Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    Old Venus
    Unavailable
    Old Venus
    Unavailable
    Old Venus
    Ebook726 pages11 hours

    Old Venus

    By Titan Books

    3/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Sixteen all-new stories by science fiction's top talents, collected by bestselling author George R. R. Martin and multiple-award-winning editor Gardner Dozois. It turns back the clock to that more innocent time, before the hard-won knowledge of science vanquished the infinite possibilities of the imagination.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTitan Books
    Release dateMar 6, 2015
    ISBN9781783297887
    Unavailable
    Old Venus

    Related to Old Venus

    Related ebooks

    Science Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      ‘The Boundless Sea’ Explores Centuries Of Ocean Voyaging

      Nov 12, 2019

      David Abulafia’s sweeping history “The Boundless Sea” touches on great explorers as well as war, trade, and migration.

      2 min read

    • Article

      Parallel Lives Lost: K Chess’s ‘Famous Men Who Never Lived’

      Feb 13, 2019

      Famous Men isn’t quite a sci-fi novel, but something more like its inverse—a book less concerned with alternate universes than their absence. The post Parallel Lives Lost: K Chess’s ‘Famous Men Who Never Lived’ appeared first on The Millions.

      4 min read

    • Article

      Unveiling The Secrets Of Electrons

      Dec 6, 2023

      THREE EXPERIMENTALISTS have jointly won the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physics for their work in probing the behaviour of electrons. Anne L'Huillier, Pierre Agostini and Ferenc Krausz helped create the tools necessary to make “films” that capture electrons'

      2 min read

    • Article

      The Jester’s Tour

      Nov 29, 2019

      The Jester’s Tour
      20 min read

    • Article

      Sisters And Other Life Forms

      Jan 1, 2021

      Sisters And Other Life Forms
      7 min read

    • Article

      Falling Down

      Sep 8, 2021

      Falling Down
      3 min read

    • Article

      Wabanaki ways

      Jan 1, 2023

      Wabanaki ways
      4 min read

    • Article

      Taste of Prison

      Jun 1, 2022

      Taste of Prison
      11 min read

    • Article

      Yes

      Sep 10, 2021

      It’s been a decade since Fly From Here soared to unexpected heights as Yes briefly reunited with Trevor Horn. And it’s seven years since their last studio album, Heaven & Earth, brought Jon Davison in on vocals and featured the late Chris Squire’s fa

      31 min read

    • Article

      How the Cicada Screams

      Dec 1, 2020

      How the Cicada Screams
      7 min read

    • Article

      Shards Of Earth

      May 19, 2021

      Shards Of Earth
      2 min read

    • Article

      An Apprenticeship

      Dec 1, 2021

      An Apprenticeship
      39 min read

    • Article

      The Human League

      May 28, 2021

      The Human League
      3 min read

    • Article

      Dare To Know

      Sep 8, 2021

      Dare To Know
      2 min read

    • Article

      The Saints Of Salvation

      Nov 4, 2020

      The Saints Of Salvation
      1 min read

    • Article

      A Very Big House

      Sep 9, 2020

      A Very Big House
      2 min read

    • Article

      Civilizational Evolution

      Oct 29, 2020

      Civilizational Evolution
      4 min read

    • Article

      'Apsara Engine' Doesn't Break The Graphic Novel Rules — It Ignores Them

      Apr 18, 2020

      Bishakh Som's new comics collection is uncanny and hard to categorize — science-fictiony, mythic and humanistic, without making any particular assumptions about where humans as a species are going.

      3 min read

    • Article

      Dr Emma Bridges

      Jan 30, 2020

      Dr Emma Bridges
      3 min read

    • Article

      Pop Art

      Jun 25, 2021

      Pop Art
      8 min read

    • Article

      How High We Go In The Dark

      Dec 29, 2021

      ▸ RELEASED 18 JANUARY 304 pages | Hardback/ebook ▸ Author Sequoia Nagamatsu ▸ Publisher Bloomsbury There are surprisingly few SF stories about death. Sure, many books and films kill off characters. But only a handful – like Tarkovsky’s Solaris, or Te

      1 min read

    Reviews for Old Venus

    3/5

    25 ratings3 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 3/5
      Add half a point if you feel really good SF died out at the end of the 1950's. In this collection, a thematic sequel to Old Mars, a number of authors were asked to write a planetary romance on the Venus that existed in pulp fiction before science discovered what it was really like. Constant rain, jungles, dinosauroids, Venusians. The results are for the most part entertaining, but in the same way an average episode of a good television series is entertaining. Pleasant to visit, quick to fade in memory. One recurring pattern that surprised me was that not only did we have a Venus from a prior period, but the villains of that period as well, either the Communists (several stories) or Nazis. The two weakest stories were Gwyneth Jones' "A Planet Called Desire," in the style of Edgar Rice Burroughs rather than Planet Stories, but with more sex and less coherence, and Lavie Tidhar's "The Drowned Celestial," whose story was pulpish enough, but so was the lack of clear characters or a consistent viewpoint, even within a sentence. Only one story was at all memorable: Ian McDonald's "Botanica Veneris: Thirteen Papercuts by Ida Countess Rathanagan, which managed to be both modern and classic at the same time.
    • 3/5

      Introduction: Return to Venusport by Gardner Dozois

      *** "Frogheads" by Allen M. Steele
      Reminded me quite a lot of Phyllis Gotlieb's 'Lyhhrt' trilogy, with its amphibious aliens as enslaved workers, and the human investigator that gets involved - but this is a much simpler and more conventional story.

      *** "The Drowned Celestial" by Lavie Tidhar
      Tidhar took the theme of this anthology seriously. This is an homage to the old pulp adventure stories, and a faithful re-creation of one. It might even pass as one, if not for the many, many call-outs to authors and tales from those days. (I 'got' a lot of them; but I'm sure that there were more that I missed, as well.)
      An adventurer and gambling man gets involved in a shootout on Venus - and before he knows it, finds himself shanghaied into a treasure hunt at the site of a ruined temple of an ancient god...

      *** "Planet of Fear" by Paul McAuley
      A Russian scientist assigned to a Naval, military team isn't getting much respect, regardless of her expertise in exobiology. The captain in charge is convinced that everything that goes wrong - and then some - must be the fault of those dastardly Americans who are competing with them for resources and territory on Venus. But when a distress call comes in, screaming something about being 'attacked by monsters' - she might be the only one who can figure out what's actually happening.

      ** "Greeves and the Evening Star" by Matthew Hughes
      This is a case of humor not hitting its mark, with me. If you are tickled up front by the idea of a butler named Greeves and a character named Slithey Tove-Whippley then you may get more of a kick out of this than I. On Venus, a herpetologist who's studied all there is to study regarding newts develops a consuming obsession with a newt-like species - particularly one specific female of the species. Is the happy matrimony he envisions in his future?

      **** "A Planet Called Desire" by Gwyneth Jones
      This one does a great job updating some of the old tropes with new life. A rough-and-tumble billionaire adventurer, sick to death of how Earth is being destroyed environmentally and tamed socially, volunteers for an experimental time-travel/teleportation experiment to visit Venus' past. Once there, he nearly dies, but is rescued and nursed back to health by an alien but oddly alluring woman... Of course, our protagonist makes any number of assumptions about the situation - which we, as readers, might also make. But there's more to come in this story...
      My one complaint is that the ending (although I loved what happened) felt a bit too abrupt.

      *** "Living Hell" by Joe Haldeman
      Good, old-fashioned action story. After a solar flare on Venus, a solo pilot must go on a daring mission to rescue a team from the wreckage of a downed space elevator. Technological malfunctions and inimical fauna must be battled to complete the job - which will culminate in the discovery of something weirder than anyone guessed.

      ***** "Bones of Air, Bones of Stone" by Stephen Leigh
      A man returns to Venus to find his ex-lover, whom he's heard is planning another attempt at the expedition they previously assayed together. She's one of those people who's always been driven to conquer unconquered peaks - and in this, case, the unplumbed depths. A rift under the seas of Venus has deep ritual significance to the native Venusians, and it's usually off limits to humans. A special permit has been granted for this expedition. But last time, our protagonist nearly didn't return. Are the stories told of this mystery mere superstition - or something more?
      Loved this one - I thought the characters, the relationship, and the situation were all beautifully done.

      **** "Ruins" by Eleanor Arnason
      Since all of Earth's megafauna are extinct, National Geographic now has to go farther afield for their stories. A Venusian colony founded by Russia is ailing, and when NatGeo arrives wanting to hire locals, they don't have any trouble getting them to agree. It only makes sense that local commercial photographer Ash would recommend her friend Arkady, who runs tourist safaris. But Arkady seems to have his own agenda, as he leads the team into an area marked as off-limits by the American CIA. There are some humorous jabs here at a variety of targets, but first and foremost this is just a good story.

      "The Tumbledowns of Cleopatra Abyss" by David Brin
      "By Frogsled and Lizardback to Outcast Venusian Lepers" by Garth Nix
      "The Sunset of Time" by Michael Cassutt
      "Pale Blue Memories" by Tobias S. Buckell
      "The Heart's Filthy Lesson" by Elizabeth Bear
      "The Wizard of the Trees" by Joe R. Lansdale
      "The Godstone of Venus" by Mike Resnick
      "Botanica Veneris: Thirteen Papercuts by Ida Countess Rathangan" by Ian McDonald
    • 3/5
      Not too bad, some storys were a bit dry, Actually got it just to read Martins short story, A not too bad not too great compilation