28 Feb, 2021
Because My Tears Are Delicious To You
Jayge Carr’s 1979 Leviathan’s Deep is a standalone science fiction novel.
The Kimassu Lady, Consecrate in the House of Equity, serves her people by doling out justice according to need. Few are in more need of justice than the meddling Terrens. With a little orange skin dye the Terrens can pass for Delyene, but their ways are quite alien.
21 Feb, 2021
Because My Tears Are Delicious To You
Judith Merril’s 1950 Shadow on the Hearth is a standalone post-apocalyptic novel.
When her maid Veda calls in sick, harried Westchester housewife Gladys Mitchell waves goodbye to her commuter husband and tackles the household chores alone. There is so much to do that it is not until well after the fact that she learns that the US has been attacked with atomic bombs.
14 Feb, 2021
Because My Tears Are Delicious To You
Sydney J. Van Scyoc’s 1976 Starmother is a standalone science fiction novel.
Cadet Jahna Swiss, of the Peace Service Corps, is astounded when she is pulled from her classes and dispatched to spend two years on Nedling, where she is to tend mutant children. Playing nanny falls well outside the traditional duties of the Peace Service.
Her first impression of Nedling is not promising.
7 Feb, 2021
Because My Tears Are Delicious To You
1979’s Thieves’ World is the first volume in Robert Asprin and Lynn Abbey’s shared-universe anthology series.
Sanctuary: city of adventure! Or to put it another way, Sanctuary: cash-strapped pest-hole to which refugees, riff-raff, and rogues swarm, hoping that an empire uninterested in backwater cities will overlook them. Once a crucial destination along a challenging trade route, Sanctuary’s economy was kneecapped when trade routes changed. Inexorable decline set in. Tragic for the locals who cannot move away but an opportunity for others.
31 Jan, 2021
Because My Tears Are Delicious To You
Frederik Pohl and C.M. Kornbluth’s 1953 The Space Merchants is a near-future SF satire. It was followed by The Merchant’s War, written by Pohl alone.
Earth is a utopia. Population continues to soar and with it the economy explodes unchecked. True, supporting such a vast economic enterprise demands bold solutions to the challenge of dwindling resources, but only the worst sort of Consie—the Conservationists, lowest of the low — would object. Nation-states are guided by what best serves the corporations who effectively own the governments. At the top of this most perfect society sit the advertising experts who shape opinion.
Mitch Courtenay, a Fowler Schocken Associates advertising agency star-class copywriter, is one of the elite. He has his own lavish two-bedroom apartment, can afford unreconstituted food, and enjoys the confidence of Fowler Schocken himself. He is, in other words, a man on his way up.
There are one or two tiny flaws in his idyllic life.
24 Jan, 2021
Because My Tears Are Delicious To You
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G. Harry Stine’s 1954 Starship Through Space is a standalone juvenile SF novel. It was published under his pen name, Lee Correy. It shares a setting and a character with 1953’s And a Star to Steer Her By.
Granted a leave of absence from Schiaparelli Space Academy on Mars, Walter “Walt” Hansman is summoned back to Earth by his father. He fears that this might be bereavement leave, but Commander Le Farge assures Walt that whatever has happened, or is happening, it is not that Walt’s mother has died. Otherwise, neither the Commander nor the summons provides any hint as to what waits on Earth.
Warning: this review contains spoilers for a book I am pretty sure you will never read.
17 Jan, 2021
Because My Tears Are Delicious To You
Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore’s 1949 Beyond Earth’s Gates is a standalone SF novel1.
Eddie Burton is a rising actor with a promising career ahead of him. Would-be actress Lorna Maxwell would like to have a promising career ahead of her as well. Convinced without proof that Eddie can provide her promising career, Lorna is carrying out a campaign to attach herself to Eddie with all the determination of a school of piranhas surrounding a succulent child. No man of action, Eddie’s countermeasures are limited to hiding in his apartment with the lights off whenever Lorna comes to call.
When Lorna vanishes, Eddie is the logical suspect.
10 Jan, 2021
Because My Tears Are Delicious To You
Walt Richmond & Leigh Richmond’s 1970 Gallagher’s Glacier is a standalone science fiction novel.
Humourless, by-the-book Captain Harald Dundee isn’t keen on hiring free-wheeling space engineer N. N. “Dublin” Gallagher, but circumstances give Dundee no choice. Their association is short. Gallagher only wants the gig so that he can strong-arm young Dundee into dropping Gallagher and some equipment on an unremarkable ice asteroid.
His curiosity piqued, Dundee checks in on Gallagher to see what the Space Irishman is doing. It’s straightforward enough: the iceteroid + an obsolete space drive = the first successful non-corporation-owned free trader: Gallagher’s Glacier.
3 Jan, 2021
Because My Tears Are Delicious To You
1977’s Imperium, designed by Marc W. Miller and developed by Frank Chadwick and John Harshman, is a two-player science fiction board wargame. It depicts the struggle between the unified might of the Terran Confederation and the forces available to a small border province of the Imperium.
27 Dec, 2020
Because My Tears Are Delicious To You
A.M. Lightner’s 1967’s The Space Olympics is a standalone juvenile-SF novel.
Herding merinolas1 with his dog Wolf has allowed young Tyros Vann to spend a lot of time throwing things for his dog to retrieve. This hobby makes Tyros of considerable interest to Barnum Winkle, space trader. Winkle has a dream, a dream to which young people like Tyros could be the key.
It all has to do with the brand-new Space Olympics.