Re: Highlights and Lowlights - February 2025

In article <vq7qmj$21him$5@dont-email.me>,
Tony Nance  <tnusenet17@gmail.com> wrote:

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
>
===========================================
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

Extensively revised I think.  I wondered the same thing years ago and
looked at the first publication.  I didn't read the whole story again,
but the first few pages make clear it was originally set on Earth after
some cataclysm:

https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=osu.32435071751028&seq=39

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.
>

I did enjoy this book.  Are the "Colonial Survey" stories part of
the collection?

( ++ ) 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.
>

Sound's a bit like _Earling's Word_ by Walker.  I always felt he
did the same and had to throw a few bits of actual fantasy in there
to get it sold.  (It also wasn't particularly good though it was OK-ish).

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