Henry L Lazarus
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Science Fiction for November 2014
by Henry Leon Lazarus
War is not fun, but suppose you could have a new
body after dying. It might be worth some heroics.
B. V. Larson tells us that Galactics
arrived in 2052 and told Earth we had to join the confederation or
be wiped out. Oh Yes they also said we had to find something to
sell. We had mercenaries. James McGill enlists with Varus, a unit
sent to the worst places and usually gets itself wiped out while
getting the job done. Basic training is done on the ship out and
most recruits die a few times, James makes is through to the world
of dinosaurs, Steel World (paper from Amazon) has hired a
number of mercenary companies to handle their many disputes. This
time they’ve decided to go into the business by themselves by wiping
out a human company, V alus. James doesn’t help things by killing a
Galactic observer no once but twice. Of course he dies four times
along with most of his compatriots. This one is free as an ebook but
I didn’t mind paying for the sequel.
Valus is mud because of losing mercenary
contracts, but Earth has a secret. Before the Galactics came they
had sent out a colony ship. They’ve sent a radio signal home and
it’s up to Valus to solve the problem. But there’s a bigger problem
when their ship is attacked by lizards and they end up landing on Dust
World (paper from Amazon) where they find that the lizards
have a habit of capturing the colonists and turning them into
slaves. The remaining colonists are fighters and don’t want anything
to do with Valus let alone they came from Earth. The trick is to
take out the lizard starship which involves dying again and again.
Just as much fun.
Earth has been upped to a level two
civilization and has to take on duties of policing the local stars.
Tau Ceti has a huge space station and is filled with money hungry
natives. Tech World (paper from Amazon) ‘s aliens
have problem in that their clothes shape their opinion and a
mercenary from another company has figured a way to get rich by
creating a rebellion. This time James is the only survivor as two
Earth mercenary companies are wiped to the last man. The lizards
apparently control far more worlds than the Galactics guessed and
they’re mad over the loss of their colony. James of course comes up
smelling good. I’m waiting eagerly for next volume.
Brad R Torgersen looks at war between
humans and aliens with a huge technological edge. Luckily they have
a sense of morality. The Chaplain's War (trade from Baen)
Harrison Barlow enlisted because his friends did and somehow became
a Chaplain’s assistant. He finds himself in a POW camp, actually a
wall hemming the survivors in, and follows the advice of his late
Chaplain. He builds a house of worship, but doesn’t try to lead
services. When a professor Mantis decided to investigate human
religion, he becomes the center and somehow his words indirectly
make it to the Queen Mother who creates a truce. But nothing can me
kept that simple. When he is brought along during the diplomatic
procedures to renew the truce, he, the professor and the
Queen Mother are trapped with both sides hunting them as war begins
again. This type of peace making could only work if both sides can
see reason. Think of Gandhi vs. The British as opposed to Gandhi vs
the Nazis. Fun, but a dash unbelievable.
Jack McDevitt has been writing of Alex
Benedict and his assistant Chase Kolpath for a while. They live nine
thousand years from now in a confederation at peace and hunt for
sellable artifacts from the past. In the latest they are given a
communicator that would have been with artifacts from the early
space age and lost during the dark ages of the early three
thousands. The quest finds them Coming Home (Hard from Ace)
to an Earth pleasantly warmed with many of today’s cities under
water. Plenty of tourists, but someone doesn’t want them digging and
they face an attack on their sailboat while diving at the Huntington
Space Museum. At the same time the interstellar transport Capella,
lost in a space warp is due to emerge after eleven years (several
days to the passengers). Alex’s mentor Gabe was a passenger. Fun, as
usual.
Ben Tripp has a tale of an indentured
servant in the middle eighteenth century turned into The
Accidental Highwayman (hard from Tor) when his master returns
one night dying from being shot. He, in addition to robbing coaches,
had contracted to rescue a fairy princess on her way to marry the
future King George III against her will. He does this with the help
of a witch and some tiny fairies who can shoot fire. The dragoons
are after him because he has been mistaken for his master and that
ties his fate to hers and her rebellion against her father. With
arrow totting pixies and horrendous goblings facing them, it is the
test of a teenage hero to survive and protect his princess. This is
the first of three adventures and lots of fun.
L. E. Modesitt, Jr has had eighteen tales
set in the Recluse universe where magic comes from control of order
and /or chaos. Heritage of Cyador (hard from Tor) continues the tale
of Lerial a grey magician and second son of the Duke of Cigoerne
during the early years of Hamor when it was ruled by five dukes.
When the Dutchy of Aftrit comes under attack from the Duke of
Heldya, Lerial is sent to provide small aid. Since Afrit’s wizards
are owned by its merchant class, Lerial is the only one capable of
stopping the order and chaos wizards that could turn the tide of
battle. In addition Afrit is a place for him to find love. This is a
routine adventure from an author I really like.
What if the Artful (paper from
47North) Dodger met up with the future Queen Elizabeth and
fought vampyres with Bram Van Helsing. Peter David takes this silly
concept and turns it into a fun melodrama, mixing in characters from
Oliver Twist like Fagin and Fang (now vampyres) and using a style
that easily could have come from the pen of Mark Twain. It starts
with the princess deciding to leaver her palace (where she was
tightly controlled by her parents) to see the real England and runs
into the Dodger who turns out to be a gentleman is thieves clothing.
What a giggle.
Keith Stevenson tells of a
scientific expedition to the possible inhabited planet of Horizon
(ebook from AUS Impulse) that takes forty-five years for a crew in
deep sleep. But on the outskirts of the new solar system, the crew
awakens to find one member dead and the A. I. guidance system
crippled. A course change sent from Earth has code designed to
destroy their ship. Cait Dyson, Mission Leader of The Magellan not
only has to deal with the internal politics of her small crew,
including one member who can connect directly to the ships computer,
but also with politics of an Earth population facing famine because
directed genetic diseases have wiped out food crops. The inhabitable
planet might represent a place to plant a colony for humanity to
make a new start and one of the Earth groups sent warships, leaving
soon after the Magellan to ensure the crew makes the right
decisions. A message sent from Earth gives direction on how to built
a communicator that allow instantaneous communication with Earth and
complicates the politics and morality even more. Fun. I gulped it
down.
David Weber enlists Timothy Zahn for A
Call to Duty (trade from Baen) in a tale set in the
early years of the Manticore kingdom when politicians want to get
rid of the Solarian Battle cruisers moth-balled in orbit because the
kingdom has no threats. The tale follows Travis Uriah Long through
his enlistment in the Navy till he is part of a special mission to
investigate ships that Haven is selling. Pirates have decided to
highjack two destroyers but thankfully a Manticore Battle cruiser is
available to stop them. Fun.
Diana Pharaoh Francis has a nice mix of
murder, romance and magic set in Diamond City, a corrupt city built
into a mountain. The Tyet criminal factions control the police
using the five types of magical powers. Riley Hollis has a
very powerful Trace of Magic (paper from Bell Bridge
Books) in that she can sense people’s traces. Unlike most tracers,
the trace never fades for her even after the subject dies. She stays
under the radar pretending to be weaker than she is, but strong
enough to find people for clients and kidnaped children for her own
satisfaction. Then the cute cope, Detective Clay Price, she’d
been avoiding drags her into a deep plot involving a mcGuffin sought
by all the gangs. It doesn’t help that her sister’s ex, whom she
still loves, has been kidnaped or that Clay’s brother is the head of
one of the Tyet Gangs. Soon she’s facing bullets and forced to
stretch her abilities with her powers to survive. If you don’t mind
a woman having sex a few hours after being shot, the story is
enthralling. I’m eager for the sequel.
Sara C. Snider has a medieval fantasy
sent in a world in which magi’s have built towers and use their
magic to stabilize area from the magic of strange creatures like
Kobolds and
Brownies. Emelyn is an orphan raised working as a house
servant at age seventeen. Then Kobolds cause everyone in the small
village to start dancing except for her and two magi suggest that
if she comes with them, she’ll discover who her parents are. A
man her age, Corran joins her, claiming to have been an apprentice
for a wood carver who hadn’t had an apprentice in two decades. Iyen’
a young girl with magical powers keeps appearing. Then, when the
corpse-like lampyres attack a town, she somehow dispels them. One of
the magi tries to teach her their version of magic with runes and
words, but it doesn’t work for her. On the quest to The
Thirteenth Tower (paper from Double Beast Publishing), a
Magi tower with all dead, she loses Corran and finds older versions
along with older versions of Lyen. This is a fun coming-of-age tale
set in an interesting world.
Michael R. Underwood has a tale of the
magic running below New York city and tied to five magical hearts,
one per borough. Jacob Greene belongs to the powerful Greene family
who have no problems with human sacrifice to raise power. When they
killed his best friend he ran to St. Mark’s University in New York
where he earns his tuition with work study and tries to avoid the
magic stuff. His room mate thinks he is weird because he knows
nothing of modern movies. Then his sister comes to town determined
to capture the five hearts, kill anyone who gets in her way and use
the hearts to get the gatekeepers to open a gate and let The
Younger Gods (ebook from Pocket Star) out. He isn’t powerful
enough to stop her so he finds allies in werewolves, a voodoo mamba,
and yes his room mate who had been assigned to watch him. Yes his
sister does get to the gates and the only way to stop her is to
compromise his principles. Fun mix of multiple magic styles with a
good feeling for New York City.
I watched the timer on the website
eagerly to buy the fourth Wearing The Cape ebook by Marion G.
Harmon. Small Town Heroes (Amazon) was worth the wait and as
much fun as the previous three. This time, borrowing from Eureka (TV
Show) Astra is sent a dream that a small town will be destroyed.
Littleton is in an alternate reality from Guantanamo Bay on a Cuba
that has discovered capitalism and is run by a hidden super-powered
person. The bad guys want to steal something from the town. It’s a
good time for Astra to leave Chicago because of a scandal from an
inadvertent fight during a flood rescue mission. Astra may have all
the powers of Supergirl except for x-ray vision, but she is facing
super villains and needs all the help she can get. I’m waiting for
the next.
Jeff Somers wrote a noir tale about blood
magic last year. Instead of just make a sequel We are not Good
People(trade from Gallery) rewrites the first so as to allow a
sequel (minor changes) and adds the second half. Blood is magic
using the proper words and the more blood the more powerful the
magic. When we first meed Lem Vonnegan and his less bright partner
Mags, Lem refuses to use any blood but his own; limiting him to
minor scams. Then he comes into the perview of the most powerful
mage, Mika Renar so old she’s practically a mummy and afraid of
death. Her solution, immortality requires the death of most of life
on earth. In the first version Lem was in the right place and time
to stop the sacrifices that would trigger world death. In this
version he almost does so. The problem is another piece of magic,
Kurre-Nikas the that can reach into the past and change one thing.
His enemies use it to bring about an earth filled with the dead and
Mr. Sommers allows readers a tour of this horrible tour before. Lem
resets the world to normal. The problem is that the Kurre-Nikas
feels like deus-ex-machina,. Still the tale is fascinating and the
world worth returning to.
Baen has new fun tales of Shattered Shields
(paper and edited by Jennifer Brozek and Bryan Thomas Schmidt) many
set in established universes.; classic tales in The Baen Big
Book of Monsters (trade and edited by Hank Davis); and tales
and Provocations from Michael Z. Williamson Tour of Duty
(paper). They’ve also reprinted Robert A. Heinlein’s classic
libertarian classic Beyond this Horizon in trade.
The 78th Anniversary Philadelphia Science Fiction
Conference, Philcon, will be on November 21st -23rd in the Crown
Plaza Hotel, Cherry Hill, NJ. The Principal Speakers are
Sharon Lee & Steve Miller known for their Liaden Universe tales.
The artist guest is Bob Eggleton It’s $50 for the weekend, but there
are day rates. Always fun. I’ll be there
Dr. Henry Lazarus is a local Dentist and the
author of A Cycle of Gods (Wolfsinger Publications) and
Unnaturally Female (Smashwords)