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Latest Recommended Books

Cumulative '97 Recommended SF novels | Fantasy/Horror novels | First Novels | Collections | Anthologies | Nonfiction & art books | Reprints

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Latest Recommended Short Fiction

Cumulative '97 Recommended Novellas | Novelettes | Short Stories

Greg Abraham, "Front Man" (Asimov's 6/97) A gay couple's disintegration mirrors the relationship between humanity and alien visitors. [Reviewed 5/97]

George Alan, "Fugue" (Spec Lit No. 1) Smooth cyberpunkish tale of two people in a French resort who realize they are being manipulated as assassins; by a student writer who went on to become a hotel middle-manager. [Reviewed 7/97]

Poul Anderson, "Tyranny" (Free Space, ed. Linaweaver & Kramer; Tor, July) Five conspirators plan to destroy a computer ruling their world; a persuasive lesson in the tradeoff between selfishness and self-restraint necessary for liberty. [Reviewed 7/97]

Dale Bailey, "Quinn's Way" (F&SF 2/97) Reflection on life as a 12 year old in small town West Virginia, with abusive fathers and a magical circus. [Reviewed 3/97]

Richard Bowes, "Streetcar Dreams" (F&SF 4/97) The culminating urban fantasy about Kevin Grierson and his "Shadow". [Reviewed 5/97]

John Brunner, "Blood and Judgment" (Asimov's 4/97) The last of the author's China stories: modern medical equipment figures in a plot by a government official to disgrace his daughter so he can gain permission to have a second child. [Reviewed 3/97]

Eugene Byrne, "Thigmoo" (Interzone 6/97) Historical simulations in a university's computer rise up against their oppressors and threaten the world with electronic chaos. [Reviewed 9/97]

Arthur Byron Cover, "The Performance of a Lifetime" (Free Space, ed. Linaweaver & Kramer; Tor, 7/97) Blackly humorous tale of a terrorist who looses plagues upon space habitats as performance art, and lesson in free will. [Reviewed 7/97]

Tony Daniel, "Black Canoes" (Asimov's 7/97) A potter and an anthropologist journey by canoe to an inverse world where Plains Indians provide a necessary ritual of rebirth. [Reviewed 6/97]

Greg Egan, "Reasons to Be Cheerful" (Interzone 4/97) Brain chemistry determines one's outlook on life: unsettling hard SF about finding a balance between meaningless happiness and meaningless despair. [Reviewed 6/97]

Esther M. Friesner, "Miss Thing" (F&SF 5/97) Performers at a club featuring drag shows take in a street urchin whose true nature surprises even them. [Reviewed 6/97]

James Alan Gardner, "Three Hearings on the Existence of Snakes in the Human Bloodstream" (Asimov's 2/97) A gospel passage about serpents in the blood affects the careers of Leeuwenhoek, Darwin, and McCarthy in an alternate history about the subjective nature of truth. [Reviewed 1/97]

James P. Hogan, "Madam Butterfly" (Free Space, ed. Linaweaver & Kramer; Tor, 7/97) A flower in a Tokyo office building, an accident among ice miners in the outer solar system, and a for-want-of-a-nail sequence of events that links them. [Reviewed 7/97]

Bill Johnson, "We Will Drink a Fish Together…" (Asimov's 5/97) A security man for alien visitors resigns to attend a family funeral in the hills of South Dakota, where the humans are stranger than aliens. [Reviewed 4/97]

Gwyneth Jones, "Balinese Dancer" (Asimov's 9/97) A British family's camping trip in France becomes a spooky reflection of a theory that human evolution is causing the difference between the sexes to erode. [Reviewed 9/97]

Vilma Kadleckova, "Longing for Blood" (F&SF 1/97) An otherworldly family named Taskre searches for a man to save them; fantasy by a Czech writer that encases the Cinderella story. [Reviewed 2/97]

Ellen Kushner & Delia Sherman, "Fall of the Kings" (Bending the Landscape) Two men fall in love at medieval university, with exhilarating, tragic consequences. [Reviewed 4/97]

Jonathan Lethem & Angus MacDonald, "The Edge of the Bed of Forever" (F&SF 8/97) Quirky tale that recombines common sf notions about time travel and infinite hotels into a useful device for cheating on your spouse. [Reviewed 9/97]

Paul Levinson, "The Mendelian Lamp Case" (Analog 4/97) Sleuth forensic scientist Phil D'Amato in Pennsylvania Amish country on the trail of non-technological bio-warfare. [Reviewed 3/97]

Paul J. McAuley & Kim Newman, "Residuals" (Asimov's 6/97) The FBI tails two survivors of an alien abduction in the 1970s and discovers the truth is creepier and weirder than they suspected. [Reviewed 5/97]

Paul J. McAuley, "Second Skin" (Asimov's 4/97) A 200 year old spy arrives at Proteus, moon of Neptune, to infiltrate trade negotiations after an interplanetary war. Well-crafted, highly imaginative hard SF. [Reviewed 3/97]

Ian McDonald, "After Kerry" (Asimov's 3/97) Fragmented 21st century Ireland is the setting for multies, people channeling aliens from Epsilon Eridani, and a man's attempt to reunite his family. [Reviewed 2/97]

Terry McGarry, "Mindchild" (Terra Incognita Spring/97) A pregnant teenager escapes a repressive US to a Canadian hospital, where she becomes part of an experimental treatment in curing Alzheimer's. [Reviewed 6/97]

David Nordley, "This Old Rock" (Analog 4/97) Asteroid homesteaders face a gruelling trial from the Interplanetary Association inspector. [Reviewed 3/97]

Tom Purdom, "Canary Land" (Asimov's 1/97) A immigrant musician to a 21st lunar city finds himself unskilled labor at the mercy of a blackmail scheme to infiltrate an artificial ecosystem. [Reviewed 12/96]

Alastair Reynolds, "A Spy in Europa" (Interzone 6/97) Inventive, colorful adventure steeped in interplanetary politics as rival factions vie for control of Jovian space. [Reviewed 9/97]

Uncle River, "Passing the Torch" (Asimov's 2/97) An old woman in rural Arizona worries about raising her 16 year old grandson as widespread social upheavals reach their town. [Reviewed 1/97]

William Sanders, "The Undiscovered" (Asimov's 3/97) Cherokee narrative about a marooned white man named Spearshaker who explains the idea of a play and then tries to stage Hamlet. [Reviewed 2/97]

Robert Silverberg, "Call Me Titan" (Asimov's 2/97) An elder Greek god awakens from underneath Mt. Etna and embarks into the modern day world. A tribute to Roger Zelazny. [Reviewed 1/97]

Brian Stableford, "The Pipes of Pan" (F&SF 6/97) When everyone is immortal, how to let people have children without risking overpopulation? Think of Peter Pan. [Reviewed 7/97]

Walter Jon Williams, "Lethe" (Asimov's 9/97) Complex, insightful study of a future when people use nanotech to duplicate themselves, including their minds, and the psychological and emotional problems that can ensue. (Williams doesn't use the word "clones", but the cover does.) [Reviewed 9/97]

(Dates in brackets indicate issues of Locus where full reviews appeared.)