SF/future spec - good story

Bloody excellent! GOod End of the world stuff! ( )

A young man in a post-apocalyptic world sets out to find his brother's ranch, befriending a wolf on the way. I felt this was in a book in which research overpowered and finally buried the story. It's clear Dickson wanted to get the details about the wolf right, he even has his main character reading the same books about wolves that he did. There are entire chapters that are little more than rehashing this information. Aside from two encounters with a bear, there's really no action in the story. Other events occur, but they are either viewed from a safe distance or related in the past tense long after they're over. The story arc that's left is boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back. Nothing else happens. The main character spends a lot of time trying to understand his wolf friend, and a lot of time trying to understand other things. Eventually almost 500 pages pass, without any kind of drama or conflict or activity, and even the main character's goal is eventually discarded. The post-apocalypse setting of the book is itself irrelevant--it could have been set in the old West, or even in a remote wilderness area. I read a lot of these books, and this one, by a respected science fiction author, was a colossal bust. ( )

[Wolf and Iron] by [Gordan R. Dickson] tells of survival after a socio-economic collapse. The characters are strongly developed and Jeebee's relationship with wolf drives the story as her learns to survive using his instincts. It follows the format of post apocalyptic stories so it is fairly predictable but the characters and relationships are what really drive the plot. ( )

I read this first when I was like 16 and really dug on the Robinson Curusoe-like details post apolyptica. Re-read it again 16 years later and found it to be a bit tedious, predictable and centered on wolves (of all things) three stars for the rosy memories of youth and one for the book makes four. Interestingly, I had forgot the title and impersonated a beautiful woman on a sci-fi forum to try and find it- I had that title within 10 minutes from at least six people. ( )