The Last Novelist (or A Dead Lizard In the Yard), by Matthew Kressel

The Last Novelist by Matthew Kressel

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


It's possible to do more in a short story, but not a lot. The Last Novelist is a very emotional piece of work, I really enjoyed reading about an eccentric author at the end of his life finding friendship and inspiration with a young girl. It's all very well handled. The eponymous novelist might have been sad or angry about the disappearance of print books, but I didn't end up reading it that way--more that he was simply an eccentric person who liked to create books from end to end.

I'm not sure that books would disappear from a universe such as this one, where technology enables the creation of such things (view spoiler)[in the story there is a fabricator called a Maker that can pretty much make anything, and makes the author's old fashioned linotype printing press. No knowledge would really be lost (hide spoiler)]. They will always be valued as art objects, at least as long as art objects are valued.



View all my reviews

The Meeker and the All-Seeing Eye, by Matthew Kressel

The Meeker and the All-Seeing Eye is quite a fun story, a good nominee for a Nebula.  Our characters are the Meeker, so called because it is the meeker of the two, and the All-Seeing Eye, a godlike intelligence that has absorbed pretty much everything in the universe.  They find something new, which really doesn't happen much--the digital form of a preserved human, who seems to have a virus--each time they animate her she dies rather quickly, after imparting cryptic information.  What's going on?  Good stuff.  3 stars.

The Souunds of Old Earth, by Matthew Kressel

The Sounds of Old Earth is a story that's been done a thousand times in SF--and never really gets old.  I always like reading a good version, though several in a row would get wearing.  Matthew Kressel does a fine job on this one, taking what is pretty much a light touch.  The premise is a little odd--complete destruction of the earth as a salvage job is being undertaken to form a new planet, very near the old one.  Seems like the only reason humanity would want to do this would be to build the largest Dyson Sphere possible, or maybe Ringworld, but in any case the point of the story is loyalty and its limits.  It's a graceful tale and worth reading to remind one of the power SF has in storytelling.  Three stars from me.