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%T Thieves' Carnival/The Jewel of Bas
%A Karen Haber/Leigh Brackett
%I TOR
%D June 1990
%O paperback, US$3.50
%P 187
%G 0-812-50272-8
Another old-and-new pair from TOR couples a minor classic by Leigh
Brackett with an original prequel to it by Karen Haber. Brackett's lush,
vivid writing has aged reasonably well even though the props of her
stories now seem cliched and the plots a tad on the melodramatic side. The
prequel, which lends more depth to the characters even though it misses
the dreamlike and haunting quality of Brackett's work, makes an interesting
contrast. Nice light reading, pick it up used.
%T The Zork Chronicles
%A George Alec Effinger
%I Avon
%D July 1990
%O paperback, US$4.50
%P 290
%G 0-380-75388-X
You've played the game, now read the book! Actually, don't bother.
This pastiche of the famous computer game manages to be frantically
silly without being very funny, like an endless Monty Python routine
that never quite comes off (come to think of it, I've never quite
gotten the point of his serious work, either). Effinger attempts to
introduce some narrative coherence by spoofing the Hero Myth, but
Craig Shaw Gardner and Terry Pratchett have already done a better job
of that one.
%T The Great SF Stories 21 (1959)
%E Isaac Asimov & Martin H. Greenberg
%I DAW
%D July 1990
%O paperback, US$5.95
%P 347
%G 0-88677-428-4
This is a sort of retrospective Best SF anthology for 1959; it collects 14
stories the authors feel have best stood the test of time since. Worth owning
for Phillip Jose Farmer's The Alley Man, or Cordwainer Smith's
bizarre No No, Not Rogov!, or for Alfred Bester's brilliant
The Pi Man. Longtime SF readers will have encountered some of
these stories before in other anthologies.
RECEIVED AND NOT REVIEWED:
Arthur, Stephen Lawhead.
The Dragon's Carbuncle, Elizabeth Boyer
The Scroll Of Lucifer, LLoyd Arthur Eschbach.
Shadow's Realm, Mickey Zucker Reichert. Life's too short for all these interminable fantaseries.
Up to Eric's Home Page | To Index | Tue Jun 12 17:39:26 EDT 1990 |
Eric S. Raymond <esr@snark.thyrsus.com>