The Burning Eye

War World #1

by Jerry Pournelle, Roland J. Green, John F. Carr

Prolog
Haven
Dream Valley / Edward P. Hughes
The toymaker and the General / Mike Resnick
The deserter / Poul Anderson
Rate of exchange / Roland Green and John F. Carr
The coming of the eye / Don Hawthorne
The great beer shortage / Janet Morris and David Drake
Necessity / S.M. Stirling
Tribute maidens / Harry Turtledove
A lion to the sea / John Dalmas
Discovery
Bar-Lev, a traveler's tales of twenty worlds.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Anthologies, Short Stories, Military Fiction, Military Science Fiction, Hard Science Fiction

366 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 1988

About the author

Dr Jerry Eugene Pournelle was an American science fiction writer, engineer, essayist, and journalist, who contributed for many years to the computer magazine Byte, and from 1998 until his death maintained his own website and blog.

From the beginning, Pournelle's work centered around strong military themes. Several books describe the fictional mercenary infantry force known as Falkenberg's Legion. There are strong parallels between these stories and the Childe Cycle mercenary stories by Gordon R. Dickson, as well as Heinlein's Starship Troopers, although Pournelle's work takes far fewer technological leaps than either of these.

Pournelle spent years working in the aerospace industry, including at Boeing, on projects including studying heat tolerance for astronauts and their spacesuits. This side of his career also found him working on projections related to military tactics and probabilities. One report in which he had a hand became a basis for the Strategic Defense Initiative, the missile defense system proposed by President Ronald Reagan. A study he edited in 1964 involved projecting Air Force missile technology needs for 1975.

Dr. Pournelle would always tell would-be writers seeking advice that the key to becoming an author was to write — a lot.

“And finish what you write,” he added in a 2003 interview. “Don’t join a writers’ club and sit around having coffee reading pieces of your manuscript to people. Write it. Finish it.”

Pournelle served as President of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America in 1973.

Reviews

[Rodney]

This book is an anthology of 13 stories about the planet Haven that is isolated from the rest of the human colonized planets in space. Nine of the stories are written by different authors and so of course range from so so to wish there were more by this author in quality. This is the first book in a series but the time frame for the stories range over many years.
Dream Valley by Edward P. Hughes enjoyed this one
The Toymaker and the General by Mike Resnick ok has twist at end
The Deserter by Poul Anderson background story ok
Rate of Exchange by Roland J. Green & John F. Carr one of best in book
The Coming of the Eye by Don Hawthorne good introduces bad guys to planet
The Great Beer Shortage by Janet Morris and David Drake odd but ok
Necessity by S M Stirling really enjoyed this one
Tribute Maidens by Harry Turtledove good with ironic ending
A Lion to the Sea by John Dalmas interesting one with descendants of vikings and apache meet during a fighting retreat to the sea
This book is an interesting concept having different authors write stories based on an isolated world with its unique issues. It is worth a read.

[Robert Furlong · Rating 3 out of 5]

Overall it was a pretty interesting anthology. The main problem is an obvious one: the fact that it's a collection of stories by different authors means that the quality of the book varies depending on which author you happen to be reading at a moment. That quality varied from amazing stories that I wanted to read an entire book about to stories that were so dry that even the ten or so pages of it were almost too much. Because of this, I gave it a nice even score of a three, but am intrigued enough to pick up the next book in the series.

[Eleanor Thompson · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a SF short story collection about a habitable planet, written by various authors which means the writing is very uneven. The last story, A Lion to the Sea, is well worth skipping unless you like lots of killing, zero character development and a poorly constructed pidgin language that the characters engage use. Strangely, it ends in a pointless epilogue. I did enjoy Necessity by S. M. Stirling and plan to read more from this author.

[Edward · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't really know what I think this volume as a whole. I'm sympathetic to the shared-world approach taken here (different writers; all stories set at various points in the history of a shared fictive world named Haven, supposedly settled by spacefaring colonists from Earth in the mid 20th century). George R. R. Martin has presided over some really fun stuff in a similar vein with his Wild Cards "mosaic novels" about virus-fueled superheros. This anthology is a bit uneven in quality.

Some of the individual stories are very good indeed; there's even one by the late Poul Anderson in here.

On the other hand, there's also this horrendous thing featuring displaced Apache and Navaho Indians (in space!) that even uses pidgin English for its dialog between the Indians and some itinerant ship-dwellers.

Most of the stories to be found here are somewhere in between. On the whole, I think I'm glad I read it because it's an interesting artifact of cooperative fiction, but I'm not quite sure that I'm going to read more from this series.

[Dmack · Rating 3 out of 5]

A really neat co ilition of writings by different authors into one story. I liked the different story lines however they didn't always flow real smooth; also there were certain times when you really wish a particular line would develop more or continue on then it would end; will try probably one more in the series and then see if i still like it

[Zachary Stewart · Rating 3 out of 5]

It is an easy read for wasting time in court.