Added by 16 members
Publisher's Weekly
In designing their book as a round robin, Chalker ( The Return of Nathan Brazil ), Resnick ( Second Contact ) and Effinger ( When Gravity Fails ) seem to have been more interested in presenting the next author with a challenge (''Write your way out of this!'') than they were in continuity, plot or character. Millard Fillmore Pierce (most names are pseudo-significant, such as the battleship Mahatma Gandhi, captain Nathan Bolivia) appears in five different guises, each a member of a different species from a different parallel universe; all of them speak English and most of them intend to take over the human Pierce's galaxy. That none succeeds is largely due to red tape: so many forms must be filled out in order even to fire a shot that battleships carry hundreds of bureaucrats to support each soldier. What could have been light entertainment is defeated by the authors' arch, feckless comments to one another--with discussions on writing the book included as part of the book. Only a blindly dedicated fan will be pleased with this collaboration.
Genre: Science Fiction
In designing their book as a round robin, Chalker ( The Return of Nathan Brazil ), Resnick ( Second Contact ) and Effinger ( When Gravity Fails ) seem to have been more interested in presenting the next author with a challenge (''Write your way out of this!'') than they were in continuity, plot or character. Millard Fillmore Pierce (most names are pseudo-significant, such as the battleship Mahatma Gandhi, captain Nathan Bolivia) appears in five different guises, each a member of a different species from a different parallel universe; all of them speak English and most of them intend to take over the human Pierce's galaxy. That none succeeds is largely due to red tape: so many forms must be filled out in order even to fire a shot that battleships carry hundreds of bureaucrats to support each soldier. What could have been light entertainment is defeated by the authors' arch, feckless comments to one another--with discussions on writing the book included as part of the book. Only a blindly dedicated fan will be pleased with this collaboration.
Genre: Science Fiction
Visitors also looked at these books
Science Fiction Gems, Volume 9
Ben Bova, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Mark Clifton, Randall Garrett, John Jakes, David H Keller, Frank Belknap Long, Rog Phillips, Jack Sharkey, Robert Sheckley and Evelyn E Smith
Science Fiction Gems, Volume Two
James Blish, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Roger Dee, Philip K Dick, Philip José Farmer, C M Kornbluth, Alan E Nourse, Rog Phillips, Robert Silverberg and Manly Wade Wellman
Used availability for Jack L Chalker's The Red Tape War