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Ten years have passed since the Mar­t­ian walk­ers emerged from the cylin­ders around Lon­don, plung­ing the Earth into its first inter­plan­e­tary war in H. G. Wells’ clas­sic War of the Worlds. G. Wells’ clas­sic War of the Worlds. Wilber­son has deliv­ered a next step in the epoch using the set­ting and char­ac­ters from the original.

The fight this time looked even worse for human­i­ty since the Mar­tians seemed intent upon destroy­ing the bac­te­ria that destroyed them and an even larg­er arma­da, com­pris­ing the entire Mar­t­ian pop­u­la­tion, was head­ing toward the Earth. We start the sto­ry with the announced dis­cov­ery of an intact Mar­t­ian cylin­der left over from the first inva­sion. The Mar­tians on the inside were like­ly dead, but there seemed to be a sig­nal that would be detectable by the Mar­t­ian arma­da. What fol­lows is a sto­ry that Well’s him­self could have written.

I like how the plot devel­ops. Giv­en the near extinc­tion of human­i­ty in the pre­vi­ous war, the twist that the Mar­tians have fig­ured out how to stop the bac­te­ria from killing them sets a fore­bod­ing tone for the sto­ry. The dis­cov­ery of a solu­tion and how to use it kept me riv­et­ed to the nar­ra­tive. The author crafts the sto­ry in such a way that the read­er doubts if the solu­tion will be enough until the very end.

Over­all, I felt the nar­ra­tive was inter­est­ing and very sim­i­lar to Wells’ own sto­ry. It answered my ques­tion from years ago, ‘What would have the War of the Worlds sequel be like?’ Wilbur­son has found the essence of Wells’ char­ac­ters and recre­at­ed them with lev­els of change that a decade would bring. The nar­ra­tive is inter­est­ing and devel­ops a plot that is very sat­is­fy­ing for mod­ern tastes. I will give this book 5 stars because it deliv­ered to the expec­ta­tions of an H.G. Wells fan and more.

5 out of 5

Deliv­ered the expec­ta­tions from a H.G. Wells classic.

This is an alter­nate nov­el of The Num­ber of the Beast. Sup­pos­ed­ly there was to be two nov­els pub­lished togeth­er. This was worth anoth­er look since it was new man­u­script. This has inspired me to read the orig­i­nal again.

4 out of 5

Def­i­nite­ly not the best of Hein­lein, but it was nice to have a fresh book after all this time. I found that I might have judged the orig­i­nal too harsh­ly, I want anoth­er look at it.

The Pur­suit of the Pankera avail­able on amazon.com.

Art and his friend Jim are on a hunt­ing trip where they dis­cov­er an alien human woman Ven­ta and a midge (a ten inch tall humanoid with insect wings). The four of them are cap­tured by a mad human mad sci­en­tist, Curt­mann, who has built a space­ship and used it to cap­ture and enslave the plan­et Venus. Art, Jim, Ven­ta, and their Midge ally Mee­ta rebel against Curt­mann in a final and bloody battle.

3.5 out of 5

Well writ­ten yarn about a hab­it­able Venus hav­ing a rebel­lion against human over­lords with the help of two oth­er humans.  Sto­ry avail­able in The Sci­ence Fic­tion Bun­dle at Amazon.com.

 

Post WWII sci­ence fic­tion sto­ry where the first man in space crash­es into a mile wide dark moon orbit­ing the Earth. He uses that fact that such a small object has a piti­ful­ly low escape veloc­i­ty that he could run fast enough to reach it. His deor­bit maneu­ver is less believ­able but still does con­sid­er New­ton­ian mechan­ics to accom­plish it. Binder is a good exam­ple of the authors work­ing out the details of space flight before the begin­ning of actu­al flight into space.

3.5 out of 5

Strong sto­ry­line that is dat­ed but is some­what believable.

This sto­ry is avail­able in The First Sci­ence Fic­tion Mega­pack.

No pres­sure! A gam­bler is asked to make a life or death deci­sion for mil­lions of peo­ple bet­ting on his intu­ition when there are no facts.

3 out of 5

Inter­est­ing sto­ry using the ele­ments of a 1960’s spy dra­ma to explore a sci­ence fic­tion theme.  This is includ­ed in: The First Sci­ence Fic­tion Megapack

The Blau­milch is a canal dig­ger that is work­ing on a real Mars that many have imag­ined to be the Mars of Edgar Rice Bur­roughs. Daud, an man turned Thark, learns that he want­ed to be a work­er on the real Mars instead of the war­rior on the Mars-that-nev­er-was. A joy­ful sto­ry about becom­ing something.

 

5 out of 5

A great short sto­ry with an array of unex­pect­ed characters.

Pub­lished in Clarkesworld Mag­a­zine Issue 205

Gavin, an Amer­i­can Avi­a­tor, crash­es his plane into a crater in Antarc­ti­ca and finds a fan­tas­tic civ­i­liza­tion where he becomes the hero of the day. This has a famil­iar feel and harkens back to the works Edgar Rice Burroughs.

4 out of 5

A good sol­id exam­ple of Andre Nor­ton fan­ta­sy/s­ci-fi. This sto­ry bridges the two genre very well. This is avail­able in The Peo­ple of the Crater from Amazon.com .

Old sci­en­tist on Mars rebuilds tele­scope to con­tact the last hope of the dying civ­i­liza­tion on Mars — The Earth. Here we have a sit­u­a­tion where the life­time of a civ­i­liza­tion (a para­me­ter from the Drake equa­tion) ends sig­nal that is detectable. Mars is mak­ing assump­tions about cities hav­ing roofs and that the city lights are actu­al sig­nal­ing appa­ra­tus. The loss of those lights are con­sid­ered a cat­a­stro­phe for both worlds.

3 out of 5

Hab­it­able Mars sto­ry with the Mar­tians as cen­tral fig­ures. Sto­ry avail­able in The Sci­ence Fic­tion Bun­dle at Amazon.com.

 

Future com­mu­nist dic­ta­tor attempts an exper­i­ment that reveals an inter­est­ing and uni­ver­sal hubris by giv­ing an aver­age man the pow­er to fix every prob­lem he comes across.

3 out of 5

Inter­est­ing but dat­ed read.  This is includ­ed in: The First Sci­ence Fic­tion Megapack