Product Description
A government scientist specializing in optics and material properties has done the impossible: she literally disappeared from the top-security research facility in Reston, VA; her ex-boyfriend is called in to find out how she pulled it off ... and why. Year's Best Science Fiction Pick ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Average Anthology Collection With the Added Annoyance of Self Promotion By the Author at the End of Each Story
The Lady Vanishes and Other Oddities of Nature is an anthology collection of 11 short stories by Charles Sheffield.None are that great, many seem to be just an idea the author has (or thinks he came up with) about a sci fi theme with the whole story being just that, here's my idea you'll love the story for that, I can't be bothered writing an actual plot to go along with it.

For example the title story The Lady Vanishes is another scientist turning invisible story.In this 20 page story, Sheffield uses the projector/cameras clothing method (see Where's My Jetpack?: A Guide to the Amazing Science Fiction Future that Never Arrived by Daniel Wilson for the best explanation of this method), for the actual turning invisible with his characters ridiculing H G Wells' novel and pointing out how the method used in that novel could never happen.Nothing else really happens in the book, basically her colleague is told she disappeared from a secure facility, has used a few ATMs without showing up on security footage and he has to find her, which he doesn't really need to do as he just drives to her apartment. In the afterword its pretty clear the author isn't too familiar with the invisible man genre, maybe just assuming H G Wells is the only author ever to write about it. Each story has an afterword where Sheffield pretty much strokes his own ego. In this one Sheffield claims this as an idea he got from animals in nature. Too bad the idea has been around for a lot longer than your story Charles.Plus the fact half the story is pretty much implying Wells came up with the invisible man idea ignores Fitz-James O'Brien's What Was It? and other stories written before Wells' novel.

As for the rest of the short stories a few get a bit better but most read like the first.They are set in space, government institutions and laboratories, the sporting fields and diplomatic postings.Incase you're interested the stories inside were all written between 1996 and 2000 and are -
The Lady Vanishes
The Peacock Throne
Brooks Too Broad for Leaping
The Art of Fugue
The Whole Three Yards
Cloud Cuckoo
Packing Fraction
Nurembery Joys
What Would You Like to Know?
Waiting for the Riddlers
Phallicide

I'd give the collection a miss though, there's better ways to spend your time.

Not Free SF Reader
A Science Fiction Story

Invisible ex-spook, now.


3.5 out of 5 ... Read more

Product Description
A group of single-minded researchers--among them Darya Lang, Hans Rebka, and Louis Nenda and the Cecropian--follow the trail toward the Builder artifacts released from the Quake during Summertide, the planetary upheaval. Reprint. NYT. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Simplistic sci-fi.
All three books from this series feature simplistic and uninteresting plots.The dialogue is wooden and the characters have all the dimension of a sheet of blank paper.If you've already bought these books then read them, everyone else give them a wide berth.They do have beautiful cover artwork and design though.You want to read something good from Sheffield?Read "My Brothers Keeper".

Alien and Human Relations
The engrossing themes of Divergence is alien-human, slave-master, computer entity-human-alien, and extremely. advanced entity-human-alien-computer being relations.

The Heritage Universe series improves with the second book.
With the second book of the Heritage Universe series, Sheffield kicks things into high gear.All the characters from the first book are back along with the addition of E.C. Tally, a computer brain in a human body.The book gets a fair amount of comedy out of the discrepancy between his Federation supplied databanks and real galactic affairs.

But the main drama comes from further exploration of Builder artifacts and a meeting with artifical constructs of theirs who may or may not be telling the truth about the Builders' origins and the purpose of their artifacts.Also making an appearance are the legendary Zardalu, land-octopi thought long dead after their Empire was overthrown by their underlings.

Sheffield also throws in some inventive entries from the Universal Species Catalog for humans and aliens, major and minor.

... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Not Free SF Reader
Not too bad, couple of interesting articles.One long novella type tale about a hunt in the Cretaceous for dinosaurs, that goes pretty wrong due to a screwed up husband and wife.Also an article about writing by Poul Anderson.

Destinies v3 2 : Slices - Gregory Benford
Destinies v3 2 : Summertide - Charles Sheffield
Destinies v3 2 : Time Safari - David Drake
Destinies v3 2 : Sacrifice - David Langford
Destinies v3 2 : Where Thy Treasure Is - Fred Saberhagen








Sensational job.

3 out of 5


Runaway girls split permanently.

3.5 out of 5


Dino shooting not for wussbag dilettantes.

4 out of 5


Teleportation headlopping.

3.5 out of 5


Proper mental utilisation.

3 out of 5

... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Sheffield's earliest works
An amusing collection of Sheffield's short stories written from 1977 to 1979. These were his first works of fiction. Some stories may seem quite roughly done compared to his later works, as he was still new to the art.

Most of the stories are set in the distant future of the 21st century. (Wee, here we are!) The scientific underpinnings are quite rigourous, befitting his background as a professional astronomer.

Those of you with backgrounds in physics or astronomy will understand some of the technical allusions. Perhaps the best example is in the story "Killing Vector". Here, "Killing" refers to an actual physicist by that name, who did work in General Relativity. The story includes an extended pun on that name.

Alas, there will be no more from Sheffield. He died a few years ago. Though he did live to see this century! ... Read more

Product Description
When Josh and his autistic cousin Dawn are sent to the planet Solferino, they join a group of kids already working for an interplanetary conglomerate stationed there. Assured by the bosses that no intelligent life exists on Solferino, Josh and Dawn come to suspect otherwise. Especially when Dawn makes contact with one of the creatures, a creature with whom she shares a mysterious ability to communicate.

With the corporation pressuring them, Josh and Dawn are drawn into a battle to save the creatures. And, it turns out, to save themselves.
... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

A good book, and would be great for use in the classroom
This is a really interesting book about a group of kids who *think* they are training to be colonists on a new planet with their families -- only to discover when they get there that their families aren't coming, and they've more or less been handed off to something that's half slave labor, half reform school for the unwanted. The kids struggle to get along with each other, to protect their siblings and friends in the group, and in the end, to defeat the evil plans of the people running the program.

This book is not only an interesting, fun read, it is also thought-provoking in a lot of ways that would be great for use in a 5th-7th grade classroom.The book touches on issues related to bullying, disabilities, protecting the environment, what "alien" means, communicating and relationships with people who are very different from you, etc.

Continuing to Expand on the Coming of Age Adventures of the Jupiter Novels
Another leap forward in time and a further expansion of Earth's reach into space are the setting for the third tale in the Jupiter Novel series of coming of age adventure science fiction stories in the spirit of Heinlein and his generation. On the far side of the Messina Dust Cloud (27 light years from Earth), a star system has been discovered and explored. On the planet Solferino, Foodlines - a gigantic conglomerate that has taken over most of the farms on Earth - has exclusive rights to extraction and development; on nearby Cauldron, Unimine - the mining conglomerate of Earth - has exclusive rights. To develop Solferino for farming as well as to explore it for new and useful compounds, Foodlines needs new recruits.

On earth, Josh Kerrigan is the son of an aspiring and always a step short of success actress that decides she needs to be free of him to finally break through; so she dumps him on her brother, his wife, and their autistic daughter Dawn on a small farm in Oregon. Josh travels across the country to a place with fond memories from a vacation visit years earlier; but, when he arrives, he discovers a changed landscape. The farm is struggling to survive as it is surrounded by megafarms operated by Foodlines. Foodlines is in the midst of buying the farm and sending the family to Solferino for a fresh start and an opportunity to farm an alien landscape.

Josh and Dawn are shipped ahead with other teenagers to be trained on the strange planet dominated by weird plant life and harmless fauna. Once there, they are put into the care of Sol Brewster, the sole person on the planet as the rest of the inhabitants have been shipped off-planet for medical tests regarding some magical health affects the planet has - or so Brewster claims. Soon after they arrive, Winnie Carlson arrives to assume the role of maintenance chief.

But, not all is as it seems on Solferino. As the kids begin to build friendships and cliques, they are run ragged by Brewster on tasks that don't seem to add up to what he claims them to be. Through their own guile and street smarts, the kids start to piece together what is going on and their role in a larger game of corporate warfare.

Add to this, the possibility of an intelligent lifeform on the planet, and we have another tale of coming of age and self discovery in the Jupiter Novel universe. Unfortunately, *Putting Up Roots* doesn't quite delivery like *Higher Education* and *The Billion Dollar Boy* do in the first two books in the series. Though it has moments of interesting exploration of the planet, the overall plot is a little thin and predictable. That said, I do look forward to reading the last three books in this series.

>>>>>>><<<<<<<

A Guide to my Book Rating System:

1 star = The wood pulp would have been better utilized as toilet paper.
2 stars = Don't bother, clean your bathroom instead.
3 stars = Wasn't a waste of time, but it was time wasted.
4 stars = Good book, but not life altering.
5 stars = This book changed my world in at least some small way.

A Long Way From The Farm
When fourteen year old Josh Kerrigan is sent to live with his aunt and uncle on their farm, his first surprise is that his aunt has died and his uncle has remarried to a woman named Stacy who is more interested in getting rid of him and his autistic cousin Dawn then in any sort of farming.She has arranged, much to Uncle Ryan's distaste with a large conglomerate to take over their small farm and provide them with a new farm on a largely unexplored planet called Solferino.There is just one catch - someone must go there immediately to stake their claim.She sends Josh and Dawn - though it appears that she has little intent of following.

Once there, it seems that everything is amiss.First, when the group arrives, there is no one there to greet them.Later, an unexpected maintenance technician shows up.Their boss, Sol Brewster, keeps moving them around like he is trying to hide something.Then suddenly the computer system and communication system fail - at virtually the same time - thus preventing them from investigating what is going on or seeking help from outside.

Things get more alarming when they begin to see strange ships on the horizon. Now Kerrigan and his fellow teens must uncover the secret of Solferino.They will come within inches of death trying to figure it out.

Putting up Roots may not be the most consistently exciting book that you ever read; in fact, there is a point in the middle where it gets a little slow - the proverbial calm before the storm.But, like in most good mysteries, once we - and the characters - begin to understand the facts, the book becomes a page-turner that is nearly impossible to put down.The book deals with a variety of ethical issues surrounding child labor, space exploration and inhabitation rights.A good read that seems targeted at either teen or adult (similar, in that nature, to Ender's Game), Putting Up Roots won't leave you disappointed.

Solid "Roots"
Juvenile scifi, a much-neglected area, has been given a boost in the last year or two by TOR's Starscape books. One of the new releases is Charles Sheffield's "Putting Up Roots," an unexceptional but likable scifi storywith a good cast, though a slightly predictable storyline.

Joshua's mother, a self-absorbed actress, sends him to live with his relatives at Burnt Willow Farm. Having had a good time there eight years before, Joshua is pleased -- until he gets there. He learns that his aunt has died in that time, and his uncle has remarried a sharp-tongued shrew called Stacy, who doesn't hesitate to make him feel unwelcome. She isn't much kinder to her stepdaughter Dawn, an autistic girl who says practically nothing. But Dawn hears and understands a lot more than she seems.

Stacy, in an effort to get her husband to sell the farm, sends the two kids to the untamed planet of Solferino, which has only some lower animals and a lot of plants. To make matters worse, the transport has a bunch of other rejected kids -- four sisters with gemstone names (one of whom is a druggie), and three boys who have Wagnerian names (ex-street thugs). And when the kids arrive on Solferino, Joshua begins to suspect that their bullying supervisor is hiding a dark secret about Solferino's value -- and about the presence of innocent, intelligent creatures on it.

The pacing is the main problem with "Putting Up Roots" -- it starts off rapidly, lags for a long time, then picks up in the last chapters of the book. And the ruperts aren't as big a part of the story as you'd expect. Despite this, it's a fairly good SF adventure story, with its realistic corporate battles and suitably bizarre aliens and planets.

Joshua is a pretty likable hero, especially since he tends to take a very balanced view of what's good or bad. A lot of characters in that sort of situation start whining about what they don't want to do, but Sheffield doesn't. Dawn is a fairly good supporting character, but has a tendency to fade out when she isn't being focused on. Topaz is much more vivid and present in the story. And supporting characters like Sig and Saph are similarly good -- even if you don't totally like them, Sheffield will let you see why they are what they are.

His writing is pretty descriptive, but not immensely. (I occasionally felt frustrated when told that an object was brown and "rounded," but nothing more) And he does an excellent job with the dynamics of the teens in the group -- not everybody is friendly, and not everyone trusts. If you like a little tension in your heroes rather than a big band of buddies, you'll like this.

"Putting Up Roots" isn't perfect, but a flair for characterization saves it from being totally average. Good solid read.

Putting Up Roots
Putting Up Roots
Charles Sheffield
Science Fiction
A boy and his autistic cousin are sent to a far away planet to participate in a research program. It starts out normal enough but there is a sick twist when they find out what their leader is up to. The end is full of action and excitement when it comes time for them to stop his plans.
I've never really read any books like this before with such an extreme change directly in the middle of the novel. It starts out very slow and continues in that fashion until about halfway through where there so much action and so many events going on you can hardly set the book down. It really surprised me and I ended up fairly pleased with the book but the slow intro and begining is my reason for 4 stars.
My personal reaction to the book is pretty good. Sheffield has many unique characters in the book that make for many interesting conflicts when they come together. I also enjoyed the happy ending though it has a bit of a twist. The characters start to get along better and they begin to accept the planet as their own home. This novel also covers the topic of intelligent life on alien planets. The suprise about their leader is very exciting and gets better as the book goes on. "He had found what he wanted, and we were no more use to him." pg. 206. This is what I loved most about his book, the surprises come out of nowhere with absolutely no hint making it a very fun and leaving the reader with no idea whats going to happen next.
I do not think this book is for everyone. It would be best for patient readers, because of its slow start I had trouble keeping the book open for more than 30 minutes or so. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Cartoonish
An early novel from Charles Sheffield.A future history after a nuclear war.Rather cartoon-like character development and plotting.

Traders World
this book kept me going for the three full days it took me to read it. the only thing that i have to say bad is i didn't like the ending. sheffield needs to do a sequil. kinda left me hanging and i wanted to read more. ... Read more

Product Description
Guarding an ancient cross that is believed to hold the soul of the disciple Judas Iscariot, Marquis Louis Villette, a knight of an ancient secret order, witnesses the devastating effects of world war on his French homeland and his loved ones. ... Read more

Product Description
Out to solve the galaxy's most persistent mystery, Hans Rebka must penetrate the Paradox, an artifact left behind by an ancient and powerful race, unaware that his success could spell trouble for all known life. Original." ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Good hard sf ideas rather let down by execution
The 'strange artifacts left behind by vanished races' theme has been quite a staple of hard sf writing. The problem is the difficulty of providing a satisfactory explanation of the aliens and their motives for doing whatever it was they did. That's the problem with this book. The trappings of hard sf are well done, but the story (this is actually two books in one, the first two parts of a four-book series) does not build up to a real climax. To be fair, it could be argued that at this point we are only halfway through the full story - but I think that each individual part of any series, that is published as a book by itself, ought to stand on its own.

The descriptive part of the narrative - the science, the alien artifacts - are well done. In my view, the book is let down by two weaknesses, wooden characters and the pace of the narration. None of the characters really stick in your mind; they all seem to be rather two-dimensional and ordinary. In this regard I suppose the comparison to Arthur C. Clarke is quite valid :-) Where the author falls behind in comparison with great books employing the same setting is primarily in the pace of events. Things start off slowly, seem to get even slower in the middle, and only towards the end does the pace really pick up. This may be OK for some people, but not for me.

I don't mean to give a completely negative impression here. The book is not bad, in fact it is among the better ones of its kind. Maybe my expectations were set a bit high, after having read some of the author's shorter work first. Read it, if you can borrow it. Then compare with "Ringworld" (Niven)and "Rendezvous with Rama" (Clarke).

Good setup, but the ending disappoints
(The Ingram reviewer must have read only the first couple pages of the book!The "Paradox" artifact pays essentially no role in the story.)

The hard thing about the "mysterious alien artifacts" theme is that if you've done the setup well the reader is wildly curious about the aliens and what astounding purposes their artifacts must have had, and doing a good ending is extremely challenging.It's hard to make the actual explanation as mind-bending and transcendant as the reader wants it, needs it, to be.The novels in "Convergent Series" are, unfortunately, an example of how the actual explanation of the enigma can disappoint.

Without giving the ending away entirely, it turns out that the aliens are basically pretty dumb.Their entire civilization was traumatized by one of those pseudo-profound questions that first year Philosophy students dissect endlessly in the pub, but that in fact evaporate under serious consideration.Their approach to working on the problem is utterly silly and implausible, and serves mainly as a plot device to get the characters to where they need to be for the next scene.

The book is certainly fodder for airplane reading if you have nothing else to hand.But there are lots better things out there...

Interesting.
Convergent Series is diffinenty a thinking man's book.Sheffield writes an amazing trip through the mind, and creates a new level for human thought to expand into.

Tom
Strong on science, concept, and plot.The name caught me, and the book didn't disappoint.Sheffield bridges the gap between space opera and hard sci-fi with an excellent grasp of drama, humor and "wow". ... Read more