James Nicoll Reviews

Dream Pod 9’s 1997 Heavy Gear, 2^nd edition, is a science fiction roleplaying and tactical game. Per the title, it is the second edition of Dream Pod 9’s Heavy Gear. The first edition appeared in 1995, almost exactly thirty years ago.

Second Edition’s writers included Philippe R. Boulle, Jean Carrières, Élie Charest, Jean Marcil, Guy-Francis Vella, and Marc A. Vézina. The art direction was by Pierre Ouelette, with art by Ghislane Barbe, Normand Bilodeau, Jean-Francois Fortier, Charles-Emmanuel Ouellette, Pierre Ouellette, plus many others too numerous for me to list¹.

The setting of the game: four thousand years from now, the competing nations of the exoplanet Terra Nova contend against each other and those darn Terrans using a variety of methods, not least of which is Heavy Gear powered armour.

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2018’s Mr. Villain’s Day Off, Volume One is the first tankōbon of Yuu Morikawa’s slice-of-life comedy science fiction manga. The English translation was published in 2023.

The evil extra-terrestrial General commands an army intent on subverting and conquering the Earth. Although Earth’s covert defenders, the Rangers, oppose the General, there can be no doubt that one day the General will be victorious. Earth will be his! Humanity will be exterminated¹!

However, today is the General’s day off.

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Walter Jon Williams’ 1989 Angel Station is a stand-alone science fiction novel.

What failed trader Pasco left to his children, Ubu and Beautiful Maria: his rundown starship Runaway, massive debt, and an increasingly untenable lifestyle. Pasco was a self-deluding fool who invested years making a terrible situation worse, but he was not entirely to blame.

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Pamela Sargent’s 1977 Starshadows is a collection of science fiction stories.

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Y. R. Liu’s 2024 The Whisperer in White is a stand-alone young-adult coming-of-age secondary-world fantasy.

Magistrate’s daughter Talia loves hunting. Her father’s insistence that her older brother Oren chaperone her on her expeditions is an affront. After all, how often could Talia’s habit of lobbing arrows at targets she cannot clearly see come back to haunt her?

Luckily for Talia, she does not manage to skewer Oren or even a young woman with her apron wrapped about her whom Talia took for a swan. Talia (non-fatally) impales a cat.

A talking cat.

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Alec Nevala-Lee’s 2018 Astounding: John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and the Golden Age of Science Fiction is (as one might suspect) a biography of John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, as their lives and careers relate to the Golden Age of SF… and its aftermath.

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2023’s The Color of the End: Mission in the Apocalypse, Volume One is the first tankōbon in Haruo Iwamune’s post-apocalyptic manga. The Color of the End has been serialized in Enterbrain’s seinen manga magazine Harta since March 2022. John Neal’s translation came out in 2025.

The alien Executioner who descended on Earth little suspected humanity’s pluck and ingenuity. Truly, it was the height of arrogance for the pitiful aliens to believe they could sweep humans aside as easily as a human could sweep aside a small insect. Well…

Fifty years after the Great Disaster, Saya is a special investigator for the Ushimitsu Technical Research Institute. Her mission: to decontaminate crumbling cities and to determine if any humans survived into the present day.

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1966’s Tarnsman of Gor is the first volume in John Norman’s Gor sword and planet novels.

Mediocre Oxford graduate Tarl Cabot successfully exaggerates his academic prowess to the gullible Americans. Result: a teaching position at a minor liberal college in New Hampshire. As long as Tarl can swot up course material faster than he has to teach it, his position should be secure. The potential for zany academic adventures, perhaps involving lascivious young co-eds, is obvious.

Also, completely irrelevant to the actual plot of this book.

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Ellen Kushner’s 1980 Basilisk is a fantasy anthology. Interior illustrations are by Terri Windling. 

While Kushner had appeared in Destiny mastheads, I believe Baslisk was her first cover credit. 

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2024’s Club Contango is the second work and first novel in Eliane Boey’s Tracerverse SF series¹.

By 2070, visionary South Asians had given humanity access to space². The rewards were doled out appropriately. For example, Freeport Station’s 210 oligarchs live pampered lives amid unimaginable luxury. 250,000 less fortunate Freeport temporary residents live one missed paycheck from being deported back to Earth.

Connie Lam is less fortunate. One could make the case that Connie is cursed.

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