Golden Hills and Sunrise Lands

So, the boxes of books have arrived. They are the hardcover, beautifully produced, with nice paper that will not turn yellow in 20 years. You can order them for $20.00, postpaid, which is less than list price. Send the check to me at 90 El Camino Real, Berkeley, CA 94705.

And when you have read GOLDEN HILLS OF WESTRIA, those of you who are following S.M.Stirling’s Nantucket and Change series may or may not know that he has started a new trilogy, focusing on Rudi Mackenzie and picking up about 12 years after A MEETING AT CORVALLIS. It’s called THE SUNRISE LANDS. If you like Westria, and don’t know what I am talking about, run, do not walk, to your local SF bookstore (or Amazon, if you don’t have one) and get DIES THE FIRE, first of the trilogy that explains what happened to the rest of the country when Nantucket was transported back in time. In a single moment, the laws of nature are changed, and any electrical, electronic or explosive process ceases to work. No cars, no phones, no guns. And very shortly, no Civilization-as-we-know-it. In other words, without the natural disasters, it’s the Cataclysm.

Stirling has essentially written the book that I am too superstitious to write, without the guilt, since this cataclysm is not caused by man. But the results are the same. Amusingly, he also posits that the survivors would include disproportionate numbers of people from the SCA, Native Americans, and pagans, that political organization would become regional, and would develop various versions of feudalism. I’ve always loved “how-to” books, from SWISS FAMILY ROBINSON to ALAS BABYLON. Stirling does the nitty-gritty description of how people learn to make weapons and use them and to cope in a hundred other ways, with vivid detail. He’s especially good with sensory imagery. And his characters are people you want to know, and the plots barrel right along.

Fortunately he finds a way to make the subsequent developments as interesting as the first survival stage,and the first trilogy ends well. Now we have a new one, and I will eagerly await volume II. It’s almost like reading a Westria novel I didn’t have to write!