Tag: Book

Razor’s Edge by Martha Wells (2013)

In finding a cover image, I found out that this novel will be reissued in November 2025 as one of the “Essential Legends” series.  This is, of course, Disney’s way to cash in on their scuttling of the entire Expanded Universe ficton when they decided that only movies were canon at that time. Of course, they have sold plenty of books in the “new canon” since then!

That is obviously a sore spot with me! I had this book on my radar for a very long time but never hunted it down. I did so and finally read it this week. Having grown to love Martha Wells’ Murderbot series, I wanted to see if I liked any of her other prose.

This is a decent Star Wars novel.  It’s not one of the best in the EU, but it tells an interesting story.  There was some effort in the staging of the plot so that some characters are going through roughly parallel situations at the same time.  I thought Wells was most interesting in showing the growing attraction of Han & Leia.  I feel for writers in the SW or Trek universes as they can only take the characters so far, or choose to write them at a certain point so that they can only grow a certain amount.

This story was a part of a “duology” when first published (the second book is not by Wells) but I feel no need to seek that one out.

When HARLIE Was One by David Gerrold (1972)

I picked this one up at a library sale in New York and it took a few months to get to it.  Like most authors I follow, I’ve been reading David’s work very much out of order.  This is an early work, and one that David refers back to in later works. HARLIE is an artificial intelligence–but referred to absolutely as an artificial human (my emphasis).  I ran into David at the 2025 Worldcon and told him I had just finished this book and exclaimed “How did you get so much of it right IN 1972?” He just shrugged.

The book’s not perfect–the subplot with the main scientist getting a girlfriend is fairly by-the-numbers but the relationship is necessary for development of an understanding about HARLIE.

All in all, an amazingly prescient story that is still relevant.

Collisions by Alec Nevala-Lee (2025)

Since I have a passing acquaintance with Alec, I look at his new projects with interest.  Collisions is a thorough biography of Luis Alvarez, a physicist who was involved with several interesting discoveries and applications of work.  He’s probably best-known as one of the scientists in the Manhattan Project.

The work covers a lot of ground while clocking in around three hundred pages.  I read the NY Times review of the book which thought it needed to go into more details about Alvarez’ character and personal actions, but the key thing I realized in reading the acknowledgements is that the first people to be thanked are his children.  That kind of access probably comes with a natural inclination to temper the view of the subject (if the children liked/respected their parent).  Since I knew nothing of his accomplishments, I found it to be an even retelling of his life and achievements.  I especially appreciated the Afterward that served as a summary/commentary of the man and his approach to science.