Re: The Return of the DAW Reviews! 1983

"James Nicoll" <jdnicoll@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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As far as I can tell, I composed this but never posted it:


512 Sharon Green The Warrior Enchained

I missed this one

Another of her woman-enslaved and getting abused stories.




513 Tanith Lee Red as Blood

This, this was a keeper. When this came out, I was working as
a security guard, a job of mind-numbing dullness. As it happened, the
breast pocket of a Burns uniform held a medium sized paper-back perfectly
and I read and reread this Lee collection several times. Lee takes well
known fairy tales (all but one familiar to me -- all I can recall of the
one I didn't know was that it involves swans) and reworks them to great
effect.

The one about the princess about to be burned at the stake for murdering
all her brothers, but they've all been enchanted into swans, and can only be
unenchanted if they wear shirts she has woven? But they take her to the
stake with one shirt not-quite-finished -- it's missing a sleeve -- the
swans show up, slip into the shirts, and all are restored to their bodies
save for one who has an arm that is still a swan's wing. I've seen this in
other books, in various ways.

Piers Anthony wrote one where it was women who put on & took off the
swan-shirts, and a boy stole one and forced the woman to marry him.
Niiice.0




514 Clifford D. Simak Out of Their Minds

Another book I know from a Berkley edition: icons from humanity's
collective unconscious, figures like Pan and Satan, show up to complain
about recent additions like Dagwood Bumstead. I can only assume Garfield
induced lethal levels of rage.

Simak declined badly in the seventies and eighties. I couldn't get
through _Shakespeare's Planet_, for example, because it was so illogical and
sentimental.





517 Edward Llewellyn Prelude to Chaos

This is set in the period when humans have already managed to
sterilize most of the population but before the effects have completely
been understood. As civilization slowly crumbles, one ex-secret service
agent seeks to learn the truth behind his incarceration.

I wish Llewelyn had written more.


520 John Norman Kajira of Gor

This is about two letters from being about a guy in a rubber
dinosaur suit trampling on little models of Gorean cities. I didn't read
it, though.

"Kajira", however, means :"slave girl". There is also a book titled
_Slave Girl of Gor_



521 C.J. Cherryh The Dreamstone

This was as early as 1983? I missed it but I think the David A.
Cherry who did the cover is Cherryh's sibling.

Yes.



523 Philip K. Dick The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch

I missed this.

Mind-messing, drugs, and a guy who has three artifical organs/limbs (the
"three stigmata"). One of the few Dick works that has so far escaped being
made into a film.


529 Jo Clayton Ghost Hunt

The seventh Diadem novel, which I missed.

Aleytys has found a job with an interstellar investigative firm, which
should in theory protect her from her pursuers, the owners of the diadem
(they want it back and don't care what happens to her), plus the various
other opponents she's picked up in the course of her life. This is one of
her investigations

I was impressed by Clayton's portrayal of a diverse and often mysterious
interstellar society.

531 Clifford D. Simak Cemetary World

I remember the setting (An Earth given over to graveyards) and
some of the characters (a robot who learned to survive in the wild) but
none of the plot.

As above about _Out of Their Minds_ Simak set up an idea and then went
to sleep for 80k words.



532 Sharon Green An Oath to Mida

No idea.

ISTR it was some kind of Amazon warrior being captured and enslaved by
oppressive men.

534 E.C. Tubb Melome

Dumarest, you great wally, you are on planet number 28. There
are 400 billion stars in the Milky Way Galaxy.

And at least 400 trillion con men waiting to sell you the route to
Earth.


536 Timothy Zahn The Blackcollar

Supersoldier stuff, maybe?

Retired supersoldier stuff, or what do you do when your homeless vet has
a proton flamer built into his arm? Or something lik ethat.

543 Isaac Asimov & Martin H. Greenberg Isaac Asimov Presents
the Great SF Stories, 10 (1948)

Introduction Isaac Asimov

Dont Look Now Henry Kuttner

He Walked Around the Horses [Paratime Police] H. Beam Piper

Fictional treatment of a historical mystery in which a British
diplomat disappeared in circumstances where he should not have been able
to.

It got retroactively included in the Paratime series; Piper had a
character in _Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen) make a reference to its having
happened.



The Strange Case of John Kingman Murray Leinster

I think this is about a very special patient.

Yes; an immortal alien in a mental hospital.



That Only a Mother Judith Merril

I think this was one of the "Twayne Triplets" stories, where somebody
designed a planet and then they got three writers to write stories set on
it.

Mars Is Heaven! Ray Bradbury

This really has to be published in a collection with John W. Campbell's
"The Moon is Hell".

Ring Around the Redhead John D. MacDonald

Believe it or not, this is the mystery writer (Travis McGee). They
weren't so rigid about categories back then, before the introduction of
computerized bookstore stocking.


Period Piece J. J. Coupling

"J. J. Coupling" was Bell Labs scientist John Robinson Pierce. His son,
J, J. Pierce got some notoriety in the sixties as an anti-New Wave activist,
and then helped ride _Galaxy_ down to its doom in the seventies.


544 Marion Zimmer Bradley Thendara House Hannah M.G. Shapero Sep-83

I missed this.

Another Darkover Free Amazons novel.

545 Colin Kapp The Search for the Sun! Vincent

Cageworld #1 and I think I read this. The sun is surrounded by
shell after shell, in an attempt to avoid both population control and
a malthusian crisis. Don't ask me about the plot, though.

Two super-agents and three regular folks set out on a spaceship to
travel between the shells to find out what the hell is going on. Much
hilarity ensues, for some values of hilarity.



546 Philip K. Dick Ubik

I missed this.

It starts out as a "war of psionicists", with cunning criminal mutants
being chased down by a government agency that can only get mentally retarded
or otherside defective ones. Sounds boring? Then it takes a totally
Dickian twist . . .

548 Tanith Lee Anackire

I missed this.

More of her heroic fantasy.



549 Richard Purtill The Mirror for Helen

And this.

Ancient Greek-setting heroic fantasy.
552 Charlotte Stone Cheon of Weltenland

I missed this.

Cheon is a woman warrior. She was raped, and in return the Goddess gave
her supreme beauty and skill with all weapons. (The back cover blurb had
her saying "That I may slay me as I will" which to me meant that she could
commit suicide with _ANYTHING).)

The review I read mentioned its thrilling wit and quoted a profoundly
lame section -- sadly, I think the reviewer wasn't being ironic.

This was "Volume One" but apparently there never was a Volume Two.

I was told that "Charlotte Stone" was Maxim Jakubowski, but also that
Maxim was the agent for the two anonymous women who actually wrote the
thing.


555 Clifford D. Simak Our Children's Children

I know I have read but I have forgotten it.

Time-travelers, the usual folksy Simak types. Somehow visitors from the
twenty fourth century who come across like Wisconsin rubes don't have much
credibility, but that's just me.

Joseph T Major


.

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