Science Fiction

The definitive xenophobia series. Nice palliative to the paranoid fantasies in Independence Day. Ursula Le Guin's The Word for the World Is Forest covers similar ground. See also Octavia Butler, of course (coming soon). Children of the Mind is weak, but it does tie up some loose ends. Someone pointed out that if it weren't an Ender book, no one would have finished it, and he's right. But it is an Ender book, eh?

Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead may both be among the ten best science fiction novels ever written, at least in terms of ideas and values. Written before Card embarked on his career as a conservative Mormon, they examine religion, culture, and interpersonal values in ways few science fiction writers have attempted. Xenocide, which postdates Card's 'change' (his word), continues in the same vein. However, Children of the Mind degenerates pretty swiftly into little but a sort of New Age/LDS theosophy (and Heck sake, but that's a combination to give ya flippin' nightmares!). Worse yet, the book has all the indicators that he's planning a fifth volume. I for one won't read it. Like Larry McMurtry, Card doesn't know when to quit mining the sequels.

The sequel to Rider at the Gate, and a more satisfying book. Cherryh's sequels often read like second volume of work in progress. The preceding novel ended with so many loose cannons, that it was very frustrating. Cloud's Rider ties up the loose ends, bringing Danny and the kids back down the mountain, and it promises a sequel without leaving us on a Saturday-morning-serial brink. Reading the Finisterre novels has reminded me that Cherryh did some interesting things with empaths, as far back as the Dus of the Kutath novels. Her exploration of the mind-connection between rider and 'horse' is worth the price of admission, regardless of the story. Like most Cherryh novel's, the Finisterre books offer a tight action-driven plot for bone and for meat, some interesting ideas about culture, psychology, and language. Watch it dance. .

Click the open book for a whole page of Cherryh in print with capsule reviews. And Cherryh has her own web site: www.cherryh.com.

Everything is excellent. One of her best, Always Coming Home, is out of print, but it's worth hitting the used bookstores for. When searching Le Guin at Amazon.com's site, call her 'LeGuin' and you'll get better results. Their search routine has trouble with two-word last names like 'Le Guin.' Buffalo Gals is a great introduction to one of our best writers. Included is one my favorites, the story of a werewolf's marital problems. It seems this female wolf discovers that her mate has been changing into a human.... If you like what you find here, then read The EarthSea Trilogy (now a tetralogy, by the way), then The Left Hand of Darkness, and then....

I posted a list of Le Guin in print for a reading group I was hosting a few months ago. Check it out by clicking the open book. {By the way, the best deal around, these days, is the hardcover edition of the lead story Buffalo Gals, Won't You Come Out Tonight, illustrated by Susan Seddon Boulet. If you get there in time, $4.98 for a gorgeous coffeetable book and a fine story.)

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Forget Donald Barthleme (I know I have). The Borges of the U.S. is in Illinois, editing a chemical engineering journal (last I heard). If you love language, if mind games are your meat, potatoes, and gravy, read the 'Soldier' books, with a narrator who has to write his memory once a day to keep it and loses the book, to our utter confusion. Read the 'Torturer' books, which is launched from the old saw that witchcraft is misunderstood science (or is it, science looks like witchcraft if you don't understand it? Whatever.) Or the 'Long Sun' books, less exotic but similar to the Torturer novels. Or The Island of Dr. Death and Other Stories and Other Stories. A feast of language.