Highlights and Lowlights - February 2025

Highlights and Lowlights - February 2025
Kind of a slow reading month, especially compared to past Februaries.
Books are rated using a very primitive rating system:
“+” are good, and more “+” are better
“-” are not good, and more “-”  are worse
I’m happy to answer questions about anything here.
Highlights - The Forgotten Planet - Leinster
Lowlights - Nothing too bad, though Flatlander was pretty uneven.
February 2025
( +++ ) The Forgotten Planet - Leinster (part of his Planet of Adventure collection)
( ++ ) The Demon of Scattery - Poul Anderson and Mildred Downey Broxon
( ++ 1/2 - ) Flatlander - Niven (collection - all 5 Gil the ARM stories)
( ++ ) Vandals of the Void - Vance
Now Reading:
Long work - Cast in Eternity [Elantra #17]
Collection - Planets of Adventure - Leinster
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February 2025
( +++ ) The Forgotten Planet - Leinster (part of the Planet of Adventure collection)
This story is roughly the first 1/3 of Baen’s Planets of Adventure (Leinster collection). It’s a fixup of three stories from 1920, 1921, and 1953. I absolutely cannot tell that two of the stories were written in the 1920s. This story follows the evolution of a planet that was visited by humans, who prepared the planet for colonization and then promptly lost track of the planet completely. (Clerical error!) In the future of these events, a decent-sized human ship crash lands on this planet; and in the far future of that landing, the story follows Burl and his fellow human savages as they try to survive this mad planet filled with deadly megaflora and megafauna. Leinster obviously put significant thought into the planet, including how megaflora and megafauna could come to be, and how they could sustainably live. Good stuff.
( ++ ) The Demon of Scattery - Poul Anderson and Mildred Downey Broxon, with over 50 pages of drawings by Alicia Austin
Short, straightforward. Vikings invade the Irish island of Scattery. The two protagonists are an enslaved Irish nun-in-training, and the Viking leader. There’s a lot of emphasis on Norse/Pagan vs Ireland/Christian. It’s mostly a relationship/character study set in the 9th Century. It reads a lot like two people who had done a bunch of historical research decided to craft a framing story around it in order to get it published. It’s not bad. It’s also not good.
( ++ 1/2 - ) Flatlander - Niven (1995 collection of all 5 Gil the ARM stories)
The 5th Gil the ARM story (The Woman in Del Rey Crater) was written for this collection. Gil is a detective working for ARM (the elite UN police force). He was born on Earth, spent years in the Belt, and the last two stories have him on the Moon. The range of quality goes from the excellent Patchwork Girl down to I-didn't-read-it The Defenseless Dead. I only read a few pages of because it was clear that this was 1000000% about organlegging, which I find too dumb an idea to ignore when it’s the primary story driver.[1]
( ++ ) Vandals of the Void - Vance
Very early Vance, before he had developed his trademark style. This is very much a “boy’s adventure” type of story set on the Moon (mostly) and in space (some). 15-yr-old Dick Murdock travels to the Moon to spend some time with his father, chief of the Lunar Observatory. En route, Dick’s ship sees the remains of a sister ship, destroyed by pirates. On the Moon, Dick finds some evidence that the pirates are transmitting messages to/from/through the Lunar Observatory communications system, and Dick’s adventures get going in earnest.
Now Reading:
Long work - Cast in Eternity [Elantra #17]
Collection - Planets of Adventure - Leinster
Tony
[1] In the Afterword, Niven makes it clear that he (at that time, at least) truly thinks organlegging is inevitable, as are the social & legal changes he brings along with it. Meh.