Frederik Pohl and C.M. Kornbluth’s THE SPACE MERCHANTS has been hailed as a triumph of science fiction since it was first published in serial form in GALAXY magazine back in 1952 (under the title THE GRAVITY PLANET), and then in book form the following year. It’s rarely out-of-print for long, and is among those works generally considered a science-fiction “classic.”
Now, Pohl, the surviving member of the writing duo, has dusted it off, revised it and added a new introduction for this trade-paperback reissue.
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Neal Stephenson’s books are huge out of necessity. In some cases, such as ANATHEM, he needs that real estate to describe a foreign world in which the laws of physics evolved and are described in a way much different from our own. In his “Baroque Cycle” begun in QUICKSILVER, a lot of pages were eaten up in explaining to readers the realities of historical ages.
His new novel, REAMDE, has neither of these requirements: The work is set in modern times, and its vocabulary is straight out of Webster or Merriam-Webster or — well, the words come from a real dictionary. But REAMDE is still more than 1,000 pages long, and none of that space is wasted.
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Thomas Mullen’s two previous novels were basically historical fiction. History also figures prominently in THE REVISIONISTS, his latest. Here, however, he ponders on the significance of history in a speculative manner by employing techniques of science fiction — mainly, time travel.
Zed, the character we are first introduced to, is from a future time and sent back to the present with a mission. Zed’s world is a Perfect Society, free of hunger, war, and despair. But there are those from Zed’s world who would like to see such perfection happen earlier, so they travel back in time to prevent such historical calamities as the Holocaust, the bombs falling Hiroshima, and other such events, large and small.
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Thomas Blackthorne’s EDGE is really a pure thriller clothed with some science-fiction finery. It’s the kind of book that doesn’t jump out at you as awesome, but you still frantically turn pages in order to find out what happens to characters you have come to like, and in search of a satisfying ending.
Josh Cumberland is your traditional thriller-hero archetype. Ex-military, ex-Ghost Force (the normal, super-secret, top-level military strike force that all our heroes must attend, apparently), Cumberland is a master programmer, an absolute killing machine, and smarter than your average bear. Too good to be true.
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