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Sneak Preview - by Robert Bloch

Although the dystopian futurist world that author Robert Bloch sets his science-fiction thriller Sneak Preview in has become a dated cliche, his social and political commentary, and satire, has aged quite well; despite his central theme having already been played out countless times before, in far better (and worse, to be fair) science-fiction novels, short stories, and films from the decade that preceded his novel's publication in 1971.

In his unauthorized autobiography, Once Around the Bloch, Robert Bloch stated outright that he had no real aptitude for science-fiction, a genre that he loved, and that his true strength as a writer was in telling tales of supernatural horror and, most famously, psychological suspense.  He could also concoct a mean pun and had a genuine talent for humor.  Every yarn he spun had at least one good zinger in it.  The zinger in Sneak Preview is an utterly unrelated to the plot digression (one of several) entitled, Flashback: Down Memory Lane.  It tells the tale of a poor traveler named Kenner and his delay plagued attempt to return home after a trip to Rio.  It is a masterful bit of writing that anyone who has ever traveled can relate to.

Lane is the last of eight "Flashbacks" that Bloch uses to pad out the first one hundred or so pages of Sneak Preview, which is only one hundred and ninety-two pages long.  Only one of them qualifies as science-fiction, and none of them have any connection whatsoever with the primary story they elongate.  

The Good Old Days, the first of the bunch, is more joke than story, while the second, Our Glorious Past, is a gruesome horror story about an unfortunate soldier's most inglorious of fates.  A Touch of Nostalgia, the third, is yet another horror story, about a funeral director that comes up with an enterprising idea of how to better profit from the new business being generated from a current, and escalating, war.  Remember When, the fourth, is a hilarious, and biting, dig at the neurotic foibles of human nature, something that Bloch excelled at, thus making it essential reading for any aficionado of Robert Bloch.  Old Home Week, the tale of a doomed astronaut, is the only "flashback" tale that truly qualifies as a science-fiction story.  That Old Time Religion, the penultimate flashback, contains the strongest thematic link with the short novel that it is padding to full novel length.  The tale of a spinster's life long attempt to connect with the confusing, distant, and hostile world around her, the story is Bloch at his most existential.  The brutal force of the ironic climax is like a fatal sucker punch to the gut.

But what of the short novel these stories are padding out?

Sneak Preview's primary story is that of Graham, a Space Opera "Talent" (an individual tasked with giving the post-apocalyptic and brainwashed masses safe and non-challenging escapist entertainment) whose creative imagination has awakened an urge to rebel against the status quo.  When he attempts to break out of his assigned Space Opera box, Graham is whisked away by the Psychos, the psycho-analyst elite that "program" (i.e. control) the peaceful thought processes of the populace.  (It is also an unfortunate name choice, as the term Psycho constantly reminded me of Bloch's far superior novel of the same name.)

Graham's rebellious adventure against the Psychos offers Bloch plenty of opportunities to both skewer and comment upon the cliches of the Space Opera - which he does, with obvious relish - while indulging in them at the same time.  The end result is a wildly uneven, albeit enjoyable on its own flawed terms, futurist dystopian thriller with a generous dollop of black humor.

Star Trek New Frontier Book Four: End Game - by Peter David

Thanks in large part to DVD and Tivo, I can watch a fair amount of TV shows without suffering the hassles of having to watch broadcast TV.  I can also pick and choose when to watch an episode of a show, according to my own personal schedule, rather than having to adjust my schedule to catch an episode of a show that I do not want to miss.  I am also old enough of a show to remember even those pre-VCR days, when, if you missed an episode of a show, you could really and truly miss it; for it might not be rebroadcast, much less released for syndicated reruns.

While these changes in technology are a distinct improvement over my viewing options of old, I can still fall behind and miss out on "my shows," losing track of the serial threads running through the various characters and story arcs.  Which is what I discovered to have happened when I started tearing through End Game, the concluding chapter in Peter David's four part serial introduction to his popular, and ongoing, Star Trek TNG tie-in spin-off series, New Frontier. There were moments when I was just lost amongst all the political backstabbing and skullduggery, for I had allowed far too much reading time to elapse between installments. This really is a series that would be best enjoyed as one book, not as four separate ones.

The definite highlights in this chapter were the scenes involving Si Cwan and Zak Kebron in captivity.  I must admit that Kebron the Brikar has become my favorite character in the series.  The low points were the tiresome arguments over that pesky Prime Directive of non-interference (and the non-surprise that whether or not it should be invoked as a reason NOT taking action is an entirely subjective one, rather than an objective one) and the rushed and oversimplified manner in which the hostage situation that was The Two Front War's cliffhanger was resolved.

Then again, the book's climax features what appears to be a giant Anti-Matter Space Buzzard.  Something that David dubs The Great Bird Bird of the Galaxy.  It is impossible for me to dislike, and thus not recommend, a book that features a one-two in-joke.  Although I doubt that Peter David intended to make any reference to The Giant Claw. Or did he?

A Princess of Mars - by Edgar Rice Burroughs

It has been awhile since I have read a book that has gone of its narrative rails as badly as Edgar Rice Burroughs' A Princess of Mars; the first story in the John Carter of Mars series and, according to the author bio at the back of the book, the very first novel that Burroughs ever wrote.

Boy, does it ever show.

A Princess of Mars is filled with all sorts of first time writer mistakes.  Telling instead of showing, needless info dump digressions that have nothing to do with what is currently going on in the story, and ham fisted deus ex machina contrivances that are presented as if they were startling plot twists.

I enjoyed the first two books in Buroughs' Tarzan series and was quite looking forward to reading this early space opera adventure.  But those Tarzan books were from a seasoned Burroughs at the top of his story telling game.  A Princess of Mars is Burroughs just getting started.

Despite the above listed narrative faults, there are some pulp delights to be found in the book.  Burroughs' imaginary Martian world is a vivid one, populated with all manner of delightful flora and vicious fauna, and his impressive skill at choreographing larger than life action scenes is easy to see, even at this, the earliest stage in his legendary writing career.

Burroughs did have me for most of the book, when Carter is a captive learning the ways of the brutal Thark, the Green Men of Mars.   That is when A Princess of Mars is basically a western set on another world.  But then Carter escapes, is recaptured by a different tribe of Green Men, escapes yet again and then sets off on a Wizard of Oz style road trip that leads to his becoming embroiled in a war between the two humanoid societies on Mars.  Burroughs piles far too many wild details upon wild details (atmosphere generators, aerial warplanes, etc) that the story becomes a jumble of stuff.  The reader does not experience the story, he or she is simply pelted with it.

By the end, though, I had learned what a tremendous debt the climax of Total Recall owes to A Princess of Mars.

Broken Angels - by Richard K. Morgan

Thirty years have passed since the events described in Altered Carbon.  Former U.N. Envoy Takeshi Kovacs is now a gun-for-hire for the government of a planet in the midst of a bloody revolution.  While recovering from wounds sustained on the battlefield, Kovacs meets Jan Schneider, a pilot with a lucrative scheme.  He, or someone he is associated with, has uncovered an apparently fully functional piece of Martian technology.  Kovacs and Schneider go AWOL, spring an Archaeologue (the far flung future's equivalent of an Archaeologist) and hunt for someone willing to fund the treasure hunt of the 25th century.

Things don't go well.

After enjoying Takeshi Kovacs's first adventure, I went into his second with high hopes for a plot filled with sudden twists and jarring turns, heavy doses of bone crunching action, and a cast of colorful and fascinating characters.  Well, after 198 pages, I can say that the plot is pretty straight forward, the action nonexistent, and the cast large and bland.  This one just did not hold my interest.

Author Richard K. Morgan painted such a vivid and somewhat believable futurist nightmare in Altered Carbon that it baffles me why he chose to ignore it in this follow-up.  Broken Angels is so unconnected to the first book (at least in its first half) that it reads like a completely different story that went through a hasty and poorly thought out rewrite in order to fulfill a demand for a new Takeshi Kovacs story from the publisher.

At the point that I am closing this particular book for good, the identity of the turncoat within the group's ranks is still unknown, the nano-blob has yet to go on the offensive, and the Martian technology has yet to become anything other than a MacGuffin.  If there is a big payoff at the end, I have lost all interest in working my way through the remaining 160+ pages to collect it.

Creature from the Black Lagoon: Time's Black Lagoon - by Paul Di Filippo

The year is 2015 and Global Warming is changing the Earth's ecosystem.  Forward thinking scientist Brice Chalefant believes that humanity's long term survival depends on its adapting to a more amphibious state of being.  Big fan of Waterworld, I guess.  Although his theory is not embraced by the scientific community, Tarquin Hasselrude, an elderly and highly respected scientist, shares with Chalefant the startling discovery of an honest to goodness Gill-Man in the upper Amazon in 1954...

There's more to it than that, stuff involving time machines and ancient Gill-Men and women from the stars, I think, settling Devonian era Earth, but I didn't make it that far.  I gave up at the start of Chapter Five.

When Dark Horse books first announced that they would be publishing a series of novels based on the classic Universal Monster movies of yesteryear (Frankenstein and his Bride, Dracula, The Mummy, The Wolf Man, and the Creature from the Black Lagoon) I was every bit as excited and I was intrigued.  What better place to start, I thought, than with my all-time favorite Universal Monster, the Creature from the Black Lagoon?

I went into Creature from the Back Lagoon: Time's Black Lagoon hoping for a loving retro-style return to the "Lost World" pulp adventures of Edgar Rice Burroughs and others.  What I got instead was a mix of shoddy futurist dystopia tinged science-fiction, clumsy plotting, and stick figure sketching that was somehow meant to pass for character development.  Not once in the sixty pages I managed to wade through did I find a single solitary moment of 50s B-movie fun.  Where were the larger than life heroes?  The smart talking heroine that delivers coffee to the LTLHs before getting carried off, kicking and screaming, in the arms of the Creature?

Come to think of it, where was the Creature?  Yes, I know, there was that prologue featuring a "smart and gentle" Creature fleeing from the "Coarsened Ones".  But that wasn't the Creature of the 1950s movie series and that, more than anything, is what I wanted.  I wanted Beauty, Beast, and a square jawed Man of Action that fights the Beast to save the Beauty for himself.

I know enough about write-for-hire projects to not lay the blame entirely at author Paul Di Filippo's word processor.  Whoever was given editorial control over how the property was handled by the owner of the rights to the Creature (which would probably be someone representing the commercial interests of Universal) is to blame for allowing the Creature to be mucked up this badly, and mucked up badly it was.  I tossed Creature from the Black Lagoon: Time's Black Lagoon back.  It can sleep with the fishes as far as I am concerned.

God Emperor of Dune - by Frank Herbert

Some three thousand years - perhaps a bit more, perhaps a bit less - have passed since the events of Children of Dune.  Leto Atreides still lives and rules, but the price he has paid to keep his empire, and thus all of humanity, moving on the Golden Path is a shattering one.  He is becoming a sandworm.

While many choose to follow and worship Leto the God Emperor, there are those that do not and they have plans to both undermine and undo Leto's tyrannical rule.

The first thing I have to say about God Emperor of Dune is that is readable, very readable.  That alone makes this third sequel to Dune far superior to the two turgid novels that came before it. With the huge leap forward in time, you almost don't have to read Dune Messiah or Children of Dune.  You can almost skip directly from Dune to God Emperor.

Almost, but not quite.  Sorry.

The second thing I have to say about God Emperor of Dune is that, while it is no Dune, taken on its own terms, it is a fascinating and thought provoking novel.  One well worth reading.  Yes it's talky and relatively light on action, but the talk means something.  It's philosophical musings on cultural and political programming, religion, and even eugenics are just as timely today as they were 28 years ago, when the novel was first published.

28 years!?!  I am getting old.

Altered Carbon - by Richard K. Morgan

It is the 25th century and humanity has achieved immortality, for the entirety of a person's mind and memory can now be recorded into a neural implant and inserted into a new body (or sleeve) after death.  Takeshi Kovacs, a former U.N. Envoy (a kind of super soldier) turned criminal, is taken out of storage (a.k.a. prison) and given an offer he cannot refuse.  Laurens Bancroft, a very old, very wealthy, and very powerful man has committed suicide.  Trouble is, Bancroft doesn't believe he did it and, since his suicide conveniently occurred before his implant could record his memories of the act, he wants Kovacs to find out who murdered him. 

I could try and explain the plot more, but it would just get confusing.  It would also spoil all the fun and ferocity of reading how Kovacs navigates the twists and turns of the complex mystery that Bancroft has forced him to solve.

When I first cracked open Altered Carbon I could not stop myself from wondering at how author Richard Morgan managed to pad his story to fill 526 pages and worrying if that content would hold my interest.  My worries were completely unfounded.  Morgan expertly balances his narrative between entertaining bouts of old school P.I. machismo and intriguing brave new world building.  I was taken by both, so Altered Carbon had a delicious one-two story hook.  I loved learning about this dystopian future every bit as much as I enjoyed getting to know the colorful cast of characters that populate it.

Also helping is how Morgan takes his noir narrative into the darkest realms made possible by this philosophically terrifying technology.  Since the sting of potential death has been removed, "enhanced" interrogation techniques have become a thing of the distant past.  Now thugs (or soldiers) can just torture a person to death and place the subject's mind into a fresh "sleeve," either real or virtual, and begin again.  Not that real death is impossible.  A neural implant can be destroyed and a mind "erased."

Morgan also explores just how extreme longevity can change, or warp, a person's mind.  Ditto the effects of having to grow old and infirm before dying more than once.  The latter being something that the very wealthy are spared, of course.

By the time I had reached the end of Altered Carbon I had forgotten all about my worries at the beginning.  I didn't want the book to end and I am eager to return to the dark and fascinating future that it introduced me to.

Get Off the Unicorn - by Anne McCaffrey

Fourteen stories of the future and the fantastic from the mind of McCaffrey.  Anne, that is.

Just a book or so down the Science Fiction Book Review thread I mentioned the nibble factor.  Anthologies are great nibble books, especially if the anthology is a themed one and the reader finds himself or herself reading story after story on the same subject matter.

While that is certainly not the case with Anne McCaffrey's Get Off the Unicorn - while some of the stories do have some very strong connective links, they all are meant to stand alone - I nonetheless found myself setting the book down and picking others up.  I do not think that this reflects on the quality of the book the way it did on Contagious, but just the fragmented nature of anthologies themselves.  Sometimes it is better to sip, than it is to gulp.

Like many a writer, McCaffrey will expand short stories into larger, novel length narratives.  Something that happened to the book's first two offerings, The Lady in the Tower and A Meeting of Minds.  Although that was not the case when this book was first published 32 years ago.  Has it really been that long?  While I enjoyed those two stories, and will get around to reading the novels they inspired "some day," I found the world of Daughter and Dull Drums and the characters that inhabit them far, far more interesting.  I can only hope that McCaffrey has also gotten around to finding a way of expanding those stories into a larger story that I can spend a few days snuggled inside of.

Changeling left me cold on the story front and depressed on the political front.  Gay rights still have a very long way to go to avoid the scenario described within the story's pages.

Weather on Welladay makes the short list for my favorite story in the book.  It's a fun little adventure mystery set on a water planet beset by violent storms and very bad weather.  Unfortunately The Thorns of Barevi, the story that follows Welladay, is my least favorite.  I have issues with rape themed stories and the heroine finding herself reluctantly enjoying her "coerced seduction" left a sour taste in my mouth.

The book rebounded nicely with the remaining stories in the book.  Horse from a Different Sea is a humorous story about a rather unique method of alien infiltration.  Great Canine Chorus is another on my favorite story in the book list.  It's a touching tale of a well meaning cop, and abused and neglected psychic girl going wrong, and dogs.  Lots and lots of dogs.  Finder's Keeper, A Proper Santa Claus, and The Smallest Dragon Boy are all variations on the coming of age story.  Each is good, but Santa Claus (with its original downbeat ending restored to powerful effect) is the best of the bunch.  

Closing out the book are Apple, which is flat out the best story in the book, and Honeymoon, which McCaffrey warns newcomers they will not fully understand without having read The Ship Who Sang. I agree with that comment wholeheartedly.

For those, like me, that have not read the novels of Anne McCaffrey, but are interested in doing so, but do not know where to begin.  Get Off the Unicorn is the perfect sampler to get directions to the best places to do so.

On Basilisk Station - by David Weber

Captain Honor Harrington's command of the HMS Fearless is far from a pleasant one.  Her ship has been stripped of its most effective weaponry, which severely hampers her battlefield maneuvering ability.  Her first officer and crew resent her and, due to numerous test battle failures caused by her ship's limited maneuvering abilities, she is assigned to Basilisk Station, the armpit of the Manticore territory.

But those that have punished her have severely underestimated her command abilities.

It was a very good thing for this reader that Honor Harrington (a space opera variant of Horatio Hornblower) was not only a damned good captain, but a strong and interesting character as well.  How she faced her assorted problems and overcame them with a mix of smarts, steely willpower, and plain old good luck, kept my interest - and won my heart - even as digressive sections, such as when author David Weber paused in the midst of a tense space battle to give the reader an overly detailed how's it done history of speedy space travel, did not.

Even with those digressive sections of technical detail, however, Weber's world building left a bit to be desired.  I found far too many of the background details of Manticore, the space faring monarchy that Harrington serves, and Haven, the space faring republic that attempts to steal Basilisk Station away from Manticore, to be sketchy, at best.  Then again, this is the first novel of what appears to be a rather long series.  So I am going to give Weber the benefit of the doubt and gamble that greater background detail will be forthcoming in other series entries.  Series entries that I plan to read, in time.

On Basilisk Station is yet another fine example of why I have been reluctant to read series novels in the past.  If I like the book, then I am impelled to read every other novel in the frakking series, which can be every bit as expensive as it is time consuming.  This has happened with Dune, Dies the Fire, and several others.  Now it has happened with Honor Harrington.  By the time Station reached its rousing and satisfying conclusion, I was hooked and hooked badly.  I knew that I would be raiding my girlfriend's bookshelves for the remaining novels in the series (and there are a lot of them) in the coming months.  At least that shelf raiding will save me some cash to spend on the other series that I have become addicted to.

Contagious - by Scott Sigler

The battle may have been won in Infected, but the war wages on in Contagious...and it is getting nastier by the hour.

A great judge of a book for me is its "nibble" factor.  Do I find myself cracking it open to nip at a paragraph here, or a page there, whenever the slightest opportunity to do so presents itself?  Those are the best kinds of reads.  The ones that demand that I finish them ASAP.

Scott Sigler's Infected was just such a book.  I cannot say the same for Contagious, Sigler's gruesome sequel to his first published, and every bit as gruesome, novel.  In fact, I put the book down and read several others before picking it back up and finishing it.  That is not a good thing, obviously.

As I strolled through horrifying set piece after horrifying set piece (and believe me, some very nasty action is splashed across the book's pages) with a strange sense of detachment, I kept wondering what was wrong.  Why wasn't Contagious grabbing me the way Infected had?

The reason turned out to be a simple one.  Sigler rides shotgun with his characters, and there are a lot of them this time around, but he very rarely crawled into their hearts and minds the way he did with "Scary" Perry Dawsey, the tormented anti-hero of Infected.  Even worse, Dawsey, who has survived his infection, but with psychosis inducing scars, is pushed into the background of the story.  Sigler also makes the mistake of telling the reader of the father/son bond the develops between CIA operative Dew Phillips and Perry, rather than showing it.

Those interested in a strictly visceral reading experience should enjoy Contagious.  The alien threat morphs into an entirely different kind of beast.  One that peppers the book with some truly disgusting (albeit fascinating and entertaining) set pieces.  But those hoping for a more emotionally resonate reading experience will, more than likely, set the book down disappointed.

Dies the Fire - by S.M. Stirling

On Tuesday, March17th, 1998, the world Changed.  The power went out in everything.  Cars stopped running, airplanes fell from the sky, phones and radios were silent, and, as cities began to burn to the ground, law enforcement officers, private citizens, and ruthless thugs were shocked to find that gunpowder no longer worked.  In one horrifying instant, the 20th century was switched off...permanently.

But from the ashes of the Old World, a new kind of world begins to grow. 

Dies The Fire scratched my post-apocalyptic itch, but good.  The book is packed with plenty of pulse pounding action, heroes that manage to be both larger than life and true to it, and the narrative builds a world that I look forward to visiting again and again.  (But one I certainly would not want to live in full time.)

It's a good thing, then, that the book is the first part of a trilogy.  If it wasn't, then I would be far more disgruntled with the abrupt ending than simply eager to find out what happens in the next book. 

My biggest complaint is that the saga's primary villain, a murderous professor that seizes control of Portland, Oregon and begins forming a conquering army of former street gangs, is only introduced, not developed beyond being a menacing background figure.  Most of the book is focused on getting the primary heroes situated and their various communities developed.

Speaking of focus, I would have liked to have seen a bit more focus on the actual apocalypse.  Having a character or two actually experience the hell of the collapsing major cities would have fleshed out the disaster to a point where it feels truly epic.  Perhaps in the next book.

Star Trek New Frontier Book Three: The Two-Front War - by Peter David

Si Cwan and Zak Kebron fight to escape the deadly snare that has entrapped them.  Calhoun is distrustful of the generous offer made by a scavenging species.  Dr. Selar demands a special favor from Soleta.

The third part of the four book set that launched Peter David's popular Star Trek New Frontier series bubbles with action, excitement, and healthy doses of the author's trademark humor.  It's terrific reading, if taken as part of a larger whole, which it is.  But the book is as far removed from a stand alone novel as it could get.  So any and all newcomers to the series will be hopelessly lost if s/he should choose The Two-Front War as the book to start the series with.  Stuff happens, you know?

That having been said, David breaks in some of his supporting cast members with some rousing action set pieces (the Si Cwan/Zak Kebron section) and more than a few intense emotional fireworks displays (the Dr. Selar/Soleta section).  The former, as entertaining as it is, is pretty much your average buddy action movie arc.  Si Cwan and Kebron dislike each other intensely, but eventually learn to work together and even manage to bond...a little bit.  Although he has not, to my somewhat limited Trek knowledge, appeared in any "canonical" Trek adventure (i.e. in an actual episode or film) Zak Kebron is fast becoming one of my all time favorite Star Trek characters.  The dude is awesome.

Then there is the emotional journey that Dr. Selar and Soleta undertake.  For all of their supposed unemotional aloofness, Vulcans always seem to be struggling with some serious repressed emotional issues.  Still waters running deep, I guess.  Deep and murky.

It all "ends" with yet another series of life and death cliffhangers for Calhoun and his crew.  Come now, you didn't think that any plot threads would be tied up just yet, did you?  There is still one more book to go.

I should be cracking it open in a week, perhaps two.

Star Trek New Frontier Book Two: Into the Void - by Peter David

Captain Calhoun and the crew of the U.S.S. Excalibur embark upon their humanitarian mission of mercy into the void left by the collapse of the Thallonian Empire.

If I tried to write anymore detailed of a plot synopsis than the above sentence it would probably take me more time to do so than it took me to actually read the book.  House of Cards, the first novel in the New Frontier spin-off series, was all introduction and set-up, climaxing with a rather frustrating cliffhanger.  Because the story seemed to have finally gotten started when the book "ended."

Into the Void introduces several more characters and set-ups plenty of dramatic conflict, but this time all the exposition unfolds in a fast moving storyline that ends on yet another cliffhanger.  The difference  between the two is that the first one felt like a chapter break cliffhanger, while this one is a stronger section break cliffhanger.  The kind that usually caps the ending of a Book One or Book Two section, not just a chapter break in a far larger and complex story.  Void's "How the hell will they survive long enough to get themselves out of this mess?" closing curtain had me charging over to my bookcase to place Book Three of the series (The Two Front War) at the top of my Next On Deck short stack.

I really can't give the book a higher compliment than that.

Shock II - by Richard Matheson

Thirteen tales of the fantastic, the frightening, and the wondrous by one of science-fiction, fantasy and horror's true Grand Masters.

A Flourish of Strumpets: With everyone else selling things door-to-door, it was bound to happen that prostitutes would attempt to do the very same thing.

Brother to the Machine: A tormented soul attempts to escape from the seemingly inescapable nightmare that is our war torn and space faring future.

No Such Thing As A Vampire: Although vampires do not exist, one appears to be killing Dr. Petre Gheria's wife.

Descent: The bomb is going to be dropped, so America moves underground.

Deadline: A doctor visits a most unusual patient.  A man dying of old age who claims to be only one year old.

The Man Who Made the World: Doctor Janishefsky has a most interesting visitor, a man who claims to have made the world five days ago.

Graveyard Shift: A woman's brutal murder uncovers a monstrous secret.

The Likeness of Julie: Eddy Foster had never noticed the girl in his English class until...

Lazarus II: A domineering mother refuses to allow her son's suicide to keep her from him.

Big Surprise: Mr. Hawkins tells the neighborhood children, "Dig a hole and find a big surprise."

Crickets: Ever wonder what crickets are actually saying?  One man learns the terrifying answer to that question.

Mute: Paal was raised to speak with his mind, not his mouth.

From Shadowed Places: An anthropologist consents to perform a ritual that will lift a juju curse that is killing a young man.

Those inclined to read a blog such as this really do not need to have Richard Matheson introduced to them.  Anyone that grew up during the 50s, 60s, or 70s (and thanks to the miracle of UHF syndicated reruns during the latter, you could experience them all in a single decade) is already familiar with his impressive body of work, if not his name.  But just to give a roll call of his contributions to the above mentioned genres, his novels include The Incredible Shrinking Man (which Matheson also adapted for the big screen), I Am Legend (which has been adapted for the big screen three times, as The Last Man On Earth, with Vincent Price, The Omega Man, with Charlton Heston, and I Am Legend, with Will Smith, and that George A. Romero admitted ripping off for Night of the Living Dead), Hell House (which Matheson, again, adapted for the big screen, as The Legend of Hell House), Somewhere In Time, What Dreams May Come, and A Stir of Echoes.

If that were not enough, Matheson has also written numerous short stories that have been adapted (by himself and others) into classic episodes of The Twilight Zone, classic TV movies such as Trilogy of Terror and Duel, and the not so classic Masters of Horror episode Dance of the Dead (based on the short story of the same name).  He also wrote the screenplays for The Night Stalker and The Night Strangler.

The man is hardcore, and so is this anthology.  There isn't a clunker in the bunch.  All of them are terrific - albeit somewhat dated, times have certainly changed for the better since the 1950s - science-fiction, fantasy and horror stories.  Several of them will be easily recognizable as the source material for memorable, if not outright classic, episodes of genre television.  The Likeness of Julie, with a little narrative tweaking, became a segment in Trilogy of Terror, Big Surprise became a goose-flesh inducing "Gotcha!" vignette for Night Gallery, and Mute, again, with a little tweaking, became one of the better hour long episodes of The Twilight Zone.

While I enjoyed reading those classic stories in their original form, always a good thing to do, my picks for favorite stories are Brother to the Machine, Descent, and Graveyard Shift, which featured a nightmarish image that made my skin crawl.  The comedy opener, A Flourish of Strumpets, gets an honorable mention.

No genre fan should require encouraging to read Richard Matheson.  But if you haven't, then this anthology, or any of the books listed above, are an excellent place to start doing so.

Star Trek The Next Generation: Encounter at Farpoint - by David Gerrold, based on the teleplay by D.C. Fontana and Gene Roddenberry

As the crew of the USS Enterprise-D begin their very first mission, they are confronted by a seemingly omnipotent alien that calls itself Q.  Q believes the human species to be barbaric, unfit to spread throughout the known and unknown galaxies.  The opinion of Captain Jean-Luc Picard and his crew differ.  Q decides to give them a test.  They will be allowed to reach Farpoint Station, where the remaining new crew members await the Enterprise's arrival, and be allowed to complete their first mission, the negotiating of diplomatic and trade ties with the Bandi people.  During that time they will have to make a critical decision.  Chose correctly and humanity will be allowed to continue space exploration.  Choose incorrectly and all of humanity must cease space exploration and return to Earth and stay there.

And they're off!  An all new crew.  All new adventures.  New worlds.  New voyages.  An entirely different tone from the original series.  I think it was that last one that caught everyone off guard, because the Next Generation was an older, wiser kind of show than the pulpy adventurism of the original series.  Picard and his crew were far more apt to engage in tense talks than the kind of raucous fisticuffs that Kirk and the gang were famous for.

Not that there wasn't a lot of phaser shooting, photon torpedo blasting, and fist punching fun to be had; but from adventure one, words and wits were clearly to be the weapons of primary choice for the Next Generation.

If setting the dramatic tone for the series weren't enough of a chore, Fontana, Roddenberry and Gerrold also have to introduce the crew of the new Enterprise, and it's a far larger one than that of the original series.  They're an interesting bunch, albeit a rather stiff one.  But they have yet to be broken in and, I think, the wisest decision was to have not a single one be the descendant of an original series crew member.

Although the above commentary could be copied and pasted into a review of the long running series first episode/pilot, and I just might do that very thing at some point in the future, when I start reviewing individual episodes again, how does the novelization of it by the legendary Star Trek writer David Gerrold (The Trouble With Tribbles) actually read?

Gerrold does a good job of translating the episode into an entertaining, if a tad slight, novel.  There were no interesting additions to (i.e. cut scenes and/or trimmed or altered dialog) or stylistic digressions from the finished episode that I could see.  Gerrold simply typed up a scene for scene, word for word translation of the episode into the novel format.  While it isn't a bad book, if you have already seen the episode, then there really isn't a reason for you to waste your time reading it.  Unless you're a novelization junkie like me, that is...

Children of Dune - by Frank Herbert

Muad'dib (Paul Atreides) has vanished, swallowed by the scorching deserts of Arrakis, also known as Dune.  Paul's sister Alia now rules Arrakis with an iron fist; but Alia is only place holding for Paul's mature far beyond their years twin children, Leto and Ghanima, who will ascend to the throne when they are the appropriate age.  Alia, however, has concocted a plan that will allow the inevitable to work to her benefit.  But Paul's mother, Lady Jessica, of the Bene Gesserit, has entirely different plans for her grandchildren.  Then there are the murderous plans of Princess Wensicia, of House Corrino, and...

Oh, the hell with it.  I give up.

It has been some twenty plus years since I last cracked open one of Frank Herbert's Dune novels; but when the itch to finally revisit Arrakis came over me, I thought that picking up where I left off would be the best place to start.  I'm all for maintaining continuity, whenever able.

Before I go any further with this review, let me just state that I consider Frank Herbert's novel Dune to be the flat out best science fiction novel that I have ever read.  But Dune Messiah?  That was a reading experience so bitter that it has taken well over two decades to clear out the bad taste it left; so that dread was not the first thing I felt whenever I contemplated cracking open Children of Dune, the third novel in the long running series.  But crack it open I have, and finish it I did.  The end result of that experience?

The novel is nowhere near as good as the first, but it is nowhere near as bad as the second.  But it does fall somewhat closer to the latter than it does the former.  Children of Dune is a dark and dense novel (it cannot be dismissed or described as "escapist reading") filled to the brim with political and religious conspiracies that make enemies friends and friends enemies.  It has enough twists and turns, and double and triple crosses, to fill two novels.  After a certain point, I just gave up trying to figure out what the hell was going on, and to who it was being done and why, and just went along for the ride.  I figured all these plot lines would eventually weave together into a tight noose that would strangle the characters trapped on the losing end of the rope; and it did.  But by the time I reached the violent climax, I found that I was once again fascinated by the people of Arrakis and curious, if not outright eager, to see the ominous events predicted come to pass in the fourth novel in the Dune series, God Emperor of Dune.

Infected - by Scott Sigler

A bizarre and deadly new disease, one that is turning average citizens into delusional, paranoid, and homicidal psychotics, has caught the attention of the CIA.  While a small, but brutally efficient team of field agents and scientists struggle to put the clues confusing together, Perry Dawsey, a former football star with a pronounced violent streak, becomes infected.  But Perry's illness is no ordinary disease, nor is it the bio-engineered weapon that the CIA suspects it to be.  It is the mere beginning of a much larger, far greater threat to all of humanity.

Although I had heard Scott Sigler's name mentioned once or twice on the Slice of Sci-Fi podcast, it wasn't enough to get me interested in listening to his podcasted novels.  At this point in my life I have the luxury of being able to kick back and actually read a book rather than having to listen to one get read to me.  But things change and, if I find myself trapped in a car for long drives, or spending more time working out at the gym (yeah, right) then I might start plugging in, down loading and listening to Sigler's books.  But until then, I will just be content in reading what he has to offer the old fashioned way.

Right now the only old fashioned way offering that Sigler has is Infected, a nasty little bio-nightmare that would make for an utterly kick ass David Cronenberg movie.  One that could be nicely sandwiched between his two classic transformation nightmares, Videodrome and The Fly.  While Sigler is nowhere near Cronenberg's level (yet) his debut novel is a solid enough effort to have gotten me looking forward to the day when he gets there.  But he still has a ways to go.

The book's strong points are in its blunt force trauma approach to horror (squeamish readers beware, Sigler pulls not a single punch and is really eager to go for the throat) and a fast paced narrative that had my eyes burning across the page.  The weak points are Sigler's narrative voice, which cracks with distracting and unnecessary folksy vernacular descriptive phrases, and his thinly developed supporting cast of characters.  He does such a good job developing Perry Dawsey, who comes truly alive as the story unfolds, that the sketchy nature of the other characters becomes painfully noticeable.  But don't let that discourage you from picking up a copy and reading it.  It delivers more than enough chills and thrills to justify the cover price.

A word of warning though, you just might find yourself becoming Infected with an addiction to Sigler's fast paced storytelling style.  Good thing then that Contagious, a sequel to Infected, will be hitting bookstores at the end of December.

ALIENS: DNA War - by Diane Carey

Rory Malvaux is a cop that needs to not only get out of town, he needs to get off the planet itself.  His brutal dispatching of a man that had killed a fellow officer and his family has landed Malvaux in serious trouble, so he takes the job of legal officer on a forty-odd months round trip space mission.  The mission?  Collect a scientific team stationed on Rosamund 6, a habitable planet that has become infested with the dreaded alien Xenomorphs.  Extracting the team proves to be more than a bit of a problem...

Diane Carey's Aliens: DNA War was everything that I had hoped it would be and almost nothing that I dreaded it could be.  It's a short and simple siege story that, despite a chaotic and shaky start, delivers plenty of thrills, chills, and brutal, bloody action.  It does James Cameron's seminal sequel proud.  Well, it does if your only criteria for a good ALIENS book is one that doesn't skimp on the chest-bursting, acid splattering action; and that is precisely where my quality line is drawn.

Character and plot wise, the book offers up the usual collection of space opera/B-movie character types (rogue cop with an attitude, colonial marines, nutball scientist with delusions that she is God incarnate, etc) and runs them through a plot wherein they all have to behave just so in order for the story to work.  There were several times where I could sense a contrivance to get the story from plot point B to plot point C.  But Carey had done such a solid job of constructing her plot that my sense never blossomed into certainty.

Michael Jan Friedman's Aliens: Original Sin, the first book in DH Press's relaunch of their ALIENS series, left me cold.  But Diane Carey's Aliens: DNA War, the imprint's second title offering, had me begging for more.  It was an excellent trip to the literary equivalent of the Drive-In.  I can only hope that my next visit will be every bit as much fun as this one.

The Trouble With Tribbles - by David Gerrold

Author David Gerrold describes how the classic second season Star Trek episode The Trouble With Tribbles, which he wrote, came into being.

When I purchased The Trouble with Tribbles at my local used bookstore the cashier was both eager and delighted to point out that Gerrold's book had once been used as a textbook for College/University television writing classes.  After finishing it the other day, I can see why.  Gerrold's narrative offers a blunt and unvarnished look at the nuts and bolts of writing for episodic television.  Judging from some of the commentary I have read on Lee Goldberg's blog over the years, I think I can say that Gerrold's book has not aged a day and is just as timely as when it was first published, back in 1973.  I will leave to your personal consideration on whether or not that is a good thing.

You do not have to be a fan of either Science-Fiction in general or Star Trek in particular to enjoy reading The Trouble with Tribbles, but it will certainly help.  Gerrold is clearly a fan of both and the early sections of his narrative read like every fan's fantasy of getting to work on his or her favorite show of all time.  (FYI - my Fan Fantasy would have to be me getting the chance to be a writer for Kolchak: The Night Stalker, although I was all of eight years old when the show debuted and actually getting that chance would involve some serious warping of the Space/Time Continuum.)   There were passages where Gerrold could have been describing me - reading a book a day, (although the list of authors I guzzled leaned heavily to dark fantasy and horror: Stephen King, Peter Straub, James Herbert, John Saul, Charles L. Grant, and Ramsey Campbell, to name but a few) dragging his father to see some of the worst genre dreck ever to be splayed across the silver screen, (I still have not been forgiven for "forcing" my family to sit through The Swarm and The Car) watching countless hours of television, (again, heavy on the genre offerings) and collecting all manner of comics, magazines, books, posters, and models (although he does not mention the binge and purge habit that I had - Oh, to have the stuff I so callously discarded so long ago).  Throughout the book there was a feeling of "That could be me!  I could do that!" that may or may not be shared by other readers.  But one thing I can assure you can and will be shared: Gerrold's joy in being able to create and, even more important in the great scheme of things, to be a part of one of the most popular episodes of what is most likely broadcast television's most popular science-fiction series of all time.

Star Trek New Frontier Book One: House of Cards - by Peter David

The Thallonian Empire has collapsed and the worlds it once ruled with an iron fist are in chaos.  Refugees from the former Empire flood the Federation outpost Deep Space Five and the U.S.S. Enterprise, under the command of Captain Jean-Luc Picard, has been ordered into the region to both assist in the care of the refugees and to help facilitate the bare beginnings of peace neogiations.

With the situation rapidly deteriorating in the former Empire - tribal hatreds causing civil wars on some planets, confused leaders arguing to the point of deadlock on others, and numerous would be tyrants brutally attempting to seize control on the rest - the Federation representatives reluctantly agree that a starship, but only a single starship, should be sent into the wreckage of the former Empire to investigate, report, offer humanitarian aid where needed, and, if requested, assist in the rebuilding process via peaceful means.

The only question remaining is who will command this starship?  Captain Picard believes he knows the perfect man for the job..

The first book in Peter David's long running New Frontier series is all set-up and no payoff.  The book does not end, it just stops, tacking a somewhat irritating To Be Continued tag at the bottom of the closing cliffhanger.  It's also a book best suited for those with solid knowledge of the Star Trek universe; something I do not, so I felt lost for short stretches of time.  But none of those complaints can keep me from looking forward to cracking open the next book in the series.  Peter David is not only a gifted storyteller, but he also has the enviable gift of being able to bring characters that are not his own to three dimensional life.  I just wish that Pocket books had released the first few books in the series as one novel, rather than as a smash and grab serial.  It would have made for more satisfying reading, I think.

Vulcan's Hammer - by Philip K. Dick

Unity may run the New World Order, but it is Vulcan 3 that runs Unity.  The Healers, a quasi-religious organization, wants to end Unity's totalitarian rule by any and all means necessary.  When Vulcan 3 learns of the Healer threat it launches a devastating counterattack.  Well-intentioned Unity Director William Barris finds himself caught between the two warring factions...

That's about as good a plot description of Philip K. Dick's 1960 novel Vulcan's Hammer that I can come up with.  It's a pretty straight forward narrative and a damn quick read.  If I had not cracked it open on a work day then I probably would have polished it off in a matter of hours.

I currently lack the ability to place Dick's novel as a point of reference in a cultural genre time line (that will change, in time), but having cut my teeth on numerous monster computer movies and stories (Colossus - The Forbin Project, Demon Seed, etc.) growing up, I have to say that the book really didn't cover any ground that hasn't been covered and recovered time and time again.  Vulcan's Hammer very well may have been one of the first (though I do find that idea more than a bit unlikely), it was the later works that I met first and the book suffers a bit in comparison to them.  Dick's narrative moves at an incredibly brisk pace, not once bothering to slow down to really let the reader experience what life is really like in this dystopian bureaucratic nightmare of a future society.  One that is free of wars, but free of peace as well.  He does create a few interesting characters: Unity Director William Barris, Unity widow Rachel Pitt, Unity school teacher Agnes Parker, and Unity Managing Director Jason Dill (the only man allowed to directly interact with Vulcan 3).  Unfortunately the other characters aren't fleshed out all that well.  The character of Father Fields, the leader of the Healer movement, is particularly weak.  An odd stumble for Dick to make, considering how important Fields is to the central events of the story.  I was also irked at how Dick jumped over what could have been an exciting action set piece with a far too convenient chapter break.  On one page Barris is attempting a risky escape, on the other he has already accomplished it.

As you can no doubt tell, the book had it's share of problems, but that didn't keep me from tearing through it.  Although I might have been disappointed with the final outcome, on the way there I could not put the book down.  That says something about the immense writing talent of the late Philip K. Dick.

Star Trek The Lost Era: 2360: Catalyst of Sorrows - By Margaret Wander Bonanno

Catalyst of Sorrows is set in the year 2360, sixty-seven years after the presumed death of Captain James T. Kirk aboard the U.S.S. Enterprise-B in Star Trek - Generations, and four years before the launch of the Enterprise-D in Encounter at Farpoint.

Admiral Nyota Uhura, former senior communications officer of the U.S.S. Enterprise-B and now head of Starfleet Intelligence, receives a cryptic message from beyond the Neutral Zone.  An unidentified virus with a 100% mortality rate is killing Romulans and Federationists alike along the Neutral Zone.  Racing against time and an unknown and lethal enemy, Uhura dispatches a covert away team consisting of Lieutenant Benjamin Sisko, Lieutenant Tuvok, Dr. Selar and Zetha, the Romulan street urchin that first alerted Admiral Uhura to the viral killer that will come to be called Catalyst.

The gang is certainly all here in this final entry in the bestselling Lost Era series that bridges the seventy plus year gap between the 23rd century set original series and the 24th century placed Next Generation, Deep Space Nine and Voyager spin-offs.  Uhura and Dr. Leonard McCoy (TOS), Dr. Beverly Crusher and her son Wesley (Next Gen), Benjamin Sisko (DS9), Tuvok and Selar (Voyager) and a handful of cameos from various episodes and films that contain elements or plot lines that are relevant to Margaret Wander Bonanno's futurist spy story.  Those looking for epic space battles and lots of fisticuff action should look elsewhere, Catalyst of Sorrows is a mystery rooted in the Cold War era storytelling style of John Le Carre.  Bonanno not only states such in the Acknowledgments section, she also makes a direct reference to Le Carre's Cold War classic The Spy Who Came in From the Cold and starts off the book with a quote taken from A Perfect Spy.  It makes for a refreshing change of pace.

While the story is a good one, I don't know if it's a good fit for Star Trek.  I had a hard time seeing the young Benjamin Sisko in the novel growing into the Captain of Deep Space Nine.  I also had a hard time buying Uhura has the head of Starfleet Intelligence.  But far stranger things have happened in the Trekverse.  The only series characters that felt right to me were McCoy, Crusher and Tuvok.  Then again I am not what you could call the most avid of Trek fans.  A couple of episodes every few months or so and the occasional media novel to pass the time are adequate for my needs.  Catalyst of Sorrows met them quite nicely.

The Hammer of God - by Arthur C. Clarke

The year is 2110 and humanity has finally moved past the shackles of its home planet Earth.  Both the moon and the planet Mars have been colonized, and humanity is now inching onwards to Jupiter and Venus.  But humanity's slow expansion into Outer Space is threatened when an amateur astronomer on Mars discovers a new, and quite large, asteroid falling sunward through the Solar System.  Earth is fated to interrupt that fall and, because of the asteroid's sizable mass, the impact will be similar to the one that erased the dinosaurs from the planet 65,000,000 years ago.  Captain Robert Singh is given the daunting task of averting the extinction level disaster, but there are those on Earth that believe the impact to be God's divine will and they do not want Singh to succeed.

The Hammer of God is the fourth novel by Arthur C. Clarke that I have read and it is one of the weaker ones.  (2061: Odyssey Three being the weakest of the bunch.)  It's not that the book is "bad" in the traditional sense, nor is it dull or uninteresting.  It's just that Clarke does a far better job at building the world of 2110 than he does creating characters to inhabit it.  The only character that truly comes close to being alive is the central character of Captain Robert Singh.  Clarke spends more time focusing on Singh's past exploits, both personal and professional, than he does on the killer asteroid dubbed "Kali," named from the goddess of destruction.  This creates an emotionally lopsided battle between human and nature.  While the former is reasonably well developed, the latter remains only an abstract threat.  Although billions of lives are at stake, not a one of them is used to create an emotional bridge for the reader to cross and become invested in the lethal threat that almost all of humanity is facing.

In the afterward Clarke sets up a humorous anecdote about Stanley Kubrick by relating his (Clarke's) "high threshold of tolerance for bad sf films," stating that he enjoyed the disaster clunker Meteor a bit more than the critics did.  Having just finished his novel, I could not help but notice the irony of the statement, for Clarke's novel suffers many of the very same problems that Meteor itself did.  Poor characterization and a complete inability to build tension for the threatened impact.  In fact, I have to say that, despite some interesting (and somewhat comical) future world building, The Hammer of God is the literary equivalent of Ronald Neame's critically maligned disaster movie.  As far as the "lumps of rock slamming into Earth" speculative disaster genre goes, the literary high water mark remains Lucifer's Hammer, by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle.

But it could have been worse, much worse.  It could have been an Armageddon level literary disaster, instead of a near miss.  (Yes, pun intended.)

Job: A Comedy of Justice - by Robert A. Heinlein

Alex Hergensheimer's misadventures in time start with a stroll through a fire pit that leaves him with only a single blister, but stranded in a world far different from the one he was in when he first stepped into that pit.  The one good thing about his new life and new identity, he is now one Alec Graham, is the lovely Margrethe Gunderson.  A saintly sweet and sinfully shapely woman that Hergensheimer/Graham finds hard to resist.  As Alex/Alec tries to figure out what is happening to him, the world around him changes again and again; sometimes in drastic and dangerous ways.  The one constant in all the ever changing worlds in which he finds himself living in is Margrethe.  Alex/Alec, a fundamentalist preacher in his home world, grows fearful of not only losing his beloved companion in an unexpected world change, but losing her for all eternity.  Margrethe is not a Believer.  Believing that they are suffering through the tribulations of the prophesied Last Days, Alex/Alec finds himself in a literal race against time to save the soul of the woman he has come to love almost has much as he loves God Himself.

If my memory (and the blurbs on the book cover) is still serving me correctly (and I am beginning to have my doubts, at times, about both) Job: A Comedy of Justice was considered to be one of Robert A. Heinlein's last significant contributions to the Science Fiction genre.  (The other, again if that memory of mine is serving me correctly, was Friday.)  Having finally finished the book, I cannot agree that it was anything remotely approaching significant.  While it could catch my attention for brief passages, it could not hold it long enough for the book to become either unputdownable or just a quick and entertaining read. 

It's not that the book was dull or uninteresting, it had plenty of laugh out loud moments and fascinating "What If" alternate worlds with plenty of upside down/inside out cultural switcheroos to keep pulling me back.  It's just that there was a certain lack of urgency to the "save Margrethe's soul from eternal damnation" subplot (Hergensheimer's devout religious beliefs and religion in general have almost nothing whatsoever to do with the story proper) and, after allowing Alex/Alec and Margrethe to adjust to the first world or two, Heinlein seems to lose interest and grow bored with all the necessary alternate world building and tweaks in history.  Although the possibility of losing Margrethe in an unexpected world change is mentioned and worried about, it is quickly dismissed as irrelevant, despite presenting Heinlein with ample opportunity to build psychological suspense and explore the figurative terror and sorrow of losing someone you love before exploring the literal terror and sorrow of losing someone you love when the Rapture finally arrives.  It is at that moment that Heinlein's novel truly comes to comedic and philosophic life as he turns the afterlife on its metaphoric head without seeming to break any Christian theological "rules" regarding Heaven, Hell, and the After Life.  What Heinlein describes is far from comforting and for some it could very well be the stuff of nightmare.  It all depends on the individual reader's religious beliefs, or utter lack thereof.

Job: A Comedy of Justice opened solid, grew very weak in the middle, but closed on a note strong and humorous enough to leave me satisfied with the end result.  As long as you don't start the book with any expectations higher than of being mildly entertained, then you just might come away feeling the same.

Quozl - by Alan Dean Foster

"The first landing on Shiraz was going to be dull, predictable routine, nothing more."

The Quozl are a gentle species of space explorers that have come to colonize the planet they have named Shiraz.  The only problem is that Shiraz is already inhabited, by a race of violent and confusing beings that are utterly unlike the civilized Quozl.  Unable to make a return trip to their home planet of Quozlene (each mission of exploration and settlement is strictly one way), the Quozl decide to colonize the planet anyway, but in hiding.  The inevitable contact with the violent species that rules over Shiraz must wait for another, more appropriate day.

But things do not go as planned, for some Quozl do not wish to spend their lives in hiding.  Shiraz is their planet, too.

Alan Dean Foster's Quozl is an entertaining first contact story, but it isn't nearly as humorous or whimsical as the book's cover art appears to hint at (although appearances are, more often than not, quite deceiving), or the slapstick Flip-A-Mation (which features a single Quozl exiting a tiny spaceship, only to trip over a skateboard in grand Inspector Clouseau fashion) attempts to state outright.  While the book does have its moments of humor, especially in its final act, more often than not Foster chooses to focus on the drama.  That made it a far more interesting book than I think an outright comedy would have, although the book was clearly marketed as one.

As I read Quozl I quickly found myself suspecting that I had read this book before, and I have.  Only it was called Phylogenesis, another first contact story, this one between human and thranx, also written by the prolific Foster.  Although the aliens and humans in both stories are quite different, the accidental and isolated nature of the first contact (both take place in locations that are geographically remote) are virtually identical.  A curious alien that refuses to follow the rule of no contact slips out to explore Earth, only to run into an Earthling.  As the two begin to communicate and share information, a friendship is formed that lays the foundation for the now unavoidable meeting of the two societies.  While human and Quozl attempt to keep their meeting a secret, both are eventually discovered.

Knowing that what is done cannot be undone, and since killing of a member of an intelligent species is almost anathema to a Quozl (note I said, almost), the contact is allowed to continue.  And a secret can only be kept for so long.  During the aforementioned third act, when the Quozl find themselves entangled in a legal battle with earthling xenphobes, I was once again overwhelmed by a feeling of deja vu.  I had read this story before, and I have.  Only it was called Diuturnity's Dawn, the third book in Foster's Founding of the Commonwealth trilogy, Phylogenesis being the first. 

As is the case with a great many of Foster's novels, I found myself as frustrated with the quick and breezy narrative as I was entertained.  This was due to Foster's introducing fascinating concepts and/or ideas, only to then brush past them in the most economical manner so that his story could keep moving forward.  It would have been nice if he had taken a moment or two to slow down and examine the important events and their outcomes in a bit more detail.  But he did not, so Foster's novel, like far too many of them, is nothing more than a few days worth of diverting entertainment that, with a little more effort, could have been so much more.

Footfall - by Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle

The first sign of the impending attack goes unnoticed.  It's dismissed as nothing more than a curious anomaly within the rings of Saturn.  Then the massive ship is discovered heading towards Earth and contact is attempted, but ignored.

Then the ship arrives and ALIENS SMASH PUNY EARTHLINGS!!!

The dust jacket of the hardback edition of Footfall that I checked out from the local library describes the book as, "Probably the finest novel of alien invasion ever written."  Nothing like marketing hype to raise a perspective reader's expectations to an almost impossible to please level, no?  Sure the ad line started with Probably (thus encouraging debate), but by the time I had finally managed to finish the nearly 500 page long behemoth, H.G. Wells The War of the Worlds remained the finest novel of alien invasion that I have ever read.  I doubt that Footfall would even manage to crack my top twenty list, much less my top ten.  Hell, Nathan Archer's goofy and gruesome Mars Attack novel, Martian Deathtrap, was a better alien invasion novel than Footfall, and that is saying a lot.

Then again, my expectations had been raised to exceptionally high levels, not by the silly marketing hyperbole, but due to Niven & Pournelle's excellent End of the World novel, Lucifer's Hammer.  For me that book is, probably, the finest End of the World novel ever written.  Knowing that the duo had not only knocked one out of the ballpark, but into frakking orbit as well, I was expecting another epic tale filled with vibrant characters, crushing destruction and nail-biting suspense.  However, by the 100 page mark, I found myself wondering, "Where the hell is the beef?"

The narrative walks when it should be galloping, and it gallops when it should be walking.  Characters are introduced, only to disappear from the story for huge chunks of narrative space.  Sub-plots are set-up and then dropped and/or forgotten as the primary story unfolds.  The worst part is how the impact (figuratively as well as literally) of the attack upon Earth is kept at a sterile distance.  In Lucifer's Hammer, Niven & Pournelle described the destruction of the Earth in harrowing detail, but in Footfall the devestation is mentioned only in passing and, more often than not, the characters react to it more as an irritant than as a soul shattering event.

Although the human characters are an uninteresting and poorly developed lot, the aliens are most certainly not.  Niven & Pournelle got at least one thing right.  The Fithp are a fascinating lot and Footfall would have been a far better, albeit much shorter, novel if the authors had chosen to focus entirely on them.  In fact, I would love to read a book wherein they are the primary characters, and not the Earthlings.  The Fithp are members of Known Space now, aren't they?

Jason X: The Experiment - by Pat Cadigan

My entry in the Final Girl Friday the 13th Blog-A-Thon:

Jason Voorhees has crashed onto Earth II and sunk to the bottom of Veronica Lake.  (Yes, I know.)  But his miraculous healing capabilities, combined with the remaining nano mechanisms in what is left of his charred body, quickly begin to rebuild the bigger, stronger and deadlier Uber-Jason.

When restored to full health, the Uber-Jason strides out of Veronica Lake (sigh) and immediately goes on another killing spree that wipes out a brand new nuclear power plant.  However the radiation from the plant's core causes an overload in the nano mechanisms filling Uber-Jason's body and renders him immobile.  The military, seeing the defensive potential in this strange mutant, ships Uber-Jason off to a secret research facility so that his healing capabilities might be harnessed and used to create unstoppable, unkillable soldiers.  But all the military has really done is lock future victims in with an unstoppable, unkillable killing machine that is about to wake up...

The old saying "The more things change, the more they stay the same" is proven true once again as novelist Pat Cadigan wastes no time restoring the tired-and-true Friday the 13th status quo to the supposedly futuristic world of Jason X.  Although it is some 450 years in the future, and humanity has had contact with alien life forms, the way of life, and technology and slang, of Earth II is no different from that of 21st century Earth I.  Talk about arrested development.  Considering all the new directions that could, and should, have been taken, this book is just a big, lumbering step backward that utterly wastes the pulpy fun potential that was laid out in the source film and Cadigan's own novelization of it.

The Experiment also falls victim to the same problem that befell Church of the Divine Psychopath (an entry in the publisher's Friday the 13th spin-off series), in that it is just too freaking long.  The narrative strolls when it should be sprinting, and its sub-plots - due in large part to the overall nature of the source material - meander needlessly before terminating in an anti-climatic dead end.  Even worse, the overly padded story reads like two stories (the first being the events at the nuclear power plant, the second the experiment of the title and its inevitable aftermath) that were stapled together to fill up the utterly unnecessary 90,000 word count.  What these books need more than anything is for an editor to go Jason Voorhees on the word count and get them down to the quick n' dirty fun style read they're meant to be.

Battlestar Galactica: Sagittarius Is Bleeding - by Peter David

FTL jumps have become death traps for the rag tag fleet, because the Cylons have managed to get the exact location of each jump before it is made.  How are they doing it?  President Laura Roslin is troubled by violent dreams and hallucinations featuring the pregnant Cylon, Sharon Valerii, and the cryptic statement, Sagittarius Is Bleeding.  A young boy, one who is considered a friend by most of Galactica's Viper pilots, sneaks in to see Sharon and is discovered talking with her, leading to accusations of him being a Cylon.  If all that weren't enough, an End Times theological cult from Sagittaron has begun to plead its case to become recognized as the Fourteenth Colony.

It's just another week on the Battlestar Galactica.

Peter David has done it again.  He has taken characters and situations that are not his own and used them to construct a suspenseful and entertaining novel that not only captures the dramatic rhythm of the show his book is spinning off from, but that can also easily stand on its own merits as an original novel.  Even if you're not a fan/viewer of the new Battlestar Galactica (and you really should be, the show is excellent) chances are very good that you will still enjoy Sagittarius Is Bleeding.

Like the show upon which it is based, Sagittarius Is Bleeding contains several story lines that, as they unfold, not only become tightly intertwined, but also function on different levels.  Author Peter David also doesn't shy away from the show's pointed political commentary.  The illegal wiretapping of the Galactica is an integral part of the story and, just as it happens on the show itself, both sides of the moral/ethical argument are presented.  What results from that action, of course, is completely different from the goal Adama and Tigh had originally set for themselves.  Nothing in the new Battlestar Galactica is ever as simple as good and evil, black and white.  It's a morally muddled world, which is fertile ground for interesting stories.  Right now, I can only hope that Sagittarius Is Bleeding is but one of many more to come.

Spider-Man: Secret of the Sinister Six - by Adam-Troy Castro

Spider-Man and New York City have had barely enough time to recover from the Sinister Six's Day of Terror (the events of which unfold in the novel Revenge of the Sinister Six) when the Six unleash a deadly attack against a local conglomerate's research facility.  This assault is the final task in the Gentleman's terrifying plan to utterly destroy the city that never sleeps, as well as the web-slinger that tries so gallantly to protect it from harm.

Secret of the Sinister Six is an entertaining and action filled conclusion to the story that began with The Gathering of the Sinister Six (which I have yet to read) and continued through the aforementioned Revenge of the Sinister Six (which I have read).  As was the case with Revenge, Secret is just one long action sequence between Spidey and the various members of the Six (Dr. Octopus, The Vulture, The Chameleon, Mysterio, Electro, and Pity) in and above the continually trashed streets of New York City.  But the stakes are far higher this time around than they were during the mere distraction that was the Day of Terror.  The Gentleman has managed to get his hands on two items that, when used together, will effectively erase all of western civilization from New York City.  If that were not enough, Spidey is tormented by the mystery of the obviously troubled Pity.  Does she share a connection beyond that of the Gentleman's contemptible need to inflict painful revenge not only on those that have crossed (or merely annoyed) him, but their children as well?  Could Pity actually be Peter Parker's sister?  More importantly, can she be saved from the Gentleman's monstrous mind control?  Spidey's day long battle (in a fierce blizzard no less) has a bit more emotional punch to it than his usual super hero shenanigans.

Secret, like Revenge (and, I assume, The Gathering), is filled with references to other non-comic book related media. The novel's nods to Marathon Man, The Silence of the Lambs, and Scooby-Doo were the ones that stuck out for me, but I am sure that there were more than a few others.  This time around it didn't bother me quite as much, perhaps it was just my knowing what to expect from Castro's narrative when I cracked the book open.  As before the action packed story won me over and I think that Spider-Man's many fans will enjoy this finale to the Sinister Six trilogy.

Slither - by Edward Lee

Professor Nora Craig and her teaching assistant, Loren Fredrick, are the two foremost experts in the field of polychaetology, the study of segmented worms.  No one is more qualified than them to escort wildlife photographer Annabelle Omart on her assignment to capture images of the scarlet bristleworm for National Geographic.  The group arrives at Pritchard's Key, a small island off the Florida coast, unaware that a field test of a genetically modified worm (one that can grow to well over thirty feet in length and causes fatal mutations in its human hosts) is being conducted there.

Slither is the first novel by the "notorious" Edward Lee that I have read, and the book is just good enough to insure that it will not be the last.  On the plus side of the equation, Lee both starts and climaxes the novel with a gruesome bang.  Sprinkled in between those moments are plenty of others featuring enough sex, violence, and slimy, icky things doing slimy, icky things to human bodies to satisfy the gorehound reader.  Lee also seems to have done a great deal of research into the different species of worm and what those species are capable of doing.  The book is filled with enough technobabble to make the monster elements seem feasible, at least within the confines of the story.

Slither stumbles, however, whenever it turns away from the worms to focus on the humans.  Lee's characters are a childish lot that aren't developed beyond two dimensions, at best, and, considering the book's length, there isn't near enough dramatic conflict between the humans to keep the non-monster stuff interesting for very long.  There are only so many scenes of an ugly duckling simmering with rage while the snooty gorgeous bitch gets all the male attention, and then gleefully rubs it in the ugly duckling's face, that I can take.  The "I'm so frustrated with being a virgin geek" thing might resonate with a teenaged reading audience, but I just found it to be irritatingly immature.  Finally there is the book's cumbersome length.  Buried within Slither's 357 pages is a taut and gruesome novel, one that really needs to lose about 50 to 75 pages of narrative weight before it can effectively strut its stuff.

Despite those weaknesses, Slither managed to deliver just enough queasy thrills and gruesome chills to keep me turning the pages.  The last hundred of which were well worth the sometimes frustrating task of getting there.

Star Trek: The Next Generation: Imzadi - by Peter David

Admiral William Riker has never recovered from the sudden, unexpected death of Deanna Troi.  When Riker, now in his seventies and in self-imposed exile, returns to Deanna's home planet of Betazed, to take care of Lwaxana Troi's estate, his visit stirs up the bittersweet memory of how he first met, then bonded with, his cherished Imzadi.

But that story is only the beginning.  Commodore Data shares with Riker a stunning development he had witnessed at Forever World, the home planet of the Guardian of Forever.  It seems that Deanna Troi's death has created two separate time lines.  Riker is convinced that Deanna Troi was never meant to die, that she had been murdered by someone wishing to create a far different future.  Riker becomes determined to go back in time and save his Imzadi...

Peter David's Imzadi is the fourth Star Trek the Next Generation novel that I have read.  I think that this creates a rather unique milestone, for I believe that I have now read more Star Trek the Next Generation novels than I have seen actual episodes of the show itself.  That will change, in time, of course.

Imzadi seems to be a rather highly regarded Star Trek the Next Generation novel by both fans of its writer, Peter David, and of the show itself.  All I can say about that is that the book certainly lived up to its hype.  Imzadi works both as a potent love story and as a Trek adventure that crackles with action packed excitement.  Every moment in the doomed relationship, from when Riker first sees Deanna Troi, up to the sad ending of their romantic relationship, rings true emotionally.  The race between Riker and Data to either save Deanna Troi, or to ensure that the established time line is not tampered with, gave the book a nail biter of a conclusion.  I could not tell if Riker would be successful in his queat, or if he would fail.  The other thing that impressed me was how David was able to present the pre-existing characters as real people, with real emotions.  Even though I have read a lot of tie-ins and novelizations for various franchises, I have seldom come across one that is as emotionally powerful as Imzadi.

Doctor Who and the Abmoninable Snowmen - by Terrance Dicks - Based on the BBC serial by Mervyn Haisman & Henry Lincoln

The Doctor and his companions, Jamie and Victoria, find their planned visit to a Himalayan monastery disrupted when the local Yeti population turns aggressive.

Long time readers of this blog (hi mom, hi dad) will have no doubt figured out that my taste in genre fare is rather eclectic.  But the one flame that would draw this genre moth the quickest would be anything that featured monsters.  If there was one thing that Doctor Who had a lot of, it was monsters.  In terms of nostalgic memories and favored show status, it ranks just beneath Kolchak: The Night Stalker and far above Star Trek (the original series, that is) and all other space opera shows.  Sure the ghoulies, ghosties, and long legged beasties all turned out, in the end, to be some kind of invading alien force, but they were all creepy and inhuman enough to win me over and keep me searching the TV Guide for the airings on the local PBS station, KQED.

My childhood was in that bygone era when collecting movies and TV shows was just an impossible dream.  But I did try, though.  I recorded many a favorite movie or TV show on audio tape and would then listen to them, even going so far as to act out scenes while lip speaking a character's dialog, as if they were old time radio plays, until the tape wore out.  The only other option was to collect and read the novelizations of films and TV shows.  In this regard the Doctor Who books were essential reading.

Try as I might, I could not catch all the Doctor Who serials and, in those days of distant memory, if you missed something, there was a good chance that you missed it for good.  So, reading a novelization was the best way to enjoy a particular serial story as a whole.  Doctor Who fans also know that many of the earliest serials were destroyed, lost forever.  So, even though the long running serial is coming out on DVD in drips and drabs, there will always be episodes out of my viewing grasp.  Doctor Who and the Abominable Snowmen appears to be one such episode.

Snowmen is vintage Doctor Who in more ways than one.  It's a Second Doctor story (obviously, since a stern looking illustration of Patrick Troughton adorns the cover) that expertly mixes together the Doctor's long history (this his second visit to the monastery, the first being three hundred years prior) with a mythical creature that turns out to be an intricate illusion meant to obscure an insidious alien invasion.  This wouldn't be the only time an alien force would use such a tactic as this.  In fact, it seems to be something of a routine trick in Whoinverse.  It's even done on other planets.

Of course, getting into the position of being able to properly investigate and understand the growing threat is problematic in and of itself.  Allies within the besieged monastery are difficult to come by and, when formed, are tenuous at best.  That the threat lies within the monastery itself doesn't help matters all that much, nor does the fact that the robotic Snowmen are pretty much unstoppable juggernauts of certain death.  It all builds to a climax that is distinctly Doctor Who.

Fans of the good Doctor will need no encouraging to pick up these novelizations, especially if they happen across an adaptation of a lost episode, but anyone looking for a suspenseful yet whimsical story about an oddball and his friends fighting off a nefarious invasion are sure to enjoy it.

Jason X - by Pat Cadigan - Based on the Motion Picture written by Todd Farmer

Jason Voorhees has finally been captured, but executing the fearsome mass murder proves to be more than a little difficult.  There seems to be nothing capable of killing him.  So a plan is made to put the Voorhees problem on hold, literally, by freezing him in a cryogenic chamber.  Things don't go quite as planned and Rowan LaFontaine, a young and attractive scientist working on the project, is frozen along with the vicious killer from Camp Crystal Lake.  The two remain frozen for 450 years...until 2455.  That is when a group of students from New Harvard University discover the cryogenic chamber beneath the storm scarred surface of the now dead Old Earth.  Hoping to capitalize on retrieving two valuable pieces of history, Professor Lowe has them brought aboard his ship, where he hopes to resuscitate the female subject.  The hulking corpse with the hockey mask is deemed a lost cause and placed in another lab so it can be cataloged and put back in cold storage.

But Jason Voorhees is already getting warmed up enough to pick up where he left off 450 years ago...

In the days before saturation distribution, not to mention home video and cable television, made watching and re-watching movies pretty much a ubiquitous form of entertainment, film novelizations were fairly routine.  Just about every major studio, and even low to modest budgeted independent efforts, had a novel version of their movie sitting in book racks "wherever paperbacks were sold."  Being a movie buff that was, and is, a voracious reader, novelizations of movies that I wanted to see, or had already seen, were a large part of my youthful entertainment diet.  After all, other than making recordings of my favorite movies on audio tape, which I did, there was no other way for me to easily revisit and enjoy a movie that I had liked.  Having it in book form was the closest I could get to actually owning the movie itself, in those pre-video era days, that is.  All that changed with the home video explosion in the 80s which, coupled with the gradual death of regional film distribution and the growing rental trade, made film novelizations unnecessary and they quickly became a marketing thing of the past.  The novelizations of today are sporadic and, more often than not, are only done for a select few films with ties to a pre-existing genre readership.  Novelizations of comic book films, say, or science-fiction epics with robust media novel spin-off series, like Star Wars or Star Trek.  While there will be a novelization of Snakes on a Plane, back in the day there would also have been novelizations of When a Stranger Calls, Slither, The Hills Have Eyes, and Silent Hill sitting in book store racks as well.

But enough with the dewy eyed nostalgia for days gone by, what about Pat Cadigan's novelization of Jason X?  What is up with that, yo?  Because of the publisher's odd decision to have all of their media novel spin-offs of the Friday the 13th, Jason X, A Nightmare on Elm Street, and Final Destination series run a cumbersome 90,000 words, Pat Cadigan has plenty of room in which to both deepen the slim characterizations and expand upon the future world in which the story takes place.  She does a pretty good job of it.  The subtle tinkering with the characters personalities, along with their world building back stories, makes Jason X read more like an original novel than one based on a film script.  However, in the early portions of the book, some scenes are bloated with what reads as an excessive amount of description and character detail.  Cadigan takes two or three paragraphs to describe something that would have worked better with just a sentence or two.  This was the same problem that befell Scott Philip's Church of the Divine Psychopath, which served as the first book in Black Flame's traditional Friday the 13th line.  It is also the same problem that has befallen this review.

Cadigan not only wrote the Jason X novelization, she also penned a follow-up spin-off entitled The Experiment, which is the first original novel in the futurist Jason X line.  After doing such a nice job of world building, going as far as to introduce routine contact with alien life forms into the mix, which gives the Uber-Jason a potentially fertile playground in which to do his thing, I am looking forward to cracking it open.

Star Wars: Outbound Flight - by Timothy Zahn

The Outbound Flight Project is the cherished brain child of the arrogant, domineering, and driven Jedi Master Jorus C'baoth.  He will do anything to convince the reluctant Senate and Supreme Chancellor Palpatine to fund his ambitious plan of sending six Jedi Masters, twelve Jedi Knights, and fifty thousand man, women, and children, all aboard a single, gargantuan vessel, out into the unexplored regions of space, to both explore and colonize an unknown galaxy.  The Sith Lord Darth Sidious sees it as a convenient way of getting rid of six Jedi Masters and twelve Jedi Knights.

When C'baoth thwarts an act of terrorism during tense negotiations, he is bestowed with the Outbound Flight Project by a thankful Supreme Chancellor Palpatine and Republic Senate.  What C'baoth, who quickly begins to abuse his power when Outbound Flight gets underway, does not know is that Darth Sidious has a battle fleet waiting to destroy them, just outside of charted Republic space.

However things are not going well out there.  It seems that a wayward group of smugglers, as well as Sidious's attack force, have brushed against the border of the Chiss Ascendancy.  Commander Mitth'raw'nuruodo, of the Chiss Ascendancy's Expansionary Defense Fleet, is quick to investigate and, in one brilliant chess move after another, exploit each to his own gain.  Soon enough, those that have taken sides with Commander Mitth'raw'nuruodo will call him by his given name, Thrawn.

Well, it was bound to happen.  After reading twenty or so Star Wars Expanded Universe novels, I finally read one where, for almost half of it, I had the feeling that I had walked into a conversation already well underway and with no clue whatsoever as to what the hell everybody was talking about.  Not having read Survivor's Quest, the book that Outbound Flight is a prequel to, or any of the original Thrawn Trilogy (Heir to the Empire, Dark Force Rising, and The Last Command), the three books that actually launched the Expanded Universe series, certainly did not help matters any.  But now that I have finished Outbound Flight, those four books have moved to the top of my Star Wars Expanded Universe reading list.  Outbound Flight should be at the top of yours.

I was quite pleased with how author Timothy Zahn managed to take what seemed to be a confusing jumble of characters, events, and skulduggery, and knit them together into one tense and violent confrontation after another; until all the pieces in Thrawn's intricate manipulation fell into place for the final, bloody confrontation between Outbound Flight, the Expansionary Defense Fleet, and the violent nomads known as the Vagaari.  That battle, and it's suspenseful and tragic aftermath, is an exciting and rewarding payoff to the complex and fascinating story.  Outbound Flight left me eager to learn even more about both the Star Wars Expanded Universe and the fascinating characters that inhabit it.  (Thrawn, for starters.)  But there is one unanswered question.  Why were Obi-Wan and Anakin on Outbound Flight, albeit only briefly?  They really didn't need to be there and, because of that, were more of a distraction than anything else.

Star Wars: Dark Lord: The Rise of Darth Vader - by James Luceno

Anakin Skywalker is believed to be dead, a victim of the Jedi's failed attempt to assassinate Supreme Chancellor Palpatine.  But the Emperor and his fearsome new emissary, Darth Vader, know the truth.  What little remains of Anakin Skywalker's scarred body is made complete and kept alive by Vader's distinctive and intimidating cybernetic armor.  Anakin's soul is a different matter entirely.  There is nothing to sustain that, and more of it dies as Vader sinks deeper into the seductive abyss of the Dark Side.

While Darth Vader learns to embrace the Dark Side, Jedi Master Roan Shryne and Padawan Olee Starstone, survivors of Order Sixty-Six, struggle with a painful decision.  Go into hiding, as the Jedi Temple beacon demands, or search out other Jedi that have managed to survive.  Then regroup, confront and battle, dethrone, and reveal to the former Republic that the Emperor's enforcer is in fact a Sith Lord.  Although Shryne and Starstone choose very different paths, Shryne goes into hiding, while Starstone goes hunting for Jedi, both wind up in deadly confrontations with Darth Vader.

James Luceno's Dark Lord: The Rise of Darth Vader over laps with the closing events of Star Wars: Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, telling the story that George Lucas failed to: Of how a Jedi was lured to the Dark Side and became the most fearsome figure in Palpatine's Empire.  Unfortunately, most of the novel does not focus on Vader himself, but on other characters reactions to the Sith Lord.  It seems odd that the title character's own story would be treated as if it were a sub-plot, but it is.

This makes the book very uneven, with numerous scenes coming across as nothing more than fan service filling (Look, it's C-3PO!  And R2-D2!  They're being funny!), or gratuitous actions scenes to liven up an expository dead spot.  Another problem is that very few of the prequel characters actually play any substantive role in the original trilogy, so the eventual fates of both Shryne and Starstone are easy to guess.  Luceno does manage to tie together an impressive amount of movie and Expanded Universe characters and plot threads, not only bridging the prequel events with those of the original trilogy, but with the numerous spin-off novels, as well.  I especially liked how the concluding moments of the battle on Kashyyyk were made to echo/foreshadow those in Return of the Jedi.  If only the rest of the novel had that kind of energy, but it doesn't.

Unchained - by C.J. Barry

Ten years after her entire family was brutally murdered, a revenge killing for a crime that her father did not commit, Cidra Faulkner is now burying Syrus Almazan, the man that had rescued her from certain death.  Interrupting the funeral is professional treasure hunter Grey Stone, who claims that Syrus had asked him to take Cidra on as one of his crew to ensure her protection against those that would still seek her out and kill her.  If they knew she were still alive, that is.  Syrus's surprise revelations do not end there, however.  He has also left behind several clues as to what really happened to the missing vaccine shipment that Cidra's father was blamed for withholding, and thus causing the unnecessary deaths of millions.  Now Grey finds himself on the most dangerous of treasure hunts.  The prize being not only Cidra's life, but the fate of an entire galaxy, as well.

C.J. Barry's debut novel, Unchained, is an entertaining ripsnorter of a read that works not only as a romance, but also as a well plotted space opera.  No matter what kind of action the reader might seek, be it hot and frenzied love making or bare knuckled brawls and/or laser gunfights, Unchained has both.  So it will easily appeal to both romance fans and space opera fans.  All of Barry's strengths are on display in this first time outing: a tightly structured and intricate story, solid and well developed characters (Barry's supporting casts are always fun to have around), and well timed outbursts of humor to release the growing tension.  (I particularly liked a gag that involved an automated vacuum cleaner.)  Unchained has it all.  Well, except for any connection whatsoever with the books in her Un series (Unearthed, Unraveled, and Unleashed, to name a few), though several plot ideas in Unchained (most notably a devastating plague and the misuse of the vaccine that cures it) were reused in interesting ways in later books, but none of the characters or events are mentioned. 

Even without a connection to her other books, Unchained was a wonderful reminder why C.J. Barry is my favorite romance writer.

Aliens: Original Sin - by Michael Jan Friedman

Clone Ripley and the other survivors of the ill-fated Auriga wage a continuing battle with Weyland-Yutani and Earthgov to prevent yet another outbreak of the dreaded alien menace.  But another alien, one only glimpsed in fossil form back on Acheron, is determined to see that the monstrous creatures return.

Michael Jan Friedman's Aliens: Original Sin is a bumpy start for the Dark Horse Press relaunch of its Aliens tie-in novel series.  Not surprisingly, the story picks up moments after Alien Resurrection, the fourth and, to date, final Alien movie, ends, with the survivors landing on Earth.  The story then jumps ahead in time to a point where Clone Ripley, the android Call, brutish Johner, and the wheelchair bound Vriess (and one or two others) are engaged in some kind of clandestine chicanery that has to do with buried information concerning the "erased histories."  (Anything that has to do with the events that unfolded in Alien, Aliens, and Alien 3.)

Friedman makes a game effort at filling in some of the minor-to-major plot holes in the Alien franchise, but the revelations are hampered by what could be called the "Yeah-but-then" Factor.  Case in point, Friedman asks the reader to believe that a select number of humans (I'm assuming representatives of Weyland-Yutani, the soulless Company that is obsessed with capturing, studying, and somehow profiting off of the acid-blooded creatures) have been in clandestine contact (and business with) the "pilot's people" (Mala'kak) for over three hundred years with no one ever becoming the wiser.  I found that impossible to believe.  It also negates the need to have cloned Ellen Ripley in the first place, because the Company would have, supposedly, limitless access to the alien eggs.  Each revelation seemed to make less sense.

Not helping is that the story is a continuation of my least favorite Alien movie, with the android-with-a-soul Call being the only truly sympathetic character of the bunch.  There is also very little alien action in the book, which is strange.  One would think that an Aliens novel would have move aliens in it.  But the attacks are pretty much confined to the last fifty or sixty pages of the book and read as being rather rushed.

Dark Horse Press unleashes another Aliens book later this year, Aliens: DNA War by Diane Carey.  I am hoping it will be a better one, I can't see how it could be worse.

Fear Today, Gone Tomorrow - by Robert Bloch

Twelve stories of the bizarre and unworldly from the pen of the incomparable Robert Bloch.

Robert Bloch is a writer that, to horror, science-fiction and fantasy fans, should need no introduction.  The man is nothing short of a legend.  For those of you who do not know who Robert Bloch is (and shame on you if you don't), he is best known as writing a little novel called Psycho.  That particular novel was made into a movie of some renown.

Bloch started writing in his teens, in the 1930s, and was fortunate enough to start a correspondence with another legendary horror writer, H.P. Lovecraft.  Not surprisingly, most of Bloch's early works were pastiches of Lovecraft's hyper-stylized writing.  Eventually Bloch found both his own voice and his own area of specialty.  While some of Bloch's stories dealt with innumerable bogeymen of old (vampires, ghosts, demons, et al) he was most successful in the corner of the genre that would eventually come to be called Psychological Horror.  Robert Bloch has the uncanny talent of being able to peel away all the artifice and pretense of the human psyche and expose the ugly truths that always lay beneath them.  He also was a whiz at crafting the twist ending.

While the lingo and time period setting of most of his stories may have faded into the past, his observations of human nature remain as potent today as they did forty to fifty years ago, when these stories were first written.  Just read The Funnel of God or Report on Sol III in this collection and tell me that I am wrong, with a straight face.

Bloch was also a huge fan of science-fiction and, despite its gruesome cover, Fear Today, Gone Tomorrow is a collection of his stories in that field.  Although most of the stories feature some science-fiction trappings, such as aliens (The Goddess of Wisdom, Report on Sol III, and F.O.B. Venus), space travel (The Bald-Headed Mirage), time travel (Crime Machine), and take place either in the future (A Toy for Juliette and Sales of a Deathman) or on some distant world or asteroid, the stories are all distinctly Bloch.  The true evil, and the weaknesses that allows that evil to triumph (some of the stories are quite horrific), lay entirely within the minds and personalities of the characters.  Humanity is and always will be its own worst enemy.

But if you've read Bloch, then you would already know that.  If you haven't, then you need to get to your local used bookstore and scour it shelves for Bloch's work (sadly, most of his stuff is out of print at this moment) and get caught up on your quality genre reading.

Spider-Man: Revenge of the Sinister Six - by Adam-Troy Castro

A mysterious figure known only as The Gentleman gathers together Doc Ock, The Vulture, Electro, Mysterio and The Chameleon to form a new Sinister Six collective with which to torment Spider-Man and the city he defends.  The sixth member is Pity, The Gentleman's murderous henchperson.  A woman that, in early childhood, had been ruthlessly programmed to follow every instruction given by The Gentleman, no matter how vile or how much her inner spirit wishes to rebel.

Spider-Man is in for the fight of his life, but that fight is just a ruse...

I did not know when I started it that Adam-Troy Castro's novel Spider-Man: Revenge of the Sinister Six was the middle part of a trilogy, proceeded by The Gathering of the Sinister Six and followed by Secret of the Sinister Six.  Despite that misunderstanding, the book was a fun and easy to follow read.

Most of my knowledge of Spider-Man comes from watching both the cartoon and live action TV series as a child in the seventies.  I think I read a total of one Spider-Man comic when I was a kid.  It featured the villain the Lizard, who remains my favorite Spidey villain to this day.  Sam Raimi's hit movie version and its even better sequel got my geekboy sense tingling and, on a whim, I snagged Revenge of the Sinister Six at the local used bookstore.  I had planned on reviewing Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man #1 to launch a Spider-Man thread on the blog, but its being tied in with an additional two books I had little interest in getting roped into reading, I decided to pass until Spider-Man: The Other is collected as a trade.  So Revenge of the Sinister Six is my first review of all things Spidey.

I thought it could have been a lot better than it was.

While Revenge of the Sinister Six is not bad, it is far too long.  Does a novel based on a comic book really need to be four hundred and thirty-five pages?  There was definitely some excess narrative fat in need of a healthy trimming in many the novel's overly detailed sequences.  That criticism aside, when the Sinister Six's dastardly Day of Terror (an honoring of sorts of Spider-Man's fatality inducing failures) begins, it becomes an exhausting two hundred page marathon of no holds barred brawling, with each villain getting his (or her) moment to attempt to defeat and shame the webslinger.  It is to Castro's credit as a writer that I was seriously beginning to doubt whether Spidey would be able to survive the day.  He also makes Spidey credible as a human being, no small feat for an iconic comic book character that has been around longer than I have.

Less credible is the world the characters inhabit, which is overflowing with Marvel heroes and villains (almost comically so) as well as an over indulgence in unnecessary pop culture in-jokes.  When Mr. Glass (from M. Night Shyamalan's Unbreakable) popped up, I thought, "Okay, a nice nod to that movie, and it fits nicely."  But then Randolph and Mortimer, two characters played by Don Ameche and Ralph Bellamy in the Eddie Murphy movies Trading Places and Coming to America (which was more of an inspired cameo gag), showed up a page or two later, my brow furrowed.  (The Randolph and Mortimer gag gets so involved it has to imaginatively dance around the copyright infringement issue.)  But the book didn't stop there, because Detective frakkin' Sipowicz of You-Know-What is at one crime scene!  It's just so ridiculous and fanboyish that it hampers taking the story seriously as piece of immersive fiction.  (You know, the kind you can get lost inside while it unfolds.)  What was worse were the astounding amount of errors in the BP Book paperback edition I was reading.  Somebody in the printing process did not bother to proofread the book.

Final thoughts?  Fans will like the action and the way the characters are handled within the story, but the Spidey curious (such as myself) might come away thinking twice about plunking down cash for another Spider-Man novel.

Unmasked - by C.J. Barry

Unmasked is the fourth book in C.J. Barry's "Un" series, following Unearthed, Unraveled, and Unleashed.  Barry's debut novel Unchained is not a part of the series, despite having a similar title.

Torrie Masters has fnally gotten the chance to run a ship of her very own in the family busimess, Masters Shipping.  But her maiden voyage goes sour when her cargo is stolen by pirates.  What the thieves do not know is that Torrie is eager to prove herself capable of the task of running a cargo ship and that she has built a tracking device into the shipment's containers.  She follows the pirates to try and get the stolen property back, but is captured by a ruthless criminal instead.

Qaade Deter is not the callous pirate Torrie thinks he is.  Qaade is actually more Robin Hood than robbing hood.  He has stolen Torrie's cargo of Phellium for its ability to undo the effects of the mind swipe drugs slavers use on slaves.  (Someone with no memory, or with the ability to remember hampered, makes for an easier to control slave.)  When Torrie is captured during his negotiations with a local crime lord, he gives up his precious Phellium to save the attractive woman from life as a slave.  But now he needs Torrie's help to get the Phellium back.  No easy task.

C.J. Barry is my favorite romance writer.  She had me with the line "Oh, a lightsaber" in Unearthed and each of the books that followed it were filled with the same winning blend of action, humor and zesty romance.  When I read Unmasked's opening line, "Engine core meltdown in thirty-two minutes," I just knew that I was going to be taken on yet another fun ride.  One that did not disappoint.  However the tone of Unmasked is somewhat darker then in the previous books, no doubt due to the story's underlying subject matter, human slavery.

I give C.J. Barry's book(s) my highest recommendation, but don't worry about the series aspect.  Each book is structured as a stand alone adventure, with previous characters and events are only mentioned in passing, if at all.  You can start the series with any title of your choice.  Enjoy.

The Scarlet Empress (2176 #5) - by Susan Grant

The Scarlet Empress is the fifth and final entry in Dorchester books' futurist romance series 2176, and it is an exciting and satisfying ending.

Before I get to the book, I need to cover the background -

In the year 2006 U.S.A.F. pilots Bree "Banzai" Maguire and Cameron "Scarlet" Tucker are shot down while doing a flyover of the North and South Korea border, but it is not an act of war.  A scientist needs human guinea pigs for a bio-stasis experiment and these two "specimans" were conveniently close at hand.  Something goes wrong, of course, and Maguire isn't removed from her bio-stasis unit until the year 2176.  The world she knew has vanished and the one that has replaced it is not an improvement.  Not helping matters is how her discovery and awakening has become an international incident of sorts, for "Banzai" Magurie has somehow become an Amelia Earhart type legend during her 170 year long stasis.  It is concern for her still missing wingman Cam "Scarlet" Tucker that drives Maguire to escape the well-intentioned but smothering attentions of Prince Kyber, the acting Emperor of what is now the Kingdom of Asia.  Other forces, led by a mysterious Voice of Freedom, are stirring up revolutionary feelings in the United Colonies of Earth, the corrupt Imperial power that has replaced the United States of America.  That is the set-up Susan Grant gives the series in the action packed first book, The Legend of Banzai Maguire.

The second book in the series, Kathleen Nance's Day of Fire, revolves around Canada and is as far removed from the characters and situations that Grant created as possible.  Book three, Liz Maverick's The Shadow Runners, followed Prince Kyber's brother Dekkar and his attempt to keep the revolutionary Voice of Freedom heard around the world.  Patti O'Shea's The Power Of Two, the fourth, shares the closest link with Grant's opening and closing books, as its story revolves around Banzai's capture and its ending directly overlaps with the beginning of The Scarlet Empress.

But what of Cam "Scarlet" Tucker, Banzai's wingman?

After opening with the capture of Banzai Maguire and her lover Ty Armstrong, the story switches its focus to Cam, who has been removed and awakened from her bio-stasis unit in far less hospitable conditions than Banzai had been.  Cam is told that the world has ended and most of the planet is still in a harsh nuclear winter, yet that lie is shattered when Cam spots an airplane flying overhead.  She is actually in the outer region of the Kingdom of Asia and Prince Kyber does not want Cam to meet the same fate as Banzai, captured and tortured by the UCE.  Kyber and his most trusted friend go undercover to capture Cam and bring her to safety, which they do.  But sparks fly between the disguised Kyber and Cam, who does not realize whom she is really speaking to.  Meanwhile the capture and threatened execution of "Banzai" Maguire has led to the an actual revolution in the UCE.  Determined to rescue her wingman, Cam refuses to be kept "protected" from the fight for freedom and confronts Kyber with an outlandish rescue plan that just might work.

Susan Grant has done an excellent job both opening and closing this five books series.  It is a detailed and, sad to admit, an all too plausible future.  Filled with just as much action as it is romance, this entry, as well as the entire series, is worthwhile reading for futurist romance fans.