Paperback, published HarperCollins 1994.
A friend sent this to me and I promptly read it over the next couple of days. If it wasn’t that I lived through a lot of this nonsense I’d have assumed this was some sort of humor parody, except that it isn’t. For instance in the alphabetical listing I find…coffee, asking a woman student out for, with the entry…a male faculty member who asks women students out for coffee outside of class or a drink to talk about Wittgenstein, God, death,. Or for that matter, liberty, is leaving himself open to accusations of sexual harrassment or worse. (I find that true enough, it’s always been a bit chancy for a male professor to ask women students to meet him outside of class in a social setting.) But the next entry is:
coffee, failing to ask a women student out for… with the entry ‘a male faculty member who ‘shuns female members outside of class for fear of accusations of sexual harrassment is guilty of a subtle but harmful form of sexism that can serious impact our performance in the classroom and our plans for future study…’ At which point I felt really sorry for male faculty members. And I disagree. If a faculty member of any gender wants to discuss the work of any student then the faculty member has an office and s/he can leave the door wide open. A faculty member should not be expected to discuss anything that isn’t pertinent to the course of study they teach, and preferring not to fraternize with all/any students in a social setting cannot in my opinion be construed as sexism in any way, shape, or form. However, it would be advisable to keep that general, as in, don’t fraternize with any of them, rather than with only those students of your own sex. The things about this book is that most of the entries are directly attributable to the writing/public utterances of specific people. And I’d have to wonder firstly how many of them now regret ever saying things so daft, and secondly if they still espouse those beliefs? Some have been State, University, county, laws in the past and I hope to heaven that they were repealed at some stage.
I also eyed one entry with utter disbelief. In fact I read it several times to obtain the full flavour and then sat there trying to work out what complete halfwit ever came up with such an idea/suggestion and may have honestly believed that it was reasonable. The entry is listed as conceptual rape, and says that this is “the imagined participation in sexual activity with a person whose explicit consent to be included in each and every fantasized act has not been specifically obtained in advance. If the imagined sex occurs while the perpertrator is on a date with the survivor, or if the survivor is someone whom the perpetrator had previously dated or wishes to date in future, the offense may be classified as conceptual date rape. I can only assume that this entry at least is intended to be humorous, because it would be unprovable, unprosecutable, and unenforceable. This book is a written tomb of some incredibly silly feminist quotes and beliefs of their day, and I lived though that time so can only say that I do remember some of them, didn’t agree at the time, and agree even less these days. It reinforces the idea that those earlier feminists were ridiculous, humourless, and without common sense. And you know what? Some of them were and this proves it. It behoves us women to remember that driving an idea into the ground can be counterproductive.

Hardcover published ACE November 2014.
The only complaint I have to make about this book is basic. I had to wait a year for it since the author’s last one (Starhawk) was published. Of all his books, I like the Benedict and Kolpath series the most so I’ve been anticipating this book for months and I wasn’t disappointed. To start with it gives a great overview of what earth has become in the twelfth millenium and how our species has spread. Again and again phrases, brief sentences, drop in bits of information about the past like tiny bits of chocolate in a chocolate-chip cookie, this book more so than the earlier volumes where there is less about Earth.
In this seventh volume in the series a client comes to Alex to show him an artifact that her grandfather had hidden in a box at the back of his closet. Her parents found it after the old man died and she wants to know what it is and if it’s valuable. To Alex’s disbelief this is an item from the dawn of Earth’s space age, something that the old man would never have hidden, he’d have paraded his finding of it, and flourished its possession in the teeth of his colleagues’ envy. But such an item is vanishingly rare, hugely valuable, and unknown initially in origin. So where did he get it and why has it been kept secret? Alex and Chase set out to discover answers, and find far more questions. The item is a Corbett transmitter, the breakthrough unit for sending messages through hyperspace. It dates back to the 26th century but stunningly, it was part of a collection of early space age artifacts of great historic significance that vanished during Earth’s second dark ages. Alex and Chase figure that if this item survived, then it’s possible that other artifacts from the priceless collection also survived and they start down the trail.
But laid in parallel with this treasure hunt is another mystery, that of the lost ships. Space ships, some of which vanish for various reasons, but with a number where the reason is known, just currently unpreventable, and with the ships almost always unrecoverable; until now perhaps? Because years ago The Capella, on which Alex’s uncle, and Chase’s original employer, Gabe Benedict, was a passenger was dragged into a temporal anomaly and while only days have passed on the ship, in real time it’s been eleven years. Scientist friends of Alex and Chase believe that they may have a way to return the ship to normal space/time or at least to take off the passengers, and approach Chase to assist as a pilot. So between chasing back and forth from Earth looking for the lost artifact collection, there is the emotional rollercoater of, will they get Gabe back, or could the project fail, cost lives, and if so how many?
And once again the chapter headings highlight the work, quotations from authors ancient and modern, and others yet to come. Nor are the latter anything but convincing and often a fascinating glimpse into our possible future and the commonsense that it may contain. For instance. “Be cautious of a man whose eyes never reflect joy,” by Armand Ti, in his work Illusions written in 7212 C.E. That one struck me as an excellent adage for these days, let alone in the future. And how many professional polititions and high-level businessmen may it not skewer? I loved the Sherlock Holmes comment that the stories were lost for six thousand years before being rediscovered thirty years earlier and that now, on Alex and Chase’s world of Rimway, are enornously popular and that the name had never quite gone from the language, that it had remained synonymous with deductive skills. Then too, I grinned when reading page 294, discovering there a tiny self-reference to a 21st century novel about an earlier pilot named Hutchins.
This is a fast-paced romp through an artifact hunt with alarms, excursions, a shipwreck (a real one, on Earth) in tandem with the much darker theme, that of spaceships going missing, (in time for The Capella,) and the immense emotional difficulties that passengers on such a ship face in returning to real-time. Matched of course, by the legal and emotional complications of those who had given up friends and relatives for dead, and now find that they’re returning, in some cases whole generations younger than those left behind, perhaps demanding the return of inheritances, and what of those who remarried in the belief that their partner was dead? What we face in the future may not be that exact problem, but space travel is bound to throw up disputes of some type, and this suggests that we are going to face something hard to deal with, if not this precise question.
In fact I found that while I really loved the artifact hunt, the discovery of The Capella pushed more buttons, the twin themes were an excellent combination, one provided the light and exciting side, the other the more thoughful one, and I was caught up completely. The book arrived mid-morning on a Monday, and as soon as I could clear the work I was doing I sat down and began to read, so caught up in the story that lunch came and went, and it wasn’t until late afternoon that I finished the book and surfaced to find thirteen chickens, five geese, and the cat, all protesting no dinner as yet, and realized that I too was starving. You can’t get better than that as a recommendation. Buy the book!

Large paperback, published The Story Plant, April 2014. second in the Coleman and Dianah Green Mysteries.
Again a good well-written mystery, with what is becoming a trademark for this writer, the ability to trickle interesting information on the art world into and throughout the book without ungainly infodumps, or items so arcane that the ordinary non-artistic reader won’t understand them. In this book Coleman is expanding her art magazine domain by a second magazine. That’s the good side, on the bad side is a major firm that wants to buy both magazines from her when Coleman doesn’t want to sell. The major firm isn’t taking no for an answer and Coleman knows that if she continues to hold out, the dirty tricks come next because what Colossus wants, Colossus gets. None of this is helped by an old friend who’d like to be a lot more and who also isn’t taking no for an answer. Despite Coleman’s having explained that she isn’t interested, isn’t interested, isnt…
Then there’s her cousin Dinah who’s having trouble making ends meet with her art gallery, however the contract she’s signed, to provide attractive prints for the walls across several floors of a large firm could save her if DDD&W pay up, and if some of the very peculiar things going on there don’t impinge on the contract too far. Except that they do when Dinah finds a body there and becomes chief suspect. The police arrive to investigate led by an extremely unpleasant detective who leaps to a number of conclusions and is both threatening and intimidating. Wound through the murder investigation is the possible disappearance of a large number of very valuable artworks from DDD&W, and the possibility that someone in the firm is responsible and that the murder may be connected to that.
Again I enjoyed this book, but less so than the previous, Restrike. Last time the cousins dealt with most of their problems themselves. This time they are a little too supported by a husband and his host of influential friends who do most of the detective work, and Coleman’s brother, who solves her pressing personal problem. Hang on, Dinah and Coleman are supposed to be the ‘detectives,’ although this aspect may not bother other readers the way it bothered me. As for Detective Harrison, I found him overblown and unlikely, but then I come from a small country where police behaving that way went out back in the last century. Rob, a private detective who is in love with Coleman is initially portrayed as a professional, a friend of the cousins and Dinah’s husband, and an ex-polieman, but over and over he drops the ball on his investigations as he assists them, behaving as a complete amateur. I feel that this was unlikely and inserted as a deus ex machina, a pity as it detracted from the verisimititude. Nor did I find the portrayal of one of the movers and shakers at DDD&W, that convincing. He is initially depicted as a man who dislikes Dinah and Coleman, and whom they heartily distrust and dislike in turn. But in an unbrupt and unrealistic turnaround, at the end of the book it appears that he is really a nice man, doing his best to cope with his firm’s vagarities, and he’s asking Coleman out to dinner. And that rang with the dull clanking of a cracked bell with me. This second in the series is like the curate’s egg, very good in parts, and as an allover effort, quite readable. But I plan to buy the third in the series which is just out, and if that isn’t better, I won’t be buying a fourth and someone else may end up with books two and three. I like the main characters and the series theme a lot and hope the next book is an improvement but there’s a limit beyond which I won’t perservere – or pay – and two not-so-good books is a row is it. So, I live in hopes…