Second paragraph of third story ("Old Faithful", by Raymond Z. Gallun):The two messengers who had come to his workshop that afternoon had not seen into his heart, and he received their message with the absolute outward calm that was characteristic of his kind - at the end of forty days Number 774 must die. He had lived the allotted span fixed by ( Read more... )

Next in my write-ups of works that won both the Hugo and Nebula, which I am now doing year by year. The 1978 Hugos and 1977 Nebulas were awarded in 1978 for work published in 1977. As is sometimes the case (most recently three years ago), three out of four written fiction categories were won by the same work for both awards ( Read more... )

With a new year coming, it's a good time to think about how the year 2020 looked from the distant vantage point of science fiction from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. (I'm therefore not going to mention the 2010 Doctor Who episodes, The Hungry Earth and Cold Blood. Oops, I just did.) So here's a survey of sf stories set next year, ( Read more... )

Second paragraph of third story ("Sleeping Dogs", by Joe Haldeman:Low gravity and low oxygen. My heart was going too fast. I stood for a moment, concentrating, and brought it down to a hundred, then ninety. The air had more sulfur sting than I remembered. It seemed a lot warmer than I remembered that summer, too, but then if I could remember it all ( Read more... )

Second paragraph of third chapter: For Ranjit, the experiment was not so successful. Gamini was away, so he had no one to enjoy it with, and world news remained bad.
I wasn't sure if I would enjoy this, Clarke's last book and Pohl's second last novel, both aged around 90 when it came out - particularly after bouncing off the recent John Le Carré. ( Read more... )

Second paragraph of third chapter: "Oh, good, Watly. Oh, good. Perfect timing. Just perfect. Couldn't've asked for better. Things'll be ready in just - almost perfect timing, Watly. A few more minutes and we'll sit down to a - be ready in a few minutes, Watly. You have a seat and put your feet up."
This 1991 novel may have been partly inspired by ( Read more... )

This was one of the sf anthologies that made a huge impression on me as a teenager, and I think about half of the ten stories fully retain their magic for me - "We Purchased People" by Fred Pohl, "The Hole Man" by Larry Niven, "The Author of the Acacia Seeds [etc]" by Ursula Le Guin, "A Little Something For Us Tempunauts" by Philip K. Dick, and "If ( Read more... )

Having polished off the Hugos a couple of months ago, I'm getting started on those Nebula winners I have not previously written up online. Man Plus is mostly a horror story about a man who is turned into a cyborg in order to explore Mars, but Pohl overlays it with a couple of other themes. First, he has a near-future projection of the political ( Read more... )

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here, including Catherine Asaro, Ben Bova, Lois McMaster Bujold, Neil Gaiman, Frederik Pohl, Neal Stephenson, Connie Willis and Patricia Wrede, from the Library of Congress 2004 book festival.