Joktar, a young dealer in JetTown, N’Yok, is blessed with a look of youthful innocence, a deadly skill with the blade, and an ability to ride a lucky streak like no one else. These traits and more served Joktar well in the service of Kern at the gambling establishment, The Sun Spot, and he will need to call upon them all when a sudden raid finds him swept off-planet to serve as an unwilling slave to the mining corporation on the cold, barren planet Fenris.

But Joktar is destined for more than forced labor on a hostile planet, for unbeknownst to him and those who captured him, Joktar is a threat to humanity’s status quo and he will soon find himself drawn into a galactic xenophobic conspiracy where his very life is in jeopardy.

Continue reading Secret of the Lost Race ~Andre Norton →

James Bolivar diGriz, alias “Slippery Jim” is no longer a stainless steel rat in the wainscoting of society…well, at least he is no longer solely a stainless steel rat. Though his thieving ways are not yet behind him, Jim diGriz is firmly entrenched as the top agent in the Special Corps, that feared branch of the law headed by the most notorious criminal of all time, Harold P. Inskipp.

When his wife is kidnapped by the revenue service out of their current home on the planet Blodgett, Slippery Jim leaps into action, gathering up his two teenage sons from their military boarding school (and penitentiary) to spring mom and wreak havoc on the tax bureau at the same time. As is often the case with his adventures, personal conflict often leads to bigger problems, and Jim diGriz soon finds himself commandeered to save humanity from galaxy-wide destruction.

Sounds simple, eh? It is for the Stainless Steel Rat…at least until his most feared enemy comes on the scene–the infamous gray men.

Continue reading The Stainless Steel Rat Wants You! ~Harry Harrison →

“To the rest of the Galaxy, if they are aware of us at all, Earth is but a pebble in the sky. To us it is home, and all the home we know.”

Sixty-two year old Joseph Schwartz, a retired tailor, is walking down the streets of Chicago in 1949 when, with a single step, he finds himself transported in time to a far distant future in which Earth is no longer recognizable. When he stumbles upon a local farmhouse he discovers that the people who answer the door are speaking a language that he does not understand, soon after that he discovers that this world, no longer his world, is a very dangerous place.

Isaac Asimov’s first published novel, set in the same universe as the later-published Foundation series, is a suspenseful page-turner, filled with a number of what are now considered science fiction tropes.

Conspiracy, prejudice, fear, suspicion, plots of galaxy-wide destruction, euthanasia and mind-control stand side-by-side with romance, adventure, scientific theory and an historic game of chess in the novel that started the Galactic Empire.

If you are a fan of Asimov’s Foundation novels, this is a must-read look at a time long before Hari Seldon posited his psychohistory. If you are unfamiliar with Asimov’s Foundation stories, Pebble in the Sky would be a great place to get acquainted.

My Rating: 9/10 stars. I couldn’t put it down.

Continue reading Pebble in the Sky ~Isaac Asimov →