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| Science Fiction for July 1997
Sometimes I think that in fantasy and science fiction, background should be considered a character. Where would Alice be without Wonderland, or Dorothy without Oz? Both modern girls, they found themselves in dream worlds almost by accident. Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere (hard from Avon) is a darker and more adult version using a fantasy underworld of London (marvelously ingenious but with lots of in jokes) filled with people and things lost and forgotten in the real city. Richard Mahew helps a girl named Door and finds himself lost to the real world, and ending up helping Door on her quest to find her parent's murderers. Laurel K. Hamilton doesn't take Amanda Blake to a fantasy world, her real world is ours if vampires, werewolves, and other monsters actually exist and teach schools or own night clubs. In the Killing Dance (paper from Ace) Amanda has to fend off hired assassins while deciding between two boy friends, the vampire or the werewolf. This is a great action series. Marina Fitch twists the real world to include elemental presences from the four elements. It seems they aren't getting along and the small California town that Gillian lives in has been effected by drought, earthquakes, storm, mud slides, etc. and needs her, a speech therapist, to get them working together. This was well written, but strained my sense of belief. S. Andrew Swann splits reality schizophrenically as four parallel world versions of Richard Brandon play with God's Dice (paper from DAW) and find themselves in a fantasy world trying to find four relics while another version of themselves is in a coma. Even now, writing the review, I'm not sure which reality was supposed to be the correct one. Backgrounds can take real history and mix magic in them as Marion Zimmer Bradley did with her three tales of the Lady of Avalon (hard from Viking), taking the history of the island of the mists from Roman times to the time of King Arthur. I found the tales wistful, but with solid characters. Backgrounds can be also developed from real history like the alternate Byzantine empire that Harry Turtledove uses for his Videssos series. The latest details the battles taking place in The Thousand Cities (paper from Del Rey) as two empires vie. Book four will probably complete this part of The Time of Troubles. The fall of civilization is a favorite ground in hard science fiction. Chris Atack shows an attempt to keep countries from tearing themselves apart by using a supercomputer and trends analysis in Project Maldon (paper from Baen). I was fascinated by the political machinations in spite of the fact I could see the ending. N. Lee Wood tells of the return of civilization after the magnetic pole switch of the earth left most survivors avoiding the hard radiation in domes. Now that the magnetic field is coming back, a helicopter pilot has to make it on foot from the ruins of Philadelphia to the Pitsburgh Dome on foot in Faraday's Orphans (Trade from Ace). The background he travels and the barbarian strangers are fascinating and fit the recovering background. The far future can be fascinating in different ways. Paul Cook puts prisoners on a closed solar mining platform, a Fortress on the Sun (paper from ROC). Robbed of their memory of their crimes, they've managed to be exemplary citizens until new prisoners bring disease and discord into their midst. Then they discover that all is not what they thought. The solution to the puzzle is overblown, however, and I don't think it really fits.
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 I've
always liked psionic tales and William Esrac's Dance to the Sun
(paper from Baen) fills the bill. The
rise of people with powers brought abuse by some so Saulus lives in a commune
living by trafficking in illegal goods to avoid the controls their powers
would bring. Nobody has reckoned with his ability to not only heal, but
also genetic engineer, and reshape people.
Of course, the first super hero was Tarzan and lovers of Edgar Rice Burroughs works will be glad to learn that Joe R. Lansdale has done a creditable job in bringing the lost manuscript up to publishable form in The Lost Adventure (paper from Del Rey) which has all the elements of a typical Tarzan adventure including a lost city and crazy monsters. Finally, two novels to be avoided by those old enough to have adult or teenage children. The better of the two is the second Cloak and Dagger tale by Anne Lesley Groell, Bridge of Valor (paper from ROC) and happily the series is getting better. The two teenage sleuths are on their first assignment an assignment to stop a mage who is haunting a castle. Even her aunt agrees that Jen and Thibault should have solved the mystery in three days rather than floundering around for six weeks, but it is fun. Not as much fun is David Feintuch's The Still (trade from Aspect). Though quite readable and exciting at time, and more accurate than most at depicting the Age of Chivalry with all its complications, this tale of a teen age prince trying for his kingship after his mother's death suffers both from the prince's obnoxious behavior and from the explorations of male sexuality and homosexuality (luckily in only a few scenes) that were embarrassing to me.. Media fans will want to try the hugo award winning novelist, Terry Bisson's novelization of The Fifth Element (paper from Harper Prism). Leonard Nimoy and John de Lancie star in audio versions of Jules Vernes' Journey to the Center of the Earth, and H. G. Wells' The Time Machine (Audio cassettes from Simon and Schuster).
The Philadelphia Science Fiction Society will have its July meeting on Friday the 18th at 8:00 p.m. at International House. The annual Hugo predictions panel will give their opinions on the nominations. Hugo award novels this year are (all out in paper): Blue Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson (Bantam Spectra), Holy Fire by Bruce Sterling (Bantam Spectra), Memory by Lois McMaster Bujold (Baen), Remnant Population by Elizabeth Moon (Baen), and Starplex by Robert J. Sawyer (Ace). Guests are welcome to attend this, the second oldest science fiction club in the country.
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I
don't know what to think about Peter F. Hamilton's tale of the Emergence
(paper from 
The
best collection of the month has to be Black Swan, White Raven (ed's
Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling hard from 
Paperback
reprints are: David Weber's Honor Among Enemies (