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• ***** "Eyes of Amber"
  This novella won the Hugo award in 1977, and it's easy to see why. It starts out as the story of an assassin renowned for her skill and for the fact that she's in league with a demon. But it becomes something more when it turns out that the demon's eye she carries is actually a probe which allows communication between her and a human on earth.
  
  Both the alien and the human have individual stories that could have carried a story on their own--they're characters you can care about. In addition, there's the story of what happens when vastly different civilizations come into contact with each other, and the misunderstandings that arise.
  
  It worked very well to begin the story with the alien portion--allowing the reader to connect with the alien as a protagonist instead of seeing her initially through human eyes, as other.
  
  This is an excellent example of a story that's exactly as long as it needs to be--so many novellas or short stories feel rushed or unfinished (and there are also full-length novels that feel stretched out or padded), but the story here is complete, complex, and satisfying.
  
  
• ****½ "To Bell the Cat"
  This is another story about humans interacting with aliens. But it's completely different.
  
  A war criminal, Jory, has been brainwiped and is now the property of a biomedical research institute, which has also turned him into a sort of superbeing who can heal anything they do to him. The institute is investigating a planet for tourism, and they want to discover how the local inhabitants, trogs, survive the radiation.
  
  We get some scenes from the trogs' POV--and they're truly alien--as they try to communicate with Jory.
  
  In the afterword to this story, Vinge talks about writing aliens who aren't just humans dressed up in funny suits, and she definitely succeeds in this case. But as with "Eyes of Amber", there's more to the story than just the description of the aliens, and Jory is nearly as alien as the trogs.
  
  
• **** "View from a Height"
  The protagonist in this story has spent her entire life in a bubble, the victim of an incurable deficient immune system. So she volunteered for a one-way research trip into space, just her and her parrot, and communication with a colleague back on earth just once every 12 days.
  
  Only to find that, once she's beyond the point of no return, that a cure for her condition has been found.
  
  This is a short story, and a sad one. It's well written, but it breaks my heart.
  
  
• ***½ "Media Man"
  A media man (reporter) gets invited along on a corporate expedition, discovers a plot by the head honcho, and falls in love with the spaceship's pilot.
  
  There's quite a lot of backstory to this one, and I'm not sure it was all that necessary. And the ending left me hanging, which I didn't like.
  
  But in between, it was a pretty good story about doing the wrong thing for the right reasons; about betraying someone to save them.
  
  
• *** "The Crystal Ship"
  This story was... confusing. There are the people from the crystal ship, who spend their time drugged on "chitta" and dreaming, until some of them start to die, and Tarawassie goes off to find the reason.
  
  Then there are the "real people," who provide the chitta and can "teach" by mind-linking through a touch. Tarawassie becomes friends with one, called "Moon Shadow." Their friendship causes problems when Moon Shadow gives her information her kind isn't supposed to have.
  
  According to the afterword, this story was based on a poem and a Doors song. That likely explains it. I'm not a poetic sort of person.
  
  
• **** "Tin Soldier"
  This one is actually a romance. The "tin soldier" is Maris, a cyborg who owns a bar frequented by space travelers. He falls in love with one: Brandy.
  
  They're perfect for each other: space travelers (all female, I don't remember why) avoid anything other than one-night stands--because of the vagaries of space travel, when they return to the same place years later, they've only aged a few months. And the cyborg doesn't age, and he's likewise, because of his nature, alone.
  
  It's a sweet story, melancholy in spots, about finding love against the odds.
  

Labels: 3 stars, 3.5 stars, 4 stars, 4.5 stars, 5 stars, books, ScienceFiction

// posted by Darla @ 5/21/2008 01:29:00 PM