From /tmp/sf.12867 Mon May 3 13:06:11 1993 Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written Path: lysator.liu.se!isy!liuida!sunic!pipex!uunet!wupost!csus.edu!netcom.com!dani From: dani@netcom.com (Dani Zweig) Subject: Crawford: Rouse a Sleeping Cat Message-ID: Organization: Netcom Online Communications Services (408-241-9760 login: guest) Date: Sun, 25 Apr 1993 04:47:05 GMT Lines: 41 I once took a Business Policy course that touched, in one class, on the Laser sf line, so we talked about how people decide which sf books to buy. I was listing what I thought were the obvious factors -- author, good recommendations, covers -- when someone broke in to protest that sf readers weren't swayed by covers. Not that there's anything special about the cover of Dan Crawford's "Rouse a Sleeping Cat" (a title which has nothing to do with the contents of the book), but since I'd never heard of book or author before, and since the cover's plot summary was uninformative, I can't think of what else motivated me to get this book. It's not bad. The writing is deft and witty -- enough so to compensate for the subject matter, which is slightly appalling. Rossacotta is a country-sized robbers' den which is in the process of civilizing itself. Very early in the process. The king is nine years old, which makes things marginally more insecure than usual. The regent is a wicked necromancer. No, he isn't plotting to seize the throne; he's one of the relatively *good* guys. So is Nimnestl, the chief bodyguard, who has to find the murderer of a popular artist, so that she and the regent can decide who the best person would be to pin it on. (It's not really clear whether or not Rossacotta has a *law* against leaving a trail of corpses. Certainly little else is illegal.) The cover describes the book as the first of a series, but fortunately it stands up perfectly well as a stand-alone novel. This isn't one of the year's better novels (why do I keep reading and reviewing books from the middle of the midlist?) but the writer *does* know his craft, and I imagine I'll be reading the sequel when it appears. ----- Dani Zweig dani@netcom.com Watership Down: You've read the book. You've seen the movie. Now eat the stew! From new Thu Jun 16 18:50:08 1994 Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written Path: liuida!sunic!pipex!howland.reston.ans.net!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!news.kei.com!world!decwrl!netcomsv!netcom.com!dani From: dani@netcom.com (Dani Zweig) Subject: Dan Crawford: The Sure Death of a Mouse Message-ID: Organization: Netcom Online Communications Services (408-241-9760 login: guest) Date: Mon, 7 Feb 1994 01:58:09 GMT Lines: 37 Dan Crawford's "The Sure Death of a Mouse" is a sequel to his earlier "Rouse a Sleeping Cat". Well, sort of a sequel -- the setting is the same, but you don't need to have read the earlier book to read this one. Like the first book, it's a light fantasy -- well, sort of light, the humor being of a macabre sort. The running gag through both books is the setting itself, the kingdom of Rossacotta. Rossacotta has, for centuries, been a kingdom of outlaws and brigands. There's never been a criminal who wasn't welcome there, as long as he paid his taxes. In the past half-century, though, it's been trying to civilize itself. So far, the veneer of civilization is very thin. Think of the setting asFrom rec.arts.sf.written Tue Feb 8 00:48:34 1994 Path: liuida!sunic!EU.net!howland.reston.ans.net!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!destroyer!news.itd.umich.edu!mail.ciesin.org!fzimmerm From: fzimmerm@ciesin.org (Fred Zimmerman) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written Subject: REVIEW--"Chimera", by Mary Rosenblum Date: 7 Feb 1994 18:24:00 GMT Organization: CIESIN -- Consortium for International Earth Science Information Network Lines: 35 Distribution: world Message-ID: <2j6100$2k0@lastactionhero.rs.itd.umich.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: mail.ciesin.org %A Rosenblum, Mary %T Chimera %I Del Rey %C New York %D November 1993 %G ISBN 0-345-38528-4 %P 403 pp. %O paperback, US$4.99 Mary Rosenblum's CHIMERA is set in a future in which most business communication takes place in a global network of "virtual offices". This novel presents a challenging exploration of cyberspace as a realm for the presentation of the self. In today's business world, we are used to being evaluated on the basis of such qualities as our body language, our clothes, our accent, our professed values, and--in professional America, at any rate--above all on the basis of our formal educational credentials. Not many of us are ready for a world like Rosenblum's, in which we will compete on the basis of how well our visualization software edits our body language and presents our chosen image of self, and in which virtual reality artists are the aristocrats of the global Net. As a verbal, book-loving, command-line person whose computing experience began with Fortran and the Heath Disk Operating System (HDOS) and who has never much liked the MTVization of the media, I must say that I hope for a future information environment that is considerably less visual than Rosenblum's. But I liked the fact that her book made me uneasy about the possibilities. This, Mary Rosenblum's second novel, is a good book, well worth reading for anyone who is interested in the Internet and communication via computer. In the words of the Del Rey Discovery motto on the inside cover, this "something new" is "worth the risk."