Off the Main Sequence

Book excerpt: Tom Easton has served as the monthly book review columnist for Analog Science Fiction for almost three decades, having contributed during that span many hundreds of columns and over a million words of penetrating criticism on the best literature that science fiction has to offer. His reviews have been celebrated for their wit, humor, readability, knowledge, and incisiveness. His love of literature, particularly fantastic literature, is everywhere evident in his essays. Easton has ever been willing to cover small presses, obscure authors, and unusual publications, being the only major critic in the field to do so on a regular basis. He seems to delight in finding the rare gem among the backwaters of the publishing field. "A reviewer's job," he says, "is not to judge books for the ages, but to tell readers enough about a book to give them some idea of whether they would enjoy it." And this he does admirably, whether he's discussing the works of the great writers in the field, or touching upon the least amongst them. This companion volume to "Periodic Stars" (Borgo/Wildside) collects another 250 of Easton's best reviews from the last fifteen years of "The Reference Library." No one does it better, and no other guide provides such lengthy or discerning commentary on the best SF works of recent times. Complete with Introduction and detailed Index.