Deborah Harrell wrote:
>
> --- Julia Thompson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> >
> > The second story mentioned is found in _Sacred
> > Visions_, an anthology of
> > Catholic-related SF. It's "The Pope of the Chimps"
> > by Robert
> > Silverberg. If you're interested in Catholicism in
> > SF, _Sacred Visions_
> > is a nice anthology. (If you're interested in
> > Catholicism in fantasy
> > dressed up as SF, I'd recommend reading stuff by
> > Christopher Stasheff,
> > but it's not as well-written as, say, _A Canticle
> > for Leibowitz_ by Walter M. Miller.)
>
> Thanks - it's infuriating to only partially remember
> stuff! Agree about Stasheff.
>
> Debbi
> who is also not a Catholic, but has good friends who
> are... :)
I have 3 friends who got me interested in Stasheff, all of them
Catholic. :)
There are 2 series of his that I've done reading in; the first one
starts with _Her Majesty's Wizard_ and it is fantasy, but the sort where
some late 20th-century USAn is thrown into a fantastic situation where
he has to figure out how the universe works and use his wits to survive
(and then thrive). One of the 3 friends reads *only* this series; she's
tried to get into the other one I've read, and it hasn't done anything
for her.
The second series is fantasy in SF trappings and begins with _The
Warlock In Spite Of Himself_. The "magic" is explained, but not
entirely to my satisfaction; the "magic" is on one planet in a universe
where humans have done a lot of colonizing from Earth, and while there's
an attempt to explain the whole system, it isn't as good as the
explanation of the dragons given in McCaffrey's _Dragonsdawn_, for
comparison. Good light reading, if you can stomach the premise. This
was a great favorite of the other 2 friends, and since there have been
more books written in this series, if you're looking for a whole lot of
relative fluff, you can get a lot from one universe.
So, if someone you know likes fantasy and you're wracking your brains
for a gift for them, this might be helpful. :)
Julia
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