It must be my inner game-show-geek coming out, but I get a small thrill any time I can recognize the work of an illustrator, particularly in the SF/F field. So I couldn’t help but smile at my small victory when I came up the steps after returning from my afternoon run Friday to see the merest sliver of an image peeking out of my mailbox. I said aloud, “that looks like a Michael Whelan cover” and was rewarded to see his cover image for Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles on the January 2013 issue of Asimov’s Science Fiction magazine as I extracted my mail.

I am not the most constant of readers. I have subscribed to Asimov’s in print form for the past year and most of the issues sit unread, awaiting my attention. That fact hasn’t lessened my enjoyment of seeing them arrive in the post. The thrill of wondering what the next cover image will be and which authors will have stories included makes it fun to be a subscriber.

Maybe it was the recent passing of Ray Bradbury and the fact that he has been on my mind, or the Whelan cover image, but I determined right then and there that I would sit down and start my Asimov’s year 2013 with a weekend read. I’ve read some really good issues of Asimov’s and others in which the stories were geared for readers with other tastes than mine. This was a good one. A really good one.

Continue reading Asimov’s Science Fiction, January 2013 →

Last year around this time Andrea of Little Red Reviewer posted her thoughts on her first Andre Norton experience, Star Born. Her review coupled with the wonderful Dean Ellis cover combined to ensure that this would be my first Andre Norton experience as well. I quickly snagged a nice copy of the book off of ebay and this past week I could resist the lure no longer.

Star Born packs quite a lot of storytelling punch in its brief 187 pages. Andre Norton’s 1957 story examines such issues as slavery, racial prejudice, apocalyptic warfare and governmental oppression and wraps it all up in the kind of adventure-filled story that was a pleasure to read as and adult and would have had me gazing heavenward as a child. Star Born is an example of fine world-building and classic space adventure that remains accessible and surprisingly relevant 55 years after its release.

Continue reading Star Born ~Andre Norton →

It has been more than four decades since Larry Niven released what would become his seminal work, Ringworld. The novel and its titular creation has inspired storie in book, game and film format for decades and it remains a story that excites. I made my first foray into Ringworld back in 2009 and I tore through it in a day. Much of what Niven writes can be classified as “hard” science fiction and although Ringworld has its share of scientific exposition, it is in service to a good solid story. In discussing hard science fiction and my predilection towards less scientific fiction, I said of Ringworld in 2009:

“If a story is good, it is good, and even large amounts of scientific exposition, as are present in Ringworld, don’t get in the way of me enjoying a book. That said, I would be reluctant to recommend a book like this to someone who has any trepidation about “getting” science fiction. So much of what I read is more easily classified as “adventure in space”. While this is true of Ringworld, there is a great deal of scientific explanation as Niven builds this fascinating world. Please don’t misunderstand. This is not an intelligence thing, it is really just a preference thing”.

Three years removed I feel the same way. While I wouldn’t recommend Ringworld to new readers looking to explore science fiction, I might just recommend the first in a series of prequels to that novel, Fleet of Worlds. Set 200 years before the discovery of the Ringworld, Fleet of Worlds is a novel of space exploration filled with interesting science fictional concepts, an examination of human vs. alien cultures, and interesting political maneuvering, espionage, and intrigue.

Continue reading Fleet of Worlds ~Larry Niven, Edward M. Lerner →

(Cover for the two book omnibus that contains “Shards of Honor” and the Hugo award winning “Barrayar”)

Cordelia Naismith is captain of a Betan Survey Ship, exploring a recently discovered planet when she and her crew come under attack by a group of Barrayan soldiers led by Captain Lord Aral Vorkosigan. Captain Naismith is knocked unconscious and when she awakens she discovers that she has been abandoned along with one of her severely injured crew members. To make matters worse, she also discovers that she is a prisoner of Lord Vorkosigan. The two leaders, and their injured charge, become unlikely compatriots as they face a hostile planet in a journey towards a cache of supplies that may prove to be their only salvation.

Thus begins award-winning author Lois McMaster Bujold’s first novel in her long-running and popular Vorkosigan saga, a novel of feudal trappings set in a fully realized science fictional universe. Bujold’s series has been a popular topic of conversation during the time I’ve belonged to the Classic Science Fiction Book Club and I put this two-book collection on my wishlist last year and received it for a Christmas gift. I’ve been curious about reading it ever since and the chilly weather brought on a science fiction hunger that I chose to fill with a reading of the first book in the series, Shards of Honor. At 254 pages it is not an overly long series debut and proved to be a solid, if occasionally flawed, introduction to a world that has me curious to conduct further exploration.

Continue reading Shards of Honor ~Lois McMaster Bujold →