A New Birth of Freedom: Lincoln at Gettysburg by Philip B. Kunhardt, Jr.; Little, Brown; Boston. On November 19, 1863, after Edward Everett had completed a now-forgotten oration of almost two hours at the dedication of a national cemetery on one of the Civil War’s bloodiest battlefields, Abraham Lincoln rose to deliver “a few remarks.”...
Robots: Facts Behind the Fiction by Michael Chester; Macmillan; New York. An associate, a PR representative for a leading manufacturer of industrial robots, did what fathers are want to do when their children come home from school with projects, in this case for a science fair: he gave his daughter some assistance. Given his vocational...
Gods of Riverworld by Philip Jose Farmer; G. P. Putnam’s Sons; New York. In 1971 Philip Jose Farmer published To Your Scattered Bodies Go. With it, Farmer launched, figuratively speaking, what has become known to science fiction devotees as the “Riverworld series.” There were four novels to landfall. Back in that general period of time,...
In the Land of Israel by Amos Oz; Harcourt Brace Jovanovich; San Diego. According to numerous speculative historians and novelists, Hitler did not die in a Berlin bunker almost 40 years ago. He escaped, they theorize, to Brazil—or Argentina, or Paraguay, or New Mexico, or the South Pacific. Explaining away the remains medically identified as...
Cold Heaven by Brian Moore; Holt, Rinehart & Winston; New York. That the supernatural is alive and well is the animating principle of Brian Moore’s tour de force Cold Heaven. He makes no attempt to rob this idea of its force by invoking the mantic arts or the favorite occult ploys of the horror movie...