From archive (archive) Subject: The Hulzein Saga - F.M. Busbee From: rvermaa@cs.vu.nl (Richard Vermaas ) Organization: VU Informatica, Amsterdam, the Netherlands Date: 25 Sep 89 12:53:24 GMT Hello folks, Recently I noticed an SF saga by F.M Busbee. Since our local bookshop doesn't have any copies I would like to ask some opinions about it first. I know that it consist of the following titles (from an Author List by John Wenn): The Hulzein Family Novels: Rissa Kerguelen [O] Young Rissa Rissa and Tregare The Long View The Rebel Dynasty, Volume I [O] Star Rebel Rebel's Quest The Rebel Dynasty, Volume II [O] The Alien Debt Rebel's Seed Zelde M'tana Any info would be apreciated, greetings, Richard Vermaas ________________________________________________________________________________ Richard Vermaas | "Extreme feminine beauty is always disturbing." rvermaa@cs.vu.nl | [Spock] "The Cloud Minders," stardate 5818.4 cs.vu.nl!rvermaa | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From rec.arts.sf.written Tue May 17 02:14:55 1994 Path: liuida!sunic!EU.net!howland.reston.ans.net!vixen.cso.uiuc.edu!sdd.hp.com!decwrl!pa.dec.com!hildy.zso.dec.com!rcrowley From: rcrowley@hildy.zso.dec.com ("Rebecca Leann Smit Crowley") Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written Subject: Recent reading: F.M. Busby Date: 16 May 1994 20:00:28 GMT Organization: The Quadrilateral Commission Lines: 77 Message-ID: <2r8jcs$rdp@usenet.pa.dec.com> References: <2r39ta$r6r@usenet.pa.dec.com> Reply-To: rcrowley@zso.dec.com NNTP-Posting-Host: hildy.zso.dec.com X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL0] Thanks for all the comments on McKinley in email/r.a.sf.w. I'd completely forgotten that I read _Outlaws of Sherwood_ and agree with the opinion that it's fairly different from the other books by McKinley that I've read. I found it, um, forgettable. In the sense of I remember a lot of details from the book, but I tend to forget that I read the book unless I'm reminded of it, which is weird, since I read it less than two years ago. Anyway. I read _Slow Freight_ and _The Singularity Project_ (Busby), interspersed with a bit more of _Atlas Shrugged_ (Rand) and also _Riders of the Purple Wage_ (Farmer). I'm not going to comment on Rand hereandnow (I'll post again in r.a.b. when I've finished part 2). Farmer will constitute another post, I think. I read the Rissa Kerguelan trilogy and some of the ancillary novels a while back; also _The Breeds of Man_. Busby's writing style isn't something that I rave about -- it tells the story and that's about the size of it. However, Busby does some things with telling the story that are, in my experience, somewhat unusual. Because this is all plotting stuff, a lot of spoilers follow. Forewarned, etc. For one thing, he practices extrapolative sf in one of its purer versions. _The Breeds of Man_ is near-future sf, in which an AIDS cure is pursued, nearly got (catastrophically, of course, because the version of the virus which survives the near-cure is contagious like the common cold is contagious), then actually accomplished, but with a truly impressive side-effect. Fixing the side effect is the second major part of the beginning of the book. The impacts of that are the book as a whole. Neat hermaphrodites. Cyclic. Great trigger mechanism -- very plausible. _Slow Freight_ is similar. Someone invents a neat gadget -- transports stuff from A to B. Rather, that's what it's supposed to do, but instead stuff just disappears. Right along about when this hey, put stuff in it never shows up anywhere aspect is being exploited, it is discovered that stuff _is_ transported from A to B, with a "realtime" delay of two years -- and no subjective time lapse. Hmmm. Spaceflight applications, check. One way time travel applications, check. And you wouldn't believe the other things Busby dreams up to do with this toy. _The Singularity Project_ is another teleportation device, only Our Hero doesn't know whether it's a scam or not. You, the reader, get to spend a few hundred pages trying to figure out whether it's a scam or not along with him -- and Busby's fair. He gives you all the clues. This is much more techno-thriller than sf, however. But I haven't yet got to the most interesting aspect of Busby's story-telling: the sex. Busby writes a lot of sex. The first weird thing about these sex scenes is that he tends to set up people in long-term relationships, and keep merrily depicting sex throughout. It isn't titillating. Near as I can tell, it isn't _meant_ to be titillating. It develops character, instead; it shows what's going on in the relationship, and how the characters are responding to the events of the novel. There's an apparent bent for serial monogamy, but he depicts triads and other multiples, sometimes favorably, sometimes not. _The Singularity Project_ has a pre-op (and, towards the end, post-op) transsexual character depicted sympathetically. Oral sex tends to show up in sexual encounters that are power-charge, rather than friendly/affectionate/even handed. I can't think of any anal sex depictions, or, in fact, any notably favorable depictions of homosexual encounters -- comments about past encounters, yes. So, in a desultory manner, I think what I'm trying to say is that Busby isn't a great writer, but he tells a good story, and he tells part of the story in a fairly unusual way. -- Rebecca Crowley standard disclaimers apply rcrowley@zso.dec.com '...intelligence is another affair. The fact that "saviours of society" take to that trade is evidence enough that they have none to spare' T. Huxley