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by Henry Leon Lazarus

Ah August! Lazy, hot, and muggy days that invite reading. On my days off I go ice skating in cool rinks, and then relax in air-conditioned comfort with a good book. I've got some great ones to tell you about this month.

The best book I've read so far this year is Sean McMullen's Souls in the Great Machine (hard from Tor). Civilization is beginning again in Australia, two millennia after the collapse of civilization. Steam power is immoral and electricity impossible. Society is burdened with the call, a lure that sends people and animals mindlessly south (they use timed anchors to stop themselves, until the call passes). The head librarian creates a computer with people as ADDERS, FUNCTIONS, and PORTS. I love the way Mr. McMullen stingily gives off the rationale for these strange elements. I also like the duel-based society he has created, along with the wind and muscle powered trains in which passengers can earn their fare by helping pumping. The novel is about two strong women involved with stopping a future calamity, and also about the war they cause. You won't believe the battle computer that is one hundred men strong, who can also join the fighting if necessary.

Walter Jon Williams takes a modern Huckleberry Finn down a Mississippi in turmoil from The Rift (hard from HarperCollins), a series of earthquakes from the New Madrid fault. This creates a toxic mess of survival problems for the ex-Californian boy and an out-of-work weapons engineer who delivering a gift to his daughter. The worst communities they face are a religious bunch believing the end of the world has come, and a KKK death camp. Add in the nuclear engineer trying to get the nuclear waste away from his plant, and the gung ho General from the Army corps of Engineers, and you get one great disaster novel that could happen any day now.

Marc Matz resurrects one of my favorite heroes, Travis McGee, and puts him fifty years from now in the middle of a politically-involved kidnapping in Nocturne for a Dangerous Man (hard from Tor). Gavilon Robie is an art recoverer who recovers people on the side, usually for free. This time he may have bitten off more than he could chew in the convoluted African development of the future. I await eagerly his next adventure.

There are three novels this month I consider keepers because I have read these authors works twice and expect to do the same with these. I waited five years for Amy Thomson to bring her Tendu to Earth. These aliens, discovered in The Color of Distance (Paper from Ace) are first met with fear and, when word of their healing ability, greed in our future world as seen Through Alien Eyes (Trade) that is recovering from our present excesses. Powerful mage Dion travels to Aramaya (trade from Avon Eos), the heart of her civilization. Her niece might be there and she just got divorced. Of course there's adventure and love in this third of the series. L.E. Modesitt, Jr. looks at the power of technology in Gravity Dreams (hard from Tor). He follows the adventures of a school teacher from one of the societies that had rejected nano-technology. Infected with the stuff he runs to the more powerful users, and then finds an even more powerful society that needs his help. I like the stability of Mr. Modesitt's societies, and his interesting look at the purposes of technology.

There are four books this month that start in our time and then verge off in very interesting ways. Steven Kane has the most intense; a tale of a girl with strong telekenic powers, a Teek (paper from DAW) who's on the run from a government agency that essentially bred her, and now wants to collect her. Predictable, but impossible to put down. Our favorite reporter from the Global Query tabloid, Savvy McKinnon, is sent to interview one of the Vampires of Vermont (paper from Ace) in her third adventure. Another government agency is the problem here (those pesky agencies) and are the reason for the strange pasty colored people who fear the sun. Jane Lindskold has finished up the last Roger Zelazny novel we'll ever see. Lord Demon (hard from Avon Eos) likes to eat pizza, after finishing one of his special bottles that other demons live in when they aren't on the demon plane. When his human helper is killed at the pizza shop, the powerful being goes after his murderer and finds that the plotters want to steal his magic. The book gets a bit silly, especially the sock universe, but scatters idea's the way we came to expect from Mr. Zelazny. Then there is Lisa Goldstein who envisions Dark Cities Underground (hard from Tor), in which subways systems all have odd connections to myth A man who had gone underground as a boy and the woman who wants to write about him, get entangled into the myth and madness below. I personally thought that Ms. Goldstein mixed in too many myths for the tale, but I enjoyed it none the less.

For alien worlds you can't beat Robert Silverberg's giant planet of Majipoor. When Lord Prestimion (hard from HarperPrism decided to have the Sorcerers of Majipoor (paper) erase people's memories of the civil war, he didn't know it would lead to madness; a growing madness that only numerous tours of Majipoor's wonders could correct. Deborah Chester ends her tale of the golden one, Ampris by having her lead her enslaved people to a promised world. With the help of The Crystal Eye (paper from Ace). The various aliens were invented by Lucasfilm but Ms. Chester has given them life. I just wish she hadn't borrowed so much from Exodus for her plot.

Two light reads. Ian Douglas has the UN and the US still fighting in space over alien artifacts. In Luna Marine (paper from Avon Eos) the action shifts from Mars, closer to home. Very pro-marine, cause they're the only ones who can get the job done. Acorna's People (hard from HarperPrism) are in trouble from people who want their magical horn and only the unicorn girl's friends can helper. Elizabeth Ann Scarborough helps Anne McCaffrey in this third adventure meant for juveniles.

Finally, a guilty pleasure. Sharon Green likes evil villains who defeat themselves, heroes who bicker romantically and then make up in the end, and generic backgrounds. Her blending of three couples now meets the bad guys in the predicted Prophecy (paper from Avon Eos), the fifth and final of this series. I can sneer at her writing, but the fact remains that I look forward to her books, and devour them in a day.

Star Wars fans have The Making of Episode 1 (trade from Lucas Books) to drool over. My patients will probably thumb well through its pictures, and it is filled with details for future movie-makers

David G. Hartwell (one of Science Fiction's best editors) and Damien Broderick have put together Centaurus, the Best Book of Australian Science Fiction (hard from Tor) in honor of the World Science Fiction Convention in Melbourne this year. Peter Haining has collected stories that inspired films in Vintage Science Fiction (trade from Carroll and Graf). Terri Windling and Delia Sherman have collected The Essential Border Town (trade from Tor) with new stories from the shared universe. David Hartwell has selected the Year's Best SF 4 (paper from HarperPrism) which he says he had too many good choices to pick from out of last years writing. Finally Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois have a bunch of classic Future War (paper from Ace) stories.

One-volume collections of series in trade paper are becoming popular. I was glad to see these three, because my paperback were getting quite dog eared. Steve Brust has the first three adventures of Vlad Taltos in The Book of Jhereg (Ace); L. E. Modesitt's Jr.'s The Forever Hero (Tor) trilogy about an immortal of the future trying to rebuild earth from its ruins; and Charles de Lint's favorite tales about Jack, Jack of Kinrowan (Orb) which take place in our time but are based on Jack the Giant Killer.

Paperback reprints include the must-read, Antartica by Kim Stanley Robinson (Bantam) that gives a solid look about the frozen continent and the politics of the future; Eric S. Nylund's excellent and fun Signal to Noise (Avon Eos) about an internet trader who bits off more than he can chew when he bargains with aliens; Martha Well's exciting Death of the Necromancer (Avon Eos) which was nominated for a Nebula; then there's Margaret Weis and David Baldwin's Dark Heart (HarperPrism) about vampiric dragons killing in the city; and finally there's the last unicorn girl adventure by Ann McCaffrey and Margaret Ball, Acorna's Quest.

The Philadelphia Science Fiction Society will have its August meeting on Friday the 13th at 8:00 p.m. at International House. Psychiatrist Mark Fabi, whose first novel was a fun look at the ultimate y2k virus, will speak. Guests are welcome to attend this, the second oldest science fiction club in the country. Set your calendars 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.