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I have a burning need to know stuff and I love asking awkward questions.

Friday, April 20, 2007

Just Finished Reading: After Armageddon – There Will be War Volume IX created by J E Pournelle.

This book has been sitting on my shelf for quite some considerable time so I thought it was right that I should’ve finally gotten around to reading it.

It was part (IX obviously) of a long running series of short combat SF stories covering various aspects of the subgenre. This one (again rather obviously) dealt with the aftermath of Armageddon – not the Biblical version but the man made one. The scenario’s varied from post nuclear war to post population bomb to post AIDS survival. The quality of the writing was uniformly good with notable contributions from J P Boyd (who I’d never heard of) in his The Last Cruise of the Zeppelin Tempest and Norman Spinrad with his Journal of the Plague Years.

The only (slightly) off-putting thing about this series is that the creator/editor Jerry Pournelle does tend to use these volumes to launch right-wing polemics regarding the state of government and the military at the time when the books were being compiled. They can be easily skipped though without undermining the quality of the short stories themselves. If you’re into combat SF this is a good series of books to own.

4 comments:

dbackdad said...

I'm a big fan of the Larry Niven/Jerry Pournelle written books. It irritates me that a lot of the stuff I used to read had political overtones that I just wasn't aware of (mostly because I wasn't politically aware then). It taints rereading some of that stuff for me. I used to really enjoy reading Tom Clancy but I just can't do it now.

I picked up about a half dozen sci-fi anthologies recently when our local library had a huge book sale. I haven't started any of them but am very much looking forward to doing so.

Plonka said...

I hadn't seen this series CK, thanks. Yep, the Niven/Pournelle books are some of my favourites.

They all do politics to a degree but Heinlein tops my list for that...

CyberKitten said...

dbackdad said: I picked up about a half dozen sci-fi anthologies recently when our local library had a huge book sale. I haven't started any of them but am very much looking forward to doing so.

Anthologies are a great way to 'get into' a genre (or sub-genre). It's also a great way to 'discover' new authors so that you can hunt down any novels they may have written.

plonka said: I hadn't seen this series CK, thanks. Yep, the Niven/Pournelle books are some of my favourites.

They're pretty old. This volume (IX) was published in 1990 so the first volume probably dates from 1981-82.

I've probably read nearly everything Niven & Pournelle have produced. They were most certainly amonst my favourite authors in my 20's.

plonka also said: They all do politics to a degree but Heinlein tops my list for that...

For sure. I stopped reading his later stuff because it (for me) just got too boring. I enjoyed his earlier stuff very much though. I think I was pretty much reading most of what he wrote in my early teens.

Plonka said...

CK: Thanks for that. There's a few good second hand book shops out my way, I'll have to see if I can hunt them down.

I stopped reading his later stuff because it (for me) just got too boring.

His earlier stuff was definitely the best. I reckon the later stuff also became a lot more implausible too.