James Nicoll Reviews

Home > Reviews > By Project

Reviews in Project: Because My Tears Are Delicious To You (506)

She’s a cop! So is he! They fight crime!

The Doppelgänger Gambit  (Brill and Maxwell, volume 1)

By Lee Killough  

21 Jun, 2015

Because My Tears Are Delicious To You

0 comments

1979’s The Doppelgänger Gambit, first book in the Brill and Maxwell series, was Lee Killough’s second novel [1]. A futuristic police procedural, it explores the question how do you get away with murder in a world where the movements of every citizen are tracked?” It’s a cousin to novels like The Demolished Man. Killough isn’t as stylistically innovative as Bester, but her book held my interest. I have a small (and sadly, almost complete) collection of her works.


Read more ➤

The Child is Father to the Man

Capitol  (Worthing Cycle, volume 1)

By Orson Scott Card  

14 Jun, 2015

Because My Tears Are Delicious To You

0 comments

Good old Wordsworth’s poem is certainly apropos to this collection of stories, but it’s my second choice. My first choice was Before Ender’s Game.” However, that had the drawback of being somewhat inaccurate: while Ender’s Game the Novel didn’t come out until 1985, Ender’s Game the Novelette came out in 1977, to great acclaim. (It definitely held my interest when I read it in 1977, despite the fairly notable distraction that, midway through my reading of that issue of Analog, someone inadvertently set me on fire.) Between 1977 and the 1985 founding of the great sausage factory that is the Ender’s Game Extruded MilSF Franchise, Card and his editors didn’t seem to realize Ender’s Game was where Card should be focusing his efforts. Instead, he spent a lot of time playing with the Worthing Cycle, a much less successful body of work that, if it is remembered at all, is remembered because it was done by the same guy who did Ender’s Game, the Alvin Maker series, and that ebulliently hilarious parody of right wing anxieties, Empire.

It’s not uncommon for authors to spend some time struggling before they find their voice. It’s somewhat unfortunate for Card that so much of his material from that period of his career saw print (although he did get paid, so there’s that), It’s even more unfortunate for him that I happen to still have my copy of this … ah … illuminating sample of Card juvenilia. 


Read more ➤

Continuing this week’s theme of travelling entertainers

Born to Exile  (The Tales of Alaric the Minstrel, volume 1)

By Phyllis Eisenstein  

7 Jun, 2015

Because My Tears Are Delicious To You

0 comments

Phyllis Eisenstein’s award-winning 1978 Born to Exile takes us to a secondary world not unlike Medieval Europe, at least as perceived from the US. It’s a world with all the dangers and prejudices of old Europe minus (as far I can tell) anything like the Church. It is a region divided into pocket feudalisms, without any grand unifying authority. Although someone is working on that last detail.…

It’s also a world with magic or at least something that will do until genuine magic comes along. Alaric the Minstrel has a fine voice but he also has a special talent, a talent so very special that if any of the people listening to him sing had the faintest inkling he had such an odd talent, they would build a special commemorative bonfire with Alaric as the centerpiece.


Read more ➤

Friday’s Big Sister

Rissa Kerguelen  (Rissa Kerguelen, volume 1)

By F. M. Busby  

31 May, 2015

Because My Tears Are Delicious To You

0 comments

Francis Marion Busby (1921 – 2005) was a Hugo-winning fan [1] and a prolific author whose career ran from the 1950s to the 1990s. After 1970 his focus was increasingly on novels, not surprising given how the SF market evolved over the course of his career [2]. While strong female protagonists weren’t unknown in the 1970s, they weren’t exactly common; Busby’s 1977 Rissa Kerguelen—a lengthy reworking of two earlier works, 1976’s Rissa Kerguelen and The Long View—belongs to a select group.

I wish I had enjoyed re-reading it more. I wish it had been a book that I could have liked, unconditionally, when I first read it. I believe I have at least figured out why I did not. I hope my reasons are interesting. 


Read more ➤

Love, hate, and atom bombs

Karma

By Arsen Darnay  

24 May, 2015

Because My Tears Are Delicious To You

0 comments

The modern reader’s perception of Jim Baen may be coloured by the sad decline of the company that bears his name into a hollow shell of its former self, a shell catering to nostalgic ideologues. This perception is more than a little unfair to the late Jim Baen, who probably would have gotten a Best Editor Hugo when he was alive if only his fans had not so lamentably lazy [1]. Baen’s editorial tastes, particularly when he was younger, were much broader than a modern reader might suppose [2].

For example, if one were to ask modern readers which right-wing editor of the 1970s, known for publishing such pro-nuclear power authors as Jerry Pournelle and Petr Beckmann, also published an occult science fiction novel about romantic triangles, reincarnation, and redemption, against a backdrop focused on the dangers of nuclear power?” I bet that very few (if any) of them would suggest Jim Baen. 

And yet, I hold in my hand a copy of Arsen Darnay’s 1978 novel Karma [3] (published in hardcover by St. Martins, under an arrangement with Baen’s Ace). It is all about romantic triangles, reincarnation, redemption, and, of course, the dangers of nuclear power.


Read more ➤

Flawed but intriguing

The Starchild Trilogy

By Frederik Pohl & Jack Williamson  

17 May, 2015

Because My Tears Are Delicious To You

0 comments

1977’s The Starchild Trilogy collects the three short novels of the eponymous trilogy by Jack Williamson and Frederik Pohl. I cannot say the novels are actually any good — in fact, I will be devoting a certain amount of space to pointing out the ways that they aren’t — but they certainly are odd and they do offer a remarkable level of wacky fun.

Read more ➤

According to the record, you have been an undergrad here […] for approximately thirteen years”

Doorways in the Sand

By Roger Zelazny  

10 May, 2015

Because My Tears Are Delicious To You

0 comments

I get the impression that his star has dimmed somewhat since his untimely death in 1995, but during his prime — from the 1960s to the 1980s — Roger Zelazny was considered one of the great authors of science fiction. Corner a group of SF fans of the right age, reveal the implements of questioning,and they will fall all over themselves revealing which of Zelazny’s works they admire most.

My great shame is that not only did I miss some of his most famous stories — it took me until the 2000s to get around to A Rose for Ecclesiastes” — but I didn’t care for such later-considered-classic books as I did encounter (like the early Amber novels). Worse yet, due to a quirk in my memory, I’ve forgotten almost entirely the contents of many of the books on my Zelazny shelf [1]. Lord of Light: forgotten! Creatures of Light and Darkness: forgotten! Nine Princes in Amber, except maybe for that first chapter: forgotten! But there are a few books that for some reason, I both liked and remembered. 

First among them is Doorways in the Sand.


Read more ➤

The Man Who Didn’t Learn Better

The Avatar

By Poul Anderson  

3 May, 2015

Because My Tears Are Delicious To You

0 comments

The man in the title is me. Way back when I was a young, easily pleased SF fan, I encountered a book by a favourite author, a book that taught me a very valuable lesson: I don’t have to finish every book I begin [1]. The year was 1980; the book was Robert A. Heinlein’s Number of the Beast [2].

I could have possibly have learned this lesson a few years earlier, in 1978, when I first read Poul Anderson’s The Avatar. This book is the distilled essence of Bad Poul Anderson fiction of the 1970s” (to quote myself). But the book does have its strong points, which may be the reason why it was Number of the Beast and not The Avatar that taught me not to waste my time doggedly finishing tripe.

There will be spoilers.

Read more ➤