Rolling Thunder

Varley continues to channel Heinlein, and may well be the best alive in this genre of space adventure. Highly reccomended.

I loved the character/narrator Podkayne. She is a fine addition to the series, maybe my favorite narrator. But there were some significant flaws in the story, in my opinion. There is one person who should be dead, but shows up alive, it seems primarily to give him a better smackdown. The explanation as to his being alive seemed very, very weak (as in, soap opera fans would be shaking their heads). Also, the romance seems contrived, like the author decided after writing book two to move the character that direction, then had to walk back almost everything hed said about the character in the prior books. Final quibble, Im not sure what I think about the driving event. There seemed to be a lot of convenience in the areas of both timing and abilities, (They are too big to be aware of us but constantly cause minor equipment failures.) as well as unresolved red herrings that only function, it seems, to move the plot. But still a good read and follow-up to the first two. And I especially enjoyed the Heinlein titles Easter-Egg hunt at the end of the book.

Okay, this is another generation of Manny Garcias tribe, and it beggars belief that there are this many influential members. Each with a different talent, yet sharing intelligence, grit and fast reactions. Must be in the DNA. Red Thunder used a mechanism named a squeezer to store energy, then power spacecraft. Fine, it worked for a prototype and performed flawlessly. But in any rational universe, scientists must duplicate the unit; begin to investigate the physics involved. But no, that is impossible. Only the original inventor can make them.... Then he makes himself scarce, to thwart potential kidnappers. Now Podkayne, a singer, gets a gig with a traveling entertainers group, sent to a ruggedly beautiful outpost- dangerously so. She is just earning fame when disaster strikes. The family mourns, but the planets do not stop turning. She lives on in her music. However, Varley has other plans.

I wondered at first if this were going to be one of those rambling novels in which the author comes up with excuses for a character from the future to be intimately familiar with popular art and music that dear to someone born ca. 1950. The plot takes an awfully long to get moving, but it does get there. This is a fond tribute to many of the lesser-known Heinlein novels, especially the juvenilia, my favorites. Not Varleys best -- try Millennium, or even better, his faultless short story, Press Enter, if you can find it -- but still a considerable cut above any other science fiction youre likely to stumble on.

Quite enjoyed it; the writing reminds me of Heinlein’s although the author’s many references to some of Heinlien’s books and characters might be influencing my judgement. You can probably tell I loved Heinlein’s books and stories while growing up and as a young adult, and I like this writing, too...

I cant say Im a John Varley fan based on this book and the previous two in the series. The biggest problem is that the plot feels lazy. You can tell that when he sat down to write this, there were moments when he thought to himself: Eh, I dont really want to research that, or, I dont have the energy to explain how the character developed here. And then at the very end, youve got all (and I repeat *all) of the main plot points still unexplained and you get a lazy I dont know answer to all of them. The result is that the characters dont develop the way they could, and you could care less about them. The result is that it feels less like a sci-fi and more like a dry historical document with a replaceable sci-fi backdrop.

Not a very exciting book to read. Dragged a lot and told a story with no end. Do not wish to follow this series.

Wonderful retro-invocation of Heinleins juvenile novels, with the protagonist even named for one (see

As so often with a Varley novel-starts slowly and builds gradually. Have put this one aside for now and will finish sometime in the future. THNX! Wc

As a longtime fan of Johns work I grabbed this book and consumed it voraciously. Having read the other books in his Mars trilogy (Red Thunder, Red Lightning) I had thought them as a separate thought or arc from his Nine planets stories but no, these books are defiantly at the heart of those earlier works. Now if he could find a way to tie in his Gaia trilogy.......