Challenges
Stories and Speculation from one of SF's Greats
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- USD 11.99
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- USD 11.99
Descripción editorial
Bova offers a new collection of wide-ranging science fiction stories, essays about the onrushing future, and observations about the craft of SF itself.
Included - among others - are such tales as the touching "The Man Who Hated Gravity," the satirical "Crisis of the Month" and "Fitting Suits," rigorously hard SF like "To Touch a Star," and wrenching drama like "Answer, Please Answer" and "Brothers." Framing all the stories are Bova's insights into the challenges posed in the writing of each one, a vade mecum of home truths about the science in SF, trusting one's own instincts, writing what you know, dealing with publishers, generating plots, creating sympathetic characters, and getting the job done. Also included is a remarkable pair of pieces, one a speculative essay about the world of fifty years hence ("2042: A Cautiously Pessimistic View") and the other a novella, Thy Kingdom Come, set in the world outlined in that essay and dramatizing its problems and opportunities.
Finally, Challenges also presents a generous selection of Bova's output as an essayist both in and outside the SF field, such pieces as "Will Writing Survive?," "Science in Science Fiction," "What Works for Me - And What I Work For," "John Campbell and the Modern SF Idiom," and his resounding affirmation of humanistic rationalism, "Science, Fiction and Faith."
Any collection of Ben Bova's fiction would be cause for celebration. With its generous helping of Bova's comments - particular, provocative, and deeply practical - on the SF field itself and the real future into which we are all embarked, Challenges is an even more special book for SF readers, aspiring writers, and anyone interested in where the human race is headed at the end of the twentieth century
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This bland collection gathers recent short stories and nonfiction essays by the Hugo Award-winning author of Mars , with each piece prefaced by the author's comments about his inspirations and writing methods. The stories display the typical elements of Bova's hard-SF orientation: robotic prosthetic limbs in the light-hearted tale, ``The Man Who Hated Gravity''; sentient computers in the cyberpunkish ``World War 4.5''; a mysterious alien artifact in ``Sepulcher''; the problems of interstellar travel in ``To Touch a Star.'' The author handles his subjects with clear prose and well-practiced skill, but none of these works breaks new ground. At best, he offers mildly intriguing perspectives on topics better handled elsewhere; at worst, he is prosaic and predictable. The nonfiction, dealing with the nature and technique of SF-writing, is adequate but forgettable. Bova repeats himself from essay to essay; his arguments about the merits of SF as literature have been made before. The one truly engaging essay is ``Science, Fiction and Faith,'' which contends that SF may be the mythology of the modern age. As a whole, this volume does not represent Bova's strongest work.