The Lathe of Heaven
{4.5/5} “He’s not a mad scientist, George thought dully, he’s a pretty sane one, or he was. It’s the chance of power that my dreams give him that twists him around. He keeps acting a part, and this gives him such an awfully big part to play. So that now he’s even using his science […]
Star Trek: Allegiance in Exile
{4.5/5} “As Kirk padded down from the outer ring of the bridge to its inner section, he shifted from reflecting on the reliability and longevity of his command crew to the interpersonal relationships that had grown among them. He felt closer to the members of his senior staff than he had to any other group […]
Julian Comstock
{4.5/5} “It was Christmas morning. I supposed that didn’t mean anything in particular to Julian or Sam, but I was poignantly aware of the date. The sky was blue again, but a squall had passed during the dark hours of the morning, and the snow ‘lay round about, deep and crisp and even.’ Even the […]
Highway of Eternity
{4/5} “The incorporeality was, to many of the human race, something akin to a new and exciting religion… There were, however, some who protested most violently against it. We number ourselves among those protestants. There are many other protestants hiding out in various time periods. We maintain small, widely separated groups. It is harder to […]
Author discovery of the year
I’ve decided to imagine, just for fun, that I’m giving out an award for the most significant (to me) author I’ve discovered in a given year. The award is given to an author that I really like (ie. who writes brilliant books) who I haven’t read before (except possibly a small number of short stories). Since […]
This is the Year Zero
{4.5/5} “Following their meeting with world leaders, and a single, carefully orchestrated press conference, the aliens had been keeping a studiously low profile. They were here, they claimed, strictly in a touristic capacity. They wished only to obtain the requisite visas to come and go as they liked, along with a supply of native currencies. […]
More Than Human
{4.5/5} “He was in the wood, numbly prying the bark from a dead oak, when it happened. His hands were still and his head came up hunting, harking. He was as aware of the pressures of spring as an animal, and slightly more than an animal could be. But abruptly the spring was more than […]
Safety Not Guaranteed
{4.5/5} “‘Have you ever faced certain death?’ ‘If it was so certain I wouldn’t be here, would I?’” A magazine writer and two interns visit a guy who posted an ad in the paper looking for a companion for time travel. Of course, none of them expects the guy to really be able to travel […]
Comments on Locus All-Centuries Poll: Novels
Here are my comments on the novel component of the results of the Locus All-Centuries Poll. 20th Century SF Novel: Their ranking Author : Title (Year) My rating My comments 1 Herbert, Frank : Dune (1965) I read it too long ago to rate but I will read it again. 2 Card, Orson Scott : […]
Comments on Locus All-Centuries Poll: Shorts
The results of the Locus Online All-Centuries Poll are now out. I told you what my votes were a while ago. Here are the results of the poll, and following are my comments on the short fiction component. In terms of short fiction, there’s a lot I haven’t read — there’s also some I read a […]