Funny story: a number of years ago I read Blackout by Connie Willis, one of my favorite authors. I really love Connie Willis, even though there have been some disappointments (Remake is way too obvious and Promised Land. . .I don’t even want to talk about it). But when she’s on, I’m nuts for her writing. Doomsday Book and To Say Nothing of the Dog, which are curiously tied together by a time-travel theme and some shared characters, are two of my favorite contemporary novels, in spite of them being very […]
Good enough to make me want more, and wonder why I waited so long
Though I’m a lifelong fan of Star Trek, in its many, varied forms, this is the first time I’ve read a novel set in that universe. So it was with some trepidation that I jumped into this. I know these characters so well, and have seen all the episodes numerous times. But how would it work in book form? As far as that goes, it most works fairly well. Ward explores the inner workings of characters that have already been fully fleshed out, so he […]
Haven’t read the original being spoofed, so I missed a lot of jokes
This was a good book that I would have liked an abridged copy of. I read Doomsday Book last year for #CannonBookClub, but this was a slightly different flavor, although set in the same universe of Oxford using time travel for history-studying purposes. Through a series of convolutions, Ned ends up in the Victorian era (not his specialty) trying to help fix a timeline incongruity. He’s working with a classmate, Verity Kindle (excellent name), who has already been back and forth to the era multiple […]
Fifties and Sixties Time Travel
Time-Jump by John Brunner (1973) I know I’m reliving my youth, but I picked up “Time-Jump” by John Brunner for some classic science fiction. It was published in 1973 but contains his pulp science fiction stories from the periodicals of the fifties and the sixties. This is a short collection of ten of his time-related tales. At first glance, you’d think “these stories have all been done before” until you realize that these classic tales are the originals. Written before Twilight Zone and Outer Limits, […]