Fiction: GRRM and others (sf edition)
George R.R. Martin, Dreamsongs, vol. II: Despite two annoying Tuf Haviland stories, I enjoyed this volume. Some stories I’d read before, but I liked the Twilight Zone script and the anecdotes surrounding it, ditto the pilot that never got picked up. And I got Wild Cards nostalgia from those stories. The volume is rounded out with a few other stories that never became series, including one about a seriously skeezy werewolf and the PI whose father was killed by a “wild animal” and one set several generations before Game of Thrones.
George R.R. Martin, Gardner Dozois, and Daniel Abraham, Hunter’s Run: This is an expansion of an earlier novella, and the expansion was helpful. Ramón Espejo is a brutal man, a prospector on a colony world, who begins the novel running to the wild to hide from the cops over a man he killed. But when aliens capture him and sets him to hunt another man in order to hide the aliens’ presence, things get much worse. The twist is pretty visible but also well executed; these guys do not lack for storytelling chops, and Ramón even grows as a person (in spoilery ways). At its best, they have real fun with the tough-guy genre: “‘The pistol guard ripped his finger off?” Ramón asked. “You mean that pendejo’s done all this without his trigger finger?’ Maneck blinked, the red eye’s lid not entirely closing. ‘Is this significant?’ Maneck asked. ‘No. It’s just kind of impressive.’”
David Levine, Second Chance: Free LibraryThing Early Reviewers copy. An astronaut revives out on a deep-space mission, his body renewed-but quickly discovers that much has gone wrong. His original was killed before the training was complete, and all the other members of his team are now formed into a tight group that doesn’t include him. Also, the lowest-bidder communications array isn’t working, so they aren’t hearing from Earth any more. As he tries to determine why all his crewmates hate him, and what’s going on with the communications, more and more secrets are revealed. A novella with just enough angst and redemption to satisfy, though the length of the form means we’re told a fair amount more than we’re shown (which probably helps sympathy with the narrator, since we only get told why his crewmates hate him!).
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George R.R. Martin, Gardner Dozois, and Daniel Abraham, Hunter’s Run: This is an expansion of an earlier novella, and the expansion was helpful. Ramón Espejo is a brutal man, a prospector on a colony world, who begins the novel running to the wild to hide from the cops over a man he killed. But when aliens capture him and sets him to hunt another man in order to hide the aliens’ presence, things get much worse. The twist is pretty visible but also well executed; these guys do not lack for storytelling chops, and Ramón even grows as a person (in spoilery ways). At its best, they have real fun with the tough-guy genre: “‘The pistol guard ripped his finger off?” Ramón asked. “You mean that pendejo’s done all this without his trigger finger?’ Maneck blinked, the red eye’s lid not entirely closing. ‘Is this significant?’ Maneck asked. ‘No. It’s just kind of impressive.’”
David Levine, Second Chance: Free LibraryThing Early Reviewers copy. An astronaut revives out on a deep-space mission, his body renewed-but quickly discovers that much has gone wrong. His original was killed before the training was complete, and all the other members of his team are now formed into a tight group that doesn’t include him. Also, the lowest-bidder communications array isn’t working, so they aren’t hearing from Earth any more. As he tries to determine why all his crewmates hate him, and what’s going on with the communications, more and more secrets are revealed. A novella with just enough angst and redemption to satisfy, though the length of the form means we’re told a fair amount more than we’re shown (which probably helps sympathy with the narrator, since we only get told why his crewmates hate him!).
comments on DW | reply there. I have invites or you can use OpenID.