is classified as a ​“non-productive unit” and not permitted residence on the Moon without a parent¹.

There’s just one minor problem with Earth from Kepler’s perspective, one that makes all of its wonders irrelevant to the young non-productive unit.

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Harry Harrison’s 1970 The Daleth Effect, also published as In Our Hands, The Stars, is a stand-alone near-future¹ science fiction novel.

His laboratory explodes. Danish-born Israeli Professor Arnie Klein walks out of the ruins of his lab, hastily packs, and books a flight to Belfast.

Arnie’s supposed destination is a ruse. His true destination is plucky little Denmark, from whom Arnie begs refuge.

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Clifford D. Simak’s 1972 A Choice of Gods is a stand-alone science fiction novel.

One day in 2135, eight billion humans vanished. For unknown reasons, whatever did this spared a handful of humans (as well as every robot on Earth) and every other living thing on the face of the planet.

Thousands of years later…

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Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore’s 1953 Mutant is a collection of near-future evolutionary science fiction stories, unconvincingly transformed into a novel by a loose framing sequence.

Trapped in the wilderness by a plane-crash, a desperate survivor does what any person would do in their position. They relive the tumultuous events of the last two centuries.

Two hundred years ago the Blowup brought peace. The cost was humanity’s doom. At least, from a certain point of view.

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Arthur C. Clarke’s 1953 Childhood’s End¹ is a near-future novel about human destiny.

1985: the world is on the brink of determining whether democracy’s Nazi rocket scientists are better than Communism’s Nazi rocket scientists… when the question suddenly becomes moot. Vast alien starships appear over humanity’s cities. The Earth and all on it are now under the rule of the Overlords.

What horrific purpose have the aliens in mind for their human subjects? And why will they not reveal their true form to humans?

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1978’s City of Whispering Stone is the second volume in George C. Chesbro’s Mongo the Magnificent mystery series.

Dr. Robert ​“Mongo” Fredrickson is New York City’s foremost diminutive former circus performer turned academic criminologist and private eye. This very specific niche is not especially lucrative. A new client would seem to be a welcome development.

As anyone who tries to mug Mongo, only to discover that the small man is as adept with martial arts as he is with tumbling, could attest, appearances are deceiving.

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1967’s Dangerous Visions was the first volume in Harlan Ellison’s Dangerous Visions anthology series.

Ellison’s purpose in editing this anthology was to eschew hoary old taboos, celebrate the full potential of speculative fiction, and carve out a bit of the New Wave as his very own¹. To this end, he recruited a small army of authors, purchased a huge number of words, and produced this hefty volume.

How does Dangerous Visions hold up after fifty-seven years?

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Jules Verne’s 1869 Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, originally published as Vingt mille lieues sous les mers, is one of Vernes’ series of Voyages extraordinaires, or in the Anglophone vernacular, Awesome Trips. In modern terms, it could be described as a proto-technothriller or possibly a proto-hard-SF novel.

Repeated encounters with a mysterious oceanic phenomenon inflame public interest and alarm. Whatever the object is, its range is global, its size prodigious. The American government dispatches the frigate Abraham Lincoln to investigate.

Chance puts esteemed natural historian Professor Pierre Aronnax and his faithful assistant Conseil in New York at the same time Abraham Lincoln is in Brooklyn. Aronnax cannot turn down the invitation to join the expedition.

Aronnax’s suspicion is that the mysterious entity could be an immense narwhal. Aronnax’s educated guess is entirely wrong.

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Joanna Russ’ 1975 The Female Man is a stand-alone feminist science fiction novel.

Joanna, Jeannine, Janet, and Jael are four different women from four very different worlds. What thread binds the quartet together?

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