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From: RNeal@HIS-PHOENIX-MULTICS.ARPA
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Subject: Farmer's Riverworld and Stanislaw Lem
Message-ID: <17506@sri-arpa.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 13-Mar-84 15:50:00 EST
Article-I.D.: sri-arpa.17506
Posted: Tue Mar 13 15:50:00 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 16-Mar-84 02:28:41 EST
Lines: 30

Well, I finally got up the drive to read The Magic Labyrinth (book 4 of
Riverworld).  It took a long time to start due to the discouraging
reviews I have read in this meeting.  I was pleasantly surprised.  I
enjoyed the book and I think it did quite a good job of wrapping up the
Riverworld mystery.  Maybe I missed something, but I thought the reason
behind it all was quite good.  The series is quite long, though, and I
would not read it a second time.

Now to Lem.  I have seen some transactions claiming what a great writer
he is.  I have read The Cyberiad, Solaris, and The Invincible.  The
Cyberiad was very good and very funny, and the other two (both novels,
while The Cyberiad is a collection of shorts) started off well.  But he
has an extreme problem ending those two novels!  The Invincible started
off great and got better, but when I got to the end, I was looking for
at least another chapter.  It was as if he ran out of paper.  It really
ticked me off for such a great book to have such a lack of ending.  I
read Solaris because I heard some of the plot and was interested (and I
figured it couldn't just drop off like the other did-he is supposed to
be a good writer).  ss Solaris is good about 1/3 of the way through.
Then it starts a down hill run the likes of which I have never
encountered before.  By the time I waded through the muck to the end (I
never leave a book unfinished) I wished I had never heard of Lem and
never started this book!

So that some of you out there will know what type of stuff I do like (so
you can determine if these reviews will do you any good), my favorites
are Niven, Chalker, Hogan, Piers Anthony, "Doc" Smith, and Alan Dean
Foster to name a few...

               >RUSTY<           RNeal.dm8%pco -at cisl