The Book of Kane, by Karl Edward Wagner (SF Gateway) | review by Stephen Theaker

Kane is a warrior, big as two of his friends put together, three hundred pounds of bone and corded muscle, tremendously strong, startlingly agile, able to see in the dark, red-haired and left-handed. He is very long-lived, supposedly the son of the original Adam, and has in the course of that life accumulated many useful abilities, some of them mystical. Time to him has no meaning, “a dozen years or as many minutes – once past, both fitted into the same span of memory”, and when he makes his entrance in a story, it is often a surprise to those who thought him long-dead, or just a legend. The five stories in this collection all find him in a pseudo-medieval setting, the longest, “Reflections for the Winter of My Soul”, stranding him in an isolated castle threatened by highly organised wolves. Reading that story, one could think Kane a hero, but later stories make it clear than he is a thoroughly bad person, a rapist (“Raven’s Eye”) and a mass murderer of men, women and children (“The Other One”). In “Misericorde” we see him at at work as an assassin, while in “Sing a Last Song of Valdese” he plays a minor role in revenge being taken upon another gang of rapists and murderers. He isn’t a character you can admire, and of course you don’t have to always admire characters to enjoy reading about them, but “Raven’s Eyrie” in particular makes for uncomfortably problematic reading, being apparently more dismayed by how Kane’s victim let the trauma affect her than by the crime itself. Perhaps this story appears out of chronological order because as the first story it would have left readers much less sympathetic to its protagonist. The ebook does have rather odd pagination, with the first story beginning on page 187, the second beginning on page 83, the third on page 143, but is mostly free of the scanning errors that have plagued other SF Gateway titles. A book of fairly decent stories with a loathsome protagonist. Stephen Theaker ***

The Super Barbarians, by John Brunner – reviewed by Stephen Theaker

The first paragraph of The Super Barbarians by John Brunner (SF Gateway, ebook, 2655ll) sets the scene; it’s fifty years since our first interstellar war was lost, twenty-five since the Great Grip was loosened, ten since humans were accorded rights on Qallavarra, home planet of our conquerors. The Vorrish have an elaborate social structure and a convoluted language to match, but despite their military superiority they seem lacking in certain areas: their cars are imported from Earth, there are members of their nobility who cannot read or write, and superstition runs rampant. All are things that Gareth Shaw, a lowly human in the Household of Pwill, begins to realise he can turn to his advantage—and that of all humans.

Kalin: The Dumarest Saga Book 4, by E.C. Tubb - reviewed by Stephen Theaker

The format of the Dumarest books is perhaps ideal for a long-running series. Earl Dumarest is searching for Earth, travelling from one planet to another, sometimes in time-dilated luxury, the next in frozen popsicle coach. On each world he has two goals: to find clues to Earth’s location, and to raise enough money to buy a ticket for the next hop. Each planet has its own cast of characters, its own particular challenges. That means you can pick up any in the series without struggling to follow continuity: any of the four books I’ve read in the series could have stood as the first.

SF Gateway republishing the complete Dumarest saga – and lots more besides

Although my collection of books is pretty big, there are gaps, even when it comes to my very favourite authors. Not for much longer! The SF Gateway plans to have 5,000 backlist titles back on sale as ebooks by the end of 2014 (press release here), and wherever possible they will be republishing the complete backlists of authors. Complete backlists!

This isn't new news, but the significance of it is only just starting to strike me. For example, a few weeks back I discovered a bunch of John Brunner books in the Kindle store I hadn't read before (e.g. The Super Barbarians, Manshape), and pre-ordered them – incidentally, the first Brunner books I've ever bought new instead of secondhand – and today I noticed that they're also reissuing all the Dumarest books (they're listed here on Amazon UK).

Fantastic news, especially since there are lots of gaps between the dozen or so in the series I bought on eBay a couple of years ago, after hearing of the series for the first time in a Craig Herbertson article for Dark Horizons. If they're all as good as the one I've read, I think they'll do very well on Kindle. They're ideally suited to the format.

I suspect other publishers may see the SF Gateway as a huge and rather worrying landgrab, but as a reader I love them for doing it. And so must the writers. I loved collecting secondhand books, but none of the money I spent on them ever went to the authors. I seem to remember reading that when John Brunner died, all his books were out of print. That shouldn't ever happen again to an author of that calibre.