Guest Post: Planet in Peril

Hello, friends! Today we have a very special post, a guest post! Constant readers might remember Philip Stiff as being the blesséd soul who sent me the Star Quest books at the end of 2015. It seems he’s found something of his own to review. Something that, I have to admit, I’m jealous I didn’t find first. I hope you enjoy his review as much as I do.

What on Earth…

Cris Holman’s world is turned inside out when insectlike aliens attack and destroy his hometown, murdering his family and his friends.

Motivated by vengeance, Cris volunteers to become a Cyborg Commando, a new breed of soldiers who allow their brains to be removed from their bodies and placed inside computer-operated fighting machines specially designed to combat and conquer the alien menace.

As Cris Holman’s body lies in cryogenic storage, the new Cris is dispatched to help defend the planet – before all of mankind becomes subjugated to the awful plans of the aliens. He and others like him are Earth’s best defense…and its last hope.

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Mahogany Trinrose

Mahogany Trinrose by Jacqueline Lichtenberg
Doubleday, 1981
Price I paid: none

Ercy Farris, heir apparent to the House of Zeor, lives in a time when humanity has mutated into predatory Simes, and their prey, Gens, who produce the selyn which the Simes need to survive…and will kill to get. Centuries ago, a Sime-submutation appeared, the channels, with the ability to take selyn from Gens without killing and to transfer it to Simes. Now, a complex social structure rules the world, with the channels at the top, preventing Simes from killing Gens.

Ercy, a not-yet-matured channel, has dedicated her life to cultivating the mahogany trinrose, source of the drug kerduvon, which legend says can free humanity of the threat of the kill.

Pursuing the secret of the mahogany trinrose during her changeover into an adult Sime, she wakens in herself powers outlawed by her society as witchcraft: telekinesis, clairvoyance, teleportation…and the strange power to make her wishes come true. Yet as they come true, they make her into a danger to her Householding and her world.

One man, the mysterious Halimer Grant, can help her in the desperate struggle to preserve those she loves and their ideals. What price does he foresee that makes him hesitate?

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Magellan

Magellan by Colin Anderson
Berkley Science Fiction, 1970
Price I paid: 75¢

Magellan is the last city-state on earth—a society where perfection is being rapidly approached. It is the Eve of Eternity—the day when the great computer complex Chronophage will assume dominion over the earth and grant every man his wish.

Euripides Che Fourthojuly 1070121, who has been avoiding the tranquilizing drugs all are required to take, will be in for a very bad time indeed….

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On Science Fiction Characters Who Are Not Robots

Hi folks! This week I’m trying a little something new. For a variety of reasons—chief among them my own lack of motivation—I chose not to read and review a book this week but instead to look back across the books I have read and see what lessons I can pull out about the craft of writing science fiction. Is this a good idea? Perhaps we’ll never know. Or perhaps we can choose to know.

Fun fact, this essay was originally going to be about Penetrator novels but I was having a really hard time finding a way to make that work. It wasn’t until late last night as I lay in bed reading Viktor Frankl that the idea of writing something about character agency hit me.

“Why were you in bed reading Man’s Search for Meaning instead of Assignment: Nuclear Nude, Thomas?”

That question might well answer itself.

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The Joan-of-Arc Replay

The Joan-of-Arc Replay by Pierre Barbet
Translated by Stanley Hochman
DAW Books, 1978
Price I paid: $1.25

It was the contention of one galactic historian that similar planets must have similar histories. It was the contention of another that this did not imply identical histories. The challenge could only be settled by actual testing in the infinity of the cosmos.

The computer came up with the story of Joan of Arc on the Planet Earth. Programmed anew, it produced a similar world, the Planet Noldaz of Sigma 32, with a human race rising from medievalism among whom a maid would appear to lead her country’s knights on a war of liberation.

The question: was she inevitably doomed to die at the stake, as Joan had before her? Did identical situations always mean identical conclusions?

Pierre Barbet, master of alternative histories and parallel worlds, spins a marvelous science fiction novel out of one of the great enigmas of history.

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The Virgin and the Dinosaur

The Virgin and the Dinosaur by R. García y Robertson
Avon Books, 1996
Price I paid: $1.50

In a far-future Megapolis free of disease, pollution, and money, Jake Bento is master of the wormhole—until an unforeseen catastrophe nearly strands the professional time traveler and his beautiful young paleontologist companion Peg in a world of huge extinct beasts. Luckily, Jake’s deft manipulation of wormhole technology can bring them home—after several stopovers in more manageable eras—with enough 3V recordings to make them both legends in their own, and other, times.

There are those, however, who resent such newfound celebrity—specifically Jake’s dangerous erstwhile employers at FASTER-THAN-LIGHT. And now Peg and Jake must watch their backs, from Pleistocene to the present. For there are no treacheries their enemies won’t stoop to—and no time left in which to hide.

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Bone Wars

Bone Wars by Brett Davis
Baen Books, 1998
Price I paid: $2.95

Montana, 1876. Othniel Charles Marsh, one of the two top paleontologists in the world, is in the state’s Judith River fossil beds, doing what he does best: digging up the bones of dinosaurs. Montana is a big state, but Marsh can’t rest easy. Edward Drinker Cope, his biggest rival, and the other top paleontologist in the world, is also in the area, and there simply aren’t enough bones for both of them, leading them to play dirty tricks. And time itself is against them: the fierce snows of winter are on the way and, rumor has it, so is Sitting Bull, fresh from his triumph at Little Big Horn.

Another complication: two foreign scientists are also competing for the bones. One says he’s from Sweden, the other says he’s from Iceland. One of them enlists Cope to help him, while the other befriends Marsh.

Marsh and Cope don’t want the fossils to leave the country, so they decide to bury the hatchet and work together to outwit the visitors. This turns out to be harder than they thought. The foreign scientists possess amazing technology, but that’s because they are much more foreign than they claimed. They don’t just want to take the bones out of the country—they’re fighting over who will get to take them clean off the planet…

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Time Blender

Time Blender by Michael Dorn, Hilary Hemingway, and Jeffry P. Lindsay
HarperPrism, 1997
Price I paid: $2.95

A RIPPLE IN SPACE-TIME

Archeologist [sic] Tony Miller was a skeptic. He had heard the stories about the remote volcanic island where ships and planes disappeared. But as a scientist, Miller needed proof, not rumors.

So he flew over the island, and saw for himself the million-year horror that waited inside the crater.

Just before his seaplane’s engine stopped…

TIME BLENDER

Millions of fans know Michael Dorn as Star Trek’s unforgettable “Worf.” Now let Dorn take you on a journey of discovery in this gripping tale of an archeologist [sic] who uncovers the most awesome secret in the universe!

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Streetlethal

Streetlethal by Steven Barnes
Ace Books, 1983
Price I paid: 90¢

Los Angeles is a teeming metropolis with a rotten core: Deep Maze, where the Thai-VI ghouls—the disease-spreading Spiders—roam. Here the all-powerful Ortegas rule over their empire of drugs, prostitution, and black-market human organs “donated” by their helpless victims.

All Aubry Knight, the former weightless boxing champion, wants is to be left alone. But you’re either with the Ortegas or against them, so they made his life a hell. First they tried to control his mind, then they tried to reduce him to “spare parts.”

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The Quy Effect

The Quy Effect by Arthur Sellings
Berkley Medallion, 1968
Price I paid: 90¢

The Quy Effect

It was so powerful that in one instant it obliterated an entire building. Only the concrete floor and stumps of walls, like the evacuated ruins of some ancient city, gave any indication that there had been a building there at all.

The Quy Effect

Its implications were so revolutionary as to render all past scientific concepts obsolete…which only served to alienate the entire scientific community against its inventor, Adolphe Quy….

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