James Nicoll Reviews

Randall Garrett’s 1958 The Queen Bee is a stand-alone science fiction novelette. Wait, no. Randall Garrett’s 1958 The Queen Bee is an infamous stand-alone science fiction novelette.

Victim of a space calamity, the interstellar cruiser Generatrix barely manages to deliver its passengers and crew to safety on an uncharted world. The starship will never lift again. Nor is there any hope of rescue.

There is, however, Brytell’s Law!

I don’t usually offer content warnings. Have a content warning.

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1979’s Murder and Magic collects four of Randall Garrett’s Lord Darcy alternate-universe fantasy mysteries.

As a surprising number of characters find cause to ponder, Richard the Lionhearted’s change of heart following his near-death on the battlefield led to eight centuries of success for the Plantagenets. Another consequence was the codification of magic, which led to a powerful Angevin Empire spanning France and England, a New World dominated by the Angevins, and a Europe torn between the noble Angevins and the expansionistic Poles.

Humans of our technological, scientific 1964, as well as humans in Garrett’s feudal, magical 1964, display all of the usual human vices. When these lead to murder, it is the task of investigators like Lord Darcy to uncover the villains. And perhaps to see justice done.

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1966’s Too Many Magicians is Randall Garrett’s¹ sole novel-length Lord Darcy work. The Lord Darcy works were alternate-history fantasy cozy police procedurals.

In a world in which Richard the Lion-Hearted lived thirteen years longer, a world in which magic was codified in the 14^th century, a world in which the Angevin Empire is a great power, Lord Darcy serves as Chief Investigator for the Duke of Normandy, solving crimes with remarkable powers of observation and deduction. His latest case may prove a difficult one, as the primary suspect appears to be his dutiful sorcerer associate, Master Sean O’Lochlainn.

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Vicki Ann Heydron and Randall Garrett’s 1981¹ The Steel of Raithskar is the first volume in their Gandalara sword and sorcery fantasy series².

Aged Richard Carillo sets out on a cruise expecting to live only a few months before untreatable terminal illness kills him. The incandescent meteor falling from the sky comes as a surprise. 

Waking up after being hit by a bolide is also unexpected. The surprises keep coming.

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