Books I've Read Recentlyby Joe Danko

These three novels are based on the concept hidden inside the popular computer game of the same title. The driving plot device is a concept totally new to me in all of the science fiction I have read and seen; and I have been doing this for 44 years. The revolutionary idea has to do with a novel application of quantum physics and probability similar but totally different from time travel. I don't want to reveal the secret because part of the fun of these books is the discovery of exotic science and arcane technology. The sweep of these stories combines the exotic imagery of When Dreams May Come with the epic scope of Star Wars, to put it in cinematic terms.

How would you handle a personal visit from an arachnid paleontologist from Alpha Centauri? What if you were a devout atheist and she told you there was absolute physical proof of the existence and actions of God? This novel has a lot more but it is also a very personal and moving account of the humanity(?) of all of God's creations. The ending sequence is a bit like 2001....

The Lensmen series of pulp novels written by E. E. (DOC) Smith over many years from the 1930's on has been republished again in paperback. I read this series back in the 1980's in fragments and enjoyed it immensely. The new publications are a bit easier to follow. This is important because the epic nature of the series is evident from its subtitle, The History of Civilization. One can see that almost any SciFi film you can think of has stolen freely from Doc Smith. In these fast moving accounts of struggling galactic civilizations he pretty much said it all. We get a battle between the darkest evil and the noblest good that stretches across epochs of time and across multiple galaxies. The worlds are populated by three dimensional characters and some with more. The good guys are HEROES and the villains are EVIL..

Last and definitely least we have an example of my least preferable form of SciFi, Alternative History. Why Richard Dreyfuss ever got tangled up in this project is beyond me. This one concerns the possibility that the 13 colonies worked out their differences with the mother country and what is now the U.S. just became the southern tier of Canada, eh. The precious oil painting, The Two Georges, is the most famous icon and symbol of British loyalty on the North American continent as it depicts George III and George Washington making peace. The awful plot and story center around the theft of TTG just prior to a planned Royal visit to the U.S. by the King to visit the famous painting. This 20th century America is a comparatively backward place technologically, powered mostly by steam and air travel by biplanes and dirigibles. Computers and electronics as we know them just don't exist. The main character is a police inspector from the west coast, a real Colonel Blimp type, that tries to be a cross between James Bond and Sam Spade. What can I say? It was a Xmas present and I read it. It has passed on to other hands.

Joe Danko lives in North Saint Paul.