A Year-end Review for 1997 
by Henry Lazarus 

Every year I put myself through it. I go back through the columns and cut and paste this summary of the past year. I mull over each book, leaving some on the cutting floor and raising the rating of others. This year I broke the group into three parts. I would be very disappointed if next year's award nominations don't come from the first (the Best) listing. Since I don't see every book that comes out, you, the reader of this column, might find some missed novels. For this I am sorry – I tried. For those saving their money, there should be plenty here to pester a local book seller to get. I don't think you could go wrong with any of these selections.  It was an excellent year. Enjoy!

By the way, there is no order to these selections (aside from the best/good/fun). I did put sequels together, but other than that pulled the books from the columns in date order. I tried to think about ordering the best selection group and gave up. This is the first year I will vote on the Hugo's and I find it difficult even to differentiate the quality in this larger group. They're all too good. 

The Best 

Stephen Baxter looks at what might have been if the decision had been for NASA to go for a Mars landing instead of building the space shuttle.  There is no question that Mr. Baxter has it right in Voyage (paper from HarperPrism).  He walks the walk and talks the talk of space engineering and also creates interesting characters to keep the reader glued to the page.  Where were you in 1986 when pictures of Natalie York's walk on Mars were broadcast? 

Then we have the continuation of Walter Jon Williams's hard fantasy of a world totally citified in which magic flows out of buildings and is piped around. Aiah used to work for Plasm Authority until she found a load of undiscovered plasm and gave it to her Metropolitan (paper and which I've read twice) for his revolution. Now she has followed him to this City on Fire (paper from HarperPrism) where she rises in the revolutionary atmosphere and grows strong in the angry current between revolutionary and anti-revolutionary forces. She also gets a glimpse through the shield covering the earth. 

Paul Witcover's alien background in Walking Beauty (hard from HarperPrism) is very odd. The inhabitants of this unusual world live in fear of losing their men to the scent of beauty that comes at night that the women watch their mates all tied down. Around them the fire flies light the night and a catholic like church runs the world.  In the end, when all the answers were given to the puzzles of this strange environment,  I was left with the feeling of having visited a strange place that I could never fully understand. This should be an award nominee. 

Then there's Sarah Zettel's tremendous, Fools War (paper from Aspect). In a future where computer programs keep people alive in their star ships and stations, artificial intelligences gone awry can kill.  When  the crew of the Pasadena unknowingly transports a bad Artificial Intelligence, it starts them on a trip through settled space to the dark secrets that lie beneath. I especially liked the real feel of Ms. Zettel's odd societies from the actual Muslim to the imaginary Freer (who refuse to land on planets) and Fool (too odd to explain here) societies. I think this is a potential award nominee. 

The oddest, and maybe best of the year is Donnerjack, (hard from Avon) started by the late Roger Zelazny and completed by Jane Lindskold. Mr. Zelazny visualized a link between the virtual world of the world net and the mystical ethos that were connected during a crash of that net.  When the ancient gods attempt to invade our reality only the child of a virtual woman and a real man, along with Death, can oppose them. I defy anyone to tell whether this is Sf or fantasy. Next lull, I'll be rereading this. 

In the perfect conclusion to Dan Simmons' award winning Hyperion (paper) series, Endymion Rising (hard from Bantam Spectra) looks at the conflict between the authoritarian Catholic church that gives physical resurrection and a virus carried in the young Aenae's blood that allows one access to the region of space-time where memories of the dead are found. It is both a love story and a retelling of the Christ story, but I found it very well done. 

Robert Silverberg returns to his beloved giant planet, telling of a historical time when a usurpation of the Coronal's crown led to civil war and involved the intervention of the various Sorcerers of Majipoor (hard from HarperPrism) whose magic is both real and lost technology.  As usual the master keeps boring politics fascinating. 

After war, peace has to be won.  The ship that started the war that C. J. Cherryh told about in Downbelow Station (paper), is the only ship that can win the peace.  The family-crewed, Finity's Edge (hard from Warner Aspect) has some problems including possible pirates, a crew used to war and unadapted to trading, and a cousin brought unwilling aboard who had been raised on Pell Station. This one of her best. 

The torture of being captured is nothing to the horror Auschwitz in1943. In Days of Cain (hard from Avon), J. R. Dunn considers the ethical conflict that a time patrol faces trying to stop renegades who want to rescue the inmates. This was very difficult for me to get through and gave me nightmares, but it is very well done. 

Felicity Savage envisions a whole society based on the work of captured daemons, caught like hamsters in a wheeled cage and used to drive the technology.  In Ever she introduces us to Crispin, her black, circus-bred daemon handler who in the first part of the trilogy meets his true love and then finds himself separated from her and fighting in The War in the Waste (Trade from HarperPrism) as a pilot in a daemon-propelled plane. Two empires are fighting for the right to capture the daemons who grow in this waste. This is an absorbing tale with a unique technology of magic. I really loved it. In the second part, The Daemon in the Machine (trade from Harper Prism) Chrispin and his friend Micky escape the war in the waste, now going badly for the Ferupian forces, and find Micky's family in the Significant Kingdom, killing the daemon that drives their plane to get there.  After escaping the fire that engulfs the city, Chrispin goes to his ancestral home of Lamaroon where the increasing growth of daemons are effecting everything. Felicity Savage takes a different approach for her excellent trilogy, Ever. It can be considered a historical novel set against an imaginary history. I am in awe at what she has accomplished in this series, and can't wait for the conclusion. 

Time was when a science fiction writer could occasionally write something that would never go out of print.  Walter M. Miller lived off the royalties from one such book that still hasn't gone out of print.  After his recent death a manuscript to a novel that fit in to that series was discovered and finished by another writer, Terry Bisson, who has been quoted as saying that he made very few changes.  Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Women (hard from Bantam) takes place a millennium after the atomic apocalypse when technology is re-emerging.  There are still hot radioactive areas around, but civilization is returning and the Catholic Church is facing reformation. Brother Blacktooth is a monk from the Leibowitz Abby who, caught between his religious beliefs, his nomadic heritage, and his love of one of the women from the mutated group.  He is brought into the struggles between the exiled papacy and Hannegan empire that controls most of what was Texas, including New Rome.  This is as powerful as A Canticle for Leibowitz (trade) and makes for deep consideration of the religious, technologic, and political issues. If the first book is taught in High School, the second should be taught in College. 

Stephen King's Dark Tower series may never have a conclusion, but it is easily the best writing Mr. King has ever done.  In the fourth volume, Wizard and Glass (Trade from Plume) Roland the gunslinger takes a quiet time in the quest to tell the others of his first adventure, and his first love and of the evil that still pursues him. 

Connie Willis's latest adventure about the Oxford traveling group sends a time lagged (like jet lag) traveler to 1888 with a misplaced cat and a quest to draw two lovers together so that a diary will fit, and a quest to find the Bishop's bird stump (don't ask) that was destroyed in the Nazi bombing of Coventry Cathedral in 1940 and important for the rebuilt structure in the 21st century. To Say Nothing of the Dog (hard from Bantam Spectra) is a riotous love story where everything works out in the end in spite of her character's attempts to fail. 

Brenda W. Clough introduces the odd idea that super powers might be an affliction.  In How Like a God (paper from Tor) Rob ends up fleeing his family and living on the streets for fear he will effect them after he develops the power to control people. Neat. 

The Good 

Eric S. Nyland has a very original view of life, death, and magic in a tale of a sf writer, a two thousand year old necromancer, and an ancient witch all hunting for water that is not water that can change the past in modern Dry Water (trade from Avonova), New Mexico. It's a lot of fun and on my to-be-read-twice shelf. 

Terry England takes an odd look at gifts that aliens can leave behind. Seventeen people go through a Rewind (paper from Avonova) and become nine years old again with all their memories intact. Ms. England is most interested in the reactions and interactions this odd gift gives than in how the wondering aliens actually accomplish this miracle, but the book is intense. 

Iain M. Banks has a funny tale of an Excession (trade from Bantam Spectra), an invader from another universe into a future version of ours, with intelligent starships as well as aliens and humans to get caught up in the furor and greed over the new technology. 

Steven Brust and Emma Bull have done the necessary research about 1849 England to life. Freedom and Necessity (hard from Tor) is really a historical novel told through letters and journal entries that make up its tale of plots and secret societies . It's really a historical novel, but I mention it here because it is impossible to put down and I want to rave about it. 

I admire Avonova's courage in publishing the well-written An Exchange of Hostages (paper) by Susan R. Matthews. This is a tale of a caring physician, who because he has been assigned to the Fleet, is trained in the extra duties of a fleet surgeon – torture. It's impossible to put down, but when I tried describing it to friends, they showed an immediate reaction, i.e. disgust. It's fascinating and horrific at the same time. 

Scott Ciencin continues his odd Elven Ways trilogy with Ancient Games (paper from Bantam Spectra). My only complaint is that the magic of Skill which previously seemed like telepathy has been expanded to the creations of roads and other things which Fitz learns about as he follows the skill made road in the mountains to find his king and save his country.  But who said magic had to make sense. 

Sherri S. Tepper puts together the tale of a policewoman who is solving the murder of some scientists while putting up with a forest that is overgrowing our world, with a tale of people on a quest in another time and place where technology is limited and magic works in The Family Tree (hard from Avonova) But when she finally got the stories together, I realized she had borrowed her plot from a famous television/movie series. However her gentle, warm characters still carried the story. 

Consider Philadelphia psychiatrist, Mark Fabi's Wyrm (trade from Bantam Spectra). It is a novel that can be enjoyed by computer people, wannabe computer people, and science fiction lovers.  He takes a mix of standard elements; an intelligent virus that comes alive on the internet, people who become part of a fantasy computer adventure, and the end of the millennium. It is impossible to put down.  Dr. Fabi has a genius in describing arcane computer terms in ordinary language, a feel for how computer nerds live and function on the web and in their multi-user dungeons, and, most important, a sense of humor. 

Sharon Shinn, a new author to watch, returns to her world of Jovah's Angel (trade from Ace) as the birth of technology bringing with it the confrontation of belief with science comes to the world monitored by a guardian starship which had forgotten its technological background in lieu of science.  As usual her biologically designed angels prove as human as the humans they intermingle with and the pleasant engineers are worth spending time with. 

Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere (hard from Avon) is a darker and more adult version — using a fantasy underworld of London (marvelously ingenious but with lots of in jokes) filled with people and things lost and forgotten in the real city.  Richard Mahew helps a girl named Door and finds himself lost to the real world, and ending up helping Door on her quest to find her parent's murderers. 

Backgrounds can take real history and mix magic in them as Marion Zimmer Bradley did with her three tales of the Lady of Avalon (hard from Viking), taking the history of the island of the mists from Roman times to the time of King Arthur. I found the tales wistful, but with solid characters. 

I don't know what to think about Peter F. Hamilton's tale of the Emergence 
(paper from Aspect) of The Reality Dysfunction (full name of novel). His wonderful future is filled with telepathic starships bonded to their captains, gene and nano technologically  modified people, and colony worlds that simply dump paying colonists and give them conscript slaves. The Reality Dysfunction (full name) allows the Expansion (--second half--paper from Aspect) of dead souls who are possessing live humans and who have awesome powers five centuries from now.  Mammoth space battles and excommunicating priests are both part of problem and solution. More is coming next spring. 

Fantasist Barbara Hambly has used her ability at world creation to bring New Orleans, 1833 alive with all its prejudices intact and A Free Person of Color (hard from Bantam) has to solve the murder of a white man's mistress or be blamed for the crime.  While the mystery is minor, the background is tremendously drawn. 

David Webber raises the stakes of his war with the peeps by having  Honor (his answer to Hornblower  in space) in command of an out-missiled ship and forced to surrender.  Honor, my favorite space war character, doesn't give up easily when In Enemy Hands (hard from Baen). I can't wait for the next. 

Paula Volsky takes a dark fantasy world city dominated by an inquisition, The White Tribunal (trade from Bantam Spectra), which uses false accusations to condemn its enemies of sorcery. Tradain, wrongfully accused as a child, grows up in a harsh prison and escapes. Then making a deal with a demon for power (limited by the sands in his hourglass) fights for revenge. Ms. Volsky is looking not for a light retribution story, but at the consequences and ethics of revenge, a much deeper and darker tale, and manages quite well. 

Philadelphia author, Michael Swanwick tries for black comedy when his demon (or intelligence from another universe) gives Jack Faust (hard from Avon), bringing the industrial revolution early.  I really love the Spanish Armada ironclad ships being defeated by the missile carrying British boats, but the end of the story dissolved instead of concluded. 

Terry Brooks' ending to Running with the Demon (hard from Del Ray) was a bit too predictable, but otherwise this modern tale of the conflict between the word and the void (good and evil) is quite good, and the best Mr. Brooks has ever done. A demon and a knight of the word come to Hopewell, a small town beset with a nasty strike.  At the heart of their conflict is a fourteen-year-old girl whose decisions can effect the future. 

J. V. Jones has the best "visitor to a fantasy world" tale that I've seen in a long time.  Basically Tessa is driven to find a ring and when she puts it on she finds herself in a medieval world where calligraphy has magical properties and where an evil king has to be thrown down using The Barbed Coil (hard from Warner Aspect) of her ring.  Strong, well drawn characters and a solid story with a romantic base lift this tale from the  generic and make it a lot of fun. 

I found Vonda N McIntyre's The Moon and The Sun (hard from Pocket) romantic tale of a captured mermaid (drawn naturally rather than mythically) brought to the court of Louis VI (the Sun King) fascinating in its mixture of historical fiction and minor fantasy.  The aging king is more interested in an organ of immortality than in the reality of the strange beasts the Jesuit naturalist has found. 

The seventh Chung Kuo novel by David Wingrove takes the fallen Chinese society that had once covered the world with its monstrous continent large cities, living through Days of Bitter Strength (Trade from Dell) as plagues and other evils afflict the ten percent that remain and the future struggles to be born.  In this penultimate book, Mr.  Wingrove is showing the sociology of change in his usual absorbing fashion, but I'm glad we are finally near the end of the series. 

Fred Saberhagen has one of his better tales about Berserker Fury (hard from Tor) which details a major conflict between a human multi-star civilization much like ours and the death dealing machines. It's really a tale of odd heroics and cowardice and quite moving. 

I like L.  E.  Modesitt jr's fantasy series about Recluse, a world where chaos and order conflict so much I went and bought The Chaos Balance (hard from Tor). Mr. Modesitt continues filling in the historical background of the earlier written books.  Here, the engineer with wife and child leave the Angels camp where their starship had crashed to wander the lowlands.  Of course Nylan has to use his "order" powers to protect against the growth of a "Chaos" empire and in doing so sets up some of the institutions that appear in later books. 

After the collapse of NASA because of another crash in our near future, space die-hards convince its administrator to finance a one-way expedition to Titan (hard by Stephen Baxter) instead of moth-balling the shuttle fleet.  The six person expedition is an eclectic mix and the well described technology uses both shuttle and the Apollo moon landing technology to jury-rig the six year mission.  Of course things go wrong. On the ground kids are taught the celestial spheres theory which denies Titan even existed.  Their reports are shown on obscure cable channels. And of course their rescue mission is de-funded. But Mr. Baxter is making a statement about the advancement of life, not just human life. Thus he somehow makes an uplifting statement out of such a doomed expedition. 

Pippa, a practicing Wiccan (modern witch) who lives In the Land of Winter (hard from Avon by Richard Grant), a California resort town,  has been singled out by a local Christian hate group who have managed to use the law to take her daughter, her job, and her home just before Christmas. But fear not, there are fairy godmothers even in our time and one such will help poor Pippa regain all she lost. 

Sean Stewart looks at the dark, uncontrollable side of magic in an alternate future where magic started coming back in World War II.  It's a century since the events in Resurrection Man (paper) and magic has overwhelmed the world.  As it starts flowing away, however, the powers that maintained the world also started dying and two human communities, one near Seattle and the other the China Town of Vancouver face new problems in The Night Watch (hard from Ace).  It's another dark-themed December book, and one that looks at compromises with power, magic and political. 

Terry Goodkind gets around the series problem by having his hero, Richard, confront a new problem with each book.  In his fourth adventure he must go to the lost Temple of the Winds (hard from Tor) to stop a magically induced plague. The plot may be a bit silly, but I  read it on a plane and didn't drowse off for the four hours of flying.

Robert J, Sawyer, in Illegal Alien (hard from Ace) considers the plight of an alien from a first contact to Earth group, being accused of murder and facing a very public trial.  I couldn't put it down.

The latest William Shatner book, In Alien Hands (hard from HarperPrism) is much better than Delta Search (paper) the first in this series. This time Jim, the boy with the information in his DNA, enlists in an alien mercenary company and discovers his true talents.  It's a lot of fun.

I missed the first book of Ken Hood's tale of a mediaeval Europe haunted by demons. In Demon Rider (paper from HarperPrism), Longdirk, the man possessed by an Irish hob, wanders across a Spain that could have been conceived by Cervantes and even has a Don Quixote type character to fend with. It stands alone, but I found the first is out of print when I went looking for it. The tale is very impressively written.