Bookshelf

Jurassic Park - Michael Crichton - Arrow œ4.99

Michael Crichton has written several other books, the best known
being the Andromeda Strain and The Terminal Man. He also scripted
and directed Westworld and, since he graduated with an MD from
Harvard Medical School, it's not surprising that his novels and
films are closely linked to medicine, science and technology and,
especially, what happens when 'things go wrong'.

Jurassic Park is no exception and takes the idea of theme parks
one step further. When it is found that extinct animals -
dinosaurs in this case - can be recreated and cloned from DNA
extracts, millionaire John Hammond, whose company made the
discovery, buys a tropical island and, secretly, sets up a vast
park stocked with a range of the creatures - from the small to the
large, from herbivores and scavengers to carnivores.  All the park
is computer-controlled from a central point by a mere handful of
staff. All possible precautions have been taken to ensure the
animals are safely confined ... electric fences, moats, ditches.
It's got to be the idea of the century, fun for all the family.
Nothing can possibly go wrong.

So why are small children on nearby Costa Rica being attacked, and
sometimes killed, by strange-looking reptiles?

With the on-going interest in genetic engineering, Jurassic Park
is very topical. It's also, as you'd expect, a cautionary tale.
The outcome is pretty clear from the start of the book, but the
reader's interest is tightly gripped by the atmosphere of suspense
created by the author as the characters walk into darkened areas,
oblivious to the clicking of claws on the floor behind them.

I read recently that Jurassic Park is to be made into a film by
Steven Spielberg. If so, I'm looking forward to seeing the special
effects. If anyone can pull it off, he can. In the meantime, read
the book; it won't spoil the film for you when it eventually
appears.

New York by Knight - Esther Friesner - Headline œ2.95

When a knight in full armour, complete with horse, turns up on the
streets of New York, you can bet a dragon won't be far behind. The
confrontation between the two characters has been going on for
years, across many worlds, all of which are now destroyed, their
people killed as the knight fails to destroy the beast.

Unfortunately, the first people the knight encounters are a
suspicious, ignorant bunch, whose response to anything they can't
understand is to attack it. A series of well-aimed bricks and
other missiles leave the knight bleeding and unconscious, his
horse gone, his armour and weapons stripped from his body. But
a kindly man, who specialises in rescuing waifs and strays, both
human and animal, rescues the knight, taking him into his own
home.

But what of the dragon? He too is gathering followers, unwittingly
taken in by what appears to be a cute little pet lizard. But as
his strength grows, so does his size - and his ambition to
subjugate this world ... or destroy it.  Can the knight, Persiles,
recover his weapons and horse in time to kill the beast, or will
Earth be eradicated in the struggle?

At first I didn't think very much of this book. It was slow and
many of the characters a belligerent lot who didn't attract much
sympathy. But from about half-way, the tone changed and I found
myself enjoying it more until, by the end, I couldn't put it down.
At œ2.95, an excellent price for a great book.

                       * * * * *

The Heechee Saga - Frederik Pohl

Having recently played Legend's Gateway, based on Pohl's novel of
the same name, I was compelled to re-read the book. I found that
since I'd originally read it and the sequel, another two had been
added. The full set are Gateway, Beyond the Blue Event Horizon,
Heechee Rendezvous and The Annals of the Heechee. The first three
at least are available in paperback from Orbit.

All four books follow the life of Robinette (aka Robin, Robby,
Bobby, Bob) Broadhead. In the first he travels to Gateway, the
famous Heechee artifact, to try to make his fortune aboard one of
the randomly directed faster-than-light ships. The book itself is
unusual in that it takes place after he leaves Gateway and, for
various reasons, is undergoing analysis by a robot psychiatrist.
The chapters take turns covering analysis or his life on Gateway,
interspersed with classified ads, scientific notes, mission
reports and his psychiatrist's notes. Robin comes across as a
thoroughly unlikable character and the style in which the book is
written makes it something of a struggle to read but it is
interesting to see the links between the book and the game.

The end of Gateway is something of a cliff-hanger which leaves
Robin in a quandary (hence the psychoanalysis mentioned above).
Beyond the Blue Event Horizon is easier reading as Robin tries to
'put things right'.  Further characters are introduced when they
explore a huge Heechee artifact, known as the Food Factory, at a
time when Earth is troubled by food shortages and strange mass
hallucinations.  It isn't until Heechee Rendezvous that the
Heechee finally appear and make known the facts about the
Assassins, a race of pure energy beings who are planning to
reverse the Big Bang and remake the universe to their own design.
This and Annals of the Heechee can be a bit overwhelming at times
with explanations about 9-dimensional space and similarly
complicated subjects.

However the series is gripping reading and the ending is VERY
different from the game! Despite the fact that Gateway was the
novel that won Hugo, Nebula and John W. Campbell awards, it was my
least favourite. I think Robin's character improvement as the
series progressed had a lot to do with that!

                       * * * * *

All the Weyrs of Pern - Anne McCaffrey (hardback, Bantam, œ13.99)

I thought I'd read all of the Pern series until I picked up this
book from the library, started reading and thought - hang on, I've
missed one ... evidently called Renegades of Pern. Never mind,
after a chapter or so, I found it easy to work out what had
happened in the 'missing' book and was able to settle down and
enjoy this latest one.  I expect most of you have heard or read of
the Dragonriders of Pern - a fearless force who protect their
planet from the danger of Thread, a micro-organism that falls from
the sky at certain times, destroying all it touches. The first few
books dealt with the Dragonriders and the other people on the
planet - Craftmasters, Lord Holders, Harpers and so forth -
setting out the traditions pertaining to them.

It gradually emerged during the series (as no great surprise) that
the people of Pern are in fact descendants of some intrepid
settlers from Earth. Much knowledge has been lost through the
generations but a complex of buildings, one of which contains a
powerful computer called AIVAS, has recently been discovered.
In All The Weyrs of Pern, using AIVAS, the people of Pern try to
recover the skills they have lost, their ultimate aim being to
destroy the threat of Thread, once and for all.

I've long had a fondness for dragons in games and books. The
dragons of Pern, with their telepathic powers and their affection
for their riders, have fascinated me since the first book in the
series.

Anne McCaffrey's books are very moving in places, always well
written and her characters realistic. If you haven't read any of
them, what are you waiting for?

                       * * * * *

Small Gods - Terry Pratchett (hardback, Gollancz)

Any fan of the Diskworld novels (this is the 13th in the series)
will know that the Diskworld has a lot of Gods. Some are very
important like Io, the God of Thunder and live in splendour in the
home of the Gods, Dunmanifestin. Others are less important whilst
others are so insignificant that they might just as well not
exist. But exist they do ... these are the small gods.

The fact is that a God's importance is in proportion to the number
of believers he or she (or in some cases like P'tang-P'tang, the
newt-like God of a small tribe, possibly it) has. The small gods
have no believers - maybe once they had thousands but, for one
reason or another, they've been forgotten.

This is the story of one pretty small god by the name of Om. You
see his statues everywhere in the city of Omnia and its environs.
His commandments are inscribed on the great bronze doors of the
his Temple. Tens of thousands of Omnians worship and pray to him.
A Quisition (complete with quisitors and inquisitors) has even
been set up in his name. Unfortunately only one person, Brutha, a
young novice at the Temple, actually believes in Om.  Om only
discovers this fact when he 'comes round' in the body of a
tortoise! More used to appearing as an eagle, lion or a bull, this
is rather a come-down for Om so he sets out to rectify the
situation.

The book follows Brutha and Om's travels and adventures and
introduces more new characters such as Deacon Vorbis, the head of
the Quisition, and various philosophers. It is perhaps a slower
book than the previous ones in the series because so much of the
action revolves around just a few characters, but is just as
hilarious as its predecessors.
                                         Sue