by Henry Leon Lazarus

My physician, who is also an author, joked that long novels are a substitute for incompetence when I showed him one of the long novels I was reviewing. I don't know about general fiction, but both fantasy and science fiction can increase the depth of their created worlds with additional pages, bringing greater clarity and intensity to their story. There is a problem, however, with greater detail. Flaws in world building, which can be waved away in shorter works, can become very obvious in these longer stories.

For example consider Tad Williams's latest opus. In a massive work he details completely a twenty first century in which virtual reality and the internet have combined to unite the world. However when a South African professor and her Bantu student are thrown into the computer-generated Overland (hard from DAW), they find themselves in an computer generated environment of multiple worlds from which they cannot disconnect. The first quarter of this very long tale takes them to the City of Golden Shadow and future volumes will eventually allow them an escape. I'm interested enough to continue, but bugged by their inability to disconnect which doesn't seem to fit the rest of their technology.

Mickey Zucker Reichert continues her enjoyable Renshai Chronicles with Prince of Demons (hard) meanders around with a story in which the teen age heroes grow up a bit, some having children and the stage is set for a final clash between law and chaos with only balance as true success. Lisanne Norman's long tale continues her tale of the human and cat person lovers by telling the secrets of the cataclysm that wrecked the Cat people's world fifteen hundred years before. The loving couple have to go through a ceremony called walking the Fire Margins (paper from DAW) which throws them back into that time. Start this series with Turning Point (paper).

A detective without memory of his past rises as a vampire and has to solve the murder of his wife and protect his daughter in S. A. Swittiarski's thriller Raven (paper). Other horror stories, based on H. P. Lovecraft, can be found in Miskatonic University (paper). Garth Nix shows how to world build in shorter form. In a world half early turn of the century and half death magic fantasy, Sabriel (hard from Harper Collins) has to cross the boundary to the magic half from which she was born, to rescue her father and save her worlds. I like the intensity of the monstrous creatures that come through the death levels as well as the well-designed magic opposing it. Dave Duncan has been building an odd variation of parallel world in which travelers to another world have magical powers they don't have in their own - eventually becoming gods. In our world these gods are responsible for World War I and on Next Door, D'ward from our world is prophesied to kill death. In Round 1 Past Imperative (paper from Avonova) he is sent to Next Door and discovers the prophesies. In Round 2, Present Tense(hard) he is dropped back naked into the trenches of that war and tells the tale of his survival on Next Door while being convinced to go back.

Nancy Springer views a Mall as in entrance to Fairy Land when an aging story teller finds a talking frog and her daughter kisses him to a prince in Fair Peril (hard). It's probably a little too cute, but I got through it with a smile. Sharon Green I regard as a guilty pleasure. She likes to tell the same story again and again, but she has such enjoyable characters that you don't care. In Convergence(paper) she has five people, with powers of earth, air, water, fire, and spirit, who will have to learn to work together to face their countries enemies.

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The rest of the Baen paperbacks are the type of humor I like - background funny to the readers but deadly serious to the characters. Holly Lisle and Walter Spence continue the tale of what happens after God sends devils to North Carolina with The Devil and Dan Cooley, a tale of a disk jockey who tries to reform one of the downsized devils wandering the streets. Margaret Ball continues the tale of a swordswoman come to our world to learn Mathemagics that she started in the collection Chicks in Chainmail. Add a magician come to our world with the ability to erase books, a reverend who wants certain books erased, and a science fiction convention and you have laugh-out-loud humor. David Drake has a collection of his humor in All the Way to the Gallows.

Louise Marley really knows how to Sing the Warmth(paper from ACE), as well as enjoyable characters you care about, on her frozen planet where summer only comes every five years. This time the issue of who to teach the cantors who bring warmth and health with their singing brings out the worst of the system. Roger MacBride Allen finishes his mystery tales set in Isaac Asimov's robot universe in Utopia (trade). This time Calaban, the no law robot, has to solve a kidnapping and rescue the victim before comets pieces hit the planet to dig canals. The space marines of the Commonwealth have to save the planet from the Federation who are lighting The Fires of Coventry (paper by Rick Shelley) to force the settlers into the wilderness. I found James I. Halperin's tale of the development of the ultimate lie detector, The Truth Machine (hard from Del Rey), impossible to put down in spite of the conservative politics that are more right winged than I believe in. Would you want a device to wear that would tell you if anyone talking to you is telling the truth? Would that solve all our problems? Barbara Hambley tortures the fantasy world she wrote her first trilogy in, in Mother and Winter (hard) by inventing an new menace aiming to warp the biology to a new basis. I personally think that worlds which have conquered their evil should have some time to recover.

It's time for gift books and young Star Trek fans will fall in love with These are the Voyages, a three dimensional Star Trek Album (hard from Pocket) but their parents may not appreciate the price. Teenage fans will love "Beam Me Up Scotty", James Doohan (Scotty)'s autobiography (trade), but the Star Trek Chronology (trade) has been a little mixed up by the recent Voyager episodes which sent the starship to current Earth when 1996 should be just after the Eugenics Wars in a parallel earth.

Roc has a collection, Intergalactic Mercenaries (paper) of classic sf war stories, a paperback of Dennis L. McKiernan's Caverns of Socrates, a solid adventure in a computer with the computer as evil, and The Physics of StarTrek (trade) by Lawrence M. Krauss which is everything you wanted to know about how the Enterprise really might work. Finally, horror fans will appreciate Stephen Jones collection, Mammoth Book of Best New Horror (trade from Carrol and Graf).

The Philadelphia Science Fiction Society meets monthly, with a guest speaker for each meeting. Guests are welcome to attend this, the second oldest science fiction club in the country.

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