Mark L. Van Name

I got turned on to this collection by a truly glowing review by Matthew Claxton in his Unsettling Futures newsletter, and I can confirm this book delivers. Sycamore Hill is an invite-only science fiction writer's workshop, the post-graduate version of Clarion and its ilk. Given that Bruce Sterling is my favorite living science-fiction author and I recognized a handful of names on the cover as heavy writers with big ideas and serious chops, I figured I'd give it a look.

I was really too young show more to experience 90s science-fiction when it happened, but this was actually a golden moment for the genre. Serious futurism was out from under the mushroom cloud binary of the Cold War, and the writers were GenX and Boomers at the peak of their abilities. It was slightly more possible to make a living writing fiction, before a certain Everything Store that owns this website and the maw of Digital Content consumed everything. Science-fiction was still a ghetto, before every Iowa Writer's Workshop literary fic head decided that straight realism wasn't enough and they could write about clones and diseases and digitally altered selves, but it was a ghetto with ambition!

What elevates this collection is that it brings the reader into the magic circle of artistic creation, with short notes of the authors reacting to each other's stories in the Milford Method style (and as S.L. Huang among others have pushed back, Milford is not the only method), and you can see where pros think a story is weak, and how it was improved.

Sterling's "Bicycle Repairman" leads the collection, and is a favorite. I also enjoyed Jonathan Lethem's "The Hardened Criminals" as a prison drama of absent fathers, Maureen F. McHugh’s "Homesick" in it's study of a dedicated dancer, and Alexander Jablokov "The Fury at Colonus", a retelling of the myth of Orestes from the point of view of the Fury as a cop facing down retirement in a setting half mythic Greece and half suburbia.

As Claxton points out, they don't make them like this any more. Even as we've been liberated from the burdens of physical text, we're bound by ever shorter attention spans. Intersections is a fine vintage, and well worth reading! show less

I enjoyed One Jump Ahead. I was in the right mood to enjoy old fashion space opera. Moore is a loner with a troubled past. He takes jobs, and they go south, so he has to clean up messes as well as he can. There is some odd science tech. The FTL issue is solved by Gates which are mysterious artifacts. He has nano-tech in his body that helps on missions. He acquires an AI brained combat craft that is part companion, part military weapon.

I liked that Moore keeps thinking he wants to avoid show more killing people. It makes the book series more enjoyable to me. I have read alot of military fiction and am getting tired of the huge body counts. Moore does kill a few people, but he seems to regret each one and try to avoid them. A feature that is missing in much science fiction action is the need for preparation and boring staging for successful action. Moore thinks about the tactical needs of each operation, and is described as waiting alone in rooms for hours or days in order to be in position for action. This preparation and boredom is a reality of military or police action that most writers leave out.

It is great, for me, that youth in danger is involved in the story. I am always a sucker for that. Apparently a feature of the series is that Moore constantly remembers back to his troubled youth and how he was in need of saving then. I like the whole dark mystery man. He needs to keep secrets about Lobo, his nano-tech and even his origin story from everyone.

This book will work for you if you want to read space opera with relatively happy endings. You need to suspend believe about science explanations and accept that Moore has somewhat unlikely tech advantages over those around him. Overall, I think, if you like military action will very minimal killing, you will enjoy this book. I have started the sequel and am enjoying the first 100 pages, so far. show less

My tablet decided to crash on me so I couldn't add stars, shelves or a review of this until I got to my desktop.
Technology.

And that is what this series seems to be about, and yet still be stultifying. I love the whole premise of Jon and Lobo. Meta-human and super warmachine team up to take on the universe.

Only, they don't. They hide, they skulk, they pout, they whine.

I enjoyed the read, but it was like going 55mph, while I was in a ferrari. It could have been so much more.

I think I am done show more with Mr. Van Name... show less

I highly recommend this book. Everyone should read this book who has too optimist view of the price of war. This story wades deep into the consequences of turning young people into warriors. I read the previous 3 books in the series in order before this one, but I think they can be read out of order.