When James Nicoll, long time poster to rec.arts.sf.written and a Canadian bookseller, started suffering from readers block he found the usual methods of breaking it didn't work. Reader's block, similair to writer's block is the inability to read any book, often brought upon by too much work, stress or just frustration with the books you usaully read. Methods of breaking reader's block are reading outside the genres you normally read, reading shorter works, revisiting old favourites or reading "light" books.
But in James' case, none of this methods worked. So he resorted to more drastic measures and started reviewing a book a day on rec.arts.sf.written. That way he was forced to read, a sort of brute strength strategy, so to speak. To make this more interesting James decide to review only books set in or around the year 2000, millennial reviews in other words. (Just ignore the fact that the real millennium only starts 1 januari 2001, okay?)
Since then about thirty reviews have been posted and I found it a shame these weren't available for future reading. Luckily James agreed and with his permission I've archived and htmlised them and made them available here. The actual reviews have been cleaned up a bit with regards to spelling, abbreviations and such. Apart from that and adapting them to html, nothing has been changed.
All Millennial reviews are the copyright of James Nicoll and are put on this website with his permission. Nothing from them may be copied without the consent of the original author.
The following Millennial Reviews are now available:
| Looking Backwards Eward Bellamy |
Millennium Ben Bova |
The Door into Summer Robert A. Heinlein |
| Equality: In the Year 2000 Mack Reynolds |
The Year of the Quiet Sun Wilson Tucker |
Judgement of Eve Edgar Pangborn |
| The Texas-Israeli War: 1999 Jake Saunders & Howard Waldrop |
2001: A Space Odyssey Arthur C. Clarke |
Eon Greg Bear |
| The Persistence of Vision John Varley |
Systemic Shock Dean Ing |
The Tomorrow File Lawrence Sanders |
| The Byworlder Poul Anderson |
Stardance Spider & Jeanne Robinson |
Ballroom of the Skies John D. MacDonald |
| Salvage and Destroy Edward Llewellyn |
The Whole Man John Brunner |
Human to Human Rebecca Ore |
| Oath of Fealty Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle |
After Doomsday Poul Anderson |
Vertigo Bob Shaw |
| Dover Beach Richard Bowker |
The Moon Goddess And the Son Donald Kingsbury |
Alongside Night J. Neil Schulman |
| The Harvest Robert Charles Wilson |
The Fall of the Republic Crawford Kilian |
The Far Call Gordon R. Dickson |
| Ecotopia Ernest Callenbach |
Omnilingual H. Beam Piper |
After Things Fell Apart Ron Goulart |
| City Clifford Simak |
A Martian Odyssey Stanley G. weinbaum |
Timescape Gregory Benford |
| Make Room! Make Room! - Harry Harrison |
First Citizen Thomas T. Thomas |