Cloak of Aesir

John W. Campbell, Jr.: A New Dawn: The Complete Don A. Stuart Stories.

It's hard for me to write fresh reviews for this collection given that I've read man of these stories several times over the past three years (as I've done the whole short story a day project). But, nonetheless, each of these re-reads is as much time as the first time. This is a good collection and several of the stories: Twilight, Night, Out of Night, Cloak of Aesir, Who Goes There?, are absolute gems in my book.

Looking at the whole gamut of "Don A. Stuart's" body of work, you can see a lot of similarities to the pulp writer known as John W. Camppbell, Jr. In stories such as Escape, Frictional Losses Blindness, or Dead Knowledge, you have many pulp elements, super science and the like.

But then you get bits, like in Blindness, where the man striving to get that extra bit of science locked down makes a great sacrifice and returns to Earth to find that his sacrifice was not needed after all.

Or Dead Knowledge, with its creepy dead planet and the slow horror that the character's find.

There's the poignancy of Twilight and Out of Night, where Campbell/Stuart manages to take what Olaf Stapledon took whole books to write about and squeeze them into two short stories.

There are the Aesir stories and the Machine stories, where man has tumbled from his heights, is subjugated, but wins in the end.

There's The Elder Gods which shows me that Campbell was pioneering fantasy as much as science fiction. But it also shows me that modern practitioners of fantasy really (except for a few) haven't taken the field further than the pioneers.

Then there's Who Goes There? Still creepier than either film version. I'll bet it'll be creepier than the planned second remake. I dare you to read this story at night, during a winter storm. I double dare you. I double dog dare you!

Good stuff.

Another wonderful volume from NESFA Press. Public service announcement: Buy books from these folks.

Made up of: The Man Who Lost the Sea (by Barry N. Malzberg); Twilight; Atomic Power; The Machine (The Machine Series #01); The Invaders (The Machine Series #02); Rebellion (The Machine Series #03); Blindness; The Escape; Night; Elimination; Frictional Losses; Out of Night (Aesir Series #01); Cloak of Aesir (Aesir Series #02); Dead Knowledge; Who Goes There?; The Elder Gods; Strange Worlds; Wouldst Write, Wee One?

Counts as nineteen (19) contributions to The 2006 short story project.