Life can be a real pain sometimes. Job, family, and the miscellaneous other commitments and responsibilities we all share make leisure reading, mixed with a little escapist daydreaming, difficult to say the least. Not that I’m a Walter Mitty type. Most of the time I live in the real world, I love my wife and kids, and life in general is good. It’s just that on occasion I need to live in another reality so this one doesn’t drive me insane. Well, maybe I do have a little of old Walter in me. Maybe we all do. Whether it’s reading Mark Twain’s Life on the Mississippi and imagining you’re strolling along the deck of a river boat or reading Walden and discussing the meaning of life with Thoreau, it’s all the same . My preferred vehicle is science fiction. Which brings me to the reason I haven’t posted in over six months.
It’s hard to find decent reads in the scifi genre these days. I mean, most of the stuff I find is filled with amoral, unimaginative cartoon like characters, gratuitous violence, and a jaundice view of humans. I miss the stories that leave me feeling good when I closed the cover on the last page; that gave me a sense of hope we could, one day, live with each other in an eclectic culture (Yeah, Yeah Kum ba yah). Unfortunately, that sort of writing seems to be out of vogue. However, like the old gold prospector, I occasionally find a nugget.
A couple of weeks ago I was browsing the stacks at a local used bookstore when I noticed a tattered hardcover with an intriguing title. I picked it up and recognized the author as one of the well known writers from the Golden Age, Poul Andersen. The book was Starfarers, published in 1998, just four years before his death. I have read several short stories by Anderson, and found his style of prose very entertaining. So, I decided the price of two bucks was a value and brought it home. I googled the title, read a few reviews and found the old adage about opinions being like rectums to be very true. That is why I won’t try to dissect the plot, and mention his characterization flaws and all that other rubbish amateur reviews like to harp on. I’ll just say thank you to Mr. Anderson, where ever he is, for giving me a few hours of adventure in my alternate reality.
Gnostic Science Fiction 