Small Gods (1992) ****
Daft philosophy and elementary scepticism for kids that doesn't rain on your prayed, since being stubbornly rational in an unambiguously supernatural world would look as foolish as a late period Dana Scully. It'd make a nice overture to the series if you read it first, though also setting a benchmark of maturity that follow-ups would be statistically unlikely to meet.
John Varley, The Phantom of Kansas (1976) ****
Masturbatory meteorological murder mystery.
Josef Nesvadba, Captain Nemo's Last Stand (1973) ****
Concise Czech cosmicomedy classic.
Larry Niven, Inconstant Moon (1971) **
Depressing domestic doomsday dallying.
Frederik Pohl, The Gold at the Starbow's End (1971) ***
Idle interstellar insights.
Italo Calvino, A Sign In Space (1968) ***
Cosmicomplex.
Italo Calvino, The Spiral (1968) **
Oh yeah, that's why I abandoned Calvino.
Isaac Asimov, The Dead Past (1956) ***
Chronoscopic conspiracy cock-up.
Annemarie van Ewyck, The Lens (1977) ***
Chick stuff.
Theodore Sturgeon, The Hurkle Is a Happy Beast (1949) **
Weak whimsy.
Ray Bradbury, Zero Hour (1947) ***
Creepy kid countdown.
The Lottery and Other Stories (1949) ****
They're not all melancholy scenes of neurotic housewives struggling stoically against the mundane darkness of humanity, but enough of them are.
Faves: 'The Demon Lover,' 'The Renegade,' 'The Lottery.'
Green Eggs and Ham (1960) ***
This face-off between stubbornness and persistence was funnier than the selfish anarchy of the Cat in the Hat, even if the repetition got similarly tedious and was scandalously abridged when reading aloud to a toddler.
Fox in Socks (1965) **
I would've practised the tongue twister and failed to impress my peers if I'd had this as a precocious brat. As it is, I sided with the spoilsport as usual. Shut the fox up.
A Fall of Moondust (1961) ***
Clarke writes a space disaster/rescue movie and does it properly, no matter how boring the result. It turns out more like 24-hour news coverage.
