Author Archives: Keith West

Firing Slow Bullets

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SlowBullets-140x220Slow Bullets
Alastair Reynolds
Tachyon Publications
Paperback, $14.95
ebook $9.99; audio $21.95

Slow Bullets is a short novel (180 pg) in an intriguing far future setting.  I read it in one afternoon when I was in the mood for big idea space opera.

Scur is a soldier in an interstellar war.  She’s captured by a notorious war criminal just after peace is established, who injects a slow bullet into her leg and leaves her to die a slow painful death.  Slow bullets are little devices that are inserted in all soldiers.  They not only contain biographical information from before the soldier entered the military.  Insertion under normal conditions is quite painless.

What Scur is experiencing will kill her.  She manages to cut the slow bullet out of he let, then passes out.  When she wakes up, she’s coming out of hibernation on spaceship.  The spaceship is carrying mostly war criminals, which for reasons Scur doesn’t know includes her.

Only there’s a problem.  They are at their target planet, but hundreds if not thousands of years later than when they should be.  The planet is now in an ice age.

That’s not the only problem.  Continue reading →

Robert Buettner’s Overkill is a Top-Notch Adventure

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OverkillOverkill
Robert Buettner
Baen Books
Mass market paperback $7.99
ebook $6.99

It’s been a while since I’ve read a Baen title, and I’d forgotten how much fun they could be.  Baen has a large number of series books, and I wanted to start with a series that didn’t have a dozen or more novels in it.  So I chose Overkill, not realizing that it’s the first volume in a new series that’s a sequel to another series from a different publisher.  (Looks like I’ve got some catching up to do.)

Jazen Parker has been hired to help a wealthy businessman hunt a creature called the grezzen that’s reputed to be the most dangerous animal in the universe.  He’s got a gorgeous guide to help, which is about the only plus to the situation.

Parker comes from a world where his very existence is illegal, since his birth wasn’t authorized.  Simply existing is a capital crime.  He’s been hiding from bounty hunters since the day he was born.  He knows nothing about his parents.  In order to keep him alive the midwife who raised him enlists him in the Legion, a group of government sanctioned mercenaries.

When a person’s term of service in the Legion is up, they have one year of amnesty before they can be pursued for any crimes they’ve committed.  Parker’s year is almost up.  He’s only got a few weeks to establish a new identity.  If he doesn’t, he’s bounty hunter bait.  He needs the paycheck from this job to pay for that kind of fresh start.  Until he gets paid and establishes his new identity, he’s got to keep his secret.

But Parker isn’t the only one with a secret.  His employer has one.  The guide his employer hired has one.  And the grezzen may have the biggest one of all. Continue reading →

Kuttner Unkollected: “Trophy”

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$(KGrHqZ,!i4E8VDJi4qGBPHe1IuBYQ~~60_35“Trophy”
Henry Kuttner writing as Scott Morgan
Thrilling Wonder Stories, Winter 1944

As I mentioned in my post on “A God Named Kroo”, this is the second of three stories Kuttner had in this issue of Thrilling Wonder. Unlike “Kroo”, “Trophy” isn’t a humorous yarn. It’s a science fiction story with a nice little horror ending.

Like “A God Named Kroo”, this story concerns the Japanese theatre of operations during WWII. This time the viewpoint character is a Japanese officer who is also a Western trained surgeon. In fact he’s one of the best surgeons in the world.

The backstory is that he and his men are marooned on a remote island in the Pacific when they see a US plane. They attempt to lure the plane to the island one evening and are almost successful when a flying torpedo shaped object zoomed by, causing the plane to crash. The airmen aren’t the pushovers the Japanese soldiers are expecting. A gun battle ensues, and the surgeon and a single airman are the only survivors. Continue reading →

A Look at Vulcan’s Dolls by Margaret St. Clair

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Startling-Stories-Vulcans-DollsVulcan’s Dolls
Margaret St. Clair
Startling Stories Feb. 1952, p. 10-73

When I posted my essay “The Women Other Women Don’t See“, I said I would be reading and reviewing the works of some of the women whose contributions to the field have been neglected.  “Vulcan’s Dolls” and Margaret St. Clair are a perfect example.

Margaret St. Clair (1911-1995) was active in the field from the late 1940s through the early 1980s, but most of her work was published in the 1950s.  Stories that appeared in F&SF carried the byline Idris Seabright.  Today, to the extent that she’s known at all, she’s remembered for a handful of short stories.

“Vulcan’s Dolls” was billed as a novel on the cover of the issue of Startling Stories in which it appeared.  Stories published as “novels” in the pulps usually weren’t long enough to be considered novels today or long enough to be reprinted in book form.  Book length work, as a general rule, was published as serials.  Consequently, “Vulcan’s Dolls” has never been reprinted.  Startling Stories isn’t a highly sought after pulp, so copies shouldn’t be too hard to come by.  I picked mine up at Half Price Books for $3.

Startling Stories, and to a lesser extent its sister publication Thrilling Wonder Stories, mixed fantasy in with the science fiction, sometimes blending the two together.  “Vulcan’s Dolls” draws on Greek mythology (St. Clair had an educational background in the classics) but is inarguably science fiction, although the science doesn’t hold up to close scrutiny.   Continue reading →

The Lines are Calling

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LinesmanLinesman
S. K. Dunstall
Ace Science Fiction
mmpb $7.99 US, $10.49 CAN
ebook $5.99

Before I get started, I’d like to thank Ace Books for the review copy.  Ace is one of those lines you should be paying attention to.

S. K. Dunstall is the collaborative pen name of sisters Sherylyn and Karen Dunstall.  Linesman is their first published novel.  It won’t be their last (the sequel hits shelves in February).

The story takes place at least 500 years in the future if I picked up on all the internal clues correctly.  Interstellar travel is accomplished by means of lines.  They’re some type of sentient energy, although the sentient part isn’t a widely accepted idea when the book opens.  Without the lines, it’s impossible to travel faster than light.  (Where they come from is a mystery that isn’t solved in this book.)

In order to travel and make use of the lines, a ship has to have a linesman on it.  Lines are numbered one through ten, with nine and ten being the two lines that involve entering  and moving through the void.  Not all linesmen can interact with all the lines, so “tens” are at the top of the pecking order.  That pecking order is about to be upset by an alien ship discovered in deep space. Continue reading →

Tom Kratman’s Big Boys Don’t Cry

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Big Boys Don't CryBig Boys Don’t Cry
Tom Kratman
Castallia House
ebook $2.99

This is another novella that’s on the final ballot for the Hugo Awards this year.  I reviewed one of its competitors recently.

There’s some pretty good competition here.  If you like military science fiction, you”ll like this one.

Maggie is a tank, and she’s been damaged beyond repair.  Her brain is still functional as the technicians are beginning to take her apart for scrap.  Big Boys Don’t Cry gives some of the highlights from her illustrious career, a career that spans centuries if I read the book correctly.  (The memories aren’t in chronological order.)

But something in Maggie’s memory is damaged.  There are certain memories that are partitioned off, memories she isn’t supposed to access.  Continue reading →

John W. Campbell, Jr. at 105

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On this day in 1910, John W. Campbell entered the world.  It was a very different world when he left it on July 11, 1971.  He envisioned much of that world and much of what followed his passing.JohnWCampbell-WhoGoesThere-314x218

John Campbell was arguably the most influential science fiction and fantasy editor of the 20th Century.  (Feel free to disagree in the comments.)  Campbell began writing science fiction for the pulps.  At first he published space opera under his own name.  Not content to be a well regarded writer in the field, he began publishing moody, thoughtful stories under the name Don A. Stuart.  He took the pen name from his wife’s maiden name, Dona Stuart.  His most famous story under either byline is “Who Goes There?” by Don A. Stuart, which was filmed as The Thing From Another World (1951), The Thing (1982), and The Thing (2011). Continue reading →

And So It Ends

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Masterminds-ebook-cover-webMasterminds
Kristine Kathryn Rusch
WMG Publishing
Trade Paper $18.99
Ebook $5.99

No, not the Retrieval Artist series, just the Anniversary Day Saga. Miles Flint and his associates will be back sooner or later.

Masterminds ends the eight volume Anniversary Day Saga. Reading this has been one of the highlights of the year for me. This is the one were everything comes together.  It goes on sale in the next few weeks, so you’ve got time to get caught up if you’re a book or two behind.

Rusch has set herself a major task in trying to tie together all the threads in a coherent manner. I’m not going to go into any detail because I don’t want to give away any of the surprises. But I will tell you a few things.  SPOILERS AHEAD. Continue reading →

Happy Birthday, Harlan Ellison

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Image result for harlan ellisonHarlan Ellison was born today in Cleveland, Ohio on this day in 1934.  I’d like to wish him a Happy Birthday.

Ellison is a writer’s writer.  He’s best known as a science fiction writer (although fantasist is a better term), but  he’s written in multiple genres.  His works include mystery, mainstream, screenplays, teleplays, and essays.  It’s hard to point to something representative of his work because is oeuvre is so varied.  There are the classic stories such as “The Deathbird”, “I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream”, “Jeffty is Five”, and so many more.  There are the essays in The Glass Teat, The Other Glass Teat, and Harlan Ellison’s Watching.

If you’ve not read him, give him a try.  Then give him another try, because chances are good that the second thing you read by him won’t be anything like the first.

Anyway, Happy Birthday, Harlan!

Vigilantes

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Vigilantes-ebook-cover-webVigilantes
Kristine Kathryn Rusch
WMG Publishing
Trade Paper $18.99
Ebook $5.99
Audiobook

As you know (or maybe you don’t know), I’ve been reading KKR’s Anniversary Day Saga and alternating reviews between here and Amazing Stories.

Vigilantes is the eighth book in the ten volume series within a series. It’s kind of an awkward volume to review because everything in the book is a continuation of story arcs begun in earlier books. If you’ve not read them, you won’t follow what I’m saying without my giving in some cases some major spoilers.

I will say this. Early in Vigilantes one of the characters we’ve gotten to know, but probably not love, is brutally murdered. That murder isn’t solved (in a legal sense) before the end of the book, although Bartholomew Nyquist knows who did it. The problem is it takes him away from gathering information about the Peyti Crisis, information gathering that was turning out to be quite productive. Continue reading →