Adventures in Resnick Reading

Joe Sherry offers a review of Mike Resnick’s Starship: Pirate,on his blog, Adventures in Reading. He calls the novel, and by extension its predecessor Starship: Mutiny,“Easy reading and highly entertaining science fiction.” He goes on to describe Resnick’s Starship books as good books to use to introduce newbies to SF, what some call “entry level” SF. This term may seem dismissive, but it isn’t. In fact, a case can be made that entry level SF is harder to write than non-entry level SF, and the importance of entry level SF to the health and future of the field should be obvious. (See John Scalzi’s December 2005 post “Science Fiction Outreach.”)

Or, as Joe says, “If I called the Starship novels as introductory sci-fi, please do not take that as a knock. It isn’t. It is just a statement that a reader who knows nothing about science fiction can pick up one of these books and be equally as entertained as one who has been reading the genre for years. It’s a good introduction to what sci-fi can be. It isn’t just about the Big Idea. It’s also about the fun story.”