…for it was the quiet not of peace but of stagnation. Strife was ended but so was progress, growth, human striving—except in the hidden laboratories and redoubts of the underground Members of Humanity. They dared to look ahead; they dared to try and struggle and learn and move forward.
And unless Eli Johnstone, Spokesman for the Autonomous Group that runs the world, can come to grips with their unflinching dedication to the future, they could just be the spark to blow a planet apart…
(read but not reviewed)
The men of the Dorsai were the finest fighting soldiers in the universe, mercenary troops without equal.
Their talents were devastatingly employed on Kultis, where a bloody little war raged between the Western Alliance and the Eastern Coalition. But not even the Dorsai could anticipate the dramatic effect of Cletus Grahame’s brilliant mind and the galaxy-shaking theory he called ‘The Tactics of Mistake’.
The story of how Cletus Grahame risked his life, the fate of three worlds, and ultimately the whole of the Dorsai to prove that a mistake may remake worlds is a classic of science fiction.
rating : 4.5 : passes the time
review : 1 August 2002
Charles Edward Stuart, bookish son of a space captain, is off for a tour of Talyina in the charge of his Hoka tutor, currently being stuffy Oxford don Bertram Cecil Featherstone Smyth-Cholmondoley. It looks set to be a straightforward week, until they discover Talyina is ruled by a tyrant, and the Hoka takes it into his head that his young charge is the Prince of the Prophecy, and takes on the persona of Hector MacGregor, sworn man of Bonnie Prince Charlie. Charlie finds himself swept along by events, and maybe helping an even worse tyrant than the one being overthrown.
This is fairly standard coming of age fare, enlivened mainly by the way Charlie manages to perform the Five Feats of the prophecy, and the chapter titles.
rating : 4.5 : passes the time
review : 1 August 2002
Three stories about the Hokas, a teddy-bear-like alien race that live out extreme fantasy lives. The authors keep explaining that the Hokas aren't mad, but I'm afraid I don't believe them.