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%T Lunar Justice
%A Charles Harness
%I Avon
%D August 1991
%O paperback, US$4.95
%P 180
%G ISBN 0-380-76010-X
Charles Harness has a very weird mind. In this book, a patent attorney
saves a client from being guillotined on the Moon for high treason, by
psionically blowing up the planet Jupiter. This sort of thing might be
over-the-top fun, if Harness's world weren't such a tissue of unjustified
absurdities. To name just one, society shows no signs of having adapted in
any way to the existence of psionic supermen who can induce nuclear
reactions from planetary distances. Pass on this unless you cultivate a
taste for the bizarre and don't care that the world-design is ludicrous and
the plot utterly contrived.
%T Specterworld
%A Isidore Haiblum
%I Avon Books
%D August 1991
%O paperback, US$3.95
%P 215
%G ISBN 0-380-75858-X
Isidore Haiblum's writing style is a kind of edgy, gritty
surrealism that works very well with some premises and very poorly
with others --- something like a cross between Philip K. Dick and
Keith Laumer with a soupcon of Ron Goulart. Unfortunately,
Specterworld wasn't written on a good day for him. The
Chandleresque first-person narration is flat and unconvincing; the
plot, in which the boss gumshoe of a robot rent-a-cop service
confronts his evil clones amidst a whirl of alternate universes, is
thin and hard to follow. Pass on this one.
Up to Eric's Home Page | To Index | Sat Jul 27 18:39:27 EDT 1991 |
Eric S. Raymond <esr@snark.thyrsus.com>