From /tmp/sf.4258 Tue Feb 1 03:51:01 1994 Xref: liuida rec.arts.sf.reviews:469 rec.arts.sf.written:47115 Path: liuida!sunic!pipex!uunet!news.sprintlink.net!dg-rtp!sheol!dont-reply-to-paths From: bp494@cleveland.freenet.edu (Dana Goldblatt Anthony) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews,rec.arts.sf.written Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Subject: Review: Conscience of the Beagle, Patricia Anthony Approved: sfr%sheol@concert.net (rec.arts.sf.reviews moderator) Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH (USA) Message-ID: <2hse1g$fld@usenet.INS.CWRU.Edu> Date: 24 Jan 94 03:46:10 GMT Lines: 44 Review of _Conscience of the Beagle_ by Patricia Anthony Review written by Dana L. G. Anthony (no relation!) Conscience of the Beagle by Patricia Anthony 201 pp. Publisher: First Books 1993 po box 2449 woburn MA 01888 $21.99 Hardcover There is more in this 200 page book than in many twice or five times as long: it invites comparisons to the best sf/detective novels including Bester's Demolished Man. Like them, it goes past the conventions of both genres to provide three-layered stories: psychological, social, and political: The mental states of the detective and quarry; the thriller story of the chase, as a menace to society is hunted down; and the science fictional specialty of explicating the political and technological changes that humanity has undergone. The narrator, Dyle, is a character reminiscent of those in CJ Cherryh's work: gifted and competent, he has recently been through a serious trauma. In fact, his entire detective team, sent to a paradisiacal planet with a religious dictatorship government to investigate a series of bombings, have devastating psychic wounds. Their primary suspect and best informant, the Minister of Science, is a well characterized antagonist; the author skillfully shows his good and bad sides alternately, never quite letting the reader decide what he's up to and whether to trust him until the spectacular and surprising (at least to me; I never was that great at guessing mysteries) conclusion. (which successfully wraps up all three of the stories: the personal, the detective story, and the sf story!) %T Conscience of the Beagle %A Patricia Anthony %I First Books %C Woburn, MA %D 1993 %P 201 %O hardcover, $21.99 %G ISBN 1-880448-30-0 From /tmp/sf.4258 Tue Feb 1 03:55:09 1994 Path: liuida!sunic!trane.uninett.no!news.eunet.no!nuug!news.eunet.fi!news.funet.fi!news.tele.fi!uunet!news!dg-rtp!sheol!dont-reply-to-paths From: kcc@cs.wustl.edu (Ken Cox) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Subject: Review of Patricia Anthony's _Cold Allies_ Approved: sfr%sheol@concert.net (rec.arts.sf.reviews moderator) Message-ID: <9309232111.AA23572@siesta.wustl.edu> Date: 23 Sep 93 23:42:32 GMT Lines: 49 COLD ALLIES Patricia Anthony A review by Ken Cox Global warming has caused massive famines, particularly in already- marginal areas such as the Middle East. Desperate for food, the allied Arab armies invade Europe from the east and west, through Ukraine and Spain. The defending Europeans are slowly losing, even with American help. Then, strange blue lights are observed on the battlefields -- lights that seem immune to weapons, yet sometimes kill people and drain their blood. Can they be used to turn the tide of battle? _Cold Allies_ is an expansion of the story "Blue Woofers", which appeared in the July 1992 _Asimov's_. That story left the questions about the blue lights -- what are they, why do they do what they do -- mostly unanswered. I was therefore quite eager to read the novel and find out these answers. Big mistake. Although a lot happens in _Cold Allies_, at least in terms of tank battles and bombing raids and people dying, the blue- light questions remain largely unresolved. This isn't necessarily bad (I enjoyed Clarke's _Rendezvous with Rama_, for example, and if ever a novel left questions unanswered...), but if you're the type of person who likes everything neatly wrapped up you probably won't like _Cold Allies_. (Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?) This is Patricia Anthony's first novel, and she shows definite potential. The pacing and characterization are both very good. Plot is a major problem, with a too-abrupt ending and several unresolved story lines (in addition to the whole business with the blue lights). Though I can't recommend buying _Cold Allies_, or even borrowing it unless you're desperate for a time-filler, I'm still willing to try her next novel. %T Cold Allies %A Patricia Anthony %I Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Publishers %C New York %D 1993 %G ISBN 0-15-118503-4 %P 276pp %O hardcover, acid-free, US$21.95 Ken Cox kcc@cs.wustl.edu From rec.arts.sf.reviews Tue Sep 3 17:00:22 1996 Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Path: news.ifm.liu.se!liuida!newsfeed.sunet.se!news01.sunet.se!sunic!02-newsfeed.univie.ac.at!01-newsfeed.univie.ac.at!swidir.switch.ch!in2p3.fr!oleane!jussieu.fr!math.ohio-state.edu!howland.erols.net!newsfeed.internetmci.com!news.kei.com!uhog.mit.edu!news!news From: agapow@latcs1.cs.latrobe.edu.au (p-m agapow) Subject: Review: "Happy Policeman" by Patricia Anthony Message-ID: Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Keywords: author= p-m agapow Lines: 45 Sender: wex@tinbergen.media.mit.edu (Graystreak) Organization: Calvin Coolidge Home for Dead Biologists X-Newsreader: (ding) Gnus v0.94 Date: Wed, 28 Aug 1996 15:46:18 GMT Approved: wex@media.mit.edu Lines: 45 "Happy Policeman" by Patricia Anthony A Postview, copyright 1996 p-m agapow In Reganite America, the world ended in a cataclysmic nuclear war. Only the inhabitants of Coomey, Texas struck it lucky - a mysterious alien race, the Torku, sealed the town off from the rest of the world and now keep it supplied with food, gasoline, even VCRs. But the town is chafing in its confinement, waiting to erupt. When the local sheriff discovers a murder and the implicated Torku respond with only cryptic answers, the situation boils over. Patricia Anthony won much acclaim with her previous "Cold Allies" and that worth is reflected again in her careful depiction of every character in this story. The central character of Sheriff DeWitt is an example - growing away from his wife, yet engaged in an affair for reasons he cannot articulate, devoted to the Torku and yet fighting them, keeping the law in a town where law is no longer relevant. There's a care taken here and justifiably so, for the denouement is character-driven not event driven. And this is perhaps the problem - for not much happens in this story. Indeed the book is barely SF, which is not a problem itself but an indication of the fact that the Torku are really just a device to get a group of people isolated and interacting in just the right way. Thus when the story ends there's the aftertaste of a shaggy-dog story where the situation has been rigged to produce a punchline. This is not to diminish Anthony's easy and clear writing style but "Happy Policeman", while still an accomplished work, is one which perhaps doesn't reach as far as it should. One final point - the cover designers of the Ace line should be congratulated for their work on "Happy Policeman" as they're produced an interesting presentation that will sit well alongside the other Anthony books in the Ace line. [**/ok] and a candle-lit TV dinner on the Sid and Nancy scale. %A Patricia Anthony %T Happy Policeman %I Ace %C New York %D 1996 %G ISBN 0-441-00321-4 %P 273pp %O paperback, Aus$12.95 paul-michael agapow (agapow@latcs1.oz.au), La Trobe Uni, Infocalypse [archived at http://www.cs.latrobe.edu.au/~agapow/Postviews/] From rec.arts.sf.reviews Thu Jun 25 13:37:07 1998 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!feed1.news.luth.se!luth.se!Cabal.CESspool!news-feed.inet.tele.dk!bofh.vszbr.cz!europa.clark.net!192.148.253.68!netnews.com!eecs-usenet-02.mit.edu!ai-lab!news.media.mit.edu!not-for-mail From: "Evelyn C Leeper" Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: FLANDERS by Patricia Anthony Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Date: Wed, 24 Jun 1998 09:21:29 -0400 Organization: Software Agents Group Lines: 78 Approved: wex@media.mit.edu Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: tinbergen.media.mit.edu X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.3/Emacs 19.34 Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.sf.reviews:1941 FLANDERS by Patricia Anthony Ace, ISBN 0-441-00528-3, 1998, 384pp, US$23.95 A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper Copyright 1998 Evelyn C. Leeper In Flanders Field the poppies blow .... To Flanders in 1916 comes Travis Lee Stanhope. He has volunteered for the British Army, looking for escape and adventure. What he finds is hell. As a Southerner, one suspects he refused to listen to General Sherman's statement along these lines. Kim Stanley Robinson summarized it well in "A History of the Twentieth Century, with Illustrations:" 54,000 men who died over a fifteen-year period are remembered on the Vietnam Memorial. Imagine one of those for the Triple Entente losses every *six weeks* of the Western front of World War I, or thirty-five Vietnam Memorials in all, lined up in a row. Along the Western front, there were 7500 casualties each day, not in battle, but from sniping; this was called "wastage." This is particularly noteworthy, because it is as a sniper that Stanhope comes to Flanders. Stanhope is an outsider: an American in the British Army, a Southerner constantly called "Yank," a reader of the Romantic poets in a company of men more interested in more earthly delights, a man blessed (or cursed) with "second sight." As such, he finds himself attracted to other outsiders, and Anthony does a good job of showing us the many faces of the outsider. PUBLISHERS WEEKLY compares this book to Erich Remarque's ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT. I also saw a lot of parallels between FLANDERS and Stanley Kubrick's classic film PATHS OF GLORY. There is the heartlessness of the distant commanders in their commands. There is the insular attitude, the use of the outsider as scapegoat. What there is more of in Anthony's novel is the hell of war, a hell that could not be brought to the screen in the 1950s. She lays it all out--not just the battles and sniping and "authorized" killing, but also the disease and the maggots and the hardening of men's hearts and souls. Stanhope tries desperately to hold on to his humanity in all this, but he finds himself gradually sinking further into not just despair, but death--the death of his soul. Although the fantasy content is on a much more restrained level that most fantasy novels, it is necessary to the story. Without it, Anthony would still have a powerful novel, but a different novel. As it stands, though, this will be on my Hugo nomination ballot next year. IN FLANDERS FIELDS the poppies blow Between the crosses, row on row, That mark our place, and in the sky The larks, still bravely singing, fly Scarce heard amid the guns below. We are the Dead. Short days ago We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, Loved and were loved, and now we lie In Flanders fields. Take up our quarrel with the foe: To you from failing hands we throw The torch; be yours to hold it high. If ye break faith with us who die We shall not sleep, though poppies grow In Flanders fields. --JOHN MCCRAE %T Flanders %A Patricia Anthony %C New York %D 1998 %I Ace %O hardback, US$23.95 %G ISBN 0-441-00528-3 %P 384pp Evelyn C. Leeper | eleeper@lucent.com +1 732 957 2070 | http://www.geocities.com/Athens/4824 "I am so small I can barely be seen. How can this great love be inside me?" "Look at your eyes. They are small but they see enormous things." --Rumi