From archive (archive) From: rob@amadeus.TEK.COM (Dan Tilque) Organization: Tektronix, Inc., Beaverton, OR. Subject: CHESS WITH A DRAGON by David Gerrold Date: 15 Feb 88 09:40:57 GMT I saw this book in the store recently and perused the first few chapters. I didn't buy it because it was in hardback. I believe it's a new release but didn't check the publication date. (I'm doing this from memory so I may have the title slightly wrong.) The book is thin. In fact, I'd say that it really is a novella published as a novel (another reason not to buy it in hardback: who wants a novella at hardback prices). However, what got me was the originality of the ideas. It seems that humans have been withdrawing data from a Galactic database for years. Now their grace period is up and they have to pay for all that data. The only way to pay seems to be indenturement to one of the older species. These species are not very nice and have nasty things in mind for their indentured races including (gasp) genetic modification. Now the question is: don't you think some other authors (such as, oh, maybe, David Brin) wish that they had come up with these ideas first? --- Dan Tilque -- dant@mrloog.LA.TEK.COM P. S. To be fair to Gerrold, I did not finished the book and perhaps he comes up with a suitably original ending so as to make the book worthwhile. From: haste+@andrew.cmu.edu (Dani Zweig) Organization: Carnegie Mellon University Subject: Re: CHESS WITH A DRAGON by David Gerrold Date: 15 Feb 88 20:43:18 GMT >I saw this book in the store recently and perused the first few chapters. >... >The book is thin. In fact, I'd say that it really is a novella published >as a novel I read the book where it was meant to be read -- in the children's library. On that basis it's worth reading, but you will be mislead and disappointed if you don't realize what you're getting. >P. S. To be fair to Gerrold, I did not finished the book and perhaps he >comes up with a suitably original ending so as to make the book worthwhile. While the ending is nothing special, the insight leading to the ending is highly elegant. It turns out that the Earthlings have been trying to solve the wrong problem. However, it also turns out that the 'right' problem involves some extremely silly premises. Not recommended for purchase. If you have time read it in the library or at the bookstore. Gerrold completists should wait for it to come out in used paperback. ----- Dani Zweig haste+@andrew.cmu.edu From uucp Sun May 21 02:56 SST 1989 >From matoh Sun May 21 02:56:24 1989 remote from majestix.ida.liu.se Received: by sssab.se (smail2.5) id AA19454; 21 May 89 02:56:24 SST (Sun) Received: from majestix.ida.liu.se by sunic.sunet.se (5.61+IDA/KTH/LTH/1.53) id AAsunic02723; Sun, 21 May 89 00:21:45 +0200 Received: by majestix.ida.liu.se; Sun, 21 May 89 00:21:36 +0200 Date: Sun, 21 May 89 00:21:36 +0200 From: Mats Ohrman Message-Id: <8905202221.AA19171@majestix.ida.liu.se> To: matoh@sssab.se Status: RO Path: liuida!sunic!kth!mcvax!uunet!seismo!sundc!pitstop!male!sun-barr!apple!chuq From: chuq@Apple.COM (Chuq Von Rospach) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf-lovers Subject: Gerrold comments on Rage for Revenge Message-ID: <30383@apple.Apple.COM> Date: 10 May 89 03:14:58 GMT Organization: Life is just a Fantasy novel played for keeps Lines: 37 [note: I passed along some of the comments being made about Rage for Revenge to David Gerrold. Attached is his response to some of the issues brought up. If you have questions for David, you can pass them along through me. %---- Please mention to the USENET people that I do not intend to do seven more novels. There are only two more novels in the series, A SEASON FOR SLAUGHTER and A TIME FOR TREASON. Everything that has happened in the books till now is very important -- even the "preaching". There is something that Jim has to recognize, but will not be able to recognize until he has experienced a whole range of events first hand. In book four, most of the time bombs go off. In book five, Jim comes to conclusions. The importance of the Mode Training to Jim is a) it allows him to continue in the face of disaster, b) it forces him to really consider what consciousness and intelligence really are...which is very necessary if he is to recognize who and what he is up against. That question gets answered (mostly) in book four. For the record, Jim is not a hero. He's not likable, and although he takes bold and courageous actions, he does not necessarily take the right actions. The point of the series is not that he is a hero, but that despite *not* being a hero, he manages to be the first one to put some of the most important pieces of the puzzle together. Sometimes wars are won by people who aren't heroes.... BTW, The Dispossessed had no influence on ARFR at all. I recognize it's a great book, but I never liked it that much personally. The structure of overlapping stories is one that so many different authors have used before (including myself) that it just seemed a good way to handle some difficult stuff. Chuq Von Rospach =|= Editor,OtherRealms =|= Member SFWA/ASFA chuq@apple.com =|= CI$: 73317,635 =|= AppleLink: CHUQ [This is myself speaking. No company can control my thoughts.] Bookends. What a wonderful thought. From rec.arts.sf.written Sun Dec 6 15:09:03 1992 Path: lysator.liu.se!fizban.solace.hsh.se!kitten.umdc.umu.se!sunic!lunic!eru.mt.luth.se!enterpoop.mit.edu!usc!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!spool.mu.edu!umn.edu!csus.edu!netcom.com!dani From: dani@netcom.com (Dani Zweig) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written Subject: Gerrold: A Season for Slaughter Message-ID: <1992Dec6.091258.20060@netcom.com> Date: 6 Dec 92 09:12:58 GMT Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services (408 241-9760 guest) Lines: 31 As a couple of people have already posted, the fourth Chtorr book, "A Season for Slaughter", is on the shelfs. It went on with remarkably little fanfare. At the store where I found it, for instance, it was on the shelf, but not in the 'new books' section. Of course, since 95% of the demand for this book will come from people who have read the last three, not putting much marketing behind it may be sound policy. There's actually a great deal of progress in this book, considering that very little happens. Since the 'goal' is to understand the Chtorran ecology, it works to have our learning a great deal about that ecology constitute progress. (We still haven't been told what the intelligence behind the invasion is, so I don't consider it a spoiler to say that I decided about a third of the way through the book that it's the worm fur, and haven't changed my mind.) The fact that so much of the plot is driven by people acting in ridiculously petty ways seems to me a weakness in this book. Yes, we've been told many times that everyone is a bit insane after all the deaths, but that's too easy an excuse for the author to set up ridiculous confrontations and implausible predicaments. If you've followed the story this long, you'll want to follow it to the end -- even if the end is at least three more books away. ----- Dani Zweig dani@netcom.com 'T is with our judgements as our watches, none Go alike, yet each believes his own --Alexander Pope From rec.arts.sf.reviews Wed Jan 6 23:40:58 1993 Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Path: lysator.liu.se!isy!liuida!sunic!mcsun!uunet!usc!wupost!micro-heart-of-gold.mit.edu!news.media.mit.edu!news.media.mit.edu.!wex From: sheol!throopw@dg-rtp.dg.com (Wayne Throop) Subject: "A Season for Slaughter" by David Gerrold Message-ID: Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.misc Sender: news@news.media.mit.edu (USENET News System) Organization: Advanced Human Interface Group Date: Mon, 4 Jan 1993 04:41:52 GMT Approved: wex@media.mit.edu (Alan Wexelblat) Lines: 75 A Season for Slaughter by David Gerrold This has been hashed out in rec.arts.sf.written recently, so I won't go into the traditional "who/what are the REAL Chtorrans", questions. And since anybody who is interested in this series is probably NOT very spoiler- sensitive about the general context, I'll not be at all carefull of spoilers in that regard (though there aren't really any spoilers that leap out at me here either). In other words, this review is oriented towards people already familiar with the series. On the other hand, I'll throw in some points about the readability of the series as a whole, which may be of some use for anybody deciding whether to bother starting on it at all. If you do, it's probably worth starting at the beginning. First of all, Gerrold mentions in an afterword that "This is the longest damned trilogy I've ever written." And that's my dominant impression, and this is *not* a Good Thing. Yes, the setting provides a stage for a large volume of material. Yes, many epic tales will fit, and not even scratch the surface of the stage Gerrold has set. BUT... how many times do we have to see McCarthy decide that he's been a total smeghead and apologize left and right to everyone (whether or not they deserve it for the particular event apologized for), and end the volume all cleansed by the cathartic experience and seemingly ready for the next book with all his chakras centered, his id, ego, and superego tuned up to a fair-thee-well, all his engrams exorsized, and in general in a state of pseudo-new-age smugness (if you ignore the fact that the world is still in the process of coming to an end, and nothing done in the duration of the book has made a molecule of difference.) I mean, OK, OK, Gerrold throws in some nice Solomon Short sayings, and he gives neat quotations from the Red Book all ending in "this is of critical importance and deserves further study", and introduces mhorr and mhorr of the chtorran ecology. I mean, he has a flair for driving home the "reality" of the invasion, eg, by mentioning offhand that it is thought that the Enterprise Fish have eaten the last of the whales recently... about the same time as one attacked and almost destroyed the Nimitz. But really, the "good parts" are sparse particles bouncing around in a sea of angst. There's a good 200-page novel in there somewhere struggling to get out. On one hand, the "good parts" (hmmmm... perhaps we can get Goldman to do a "good parts" version, as he's done for Morgenstern's _The_Princess_Bride_) are really good. All too many alien invasion yarns give all too little thought to the subject. The notion of an ecological invasion elaborated as Gerrold has done is just excellent. Morbid, depressing, disturbing, yes, but mind-expanding and and fascinating also. Plus, isn't that old curmugeon Solomon Short just so cute you want to hug him and squeeze him and pet him and pat him and call him "George"? But on the other hand, it may be funny to hear Rimmer called a smeghead for the 1000-th time, but hearing McCarthy whining to himself for page upon page, dozens of times in each book... well, it gets old. Yes, yes, we KNOW he's a smeghead, he doesn't have to stop every page, interrupt the action, turn to the audience and ask if he's told us what an idiot he feels he is lately. "Yes, McCarthy, I believe you DID tell us that story. About as often as a chtorran burps." On the third hand, that's what "skipping ahead" is for. To sum up, the book is much like others in the series: great well-elaborated ideas, good pithy quotes, overlong repetive skippable interludes of McCarthy's internal psychodynamics. ( Hmmmm. I wonder when "An Aptitude for Abasement" is coming out... maybe right after "An Abundance of Alliteration". ) %A David Gerrold %D January 1993 %G ISBN 0-553-28976-4 %I Bantam %P 562 %S The War Against the Chtorr %T A Season for Slaughter %V Volume 4 -- Wayne Throop ...!mcnc!dg-rtp!sheol!throopw From rec.arts.sf.reviews Tue May 24 18:45:30 1994 Path: liuida!sunic!ugle.unit.no!trane.uninett.no!eunet.no!nuug!EU.net!howland.reston.ans.net!agate!postmodern.com!not-for-mail From: aaron@amisk.cs.ualberta.ca (Aaron V. Humphrey) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Prograde Reviews--David Gerrold:A Season For Slaughter Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Date: 24 May 1994 08:15:43 GMT Organization: The Anna Amabiaca Fan Club Lines: 58 Sender: mcb@postmodern.com (Michael C. Berch) Approved: mcb@postmodern.com (rec.arts.sf.reviews moderator) Message-ID: <2rh1m5$4oi@scapa.cs.ualberta.ca> Reply-To: aaron@amisk.cs.ualberta.ca NNTP-Posting-Host: remarque.berkeley.edu Originator: mcb@remarque.berkeley.edu David Gerrold: A Season For Slaughter A Prograde Review by Aaron V. Humphrey You know, things seems to get worse with each book in the Chtorr series. In each book so far, they've discovered new depths to the Chtorran infestation. It's mind-boggling, the scope of this thing... Some things don't change much, though. James McCarthy is still as pigheaded and stubborn as ever. The Mode Training he took in the last book seems to have heightened it, if anything. He spends the bulk of _this_ book making enemies, and then regretting it later. The book tends to switch back and forth between McCarthy-making-enemies and McCarthy-discovering-the-new-depths-of-the-Chtorran-infestation. Between the two, things go from bad to worse (apart from a romantic interlude in the middle, where he solemnizes his relationship with General Elizabeth "Lizard" Tirelli). The result is sometimes painful to read...but despite everything, you still sympathize with McCarthy, and his desire to throw politics aside and just get down to fighting the Chtorrans. Gerrold has this annoying habit, however, of going into long digressions, about new technology and how it has affected life, or did before the Chtorr arrived. Amusing though these side-trips may be, they slow down the story, and would almost be better told "straight" in another format--released as short story rather than stuck haphazardly into novel. I mean, would James McCarthy _really_ go into great detail about these things in his own thoughts? Some incident from decades ago that is already part of their popular culture? If they weren't so much fun to read, I'd say get rid of them altogether--as it is, I just wish he'd put them someplace else. Appendices, perhaps. But there's no question that I'm going to buy the next one. If only to see whether McCarthy's been busted down to Private yet. Oh, an interesting note--many of the characters in this book were named for people who donated money to AIDS research for the privilege. All I can say is, I wouldn't want to be the _real_ Randy Dannenfelser, or Robert Bellus. After reading this book, I'd sure feel like scum... %A Gerrold, David %T A Season For Slaughter %I Bantam Spectra %C New York %D 1992 %G ISBN 0-553-28976-4 %P 555pp %S Chtorr %V Book 4 %O Paperback, USD5.99, CAD6.99 -- --Alfvaen(Editor of Communique) Current Album--Tom Petty:Full Moon Fever Current Read--IASFM August '90 "Thinks again--thanks to brain, the new wonder head-filler!" --Bluebottle