Book Recommendations

I'm rather surprised that my opinion on books is actually valued, but so long as it is, permit me to make a few recommendations in the fields of science fiction and speculative fiction. These are books that I have read and re-read countless times.

The Man Who Folded Himself by David Gerrold is subtitled as "The last word in time machine novels". This novella is indeed the finest time travel fiction that I have ever encountered. It is a first-person account of one man's discovery of a time machine in the form of a belt and his subsequent encounters with his alternate selves that result from travel in time.

My wife offers her own anti-review due to the, ahem, gay sex scene. The homosexual element of the novella is, however, integral to the story, which would be substantially diminished without it.

Trivia: this book is written by the same man who composed the Star Trek episode "The Trouble with Tribbles."

Next, you should read Midshipman's Hope, the first novel in the Nick Seafort Saga. This science fiction series of 7 books was composed by the late David Feintuch. What is so gripping about these novels is not the plot or background, but the main character, Nicholas Ewing Seafort, a guilt-ridden Calvinist convinced of both his duty to the UN Navy and his own inevitable damnation. He is simply one of the most compelling fictional characters that I have ever met. Nick Seafort has contributed significantly to my image of masculinity.

Speaking of novel serieses, a truly great yarn is found in The Lost Regiment Saga by William R. Forstchen. It begins with the 35th Maine Infantry Regiment led by Col. Andrew Lawrence Keane (directly modeled after Joshua Chamberlain) in January, 1865. The 35th is being transported by sea from Virginia to South Carolina when it is suddenly sucked into a wormhole. It lands...somewhere else. What follows is so truly original that the series defies genre classification. Rally Cry is the beginning of a stirring generational epic of courage and liberation.

Yes, a Star Trek novel. Who would think that a pulp fiction genre could produce a classic novel, but Diane Carey created a truly great yarn with magnificent craftsmanship. It is a story about a young lieutenant named Piper who suddenly given command of a rusted, ancient tug and dispatched on a secret mission -- so secret that even she doesn't know what it is! What makes Battlestations! the finest of Star Trek novels is Carey's ability to suck you into her story and make its presence very real to the reader.