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by Henry Leon Lazarus

Disasters are part of life. Whether personal, like the hard disk crash I just lived through; public, like what President Clinton is living with; or economic, like what Russia is going through, we all live through disasters and somehow find the courage to survive them. Fictional disasters can teach us how to handle ourselves during them, and also provide relief our disaster could always be worse. Science fiction and fantasy provide some real doozies of disasters. This month was filled with them.

Stephen Baxter, who has been showing how NASA has destroyed itself in previous novels, now has a real disaster (the most unlikely I've ever heard of) to force NASA to launch a new and desperate Apollo mission to the Moon. The problem is dust from moon rocks, or Moonseed (hard from HarperCollins) that contains alien nanotechnology from a starship that aeons ago hit the Earth and separated it from the Moon. In contact with earth this stuff starts dissolving the Earth and unlocking volcanos. Mr. Baxter provides very realistic views of this unlikely occurrence and interesting characters that keep you glued to the pages. His solution is not very likely, but also very interesting. In Wil McCarthy's Bloom (hard from Del Rey), the things that dissolve the Earth, Mars, and Venus are organic dust from the stars. Humanity, which now lives in colonies in the Asteroid Belt and around Jupiter send a desperate mission to the inner Solar System with new technology that can investigate this phenomena. Told by a reporter on the tiny ship, The crew faces not only physical dangers, but also opposition from humans who believe the bloom is really beneficial. I really like the way Mr. McCarthy developed his odd human civilizations living on the edge of this calamity.

Humanity has all but destroyed the Earth in World War III and is sending out starships looking for a new home. At the same time something is dissolving the universe and that something may be God. Michael Capobianco and William Barton take a crew of six raunchy humans on a trip to the heart of that White Light (trade from Avon Eos). I was reminded of a language test I took in the Army decades ago. The designers of the test made things weirder and weirder until I couldn't follow it anymore. If you can follow White Light to the end, you might find God. I got lost.

George Zebrowski believes that at some time we will send prisoners to the ultimate prison, in mined out asteroids sent on solar orbits that won't return until all the sentences are over. Brute Orbits (hard from HarperCollins) is told from the unsettling view of those prisoners. I wouldn't want to be them. Fred Saberhagen returns with a new Berserker novel in which an especially bright Berserker machine, Shiva in Steel (hard from Tor), attacks a secret military base. Mr. Saberhagen's heroes are odd-ball characters rather than dedicated military types. A smuggler, a charismatic would-be Napoleon, his dedicated followers, and a psychopath all provide the elements that can stop this unstoppable life destroyer.

I was awaiting eagerly for David Weber's Echoes of Honor (hard from Baen) because I really have enjoyed the series so far. The series, starting with On Basilisk Station (inexpensively reprinted for new readers) showed a courageous female Hornblower of the future, and the previous novel left Honor Harrington In Enemy Hands (paper). But in spite of Peep attacks on the rise and Honor trying to escape the hellish prison planet, the best I can call the book is routine. It is not up to the fun of the rest of the series. Article 23 (paper from Baen) is William R. Forstchen's law for treason which his space cadets face on a training flight with a mad captain like out of The Caine Mutiny. It was fun and exciting.

I really enjoy what Deborah Chester has done with the Alien Chronicle trilogy she is doing for Lucasfilms. The middle book, The Crimson Claw (paper from Ace), takes the golden Aaroun, Ampris, from gladiator to freedom from ruling reptile, the Viis. It is just as much fun as the first. Rick Shelly is one of the best tale teller of ground-pounders of the future. Lon Nolan, now Lieutenant (paper from Ace) in the Dirigent Mercenary Corps has an exciting time when one world in a system invades its richer neighbor. This was perfect for reading while waiting for my daughter to board her bus to Israel, exciting enough to keep interest, while not complicated enough to worry about details. Mike Resnick tells of The Widowmaker Unleashed (paper from Bantam Spectra) in which the real gunfighter now awoken healed has to find a safe place for himself in a galaxy filled with killers trying to cash in on his reputation.

Patricia A. McKillip is a lyrical writer so it makes sense that her latest is Song for a Basilisk (hard from Ace). It is about the only survivor of a ruling house, the evil head of the ruling house which supplanted it, and a mysterious musical magic. Margaret Weis and David Baldwin replace vampires with disciples of a immortal dragon in their tale of deadly killers in the night, Dark Heart (hard from Avon Eos) about the life of a swordsman who serves faithfully, but eventually has to confront his king who has slipped into evil.

I found the concept of a fighter allergic to magic interesting in Doranna Durgin's Wolf Justice (paper from Baen). Reandn has to protect a diplomat entering his country from her enemies. I always like fast action. Mercedes Lackey and her husband Larry Dixon have another tale of the village of Errold's Grove and another barbarian invasion. In Owlsight (hard from DAW) the barbarians are sick and Kiesha, who is learning to be a magical healer, has to figure out how to heal them. Andre Norton tells of a place where there is a Scent of Magic (hard from Avon Eos). Willidane, a herbalists apprentice with a true scent talent has to find the evil corrupting her kingdom so her princess can marry a prince.

I'm not sure I liked Brian Stableford's Inherit the Earth (hard from Tor) about big corporations blocking true immortality, but he does make interesting arguments for creating artificial plagues to sterilize most of humanity. I also have mixed feelings about Peter Delacorte's Time on My Hands (trade from Washington Square Press) about a writer sent from our time (with a time machine discovered in a museum of industry in Paris) to Hollywood in 1938 with a mission to stop Ronald Reagan from ever becoming President. I really enjoyed his depiction of the golden years of the movie studios and of the younger Ronald Reagan (who keeps getting himself killed) but I wish the book didn't need a sequel to wrap things up.

Elizabeth Hand's Last Summer at Mars Hill (trade from Ace); and Paul Di Filippo's Ribofunk (paper from Avon Eos) are all collected short works of the authors.

Other collections include Black Swan, White Raven (trade from Avon Eos) fairy tales selected by Ellen Datlow and Terri Wilding; Departures (paper from Del Rey), alternate history stories reprinted by Harry Turtledove; The Best of Crank (hard from Tor) by its editor, Bryan Cholfin; Sisters of the Night (paper from Aspect) original vampire tales selected by Barbara Hambly and Martin H. Greenberg; and the eighth in the Man-Kzin wars series, Chosing Names (paper from Baen).

Paperback reprints include Katharine Kerr's The Red Wyvern (paper from Bantam Spectra), the eighth in her reincarnation/Celtic series; William Shatner's In Alien Hands, the second about a boy with a secret in his DNA; Patricia Kennealy-Morrison's latest Celts in space novel, Black Mantle (paper from Avon Eos); Janny Wurts long continuation of her tale of two princes, Fugitive Prince (Ace); and a new trade paperback printing of Christopher Stasheff‘s The Warlock in Spite of Himself, a classic far better than any of the endless sequels.

The Philadelphia Science Fiction Society will have its October meeting on Friday the 9th at 8:00 p.m. at International House. Editors, Warren Lapine and Angela Kessler will speak. They are part of the team that edits and/or publishes alternate magazines like Absolute Magnitude and Weird Tales. Guests are welcome to attend this, the second oldest science fiction club in the country. Don't forget the annual convention at the Adam's Mark on November 13th. It is the oldest continuously running (except for one of the war years) science fiction convention and was started in 1936.