HEDRICK@RUTGERS.ARPA (06/11/83)
From: Dir LCSR Comp Facility <HEDRICK@RUTGERS.ARPA> Now and then I feel the urge to mention some of the better books I have read recently. I hope people find this useful. R.A.MacAvoy, Tea with the Black Dragon. This is certainly the best book on this list. It falls into the category that I call "civilized". By that I mean a book whose charactization and style add to my appreciation of what it means to be human. As this book has been mentioned before, I will not summarize the plot again. Formally speaking, it is a sort of mystery story. It involves magic, of a sort, an ancient dragon, and the microcomputer subculture. I found its handling of technology convincing. Randall Garrett and Vicki Ann Heydron, the Bronze of Eddarta. This is actually the third book of a trilogy (and from the back cover it looks like it may turn into more than a trilogy). The first two are The Steel of Raithskaar and The Glass of Dyskornis. These are also eminently civilized books. Starting with the first (which is necessary, since the situation set up there is continued in all of them): The protagonist suddenly wakes up in the middle of a desert, having no idea how he got there. It turns out that he died on earth and somehow ended up in the body of a nearly-human race on an unknown planet. (At least we assume that this is the case. It is at least possible that it will turn out that this is earth in the far future or past, and humanity has changed.) Much of the plot flows from his attempt to carry out the various obligations of the person whose body he has replaced. These include tracking down a thief with various telepathic powers, and dealing with a military clan that considers him their hereditary leader, but with whose ideals he disagrees. Among other interesting aspects of the books are: (1) its handling of age differences. The protagonist was in his 60's on earth, but ends up in the body of a young man. The authors clearly believe that age can bring wisdom. (2) its handling of the relationship between certain "humans" and the telepathic cats that are their partners and mounts. The relationship is close enough that it is questionable whether either will live after the other dies. David Eddings, the Belgariad, of which there are so far 3 books (out of a projected 5): Pawn of Prophecy, Queen of Sorcery, Magician's Gambit. This is attempt to do the same sort of thing as Tolkien. We have a small group undertaking a quest for a magical object, with the power of evil growing and threatening to attack and overwhelm the civilized world. As in Tolkien, much of the charm of the book is in the various groups of people (and other things) that the travellers meet. That is, in the richness of the imaginary world. The author has attempted to supply a long history, a mythology, a reasonable amount of magic (but with a high enough cost for its use that not all problems can be solved by a wave of the wand), and a variety of cultures. I haven't met anything else that seems quite as attractive as Tolkien, but this is among the better attempts. Like many of you, I have gotten tired of a lot of this fantasy/quest literature, but found this worth reading. Eileen Kernaghan, Songs from the Drowned Lands. This is the story of a group of people living on an island, whose sorcerers have forseen that a great tidal wave is going to come and wipe them out. It consists of a number of portraits of various people in action. They vary from sorcerers ranging from wise old people who try to save things to the decadent sort who just want to live up their remaining time in moderately evil ways, to more mortal adventurers of various sorts. Again, this sort of thing is not all that unusual, but it is among the better pieces of work of its kind. Alan Dean Foster, Spellsinger. Here we have another quest lead by a sorcerer, to find something needed to rescue a world from the powers of evil. It has a rather attractive collection of rogues and moderately good creatures from a variety of species. It has a somewhat absent-minded magician. It seems like it could easily be the foundation of one the better sort of Disney movies. A bit less serious than a lot of fantasy. The only problem is that it turns out to be the first part of a --olgy. Nothing is said on the cover to indicate that it is not complete. I am not quite sure this will have enough ideas to sustain a trilogy. The purpose of this review is not so much to recommend it as the best possible book as to warn you that if you buy the book you shouldn't expect to find an ending to it. John Morressy, The Mansions of Space. I mention this book, not because it is really one of the best books I have read, but because it tries something that I find interesting, even if it doesn't completely succeed. We start with the good monks of the Monastery of the Holy Sepulcher on the planet Peter's Rock. They fled to Peter's Rock centuries ago to escape persecution on earth. They have been living good monkish lives since. At the beginning of the story, a ship descends, and a "free trader" comes out to meet them. It turns out that they can do business. Peter's Rock has a library of 25000 volumes, and a real book from Old Earth is nearly priceless. In exchange, the trader can take some monks as missionaries to preach to the heathen. The strength of the book is that it makes a real attempt to look at what it would mean for these isolated monks to try to preach to a galaxy that doesn't want to be preached to, and whose life forms include beings whose cultures have features that are rather shocking to their Christian sensibilities. The rest of the book shows how the missionaries, and the trader, deal with several of these groups. I found it interesting enough, and if you run out of classics I certainly recommend the book as worth looking at. But it does not completely fulfill the promise of the first few chapters. Somehow the problems just seem to vanish. Not all of the missions flourish. But mostly they just seem to preach and people (well, entities) are converted. Don't get the impression that this book looks like a fundamentalist tract - it doesn't. But the meeting of two cultures, and the translation of important values from one to the other, deserves more attention than it is given here. Probably the best job of dealing with these themes in SF remains Joan Slonczewksi's Still Forms on Foxfield, with honorable mention to Blish's A Case of Conscience and Lee Killough's A Voice out of Ramah. (Of these, Slonczewki's has the advantage of showing real spiritual depth, although Blish deals accurately and sensitively with Catholic theology and Killough does a good job with an imaginary almost-Christian group of fanatics.) Of course there are plenty of nonfictional accounts of missionaries that could easily be turned into good First-Contact SF if you changed the name of the planet. As I am sure you know, it is not necessary to leave earth to find interesting alien cultures. (For an example, if you aren't bothered by a bit of conservative theology, take a look at Don Richardson's Peace Child.) -------