Spiders from the Stars Assuredly, "M.C. Planck" is the best name ever for a happening SF writer. It combines a rapper's hipness with scientific laboratory cred. I am going to assume that the possessor of that byline came by it through an accident of birth and parental dispensation, and not by his own invention, and that, having been endowed with such a potent moniker, he was forced by sheer nominative determinism to enter our field. But all kidding aside, M.C. Planck has the requisite chops his name implies. His debut novel, The Kassa Gambit (Tor, hardcover, $24.99, 288 pages, ISBN 978-0-7653-3092-5) is the pure quill, a space adventure solidly planted in the middle of the genre's vast dominant lineage. Certainly not postmodern or "new space opera," it might have come from the pen of Poul Anderson or Gordon Dickson, Keith Laumer or James Schmitz, yet feels contemporary, dynamic, and authentic, not mere vintage pastiche. We might very well be witness here to the start of a career to match John Scalzi's.
