Mickey Zucker Reichert

Anne McCaffrey has written many wonderful fantasy and science fiction books. I personally own over 60 and have still to meet one I disliked. She has also inspired outer authors with her characters and the following illustrated short stories are highly recommended.

FEOM AMAZON: Behold Acorna, the Unicorn Girl.

Discovered as an infant and adopted by three gruff asteroid miners, she has now grown into a beautiful young woman with delicate, ivory fur and silken skin, the tiny horn on her forehead is all but hidden by her silvery locks.

Acorna is known as Lukia of the Light by the grateful children she rescued from brutal slavery in the mines of Kezdet. She is helping them recover, and enjoying life with her guardian "uncles," when she receives a mysterious and disturbing message: There are yet more children enslaved on Kezdet, overlooked by the Child Labor League--children suffering a cruel, almost unimaginable fate.

Only Acorna, with her healing powers, can rescue them from the enigmatic figure known as "The Dodger." But to save the children, she must deceive Pal Kendorno, the man she is beginning to love in spite of herself.

Inspired by Anne McCaffrey's and Margaret Ball's unforgettable novel Acorna, the soaring adventures in this extraordinary volume are written by some of today's most celebrated fantasy authors, and illustrated by world-acclaimed artists. Here you will read about (and see!):

Acorna's heartbreaking search for her home planet
Acorna's fight to stop a deadly plague on the beautiful and fabled planet, Earth
Acorna's first love affair...with a human… (more)

This is the final novel in the author's trilogy of spin off novels about the life of Susan Calvin, the robotics pioneer in Isaac Asimov's early robot short stories published from the 1950s onwards. It is 2037 and Susan is still threatened by both the Society for Humanity and a shadowy rogue government agency for the secret of a supposed code to deactivate the Three Laws from robot brains, the constraints which force them to obey humans and prevent them from harming them. Faced with proving the innocence of Nate, a humaniform robot, of the crime of murder of a leading roboticist, Susan is once again put through the emotional wringer and loses more of those few she loves and trusts. Not far into this book she is leaving her short lived medical career and become a roboticist. This was like the second novel in being a police procedural/murder mystery rather than a medical thriller as was the first, and in my view the best of the trilogy, but still a fairly gripping page turner. I would consider reading other books by this author.… (more)

In the conclusion of the I, Robot trilogy, Susan has decisions to make and problems to solve. When NC-8 is found standing over the body of Dr. Ari Goldman, Susan knows that the Three Laws of Robotics make it impossible for him to have committed the crime. However, she is in the minority since most don't understand those laws. Dr. Lawrence Robertson is arrested because he was the one who designed and programmed Nate and is therefore responsible for his actions.

Susan knows that she needs to find out who killed Dr. Goldman and how they managed to make it look like Nate did it. She gives up her residency in order to have time to work on finding the proof which causes her friend Dr. Kendall Stevens to worry about her.

She manages to free Nate from the police property department and while they are fleeing, she is shot at. She is rescued by Pal Buffoni who says that he is recently discharged from an elite military unit. He says that he has fallen in love with her and is determined to keep her safe. Susan, being alone and attracted to him, decides to accept his offer to keep her and Nate safe. Pal tries to convince her that the Society for Humanity has regrouped enough after the events of the last book to become a threat again. He also encourages her to find the lost code that divorces the positronic brain from the Three Laws that both the SFH and DoD's Cadmium are convinced she knows.

This was an exciting and fast-paced story as Susan, Nate and Pal are being chased both by bad guys and by the police who want to recapture Nate. I liked the action even though I knew about the big reveal long before Susan figured it out.

Fans of hard science fiction and robotics will enjoy this trilogy which makes a good introduction to Isaac Asimov's books about robots with positronic brains.… (more)

Susan Calvin is entering her second year in Psych residency when this story begins. She has survived the loss of her true love at the hands of terrorists from the SFH - Society for Humanity - and gotten to know N8-C - a positronic robot who could be mistaken for a regular human. She has learned that her father had a large part in the development of the positronic brain and the three laws that govern it.

She has chosen the same beginning site for her second year which lets her be with her friend Dr. Kendall Stevens. Their site has them working with dementia patients which is a difficult thing for Susan who wants to believe that she can fix medical problems. It causes her to wonder about the rationale for prolonging life when the mind is gone. She is also working for a lazy, self-serving boss. When Susan's genius level diagnostic skills suggest that some of her patients have been misdiagnosed and can actually be helped, she is first obstructed by her boss. When she goes around him to prove her diagnoses, he is quick to claim the credit and claim that Susan is the one who was obstructing. Susan, naturally, finds this very frustrating but it becomes quite a minor problem when the death of her father happens.

Susan comes home to find that her father has been murdered. When she tries to see his body to understand what happens, she is obstructed by the police who have decided that his death was because of "natural causes." Susan begins to conduct her own investigation along with one police officer who doesn't want to follow the party line. They soon find themselves at odds with the SFH and a shady government department that wants the secret they are certain she and her father had about the way to separate the positronic brain from the three laws.

Along the way in their investigation, Susan learns a big secret about her past and finds a way to get both the government department and the SFH off her back.

This was an engaging science fiction story. However, I started to get bogged down in all the medical terminology that Susan uses in her diagnoses. Once I decided to treat it all as bafflegab things went better. I don't know if the medical terms are fact or fiction and for the purposes of the bigger story it really didn't matter.

Fans of hard science fiction and fans of Isaac Asimov will enjoy this second book in a trilogy. I would recommend reading the series in order though.… (more)