Customer Reviews

The Right to Arm Bears

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

First, ignore the title and the cover art, however clever and amusing they may be. None of the three stories in this volume has much to do with providing weapons to the ursinoid Dilbians, whose culture shuns the use of weapons (for that matter, they're not so hot with tools either). Second, fans of Dickson should be advised this book is an omnibus edition of three previously released works, "Spacial Delivery", "Spacepaw", and "The Law-Twister Shorty".

I found these stories to be rather entertaining as something of a guilty pleasure, but overall I wasn't terribly impressed with the storytelling or the world-building. The Dilbians were amusing in their backward-thinking, but at times they tended to be a bit too, how should I say it?, "folksey". The manner in which the human characters were identified and thrust into the situations in these stories was too counterintuitive and far-fetched to be believable; nevertheless it did provide for some interesting problems for the human characters to puzzle over as they interacted with the Dilbians. Overall, not a great read but not too bad either.

If you liked Dickson's earlier novel "Hoka" then you'll probably also like this one. Written in a similar style, it's lighthearted and amusing in all the right places but probably not the sort of book that you'll put away on the shelf to read over and over again.

For those of you who have yet to collect all you can of Gordon R. Dickson, this volume will make it possible to collect three of his light SF tales inexpensively.

I'm sorry to say I've heard that Gordon R. Dickson died 31 Jan 2001 from asthma complications. He was one of my favorite authors. While his Dorsai SF and Dragon Knight fantasy series were my favorites of his works, pretty much everything he published was worth reading. I hope SF publishers will find some good editors and republish more collected editions of his works.

Don't judge a book by its cover.

I saw the picture of the heavily armed bear and hastily purchased the book without reading the title. Working under the assumption that this was a how-to guide to train bears in the arts of war, I increased my personal arsenal and hatched plans to break into the local zoo while I waited for the book to be shipped.

Fortunately the shipping was handled so promptly and professionally that it arrived early into my planning stages. This saved me a great deal of money and possibly prevented me from having to serve jail time for my late night bear liberation efforts.

While this book is not a training manual for creating your personal army of armed bears, it is an enjoyable collection of short stories and I would suggest it to any fan of the English language.

The three storrys in this books are neither really funny like the "Hoka" tales, for that the bears here are just too big, nor is there much suspense. Oh, granted, they are all well written and not unpleasant to read. However one would wish that Gordon R. Dicksons last book were more memorable.

As many others probably have been, I was roped into this one by the pretty cover, which has nothing to do with the actual story line. Our poor misinformed Terran heroes, facing the mighty Dilbians (too big to be Hokans, and, really, to be funny) on their own planetary turf, still emerge victorious in several incredible (and slightly implausable) "Rescue the Fair-Maiden" scenarios. But, as an evidently retreaded pulp collection, it's still a decent read for a bad weather afternoon, or, even better, as a late night "read yourself to sleep".

It would be real nice to know if this is a reprint of Spacial Delivery or Spacepaw, or a new volume in that series. They were both good, fun books, so if you don't know them, read and enjoy. I won't get it til amazon or someone tells me what it is.

...and that's what really [bothered me] about this novel. I was [pulled] in by an amusing title concept and having read some of his other work took it on faith that this novel would be as enjoyable as all of his others....WRONG....

Since wasting my hard earned $$ on this cookie cutter assembly of short stories, I've learned to read at least the first chapter of a novel instead of just the back cover. Lesson learned...