The Ultimate Vampire Resource and Directory

The pieces collected here include excerpts from the novels as well as short stories on related themes. While their science is up to date, their narrative and stylistic strategies are comfortably old-fashioned. Not for Bova the ambiguities and excesses of cyberpunk rage, nanotech noodling or quantum weirdness. His characters resemble elements in the periodic table, clearly defined by a few well-chosen traits; even their life-changing epiphanies are carefully flagged and thoroughly explained: ''Like two kindred souls, like comrades who had shared the sight of death, like mother and son they walked up the tunnel toward the waiting race of humanity.''

Reading Bova, you are always aware of solid ground beneath your feet -- even when the protagonist is an alien life-form swimming in Jupiter's world-girdling, 5,000-kilometer-deep ocean. — Gerald Jonas