Customer Reviews

Cascade Point

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Timothy Zahn is one of the most imaginative science fiction authors writing today. He has written a large number of novels, which range from fair to excellent, and is probably best known for his contributions to the "Star Wars" Universe, particularly the novels in which he bought to life the character of Grand Admiral Thrawn and his people, the Chiss. However, Zahn's four short story collections are perhaps his best achievement.

This collection is named for a story set in a Universe where the pilot of a star ship, as it travels between the stars, passes through "Cascade points" where he or she will see a pattern of images showing how he or she might have appeared in a slightly different reality in which different major lifestyle choices had been made.

Sometimes Zahn revisits the characters or wider universe he created in previous short stories. For example, his subsequent book "Distant Friends" contains the story "The Evidence of things not seen," which is a direct sequel to the title story of "Cascade Point."

Another very memorable story is "The Giftie Gie Us" (as in the Robert Burns poem, "Oh Wud some Powr the giftie gie us, to see our selves as others see us.") Set in a post-holocaust Canada, a World War Three veteran meets and falls in love with a blind woman. Then he wonders how she can appreciate what is going on around her ...

All these short stories are disciplined and to the point, as they have to be to make this format work: they are also very accessible and easy to read.

As with his novels, Timothy Zahn's short stories are characterised not just by an amazing range of weird ideas about the creatures or scientific principles we might find in the universe, but also about the difficult moral choices which humans - and other intelligent creatures - might face as a result.

Some of these stories have a romantic element, some don't, and when they do the hero may or may not get the girl. Since Zahn doesn't write to a formula in this respect, you cannot always see a romance coming, or predict the outcome. This makes some of the stories more satisfying and others more poignant.

If you like these stories, you will like his other collections which are:

Distant Friends (and others)
Time Bomb and Zahndry Others
Star Song and other stories

This book is a great read whether you know Zahn's other work or not. Filled with several solid short stories, the author also takes the time to explain where some of the ideas came from as well as why he has problems with some of the stories. I felt that there was potential full length novels (or at least worlds where a novel could be set) that I haven't seen him visit yet, so hopefully additional readers of this book will feel the same way.

I first became familiar with the works of Timothy Zahn, as many geeks did, through his novels set in the Star Wars expanded universe. While those works are memorable on their own, none are so memorable as this collection of Zahn's early short stories. Having first read these stories when I was still in elementary school, they stuck with me until this past year, when I was compelled to seek them out in print once more. Upon rereading them, I found them to be every bit the moving and powerful tales that my far younger self remembered. From the title story "Cascade Point," in which traveling faster-than-light allows one to see images of alternate realities, to post-apocalyptic Canada, Mr. Zahn's characters and stories do not disappoint, and as good science fiction should, prompt a bit of philosophical thought now and again.