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Reviews by Larry Woods
Modern American science fiction originated as a literature of short stories about possible worlds and futuristic ideas. Much of the best work in science fiction is still written in short story form as evidenced by Michael Flynn's first collection, The Forest of Time and Other Stories. Flynn's strength is his adept characterization and his hard-edged thematic content. His works of imagination and possibility range from stories like "On the Wings of a Butterfly" inspired by his child's inquiry as to why he needed to know anything about the Inca Empire in school and how he would never use it for anything. This strange and shocking story of Pizarro and an alternate history illustrates again how small events create large consequences.
"Spark of Genius" is all about the agony -- yes, agony -- of an author with a bestseller about neural nets and his concern that computers can do it better than he can. As such, it illustrates that science fiction continues to be a literature of challenge concepts.
The best story in this collection, "The Common Goal of Nature," is about aliens, while the most appealing story may be "Mammy Morgan Played the Organ" for its autobiographical insights into the author's background.
We predict that the work of J. Gregory Keyes will become recognized as classic. Keyes's The Waterborn was a delight, and he has artfully dodged the inevitable sequel quandaries with this new book.
In The Blackgod, Hezhi, the royal-born princess, has made good her escape with Perkar.
Accompanied by Tsem, the half-giant bodyguard, they seek protection from the River with the barbarians known as the Mang. Inevitably danger follows her as the River uses all its cunning to find its wayward child and to kill Perkar. Now Karak, the Raven, reappears from the first book in its manifestation as the Blackgod, promising a path for Hezhi and Perkar to thwart the River. Can the Blackgod be trusted? Probably only to fulfill its own needs using duplicity and treachery.
The strength of this sequel is the reappearance of the memorable characters such as Ghan, the librarian in Nhol, and the traitorous Ghe who continues to plot the demise of Hezhi, Perkar, and Tsem. Lending texture is author Keyes's invocation of legend that is reminiscent of Native American folklore as exemplified by the interrelationship between his literary characters and their natural world.
In The Billion Dollar Boy by Charles Sheffield, Shelby Cheever is the 15-year-old, overweight, spoiled rich kid whose life on mother Earth has been idle luxury. Now his own negligent error has stranded him on a mining colony in the Messina Dust Cloud until he is rescued by the Harvest Moon mining ship and the Trask family who operate it. Shelby will be stranded six months on this dust cloud of trans-Uranic elements featuring "wreaths" with dangerous electromagnetic forces and space traveling life forms. Now Shelby has to learn to survive on his own. Much in the tradition of Robert Heinlein's coming-of-age novels, Shelby encounters dangers that shape his destiny and self-identity.
Attorney Larry D. Woods is an avid collector of science fiction.
©1997, ProMotion, inc.
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