First of a projected series, each entry from a different author, expanding on the successful television series Gene Roddenberry’s Earth: Final Conflict (yes, Star Trek’s creator is still dead, the crunching title notwithstanding). The series dramatizes a well-worn dilemma: Are the humanoid alien Taelons, having arrived on Earth from another dimension, benevolent, as they present themselves? Or are their real purposes hidden and malign? Here, prolific SF author Saberhagen (The Face of Apollo, 1998, etc.) details the origins of resistance leader Jonathan Doors’s conviction that the Taelons are evil and, since they’re too advanced and powerful to be confronted directly, must be subtly thwarted. Saberhagen contributes a professionally brisk and polished curtain-raiser. Still, does this pleasant but lightweight series justify further hype and a move into print? Quality-wise, no. In terms of sales potential—well, just look at Star Trek’s spin-offs.
Pub Date: Dec. 27, 1999
ISBN: 0-312-87302-6
Page Count: 340
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1999
Some of the best pure storytelling around these days is being produced in the critically suspect genre of fantasy, and this exuberantly inventive first full-length novel, by the co-creator of the graphic series The Sandman (1996), is a state-of-the-art example. The protagonist, determinedly unheroic Richard Mayhew, is a young man up from the provinces and living in London, where he has found both job success and a lissome fiancee, Jessica. Soon, however, Richard meets a mysterious old woman who prophesies he'll embark on an adventure that "starts with doors." Sure enough, his fate becomes entwined with that of a beautiful waiflike girl who calls herself Door, and who is in flight from a pair of ageless hired assassins and in pursuit of the reason behind the murder of her family. Suddenly wrenched away from his quotidian life (people can no longer see or hear him), Richard follows Door underground to an alternative "London Below," where "people who have fallen through the cracks" live in a rigidly stratified mock-feudal society that parallels that of London Above. A parade of instructors and guides brings Richard and Door ever closer to understanding why her father was marked for death by the rulers of London Below, and prepares Richard to do battle with the (wonderfully loathsome) Great Beast of London. The ending is both a terrific surprise and a perfectly logical culmination of Richard's journey into the darkest recesses of his civilization and himself. Altogether, Gaiman's story is consistently witty, suspenseful, and hair-raisingly imaginative in its contemporary transpositions of familiar folk and mythic materials (one can read Neverwhere as a postmodernist punk Faerie Queene). Readers who've enjoyed the fantasy novels of Tim Powers and William Browning Spencer won't want to miss this one. And, yes, Virginia, there really are alligators in those sewers—and Gaiman makes you believe it.
Pub Date: July 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-380-97363-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Avon/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1997
A weirdly credible adventure revolving around moral philosophy and entomology, told in the first person. The hero, a youth in his late teens, a citizen of Terra, one of the member governments of the Federation of Planets, enlists as an interstellar soldier. His adventures not only include fantastic journeys through space, combats with horrifying insect enemies, and a range of bewildering maneuvers, they also extend to the battle front of his mind in which ultimately he justifies the moral validity of war as an instinctual preservation of the species. Somewhat pretentious in style and proposed scope, often slightly confusing to the non-aficionado, this should, nevertheless, find readers among the devotees of Robert Heinlein's impressively long list of science fiction titles.
Pub Date: Nov. 5, 1959
ISBN: 0441014100
Page Count: 279
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Sept. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1959
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