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stephenmeansme's review against another edition
3.0
Solid 3 stars. This is a three-novella anthology, with each by a different female sf author of the Seventies. A good sampler platter!
"THE CRYSTAL SHIP" by Joan D. Vinge ***½ - A kind of dying-earth, post-contact tragedy of lotus-eating humans and genetic-memory kangaroo-men.
"MEGAN'S WORLD" by Marta Randall *** - First contact with a medieval alien civ, the actual story was decent but (1) the aliens didn't feel that alien, and (2) the humans' motivation of strip mining part of the planet seems comically, cosmically absurd when metallic asteroids exist. It would work if there was something special to be extracted (even something as goofy as 'unobtanium' in AVATAR) but no.
"SCREWTOP" by Vonda N. McIntyre **½ - A prison work-camp story. Not really that sfnal other than that it takes place on another planet and there's a kind of person called a "tetraparental," i.e. a chimera from four genomes, which isn't that relevant to the story in itself, it's more of a "specialness" flag.
HUNDRED BOOK CHALLENGE #8
"THE CRYSTAL SHIP" by Joan D. Vinge ***½ - A kind of dying-earth, post-contact tragedy of lotus-eating humans and genetic-memory kangaroo-men.
"MEGAN'S WORLD" by Marta Randall *** - First contact with a medieval alien civ, the actual story was decent but (1) the aliens didn't feel that alien, and (2) the humans' motivation of strip mining part of the planet seems comically, cosmically absurd when metallic asteroids exist. It would work if there was something special to be extracted (even something as goofy as 'unobtanium' in AVATAR) but no.
"SCREWTOP" by Vonda N. McIntyre **½ - A prison work-camp story. Not really that sfnal other than that it takes place on another planet and there's a kind of person called a "tetraparental," i.e. a chimera from four genomes, which isn't that relevant to the story in itself, it's more of a "specialness" flag.
HUNDRED BOOK CHALLENGE #8
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