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by Henry Leon Lazarus

Science fiction writers create stories, just like those you can get from Hollywood, only with unlimited budget and freedom from committees. I've always been convinced that no one from Hollywood is sifting through the written field looking for potential movies, They'd rather copy from previous sf movies rather than do something different. The only original approaches come from a director or producer who is also a writer. Sure, some things written are impossible to produce, but there are some novels that would just be great on television or on the silver screen.

Maureen F. Mchugh's tale of a Mission Child (hard from Avon Eos) who has to set out on her own when outriders kill the adults and destroy her mission home, would make a dark, political movie with echoes of what is happening in Africa today. Taking place on a world that has fallen to barbarism and then been re- contacted by Earth – it somehow finds that place somewhere between primitive and the modern where real people live and allows the reader to connect. It will echo in my mind for a while. Kage Baker has the wildest time travel concept I've ever seen. Since it's impossible to take something forward from its own time, a group of immortals are created to shepherd lost items, like books, plants, ceremonial objects, and other things, through time. In the Garden of Iden (paper from Avon Eos) tells the tale of a new immortal in pre-Elizabethan England who has a love affair with a mortal determined to reform that Catholic leaning country.

I had fun over Halloween weekend rereading Laurell K. Hamilton's previous Anita Blake adventures. Anita lives in a parallel world to ours where Vampires own nightclubs. She raises the dead for a living and is the licensed Vampire Executioner for a three state area around St. Louis. In Blue Moon, she goes to a small town in Tennessee where Richard, her werewolf boyfriend, has been framed for rape. There she finds a rich developer corrupting the town in order to access to land where a federally protected species of Trolls live. In addition she has to intervene between the local vampires and the local werewolves. Steven Brust's latest tale of Vlad Taltos, human assassin in a magical world, has Vlad serving in a Dragon (hard from Tor) clan army that is fighting over a stolen sword. In the usual fun excitement, Vlad manages to retrieve the sword and kill the other commander. Both series would be prime candidates for the movies or television.

I got two new writers with very fresh, and original approaches to overused themes this month, and, although they are complete in themselves, I already eagerly waiting for sequels. Mark Anthony's Beyond the Pale (trade from Bantam Spectra) takes two people from our world into a fantasy world. However, he makes it work by having the evil, practically unkillable men with iron hearts (literally) show up first in the emergency room where Grace is an intern. It also helps that most of the action takes place in a castle where the problem is locating more of these corrupted people. I like the way Grace and Tom adapt to the magic talents they have and at the same time take their time adapting to using them. Kristen Britain tells of a young woman suspended from school and heading home on her own who tells a dying messenger, a Green Rider (hard From DAW) that she'll carry his message to the king. It turns out to be a near impossible, and very exciting task. I liked the capriciousness of the magic in this mediaeval fantasy and the way Karigan grows to maturity because of the conflicts she faces.

James White has been writing about a giant hospital in space, Sector General, for forty years, unlike the forty days that a certain recent attempt at television lasted. In Mind Changer (hard from Tor) he tells how the chief psychologist, O'Mara faces his coming retirement, We, the reader learn all about the problems he faced in the hospital's initial years and what he has been doing with his vacations all that time. On Tery Pratchett's Disc World, someone has killed the Hogfather (hard from Harper Prism) and Death has taken his place on Hogwatchnight delivering all the toys for the good little boys and girls. With the help of his grand daughter, who works as a nanny, and the god of Hangovers the assassins are found and stopped. Terry Pratchett writes British humor like Monty Python with a plot. This latest is as addicting as the other twenty, and a great read when you've overdosed on Christmas.

Esme who was Once a Hero (paper from Baen) is back in Elizabeth Moon's Rules of Engagement (hard) a bit of light fun that has her friend captured by the enemy (who like the women naked and mute) and herself blamed. Of course senior aunts help sort out the mess. Mickey Zucker Reichert and Jennifer Wingert tell a tale of two cultures coming into conflict – each with different versions of magic. One of the characters has to also deal with her spirit mixed with a Spirit Fox (hard from Bantam Spectra) which turns her into a fox every so often. However I was amazed to find that a good talking can end a war in the making, even if each has beliefs diametrically opposed to the other.

Finally Ray Bradbury lovers with children will want Ahmed and the Oblivion Machines (hard from Avon) a fable about a buried God and a boy lost in the desert.

Speaking of Hollywood, you might need The SCI-FI Channel Encyclopedia of TV Science Fiction (trade from Aspect and collected by Roger Fulton and John Betancourt) which is complete enough to include my favorite show, Captain Nice. Look also for Jeanne Cavelos's The Science of the X-files (trade from Berkley), a contradiction in terms, and Lawrence M. Krauss's Beyond Star Trek (trade from HarperPerennial) for scientific explanation of your favorite shows.

Star Trek lovers will like Pocket's Christmas releases. There's Terry J. Erdmann's Action! (hard from Pocket) which tells the full details of filming two minutes from scripts of three episodes. There's also a Deep Space 9 Technical Manual (trade), the trade reprint of last year's hard cover, Star Trek the next Generation The Continuing Mission, and a little stocking stuffer, The Tribble Handbook (trade written by Terry J. Erdmann).

The collection to look for is Gahan Wilson's The Cleft and other Stories (hard from Tor) a collection of some of his very unusual stories. The rests of the collections are all in paper. Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois have found older stories about Nanotech (Ace); Peter Haining has a collection of classic Flying Sorcerers (Ace); Ben Bova found a bunch of Dangerous Vegetables (Baen), avoid the killer tomatoes; Brian Thomsen and Martin H. Greenberg got writers to write about Mob Magic (Bantam Spectra); and the paperback of the first half of Peter S. Beagle's immortal Unicorn (Harper Prism) stories.

The reprint for collectors is The Complete Fuzzy (trade from Ace) all three of H. Beam Piper's classic fuzzy novels. The paperback reprints include: Neil Gaiman's fantastic side of London, Neverwhere (Avon); Ben Bova's fun tale of a small colony fighting marines from Earth, Moon War (Avon Eos); N. Lee Wood's adventure in a future Earth where the magnetic Poles have shifted, Faraday's Orphans (Ace); and Mercedes Lackey's fourth bardic voices novel, Four and Twenty Blackbirds (Baen).

The Philadelphia Science Fiction Society will have its December meeting on Friday the 11th at 8:00 p.m. at International House. Artist Stephen Youll will speak. Guests are welcome to attend this, the second oldest science fiction club in the country. Set your calendars to 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.