Subject: "Battlestation: Vanguard" edited by David Drake and Bill Fawcett

From: [email-masked] (Rex Croft)
Date: 24 May 93 21:51:15 GMT

"Battlestation: Vanguard" edited by David Drake and Bill Fawcett

				- reviewed by Rex Croft  [email-masked]

This is the successor to the book "Battlestation".

Both are braided anthologies about the battlestation _Stephen Hawking_ which
was created to fight the predatory Ichtons, a large insect like alien.
The Ichtons breed and breed, overrunning any planet they come across.
The Earth decides to take the fight to the Ichtons before Alliance space is
threatened.  But the governments don't want to fund a battlestation all by
themselves, so involve commercial interests on the understanding that they
will get preferential trade agreements with the friendly aliens when the
Ichtons are defeated.  So the battlestation has a lot of non-military
personnel on it, which adds to the scope for interesting stories.

I don't normally buy books of short stories, preferring full length novels,
but made an exception with "Battlestation" because of its topic.  Since I
enjoyed it, I purchased the second volume, which I also enjoyed.

There are a variety of subjects covered by the 11 short stories, some of
them deep and moving.  The stories slowly advance the general plot until
near the end of the book we find the battlestation nearly reaching the end
of its military usefulness.  I feel that at this point the editors decided
not to write another volume and looked arround for a trick which would
enable the humans to win over the Ichtons, which they hadn't managed to do
militarily.  In 23 pages, David Drake ties up the series, by the use of
this trick, which, admittedly, is plausible.

Some of the authors contributing to this book are:
Christopher Stasheff
S. N. Lewitt
Mercedes Lackey
Esther M. Friesner
Diane Duane
Jody Lynn Nye
Katherine Kurtz
David Drake

%T  Battlestation: Vanguard
%E  David Drake
%E  Bill Fawcett
%I  ACE
%C  New York
%D  March 1993
%O  paperback, US$4.99
%P  264 pp.
%G  0-441-86032-X
%S  Battlestation
%V  2