Books: Times Five

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Believe it or not, even with all my book blogging, I'm still getting behind . . .

The Sword Woman by Robert E. Howard

Howard, the creator of Conan, also created the Sword Woman of this collection, Agnes de Chastillon. (Red Sonja was created decades later by Roy Thomas for Marvel Comics.) Agnes' stories are typical Howard fare, set in 16th century France, and all the character development happens in the first story, where she goes quickly from being a peasant girl doomed to an arranged marriage, to a swordswoman with a mercenary company. There's a lot of backstory which never gets a chance to be explored, as Howard didn't write much about her. (Indeed, this book is filled out with a couple of unrelated pseudo-historical novel fragments.) As part of the evolution of the sword-heroine, moderately recommended, but otherwise, eh.

Dimension Thirteen by Robert Silverberg

At any given moment, only a fraction of Silverberg's work is in print, and his short stories from the 1950s and 1960s get the particularly short end of that stick. The highlights of this collection include "Bride Ninety-One" (about human-alien marriage), "Dark Companion" (about suicide prevention), and "The King of the Golden River" (about culture shock). Recommended.

Axis by Robert Charles Wilson

Sequel to Spin, this novel is set on an uninhabited alien planet accessible through a star gate, set on Earth by the mysterious Hypotheticals. It's about an attempt to learn the nature of the Hypotheticals, which doesn't come to much. Wilson's weakness is that the weirdness in his novels is explored, but rarely satisfactorily explained, so you end the novels not much wiser than when you started. Still, the trip is fun; he's a good writer. Mildly recommended to people who have read Spin.

The Mightiest Machine by John W. Campbell

Sequel to The Dark Star Passes, this reads like Lensman-lite, with our human heroes going absurdly quickly from "I have an idea for a spaceship" to "and now let us crash a moon into the bad guy's planet." It's a very good example of its time (the 1930s), but is still of its time. (E.g., not a single woman actually appears, and the backstory, once you decipher it, is really racist.) If you've read and enjoyed the Lensman books, you might want to seek this out, but . . .

Ten Points for Style by Walter Jon Williams

As buxom_bey was reading the Stainless Steel Rat stories, I was inspired to pick up this collection of WIlliams' novels about Drake Maijstral, SF jewel thief. The premise: Centuries in the future, Earth has been bloodlessly conquered by aliens, who in addition to their superior technology, also bring with them a highly stratified, formal culture, full of lords, ladies, duels, "if you'll permit me"s, "may I introduce"s, etc. The aliens also have a suppressed admiration for people who can break the rules, so the profession of Allowed Burglar exists, and is indeed the role of choice for the insolvent nobility. In this trilogy our hero carefully burgles his way to the top of the rankings. It reads a bit like a Jane Austen novel or a Gilbert & Sullivan opera with aliens and theft thrown in. Fun, recommended.