Book Review: Eternal Frontier

Today's book review is Eternal Frontier by James H. Schmitz, edited by Eric Flint and Guy Gordon.

This is the sixth volume of Flint's project to get Schmitz back into print.  The seventh volume is a reissue of The Witches of Karres, and with that, everything that Schmitz ever published is back in print.

This was the book that I took to cons and such for a while, and it was the book that I read in the airports on my Ecuador trip.  I finished it when I got back.  This isn't the best way to treat a book, and my impressions may not be the clearest.

If you've read the previous volumes of this series, the quality of the stories is similar.  Generally good SF stories; the tech is for the most part kept vague enough that it's not too badly dated despite many of these stories being 40 years old.  Plot is generally solid; characterization is often a bit weak, but not too terrible.  The individual stories are reasonably engaging, but seldom really spectacular.  Anyone who's a serious SF fan ought to read some of the Schmitz stories; once you've read one book, you should know whether you like his writing enough to pursue the rest.  I give this one a 7 out of 10.

5 Questions from peteralway

1: When times are better, what do you do for a living--or what do you hope to be doing?

The only work I've ever done for a living has been computer programming in some form.  I'm currently looking for another programming job, but I can't work up much enthusiasm for it right now.  I'd like to work as a photographer, but it's a tough field especially for someone with as little motiviation as I have.  I'd like to work with big cats, but there aren't many jobs in the field at all, and incredibly few of them actually pay enough to live on.

2: Is there another field you wish you had gotten into?

I think if I were 20 years younger and going to college now, I would go into veterinary medicine.  Certainly some biology-based field.

3: Do you ever write your own songs, lyrics, or music?

I've never written more than a few lines of lyrics.  I've composed a couple of tunes in my life, and I wrote a tune for a Kipling poem once, but I never worked it into a performance piece.

4: When do you feel you had the best results conncting with an audience? What song, and what event?

At Chambanacon a few years ago (I'd have to think for a while to figure out just when it was), the big room was packed with people, and Howie had just finished making everyone laugh like crazy with the Birdie Song.  Just as the excitement was dying down, I stood up and sang Cat Faber's "The Word of God".  This was before it had been released on an album, and few people had heard it.  I played and sang well, and I felt that I had the full attention of everyone in the room -- 100 people or so.

After the song came out on albums, I found audience reaction never came close to what it was when I wasn't competing with what the song was "supposed" to sound like on the album.  This realization was so painful to me that I almost stopped singing the song, even though it's one of my favorite songs ever.

5: What is the single moment that struck you the most on your trip to South America?

There were so many moments when I was overwhelmed with the beauty around me I couldn't begin to remember them all.  More than once, I was in a place that seemed so beautiful that it didn't matter where I pointed my camera, what I saw in the viewfinder looked like a prize-winning photo.  Probably the most intense was when we went well up the river to a "rock cathedral" -- a cliff maybe 40 feet high, undercut into a shallow cave by the river, with loose rock, interesting plant life growing in the sheltered area, and a wonderful view of the river and the other bank.

The other candidate would have to be when Mishi, the tame ocelot at the lodge, first seriously started licking me.