Cascoly-Amazon.com Science Fiction (3)
Last revised: 23 March 2003
Star Wars: The Essential Guide To Vehicles And Vessels, Bill Smith, Doug Chiang, Troy Vigil, Del Rey . Bill Smith provided the text for this book, Doug Chiang did the original illustrations and Troy Vigil provided the schematics. One must know about the world one moves in to understand the nature of the conflicts one is presented with. George Lucas did this in wonderful fashion and it is pretty amazing that the Star Wars phenomena still continues. So, if you ever wondered exactly what made some of those ships, speeders, bikes, 'bots, etc., tick then this is the book for you. It's a great book just for the illustrations and to get an idea what kind of detail can and probably should go into world creation. Everything is here, even things you probably never even knew existed in the Star Wars universe. But then, that's the mark of a great concept, that there is such good stuff thrown away and never used. If you're a Star Wars fan then you'll want to get this book. If you're a fan of technology and just want to see what all those protrusions and knobby things on the AT-AT Walker then you need this book. There's more detail than you could ever want or need and you'll love every word, sentence and paragraph. A must-have for any real fan of either Star Wars of Science Fiction.
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Blade Runner The book came first here. Secondly, this is the original story not the one based on the screenplay, so ignore the cover and the back cover and know that this is what Dick wrote back before Hollywood even knew of him. Expect something different--especially if you still have not seen the Director's cut of the film. Expect to have your mouth hang open in wonder at how Hollywood could have treated this story so shabbily. Expect to be pleasantly surprised at how well this still reads. Expect to finish it and go searching for more of Dick's work. Expect to be surprised over and over again. Dick is perhaps best known for the bizarreness of his writing and of his person beliefs. None of this really comes through here but it does bear mentioning in case that is exactly the kind of thing you are looking for. This is still the story of Deckard and his search for androids but it is also a much deeper tale a darker one (which is very Dick-like) and a broader one in scope. It is more involved in the themes it delves into while being trickier to figure. It is, in a word, pure Dick. Read it for the pure pleasure of letting the words slide around in your head. Read it for the thoughts it will produce. Read it to see how they turn a story into a film. Read it to see who Dick is (although what you see will be but a shadow). Read it for the enjoyment. But read it! So, we come to the end, having revisited two masters of the field and having come to the conclusion that good stuff did indeed exist before 1990. We should not let the best of us slide into the darkest rest without often bringing them to light in remembrance. For writers this is doubly important. For great writers it is a must. Related Blade Runner books: |
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Trumps of Doom Roger Zelazny
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These are three of the final five books in the ten book Amber series. With Zelazny's recent death it seems that publishers are going to rush his material to publication and while the passing of one of SF's grandmasters is a sad thing, the generation of new Zelazny fans as they discover his work is nothing less than a joy to behold. Zelazny is a master in more ways than one, with his short, Hemingway style of punctuation and brevity and his first person narratives which tease, twist and generate a high level of reader involvement, Zelazny moves a story along faster and better than anyone in the field. That he has also created the world of Amber and uses its individual strangeness to build upon is just another facet of one of the field's premiere storytellers. Amber is a world which exists alongside other worlds. It is, in fact, the true world an all other worlds are nothing but shadows. In Amber there is the pattern and when one walks the pattern one gains great powers and is able to do magical things. One family has controlled the pattern and has essentially ruled the worlds. The First series follows a single member of the family and introduces us to the worlds and to the pattern and to the strangeness that grows from strange relationships. Politics abound and intrigue is second nature. With the second set of books, Zelazny picks up years later and this time we follow a descendant of Amber as he makes his way on Earth and beyond. This time Zelazny lets Amber grow, to become fuller, larger and to become a mirror image of itself in the process. Not many could actually make the second five books of a series better than the first but Zelazny does. This is great stuff, made all the better because Zelazny is such a master of his craft. If you've not yet discovered Zelazny's worlds then you're in for a treat. If it has been years then take this opportunity to rediscover. Amber is a place of magic and there can be no more fitting place of rest for one of the greatest story tellers the Science Fiction field has ever had the pleasure to know.
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more zelazny:
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A Stirring of Dust, Susan Sizemore In the world of the Television Series Forever Knight. To someone not familiar with the television show, and the history of the characters, this book will not make much sense. This story takes place during the final season of the television show, during the time when Nick is partnered with Tracy Vetter, and Jannette is still missing. This book reads very much like a novelized script. Through thought monologues, it provides additional insights into some of the driving forces behind the characters, something that was missing from the television show. The story hinges around two new features of vampire biology, the ability to return after being reduced to ash, and a possible disease. In this volume, we learn that under some circumstances (that are not fully revealed), a vampire can return to activity after it has been reduced to ashes, hence the title, "A Stirring of Dust". The vampire who returns to activity from his ashes is Radu, a very conservative being, who's ideology comes from a barbarian upbringing prior to the 1200AD. Not unsurprisingly, Nick had a hand in turning him to ash, 200 years prior to the present. Radu does not have any understanding of the constraints that co-existing with modern society now impose on vampires and vampire society. He goes about feeding with abandon, resulting in a string of murders, a trail of not quite corpses, and an inflamed the media. Nick and Natalie rush to try to stop him and to keep the mortal world from discovering the vampires in its midst. Some background: Nick Knight, became a vampire in 1228. He feels remorse for all of the humans he has killed, and longs to be mortal again. As part of his atonement, he works night shift for the Toronto Ontario Canada police force as a homicide detective. He works with Natalie, the coroner to solve crimes that not fully rooted in the normal world, and to conceal that anything out of the ordinary has happened. |
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The Arthur C. Clarke Audio Collection : 2001 : A Space Odyssey, Transit of Earth, Fountains of Paradise, Childhood's End; Arthur C. Clarke; Audio Cassette Childhood's End; Arthur Charles Clarke Okay, this is a book that Ballantine first published in 1953. However, Clarke is a big name in the genre and one needs to understand why. A casual flip to an interior page brings one to a list of his published works which almost needs two full pages of small print to present. The second thing about this book is that it came out at about the time that modern SF was being born. Read this book and you see the seeds of the present. Read this book and you understand what drew so many of us to this type of fiction. Read this book and you start to understand the genesis of this very magazine that you now hold in your hands. Is it dated? Sure, a bit. It's also somewhat dystopian in nature which might turn people off. Bottom line though is that it's a classic that has held up extremely well and is still an amazingingly entertaining, intellectual and emotional read.
-- Sawicki |
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Beowulf's Children; Larry Niven, et al Beowulf's Children Vol 1; Larry Niven, et a Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, Steven Barnes. Niven, Pournelle and Barnes have joined forces once again to bring us superb science fiction. In Beowulf's Children, they move the story of the colonization of Avalon started in Heriot's Legacy forward a generation as the Star Born colonists deal with that universal problem - what to do with the old folks. In Legacy, we saw the landing and colonization of Avalon, the Earth's first interstellar colony. In much the same way that Threadfall took Anne Mcaffery's colonists of Pern by surprise, The colonists of Avalon were = nearly torn to shreds by the Grendals - smart lizardy carnivores that can produce and metabolize a substance called speed which allows them to move at the mind numbing velocities of the Flash, but a flash with an appetite for human flesh. During the long years of hyper-sleep ice crystals formed in the colonists brains, planting mental and emotional instabilities in the minds of humanity's best and brightest explorers and the knowledge of their flaws has led them to rely on group decisions and rule bound behavior - an intolerable state of affairs for any teenagers and doubly so for the Star born, eager to tame a world. As Beowulf's Children opens, the island of Camelot has been rid of grendel, and the colony has known close to two decades of peaceful development. En= ough time to raise a generation that has never fought grendels except in relentless simulation, but not nearly time enough for the Earth born to forget the ravage of their friends and lovers in the grendel wars Cadman Weyman, once head of the UN's security forces and more recently the hero of the grendel war will ultimately face Aaron Tragon unspoken leader of the Starborn, whose drive to colonize Avalon is his consuming passion, no matter what the cost in lives. Though the authors never waste their characters needlessly, they make no bones about the risks an alien world holds, nor the threat we bring with us wherever the deadly human beast goes. The talesmiths three have built an excellent ecosystem and peopled it wit= h compelling humans and aliens alike. The saga of Avalon's colonization echoes SF classics such as McCaffery's Pern series (complete with dolphins) and Heinlein's Tunnel in the Sky, but with all the hard SF and contemporary vision available to these contemporary masters. It is a novel about both coming of and coming to grips with aging, and I recommend it strongly. |
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