2009 books
16) Robert Silverberg & Randall Garrett, A Little Intelligence, 2009
Seven murder/mystery/SF hybrid short stories mostly written under the pseudonym 'Robert Randall'. As Silverberg's introduction indicates, theirs was an unlikely but highly productive partnership for a few years in the late 1950s; two writers with very different outlooks on life who somehow ended up as neighbours in New York. Garrett was by then the more experienced author and his share of the ideas comes through more than Silverberg's, particularly with the Jesuit/Catholic characters and themes used in the best stories, 'No Future in This', 'Deus ex Machina' and 'A Little Intelligence'. There is a softer vibe to these stories than I'm used to getting from Silverberg, so while this is a useful little collection it's also mostly one for the completists.