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Monthly Archives: August 2010
To the Stars by Robert Heinlein: a review
All four novels are Heinlein juveniles, with the strengths and weaknesses of all juvies. If you can to set aside the improbable competence Heinlein sometimes gives to youngsters, you can enjoy the rich environment he’s created for the characters to act in. All four are strong stories; the fourth is exceptional.
The Reaches by David Drake: a review
This is a marvelous work of imagination. The author has developed plausible and internally-consistent reasons for starships to have similar properties to age-of-sail warships, and similar vulnerabilities. Moveover, he’s created a political universe enough like that of Elizabeth’s reign to use it as a framework for a Drake-like career. Finally, he’s told the story through the eyes of sympathetic, albeit very brutal, characters who are certainly real enough to be credible; they worry about each other, brood about the impacts of their activities, and–most interestingly–they grow as we watch them.
Fire in the Valley by Paul Freiberger and Michael Swaine: a review
The authors–both of whom edited computer publications as the stories developed–tell the story of the beginnings of the PC revolution from the perspective of Silicon Valley. Their version heavily overlaps Stephen Levy’s Hackers, which was published a few months later, but it’s a very different tale in style and substance.
The Partisan Leader by Nathaniel Beverly Tucker: a review
The story’s interesting on several levels. One is the prophecy aspect; the tale gets the details badly wrong but clearly understands the forces which led to the American Civil War. There’s also a Negro slave undercurrent; Tucker is clearly aware of tensions between slaves and masters, but just as clearly does not believe them important. And there’s the unsettling change of perspective; rarely, nowadays, do we find well-written and sympathetic portraits of slave-holding southerners. As i said at the beginning, a fascinating read.
James Wallace of Macalester by Edwin Kagin: a review
The strength of the book is its fascinating portrait of the early years of a small college. We see buildings under construction, we sit in on debates about whether to permit women students, we watch faculty get hired (and fired), we experience a neighborhood growing around the campus, we grow frustrated as the finances of the school devolve from difficult to grim. Then we follow newly-elected Macalester president Wallace as he slogs through a half-decade of budgets and fundraising–begging, really–during the 1890s recession. Finally things right themselves as the new century begins. This section of the book is extremely well-done, and worth reading for anyone interested in the beginnings of educational institutions. While the details are specific to this institution, the general pattern, I suspect, is common.