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This adventure tale has a great premise and decent pace and an abrupt political ending.

The world of this story is one where scientists are blamed for atomic weapons, and most other weapons of war. This plus a charismatic leader equals a fanatical purge of scientists. Only a few have escaped, hiding out.

Living in this world are the remaining Nordis family - Lars (a chemist and scientist in hiding), Dessie his nature-loving daughter, and Lars' younger brother Dard. Through the eyes of this youth, an expert woodsman, the entire tale is told. Some of his adventures include escaping a manhunt, secret messages and finding an enclave of hidden scientists who are building a spaceship to escape this world. The second half of the book details Dard and the scientists adventures on a new world, far from Earth.

This book was originally published 60 years ago, and some parts of it feel dated. The adventures keep the plot moving, and chapter breaks seem to be more on a whim than a change of scene or action. The ending is very abrupt and feels like a political statement against war. While somewhat fitting the world described in the beginning, it is a change of pace for the characters, who have been busy surviving and growing their new colony to this point. Andre Norton wrote a sequel to this book, and perhaps this ending was adjusted to tie them together.

That sequel, "Star Born", was released just three years later. Later on, an omnibus edition titled "Star Flight" combined both this story and its sequel. Both of the original works are out of print but not difficult to find in used science fiction and fantasy sections.

This is the delightful story of Minnie, a cat who has become a human. She is rescued from a tree by Tibbs, a local reporter. His job is at risk because he can’t come up with new story ideas. The cats of this town have a lot of news, and Minnie’s ability to talk to cats helps Tibbs quite a lot.

This is a very good chapter book for middle readers. The first half of the story deals with Minnie, who spends part of her time exploring this new world and the rest longing to be a cat again. The transformation is not something the main character thinks about much, and we learn what happened when she does in the latter half of the story. Also emphasized in the second half of the book is the main villain, giving both main characters a challenge for the rest of the tale.

Minnie and Tibbs are well written characters, and both grow and learn over the course of the story. The author uses humor and drama effectively. While I can’t speak to the original Dutch, this translation worked very well for me. Recommended to middle and younger readers everywhere - 4 stars out of 5.

Nearly two months after I started it, the slog through Dan Simmons' The Terror is at an end. Like the inevitably doomed mission of the characters, this story is devoid of humor and hope.

The premise is simple enough - a historical mystery presented as narrative, with possible explanations and occult phenomena worked into the plot. Chapters told from the perspective (and voice) of individual crewmen worked very well. The ending was interesting and enjoyable, and helped me understand the monster who lurked through the first half of the book.

Other parts of the book were very uneven. Said monster was a major point to the plot, then mostly vanished. Uneven timing of the earlier narrative worked well, but then was abandoned. Captain Crozier has a nasty habit of mentally accounting for his crew, living and dead, and the author shares each mental word with us. Yes, this proves that Dan Simmons did his homework, but doesn't make for a good story.

Still other aspects rubbed me completely the wrong way. Crozier has some sort of second sight while quitting his alcohol cold turkey - and the author uses this to detail many of the future quests to find the expedition. Adds nothing whatsoever to the story! Many days of sledging and detailed descriptions of ice formations could have also been reduced, sparing the misery of the readers.

This book is included in Nightmare Magazines top 100 horror books, and was nominated for three other awards. A shorter version of this story could have earned that honor, but this novel is just way too much.

Clifford Simak's City won the 1953 International Fantasy Award, which was awarded to a science fiction or fantasy book. This book is more the latter, despite its later inclusion in later collections such as the SF Masterworks, Easton Press Masterpieces of Science Fiction, and the Locus Best SF Novels of All-Time.

Yes, this book is science fiction, and contains references to space and dimensional travel. Despite one of the stories being set on Jupiter, these are only references. This book focuses more on human development over a very long scale. It was originally published as a series of short stories in Astounding Science Fiction magazine. These stories are collected with interspersed brief commentaries from scholars of a future dog civilization.

This far future civilization is fascinating for a number of reasons – the removal of violence, the collective of animals, and the complete loss of Man - even as an idea. The agents of much of this change are a mutant named Joe and the robots, and later one robot in particular – Jenkins.

Much of science fiction is judged on whether the author "got it right" – it will be thousands of years before we can weigh in on this tale. Where some reviewers have complained about whether dogs could become intelligent, I found the most absurd bit that the physical house of Webster would remain standing after thousands of years.

I liked this tale, but I didn't love it. I spent the better part of three weeks reading it with travel and interruptions – perhaps a re-read of this slim book would rate higher.

The High Crusade is a riotous adventure story.

A spaceship arrives in a medieval kingdom. Instead of being paralyzed with surpris, the English Knights charge into the fray and take the battle to the aliens. From here, the story escalates to one of increasingly lucky conquest. Far more Pulp SF than Hard SF, I imagine a serialized audience becoming more incredulous with each weeks installment.

The characters are mostly static, encountering a small difficulty then resolving it fairly soon. The narrator is mostly sparse with his descriptions, in only a few cases spending more than a page to describe a scene. The first chunk of the book had a religious subtext - was God among the aliens? Do they have souls? - but this didn't show as much in the latter majority. The author could certainly make a point about the eventual outcome, but does not.

In short, this short pulp novel was a fun read, with a great topic. i didn't find it particularly well written, and didn't care about the characters afterward, I wouldn't seek out a sequel either. 2.5 stars - Poul Anderson has done better.