Pawn's Gambit

December 1, 2015

Zahn, most famous for his books set in the expanded Star Wars universe (Heir to the Empire), has also written a fine body of short fiction, some of the best of which are collected here. The 15 stories range from hard sf to fantasy to horror and include his Hugo Award-winning novella "Cascade Point," about a psychological experiment on a starship. Other standouts include the opener (and earliest story) "The Price of Survival," about an alien ship headed straight for our sun. Another fascinating sf winner is the title story, in which a man is abducted by aliens and forced to play board games with other species, although he is unaware that the aliens are judging humanity by his performance. Two fun Earth-bound tales are "Old-Boy Network," a riveting story of psychics forced to work for trillionaires and "Hitmen--See Murderers," about an unusual phone book. VERDICT For readers who only know Zahn from his Star Wars novels, this collection gives some nice examples of the author's range.--MM

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 12, 2015
Hard SF readers and long-time fans of Zahn will appreciate this collection of 15 short fiction works from his early writing career. Like many other hard SF writers, Zahn (Cobra Outlaw) excels at old-school puzzle stories in which a technological tweak saves the day, such as “Protocol” and the title story, as well as the space opera-flavored “The Price of Survival” and the Hugo-winning novella “Cascade Point.” Flashing back to the 1980s, stories such as “The Giftie Gie Us,” “The President’s Doll,” and “Old-Boy Network” mix the supernatural with SF settings. “Hitmen—See Murderers,” with its dependence on the Yellow Pages, and “Chem Lab 301,” with its college students commandeering expensive high-tech lab equipment to manufacture street drugs, demonstrate how easy it is for formerly futuristic premises to fall prey to technological innovation. Zahn twists classic fantasy tropes into modern plots in “The Ring,” “Clean Slate,” and “Trollbridge.” Several stories include author afterwords, leaving the reader wondering why Zahn didn’t provide comments for all of the works included. Nevertheless, this collection will illuminate Zahn’s early career for readers.