{"id":36,"date":"2011-12-02T03:47:00","date_gmt":"2011-12-02T03:47:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/the-paths-of-righteousness-lead-to-many-worlds\/"},"modified":"2011-12-02T03:47:00","modified_gmt":"2011-12-02T03:47:00","slug":"the-paths-of-righteousness-lead-to-many-worlds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/the-paths-of-righteousness-lead-to-many-worlds\/","title":{"rendered":"The Paths of Righteousness Lead to Many Worlds"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Paths of Righteousness<\/a><\/i>
James Reasoner<\/a>
various ebook formats $2.99, trade paper $8.99<\/p>\n

If the name James Reasoner doesn’t come to mind when you think of contemporary science fiction authors, there’s a reason for that.\u00a0 Science fiction isn’t what he mainly writes.\u00a0 James Reasoner is a noted western and crime writer.\u00a0 If you like either of those genres and haven’t read him, you should check him out.<\/p>\n

Science fiction has always been one of my favorite genres, in fact the only one I read for a while when I was a kid.\u00a0 So when I read about this collection on James’ blog, I quickly snagged myself a copy.\u00a0 Good thing I did, too.\u00a0 James Reasoner is a practitioner of the art form created when Urg first painted his version of the mammoth hunt on the cave wall; he’s a storyteller.<\/p>\n

<\/a>There are only five pieces in this book, which is something of a downer because I wasn’t ready for the book to end.\u00a0 Reasoner has a unique voice, and it comes through in the phrases his narrators choose and the way they describe things.\u00a0 You can also see the influence of the western writer side of Reasoner’s mind in some of the selections.\u00a0 “The Path of Righteousness” and\u00a0 “The Border Shift” have strong western overtones, especially the latter.\u00a0 “Bugeyes” deals with human-alien relations.\u00a0 “Terran Girls Make Wonderful Wives” is a noir PI story set on the Moon.\u00a0 The final selection, “Season of Storms” is set in a near future Texas in which the weather has gone wild.<\/p>\n

The characters are likeable, and they have depth.\u00a0 The plots are straight forward science fiction adventures with heart.\u00a0 The first and last tales are set in Texas, and being (as far as I know) a life-long Texan, Reasoner captures the tone and voice many non-Texan writers miss when they attempt to set their stories in the Lone Star State. <\/p>\n

The stories are serious, meaning they aren’t intended to be humorous or funny, but none of them have the dark, almost nihilistic tone that so much contemporary science fiction does, especially near future science fiction.\u00a0 They reminded me of the science fiction I grew up reading, the old fashioned kind where the author told a story, told it well, and didn’t try to beat me over the head with how clever he was with words or raise my social consciousness.\u00a0 In other words, I was entertained, which is the primary purpose of good fiction.<\/p>\n

In his blog post announcing<\/a> this collection, Reasoner mentioned that putting the book together had made him want to write more science fiction.\u00a0 I think that’s a swell idea.\u00a0 So, James, do you see that chair over there?\u00a0 Yes, that one next to the (choose all that apply:\u00a0 computer\/typewriter\/quill and parchment\/clay tablet).\u00a0 Please sit down and get to work.\u00a0 Now.<\/p>\n

Bill Crider posted the following photo on his blog earlier this year, and Scott Cupp passed it along to me.\u00a0 I’ve been looking for an excuse to do something with it either here or at Adventures Fantastic<\/a>.<\/i>.\u00a0 It’s from 2001, although I don’t know the venue.\u00a0 The writers pictured are Scott Cupp, James Reasoner, Bill Crider, and Joe Lansdale.\u00a0 A swell bunch of guys.<\/p>\n

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The Paths of RighteousnessJames Reasonervarious ebook formats $2.99, trade paper $8.99 If the name James Reasoner doesn’t come to mind when you think of contemporary science fiction authors, there’s a reason for that.\u00a0 Science fiction isn’t what he mainly writes.\u00a0 James Reasoner is a noted western and crime writer.\u00a0 If you like either of those […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[55,56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-james-reasoner","category-texas-writers"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3P5pJ-A","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}