The Children of the Sky by Vernor VingeThis is the sequel to A Fire Upon the Deep. This book demonstrates the Tines advancement and the perfidy that the human soul is capable of demonstrating. Ravena Bergsndot and the Mad Bad Johanna are featured prominently in this volume of the series. The...
Christmas 2010: I realised that I had got stuck in a rut. I was re-reading old favourites again and again, waiting for a few trusted authors to release new works. Something had to be done.On the spur of the moment I set myself a challenge, to read every book to have won the Locus Sci-Fi award. Th...
Maybe I'll come off as bi-polar when I start this five star review (my first of 2011) with an extensive list of why the book I'm applauding is utter garbage. But what the hell, I'm game if you are. Let's do it.Why "A Fire Upon the Deep" is Utter Garbage1. Mr. Vinge's characters are only so-so, ...
Multiple Hugo Award winner Vernor Vinge's first full-length novel As a mud-spattered youngster, Tatja quickly realized she was different from the stone-age primitives with whom she grew up. Her insatiable curiosity and thirst for knowledge could not be quenched among them; she had to explore and...
The Peace War is quintessential hard-science adventure. The Peace Authority conquered the world with a weapon that never should have been a weapon--the "bobble," a spherical force-field impenetrable by any force known to mankind. Encasing governmental installations and military bases in bobbles, ...
As times passed, and we graduated to the Age of Reason and thence to the first and second industrial revolutions, such notions were discredited. Now it seems that the Wheel has turned full circle (even if there never really was a First Age) and we are back to worrying about true names again:The f...
Foner Internet commerce is really what has the whole world—the glitzy, high-profile world of money and politics—interested in the Internet. The stock markets are awash in hot Internet stocks, because the people who control most of the money in the world have come to realize that they can use this...
Fred Pohl published my short story “The Accomplice” in the April 1967 issue of If. It was only my third story to appear in print. Wolgang Jeschke included a German translation of the story in his collection, Science Fiction Story-Reader 16. Its only other appearances were in two program books. So...
Gonle Fong had lived her whole life by that principle. The mission to the OnOff star had been a long shot, the sort of thing that appealed mainly to scientists. But Gonle had seen angles. Then had come the Emergent ambush, and the long shot had been turned into servitude and exile. A prison run b...
A groaning, ripping sound came through the speedboat’s belly. The deck split down the middle and Yoninne was looking straight up into the morning sky—then down at the water. Around her timbers and planking flew in all directions. Finally she came to rest, hanging upside down from her harness. For...