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by Henry Leon Lazarus

I have to apologize this month. I am only reporting on a few new novels. The problem was that too many of those that arrived, hit the wall before being finished. However, like cream rising to the crop, the few that remain are so good, I expect a number of them will become award nominees.

James Michener would have done Antarctica (hard from Bantam) as a historical, putting fake characters on Scott's and Admundsen's famous expeditions, Kim Stanley Robinson puts the tale of Earth's harshest continent in the near future when the treaties are running out. He has high tech tourists being guided over some of those routes, eco-terrorists, and even a Senator's aide investigating the continent. Mr. Robinson visited there a few years ago, and his love of this frigid place and the small community living there comes through. This is a book to lend to non-science fiction readers in the hope they will follow this to his award winning Mars series.

For sheer cold, of course, you can't beat suspended animation. Sean McMullen imagines that suspended animation is simple enough that the Etruscans could have invented it and were the real power behind the Roman Empire. Some of their drug was stolen and a Roman manages to sleep to the near future. Stopping at the eighth century to help Alfred the Great, and the fourteenth to find a new resting place he finds that the English village set to watch over him as created The Centurion's Empire (hard from Tor), an economic powerhouse that he is the key to controlling. This prompts a hunt for him through a future with mind-bending tools, deadlier than anything he has faced before.

The most original fantasy I've come across in quite a while is The Runelords (hard from Tor). In David Farland's world, a man with the sight of three is caring for two blind men who have given him their sight through runes. The best scene is where two enhanced metabolic warriors fight, each moving twenty times faster than their environment. Not as original, but still fun is Kate Forsyth's tale of the Witches of Eileanan (paper from Roc). In this first of a trilogy, Ms. Forsyth borrows heavily, and enjoyably, from fairy tales, telling of an evil queen who has banished all the good witches, destroyed their towers, and ensorsled the King. The heroines are twin red heads who have never met. Ms. Forsyth makes you care about her characters. I am eager for the next volume.

In Six Moon Dance (hard from Eos), her best novel yet, Sheri S. Tepper tells of a human settlement on a volcanic planet, a Questioner, a bionic construct with three brains who decides the fate of worlds, and a collection of very odd aliens. Ms. Tepper has a very odd voice that I have come to enjoy a lot. Her musings on the differences between the genders make sense and add to the enjoyment. I also enjoyed the second quarter of Tad Williams's Otherland. River of Blue Fire (hard from DAW) takes the characters from our near future deeper into this virtual world from which they cannot escape (their bodies asleep in the real world). They are finding ways to control their environment as it comes closer to crashing and killing them with it. When finished, this promises to be a major work but I wouldn't start it unless I was prepared to live the six years till the final volume appears.

David Drake, in his best and most fun novel ever, With the Lightnings (hard from Baen) leaves a naval lieutenant and a librarian to fight their enemy's empire, when the baddies try to take over the capitol world of a neutral trading empire. I especially liked the pocket sized rail gun (remember the weapons from the movie Eraser). I'd love to see a sequel.

Jerry Jay Carrol tackles aliens, Inhuman Beings (trade from Ace) trying take over the world with a retired cop, private detective on the beat. It's fun, over the top, and very exciting. I read it in one sitting. Sean Russell concludes his tale of the end of magic in The Compass of the Soul (hard from DAW). I think he is writing a trilogy of duologies backward, and I was glad to see some magic finally employed. A lot of things from his Moon Tide and Magic Rise (two paper backs from DAW) are finally explained.

I missed the hardcover of Joel Rosenberg's The Silver Stone (paper from Avon) which takes the hero's from our world back through the gates into a fantasy world where they go on a mission for Odin to stop a war. Nothing is what it seems and the ending was quite surprising. Even though I'm quite tired of people from our world going into fantasy ones, Joel makes the concept work again.

Collections include: Fred Saberhagen's early tales of his Berserkers, Berserkers: Beginning (paper from Baen); David Drake's Hammer's Slammers tales, Caught in the Crossfire (paper from Baen); The Immortals, classic tales collected by Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois (paper from Ace); Camelot Fantastic, new stories edited by Lawrence Schimel and Martin Henry Greenberg (paper from DAW); and Tad Williams's Mirror World (hard from HarperPrism), stories based a world he created.

Paperback reprints include: Dan Simmon's excellant conclusion of his award winning series, The Rise of Endymion (Bantam Spectra); Neil Gaiman's odd walk through a fantastic side of London, Neverwhere (Avon); James Herbert's near horror tale of an alternate past, a plague emptied London in '48 (HarperPrism); and C. J. Cherryh's tale of war's end in the far future and the trading ship Finity's End (DAW) making the first trading voyage.

The Philadelphia Science Fiction Society will have its August meeting on Friday the 14th at 8:00 p.m. at International House. There will be a speaker. Guests are welcome to attend this, the second oldest science fiction club in the country.