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In an effort to defray some of the expenses involved in providing this on-line magazine every month, Reader's Bookshelf has become a barnesandnoble.com Affiliate. This means that you can buy any of the books in this column on-line. Just use one of the links which follow each review. We'll receive a portion of the purchase price, and maybe we'll get enough to pay our ISP without dipping into the household budget.

Starting last month, I made available a list of past reviews (organized alphabetically by author) from a link at the bottom of this page. Now you can use a search engine on that page to look up and order books, as well.

We hope you enjoy this service. You'll probably pay less that I have for most of these books, and I hope you'll enjoy reading them as much as I have!


    A Quantum Murder
    by Peter F. Hamilton

    Copyright 1994
    1st Mass Market Ed. 6/98
    TOR Science Fiction

Mr. Hamilton has written a very readable Techno-thriller. The setting itself is much more disturbing that anything William Gibson or Bruce Sterling have so far concocted. Global warming and the post-communist government in Britain are taking their toll on the local populace. The previous communist government and another war in Europe have devastated the economy. The new government depends, in part, on the charity of the multi-nationals who are willing to invest in the UK.

In this setting, Greg Mandel - hero of Mindstar Rising - returns to solve another mystery. This time its essentially the "locked room" plot familiar to fans of detective literature. A double Nobel laureate has been slain in his remote hideaway in the middle of a storm. Because of the location's inaccessibility, the only possible suspects are his six students, all of whom check out as innocent. Since one of them must have done it, it calls into question Greg's Psi abilities. Those of you familiar with the background of this story will remember that these abilities were given to him by the military, and left intact when he was demobilized from the infamous Mindstar Battalion.

Greg's job, of course, is to find out who killed the professor, and why. Professor Kitchener was working on a secret project for Event Horizon, a large multi-national corporation. Was he killed by a rival company, by another physicist whose work he had made obsolete, by a rival in love? Who was the mysterious phantom lady in hall the night of the murder? The plot proceeds - with many twists - towards its tense denouement.

This is another tour-de-force by author Peter Hamilton, and not to be missed by those who enjoy a gritty story with lots of action. The confrontation at the end (you knew there had to be one) is truly chilling. Its Agatha Christie meets cyber-punk - on steroids!

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    Vast
    by Linda Nagata

    Copyright 1998
    PB Edition 8/98
    Bantam Spectra

A weird quartet of travelers has set out to find the enemy aboard a bionic spaceship, but the enemy has found them first. Now its trying to catch up to them. If they can't manage to convince it that they're on the same side by the time it catches them, they'll be destroyed.

So begins this tale of life aboard Null Boundary, a haphazard business, at best. First, there's Nikko, sometimes embodied as a modified human, sometimes a dis-embodied presence operating the ship. Then there's Urban, a refugee from the city of Silk. With him is his boyhood companion Lot, a carrier of a virus which spreads a religious mania among those who are not immune. Lastly, there's Clemantine, a thousand-year-old woman who no longer has a home world - it was destroyed by the enemy, the Chenzeme.

Their journey lasts hundreds of years, but most of that time they spend asleep. The exception is Nikko, who cycles his consciousness every 90 seconds. These un-remembered slices of time allow him to keep an eye on the outside universe while still keeping a reasonably short memory of the journey.

This technological thriller is very well done. Most of the scientific elements flow logically from what we know of Physics and Cosmology today. Likewise, the characterizations, while remaining alien enough to seem plausible, are understandable. One of the more surprising things about this book (at least to me), is that the plot flows so freely from the character of each person depicted. I guess I'm not the only person who still believes that, "Character is Destiny."

This is not one of those books which is a short, fun, read. Its quite thick, and the subject matter is similarly weighty. While having more than enough action to sustain the plot, it strives to investigate ideas such as, "What does it mean to be human?"

This is not to say that it wasn't also fun to read - it was - but Ms. Nagata has provided a little more substance that most writers these days. I highly recommend this one.

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    Berserker Fury
    by Fred Saberhagen

    Copyright 1997
    1st Mass Market Ed. 12/98
    TOR Science Fiction

For those of you unfamiliar with the story, berserkers are left-over war machines bent on destroying all organic life in the galaxy. Organisms which resist are called "bad life." Sol-normal humans are the most notorious example. Organisms which aid in the berserkers' goal are "good life." Sol-normal humans are also the most notorious example of this type of scum.

Because of the vast distances involved, the only efficient way to communicate between star systems involves sending small ships with coded messages. This is as true for the berserkers as it is for humanity. As the story opens, humans have discovered a way of reading the messages of the berserkers couriers without being discovered. The intercepted messages all point towards an attack on a human settlement on the edge of human space.

But, is it a berserker plot? Have the berserkers discovered this secret human capability? Are they deliberately misleading the Solarians in order to get them to leave Earth undefended? The answer may lie within the mind of a human traitor.

Once again, Mr. Saberhagen has managed to wring another wrinkle on this concept, and fascinate all of us. This book is even better than the last one in this series. The murkiness of the plot, the moral ambiguity of one of the characters, and - of course - the action, all add up to an excellent read.

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'Til next month, keep reading!

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Text Copyright © 1998 Paul Roberts

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