Martin, George R. R.; Dozois, Gardner; Abraham, Daniel -- Hunter's Run

The authors' afterword takes pains to point out that this is not two elder statesmen of the field collaboring with a rising young star. It's two young stars of the 70s tossing a novel idea back and forth, getting bogged down, putting it in a trunk, and then (twenty years later) offering it to a new young star to finish. Weird, but less one-sided than it seems at first.

Anyhow, this is an entertaining bit of frontier adventure SF. Think "third-world company-bent mining town" frontier, not "square-jawed American cowboys". The authors (I'm not going to try to sort them out, except for a vivid touch of Martin's alien lifeforms) do a nice job of presenting a mean, self-centered cuss of a protagonist whom I didn't like, but rooted for anyway. (Which turns into its own set of problems; you'll see.) Also, nice to have an SF protagonist who, when lectured by aliens about the central macguffin of the plot, doesn't respond "Fascinating!" or "That's incredible!" but rather "...You are a lying whore with breath like a Russian's asshole!"


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