Search Results for: Downbelow

Black Gate Book Club, Downbelow Station, Final Discussion

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Welcome to the final round of the Black Gate Book Club, where we hash out or feelings and impressions on C.J. Cherryh’s 1981 classic Downbelow Station (DbS).  We also give DbS our final score– and things get contentious! Need to catch up on the discussion?  Easily done with these convenient links to the first, second, third, and fourth rounds. Adrian S. I finished DbS last week. Third time was on the money!  Since I appeared to be the slow elephant I assume…

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Black Gate Book Club, Downbelow Station, Fourth Discussion

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Welcome back to the Black Gate Book Club! We are rapidly closing in on C.J. Cherryh’s Downbelow Station (DbS).  You can get to speed with the first, second, and third rounds. Adrian S. Fourth round! Okay, page 285 and Fletcher, you are right that things are (finally) happening quick. The Union Fleet has dropped into the system, and the Company Fleet and the militia go out to meet them.  I like the idea that all the ships look the same…

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Black Gate Book Club, Downbelow Station, Third Discussion

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Welcome to the second round of discussion on C.J. Cherryh’s classic 1981 novel Downbelow Station. New to the program? Check out the first and second rounds. We lose Chris on this one, perhaps a casualty of a bad Jump from the Beyond. Fletcher and myself carry the standard of the Black Gate Book Club as best we can! Adrian S. Third round! And it is appropriate that I just started book 3 of DbS.  I’m on page 190, so I have surpassed…

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Black Gate Book Club, Downbelow Station, Second Discussion

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Welcome to the second round of discussion on C.J. Cherryh’s classic 1981 novel Downbelow Station. New to the program? The first discussion can be found here. Chris Hocking gets the ball rolling this time around. Chris Hocking Hi people, I had business travel to do and took Downbelow Station on the plane for some serious reading. I came away from it realizing that I had developed an unusual (for me at least) attitude toward the book. This is an intense…

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Black Gate Book Club, Downbelow Station, First Discussion

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Welcome to the very first post of the Black Gate Book Club!  What are we up to?  As Fletcher Vredenburgh said in his introduction to the Book Club: The plan is to read Downbelow Station over the month of June and post a discussion of it each Monday afternoon. This time around, the Book Club participants will include Adrian Simmons, Charlene Brusso, Chris Hocking, and me. We’d love it if you’d read along with us and join in the conversation….

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Announcing the Black Gate Book Club: Downbelow Station by C.J. Cherryh

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Last year, when I reviewed C.J. Cherryh’s The Pride of Chanur, Adrian Simmons mentioned he had been thwarted by her Hugo-winning Downbelow Station (1981). That led to him suggesting another go at it, but this time with the impetus of a reading group to spur him on and to discuss it. Thus the idea of the Black Gate Book Club was born. It’s taken a year to actually get around to getting this off the ground, but here we are. For forty…

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Vintage Treasures: Merchanter’s Luck by C.J. Cherryh

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Merchanter’s Luck (DAW, 1982). Cover by Barclay Shaw I haven’t covered many C.J. Cherryh novels in my ongoing Vintage Treasures project, and that seems like a serious oversight. Cherryh was a constant presence on the paperback racks in my youth. She sold her first novel Brothers of Earth to Donald A. Wollheim at DAW in 1975; since then she’s published more than 80 science fiction and fantasy books, including the most ambitious and successful first contact saga in science fiction, The…

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The Most Ambitious First Contact Saga in Science Fiction: The Foreigner Series by CJ Cherryh

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Art by Michael Whelan (1,2,6,7), Dorian Vallejo (3), Stephen Youll (4,5), Donato Giancola (8,9), and Todd Lockwood (10-19) I like to talk about SF and fantasy series here, and last week I dashed off a quick article about a 9-volume space opera that caught my eye, Lisanne Norman’s Sholan Alliance. The first two commenters, R.K. Robinson and Joe H, both compared her novels to the queen of modern space opera, C.J. Cherryh. That certainly got me thinking. Like Norman, Cherryh is published by…

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That’s All (for now)

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Over five years: 55 Short Story Roundups, each of at least four stories, making for a minimum of 220 reviewed. It’s probably at least half-again as many. 157 Book Reviews, including 11 books by Glen Cook, 7 by PC Hodgell, 7 by Andre Norton, 6 by TC Rypel 12 Essays That’s how much I’ve written at Black Gate since my inaugural post, The Best New Sword & Sorcery of the Last Twelve Months. I should also add I co-wrote a…

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July-August 2018 Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction: A Review

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Having just come out of the 1969 Retro-Reviews, AND Black Gate Book Club’s 1981 Downbelow Station, I wanted to dip into the modern SF/F scene a bit before starting the 1979 Retro-Reviews. I delved into Fantasy & Science Fiction, July/August 2018. I’ll be talking about the fiction and poetry in this review, spoiler-free, but skipping book review columns and such. This is a somewhat special issue, with stories inspired by (or matching) the excellent Bob Eggleton cover art “Big Mars.”…

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