The Dragons of Springplace - Hardcover

Reed, Robert

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 096559016X ISBN 13: 9780965590167

Publisher: Golden Gryphon Press, 1999

Synopsis

In the title story of this first-rate science fiction collection, a renegade misfit conquers the dragons and renews the threat of nuclear chaos aboard Springplace, a man-made repository for old reactor cores, dirty plutonium, and dismantled bombs. Another story is a sprawling intergalactic epic that takes place aboard a starship. Salvaged and commandeered by humans, the massive generation starship becomes the setting for a titanic struggle between two alien entities who engage in a monumental battle for survival. The tale “Chrysalis” explores not just an alien milieu but the nature of man himself when another ancient starship lands and investigates an icy unknown planet inhabited by humans millions of years earlier.

About this title

About the Author

Robert Reed is the author of eight science-fiction novels, including Beneath the Gated Sky, Beyond the Veil of Stars, and An Exaltation of Larks. He has contributed stories to Asimov's Science Fiction, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and Science Fiction Age. He lives in Lincoln, Nebraska.

Reviews

Eleven substantial stories, spanning the years 199097, from the author of Beneath the Gated Sky (1997), etc. In the imaginative, striking, improbable title piece, a nuclear waste repository that's been turned into the Lost World of a steamy jungle swarming with huge, genetically engineered reptilian predators, proves an irresistible magnet for the unscrupulous. A woman unjustly exiled on devastated Earth, forced to help rebuild the planet after an interplanetary war, realizes she's gained far more than her rich friends who escaped retribution on the Moon's Farside. People didn't domesticate corn, Reed speculatesquite the reverse; and galaxies were built in the remote past by intelligent plasmas. A star traveler with a composite brain returns to a world of childlike, merciless immortals; a violent man is hunted by a birdlike predator from a parallel Earth; and aliens who visit Earth often fit in better than human outsiders. Elsewhere, in a far-future era of planet-sized starships, immortal passengers float through space on million-yearlong pleasure cruises while repair crews on the hulls, exposed to the manifold hazards of space, evolve into virtually other species. Aboard another starship, Gaean planetary intelligences pursue an ancient, meaningless feud; and on still another, the robots that systematically control everything deceive their organic counterparts in their paranoid determination to prevent another war. Ingenious yet disciplined, as too often Reed's novels aren't, and resolutely inquisitive, providing no easy answersor easy questions, either. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Like Reed's 1997 novel Beneath the Gated Sky, these 11 short stories, all written since 1993 and originally published in Asimov's or the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, soar into boldly realized starscapes and plunge into profound human heartaches. With clean, convincing story lines, Reed moves easily from near-future encounters with alien visitors, as in his ingenious treatment of crop circles in "To Church with Mr. Multhiford" and the ominous avian roadrunner from an alternative Earth in "Stride," to humanity's far-future cosmic voyages, as in "Chrysalis," "Guest of Honor," "Aeon's Child" and "The Remoras." Sympathetic characterizations of underdog heroes and alien or android antagonists alike flesh out the common theme of this collection: a victimized outsider survives and prevails not by cunning or brute strength, but through compassion. Reed is particularly adroit at conveying the stupidity of war, another of his major concerns, and the sadistic collective urge to destroy weak, sick or merely "different" members of the human pack, as in the remarkably poignant "Waging Good," a startling glimpse of post-nuclear devastation. "Aeon's Child" falters slightly because of a conflict almost too vast to imagine, but most of these stories turn expertly upon a gasp of epiphany, the recognition that in undreamed-of futures, galactic deeps or a neighboring cornfield lies undeniable truth about what makes us human.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Golden Gryphon Press
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 096559016X
• ISBN 13: 9780965590167
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320