his volume celebrates three decades of flourishing existence of the firm founded by legendary editor Donald Wollheim after his departure from Ace Books in 1971. Two informative introductions by the editors offer a capsule history of the firm and its output over the years, as well as many anecdotal tidbits. Nineteen stories by notable DAW authors follow, along with prefaces either by the editors or by the writers themselves.
Brian Stableford's "The Home Front" details "the First Plague War" of 2130, as viewed through the perspective of one family. A cursed killer starship and its mad captain encounter their nemesis in Brian Aldiss' "Aboard the Beatitude." Noted SF satirist Ron Goulart revisits his "Oddjob" series, starring husband-and-wife investigators of the weird and outré, in "Odd Job #213." A world in which aliens force mankind to reenact ancient myths is the substance of Robert Sheckley's "Agamemnon's Run."
The alien viewpoint character in Neal Barrett's "Grubber" is a juvenile undergoing the mysterious transition to the adulthood of its species. Tending guidance buoys in the busy solar system cannot be left to robots. So humans in their little ships—such as "The Sandman, the Tinman, and the BettyB"—continue to risk their lives—as chronicled by C.J. Cherryh. Humans vie with the alien marauders known as the Sjonntae on the planet Minkta in Timothy Zahn's "The Big Picture." Can a news reporter break the military stalemate? Only if she can see the forest instead of the trees.
Frederik Pohl revisits his famous Heechee universe in "A Home for the Old Ones," where a wildlife refuge in Africa guards a peculiar species. What kind of entity will be mankind's inadvertent successor? Find out in Tad Williams' "Not with a Whimper, Either." Ian Watson reveals that "The Black Wall of Jerusalem" offers entry to another part of the multiverse. But will mankind find gods or demons there? Poet Philip Wilson volunteers to explore the eldritch realm—but finds himself altered in ways he did not anticipate. Care to dive into Jupiter's turbulent, crushing atmosphere in search of rare elements? Then journey to "Station Ganymede" in the company of Charles Harness. Finally, C.S. Friedman's "Downtime" explores the intersection of sociology, culture and technology in a manner reminiscent of Robert Silverberg's To Live Again (1969).
Thanks for three decades of SF memories
In its scope and impact and focus, this volume recalls Astounding: John W. Campbell Memorial Anthology, edited by Harry Harrison in 1974. Intelligently and lovingly assembled, intended as a monument both to DAW's founders, Donald and Elsie Wollheim, and as a sampler of the talents that DAW has ushered into print over the years, this book is, however, even more ambitious than its predecessor, since it's companioned by a simultaneous release, DAW 30th Anniversary: Fantasy Anthology.
The stories herein run the gamut from exceptional to satisfactory. It's always a pleasure to see Brain Aldiss taking a good stretch, and his foray into van Vogtian oddness is stimulating. Sheckley never fails to entertain, and his portrait of a hapless fellow seeking to escape out of the legend he's trapped in has a metafictional gloss. Goulart is a master of comic timing and standup laughs. Zahn's story is driven by an unlikely gimmick, but offers satisfactions akin to those of a locked-room mystery. Oddly enough, both Cherryh and Williams employ cyberchat formats for their pieces, replicating online discussion groups. In the Cherryh piece the mode seems slightly less essential. Pohl's vignette is crisp and vivid, but, as an unresolved excerpt from a forthcoming novel, it never delivers a payoff. And Ian Watson manufactures real creepiness out of apocryphal histories.
But any reader who examines the table of contents of this volume will note I've not said anything about the entries by the younger writers. The editors have arranged the contents quite logically, by the order in which the authors were first published by DAW, thus making the second half of the volume the "newbies" section. And it is here that the issue of "house style" comes up. In her intro to Kate Elliott's "Sunseeker," editor Gilbert mentions that from the outset she was "certain that [Elliott] belonged at DAW." This comment and others seems to imply a kind of distinctive style or tone or set of subjects deemed particularly unique to DAW. And, judging on the basis of the entries by Elliott, Charles Ingrid, Lisanne Norman, Julie E. Czerneda and eluki bes shahar, such a house style becomes undeniable.
DAW Books is the inheritor to the old Planet Stories of fond memory, the purveyor of romantic space opera with not a few sword-and-sorcery tropes thrown in. Leigh Brackett and Edmond Hamilton, your children have learned your lessons well. In all these stories, blasters blaze, jumps across hyperspace circumvent the light-years, and the aliens are all analogues of the more exotic Earth cultures. The stories all exhibit a general competence, but they're stylistically and thematically indistinguishable. Try stripping the byline from the Aldiss and convincing someone it's Stableford, or vice versa. It's impossible. But unless I'm just blind to subtle differences, I find little to distinguish the "throne city of Sshen" (Ingrid) from the world "Pandora ... at the edge of the empire" (shahar). Among the new generation, Cheryl J. Franklin stands out for her near-future murder mystery in "Words," as does S. Andrew Swann for his Bloch-Ellison-Matheson riff on multiple personalities.
But of course, take my preferences with a grain of salt. There's certainly plenty of variety here for every taste. Donald Wollheim must be smiling down on his heirs.
