Assignment in Eternity is a collection of four of Heinlein’s early published works. Two of the stories are advertised as “short novels”, or what might be more accurately called in current word count designations as novellas, and two shorter works. All four of these were first published in magazine format in the 1940’s, though two were actually written in 1939.

I first became a fan of Robert A. Heinlein over a decade ago when I read his novel Friday. I went on to read Time Enough for Love and then came a long Heinlein drought, ended because of friends reading and discussing his juveniles–a designation for books published by Scribner’s between 1947 and 1958 that would now be classified as ‘young adult’.

There was something special in both Friday and Time Enough for Love that made it obvious to me while reading them why Heinlein had maintained popularity, but the novels, like others of his later work, are filled with embarrassingly juvenile (here used negatively), taboo-crushing sexual content and diatribes about his beliefs at the time. His juvenile work is wonderful, as are some of the novels published just after the Scribner’s period.

The collection The Green Hills of Earth proved Heinlein’s skill at crafting stories in the short format, so I was very curious when I put this on my Christmas wishlist to venture into some of Heinlein’s early work.

That curiosity resulted in four rewarding journeys into the early imagination of the Dean of Science Fiction, Robert A. Heinlein.

Continue reading Assignment in Eternity ~Robert A. Heinlein →

In anticipation of the August 2014 release of his novel, Lock In, John Scalzi has released a prequel novella that covers the rise of the epidemic which is the cause of the condition for which the novel is named.

Fifteen years in our future a virus arises worldwide that causes minor symptoms in most cases, but in extreme cases causes victims to be “locked in”.  Those experiencing this reaction to the virus are alert and aware but are unable to communicate or function in any meaningful way, they are trapped within a no longer fully functional body.

Unlocked is told in the form of interviews from doctors, scientists, politicians, journalists and regular people who were affected by Haden’s Syndrome and/or played a significant role in the world’s response to and investigation of the disease and its most devastating effects.

Unlocked is a story with an unsettling air of plausibility that examines a broad spectrum of the history of this virus in a way that feels intimate and personal.  It is a story filled with characters that are easy to relate to–they are us–and as such it overcomes a criticism often leveled at short stories, which is that there is no character development.

In Unlocked John Scalzi employs a fascinating storytelling device that engages the reader, and along the way he takes the story in an unexpected direction that will leave readers anticipating the summer release of Lock In.

Continue reading Unlocked: An Oral History of Haden’s Syndrome by John Scalzi →