Previous SFF Author: Robert V.S. Redick
After a ridiculously normal childhood spent fighting with my siblings in the woods of West Virginia, I graduated from Georgetown University with an English degree. To my parents’ chagrin, I parlayed that fine education into a series of jobs including waitress, monument tour guide, and sheepskin packer before settling in as a morning radio host in Huntington, West Virginia. I tend to stroll blithely into strange situations and take adolescent pride in surviving them. Some of my favorites: jumping from an airplane (recommended), jumping from a moving train in Hungary (not recommended), getting lost in the Spice Bazaar in Istanbul, and being locked in a dining car on a midnight train through the Carpathians; and winning a heated argument over the schematics of the Battlestar Galactica. These days, I spend a lot of time in pajamas and — for reasons too complicated to explain — I am no longer shocked to find wildlife in my house. For me, everything is a story and the story is everything. Getting to tell my stories? Greatest thing ever.
Damocles by S.G. Redling is a charming but flawed twist on first contact stories, the twist being that, in this case, the humans are the aliens who are landing on a faraway planet after a long period of cryogenic sleep. They are attempting to trace the origins of a mysterious message from an ancient race that claims to have originally seeded the Earth. Upon landing, the small human team discovers a humanoid race called the Dideto and becomes the subject of intense study.
Stefan Raets´s rating: 2 | S.G. Redling | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |
Previous SFF Author: Robert V.S. Redick
Pretty challenging book. Cut by half, speed up the cadence. Trying to figure out the plot, the main point of…
Thanks for the kind words, Marion! Coming as they are from a professional writer, they are much appreciated!
Wonderful review, Sandy.
The "body count" bothered me a bit less because being dead seemed more like an inconvenience than anything else... unlike…
Detailed, thoughtful review, Bill. I'm going to read it for two reasons. First, Karen Russell wrote it, and second, it…