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by Henry Leon Lazarus

I give up! I'm overwhelmed. Most months there are only a few books per publisher to evaluate for this column. What with reprints, collections, and media literature, I had time to evaluate all the original novels that I got, reporting on the ones worth reading. This month was impossible. Even though I know that many of the twenty unread books on my shelf will prove unworthy of this column, I still will have to attempt reading them. Alas, I ran out of time.

Neal Stephenson's nine hundred page behemoth, Cryptonomicon (hard from Avon) was the stopper. It took me a full week, and to fully probe it's depths, it would have taken me a year. Mr. Stephanson looks at encryption technology both in World War II where math geniuses broken the German Enigma code, and in the present where the grandchildren of the war characters are attempting to set up an encrypted data bank with access to the web. Most comparable to Joseph Heller's Catch 22, Mr. Stephenson takes his characters from the depths of the ocean in a U Boat, to a first class seat in the upper sky in a luxury jet liner. At its heart, Cryptonomicon may be about an unsolved German code revealing a trove of hidden Japanese and German gold in the Philippines, but the observations of life that Mr. Stephenson throws out on practically every page are both extremely funny and absolutely true. Octogenarian Jack Williamson also attempts to look at web culture and an America warped by the mix of television and web he calls the infotel. New technology such as an unbreakable barrier stretch a small Kentucky county to the limits in the madhouse caused by this Silicon Dagger (hard from Tor) of unlimited information, with militia nuts and pure freedom lovers mixing it up and taking the county to the edge of chaos.

I realize that, even in the future, the Secretary General of the UN wouldn't be involved in taking over a Starship that the space Navy is using to threaten Earth, to stop his policies on ecology. However Patriarch's Hope (hard from Aspect), David Feintuch's latest tale of Nicholas Seafort, kept me up to midnight with such a plot and actually made it make sense. Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens also kept me at the edge of my seat with a die hard plot set at the Pentagon, of all places in Quick Silver (hard from Pocket), the laser satellite weapon, that is at the heart of it, is right out of movie sf, but because of the gutsy women fighters, my heart was pounding as the pages flipped past.

My daughter liked both fairy tales this month. The better one, Orson Scott Card's Enchantment (hard from Del Rey) posits sleeping beauty on a land island in the Ukraine that connects the present to her age, the ninth century. Her prince in an Americanized Russian Jew and the wicked witch is Baba Yaga. Traversing the ages is the ultimate culture shock that both the lovers and the witch face, and put a new face on these very different ages. Swan Lake has never been done more heart-fully than Mercedes Lackey's The Black Swan (hard from DAW). The background might be generic, but the characters are involving and keep this tale of maidens transformed into swans moving and fun.

When she was out of her books, my daughter dragged me to the library where I saw the missing Nebula nominee, Martha Well's The Death of the Necromancer (hard from Avon). Using a modified Victorian background, the tale is about Nicholas, a young aristocrat who has turned thief in an effort to get revenge on the man who framed his patron and caused him to be executed. However his machinations bring him into contact with sorcery and soon he is fighting an evil necromancer who may have risen from the dead. Ms. Wells work reminds me of Rafael Sabatini (Captain Blood) and is taut and spine tingling. Glen Cook has another tale of his private detective in a fantasy world, Garrett, in Faded Steel Heat (paper from Roc). I love these adventures. This time Garrett his dead partner has moved out and he is facing shape changers and humanity first militias as he tries to protect his friends in the brewery. Fun. S. Andrew Swann has a new tale of his half tiger detective in Fearful Symmetries (paper from DAW) a non-stop-actioner with pulse pounding excitement that brings Rajasthan out of retirement to help find his unknown and new missing son. He is shot at every few minutes, framed for murder, and facing people who won't stop trying to kill him.

Sharon Shinn has an odd love story about an expert detective, brought to a planet foreign to him, to solve the reason that nuns are being killed. Wrapt in Crystal (trade from Ace) is a quiet tale in which the secular detective has to understand the differing religious sects, that worship the same goddess, to discover the killer while he is falling in love with one of the suspects. Don DeBrandt has a second in his myth mixing futures. In this one the characters from Steeldriver (paper) find themselves on a planet where Paul Banyon is the union head for a bunch of Timberjack (paper from Ace)s. I like the fact that even though Mr. Debrandt included such elements as a Bob, the blue ox, he lets the story happen without letting the tall tales overwhelm the story. I also like the solid sense of wonder that kept me gobbling pages. Hopefully there'll be more of these. Diana Wynne Jones has a lot of fun with real magic at a British Fantasy Convention, including dueling mages, in Deep Secret (hard from Tor). The plot originates in an alternate universe and has to do with replacing a slain emperor. It is a mind blowing convention and I wish I could have been there.

I'm anti war right now, so the idea that the Nantuckians who were sent back in time to the bronze age (it's a sequel to Island in the Sea of Time (paper)) are setting up to have a world war with the eighteenth century technology (and the oddest guns that S. M. Stirling could find). The history in Against the Tide of Years (paper from Roc) is done well, but I wish the characters were trying to solve the puzzle of how they got there, rather than raising the technological level around them to wage better war. James P. Hogan has the latest of the Jupiter series about young men and women taken from unusable earth schools and trained to work in space. Outward Bound (hard from Tor) tells the tale of Linc from an enforcer for the gangs to engineer trainee in space. The political assumptions here are not ones I totally agree with. Chris Bunch has a new series about The Last Legion (paper from Roc) in a star empire that is falling apart and the legion is cut off from the rest of the empire and has to survive through is fighting strength. Light fun, but the characters win too easily.

Finally a book so bad, I have to point it out. Louise Marley is a good writer but she is extremely, but her current book passes the bounds of gender wars. In a gender separated culture on a colony planet where the men work the mines and the women raise the children while locked in purdah, only women treat illnesses. One medicant starts getting justice using her medical knowledge to start The Terrorists of Irustan (Trade from Ace). This is a horrible concept, and to me a health care provider, ethically challenged. Avoid it..

William Shatner has collected interesting stuff about the people who go to Star Trek Conventions in Get a Life (hard from Pocket and written with Chris Kreski) that is a lot of fun for convention goers, who probably will want to collect the latest Star Wars tale, Rebel Agent (trade from Dark Horse Comics), a novelette enriched with twenty-three graphic pictures.

Far Horizons (hard from Avon) edited by Robert Silverberg has tales from major writers that take place in their major series. Chicks'n Chained Males (paper from Baen and named in protest from the editor Esther Friesner) is the third in the fun and popular tales of sword wielding women. The other new collections are Prom Night (paper from DAW and edited by Nancy Springer) and Sword and Sorceress, XVI (paper from DAW and edited by Marion Zimmer Bradley).

Three of Jenny Wurts's early fantasy novels have been reprinted as Cycle of Fire (Trade from HarperPrism), a bargain. The paperback reprints this months include: David Brin's somewhat disappointing finale to his Uplift trilogy, Heaven's Reach (Bantam Spectra); Mickey Zucker Reichert's finale to her Renshai trilogy, The Children of Wrath(DAW) which was also disappointing; Sharon Shinn's third book about her Angels on a world discovering technology, The Alleluia Files (Ace); Greg Bear's part of the new Foundation Series, Foundation and Chaos (HarperPrism); and Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens spy chase about the blowing up the south pole, Ice Fire (Pocket).

The Philadelphia Science Fiction Society will have its June meeting on Friday the 11th at 8:00 p.m. at International House. Allan Steele, a writer known for his tales of orbital hippies, will speak Guests are welcome to attend this, the second oldest science fiction club in the country. Set your calendars to August 30 to September 3, 2001 when the World Science Fiction comes to Philadelphia for the first time in fifty years. It was invented here in 1936.