Neverness

By David Zindell

A science fiction story about a dysfunctional family and the search for immortality.

Mallory Ringess is a young graduate from space pilot school and he is full of pride and ambition. He has declared he will solve one of the great mysteries of space, one that many other pilots have died trying to solve, the Solid State Entity.
The Solid State Entity is a sentient nebula and every pilot who has penetrated its borders has never come back out again. So for Mallory to chose exploring the Solid State Entity was the height of foolishness.
The Timekeeper, ruler of the pilots, gave Mallory a book of poetry and told him to memorize the poems. Because, according to the Timekeeper, the Solid State Entity appreciated poetry. How the Timekeeper would know that, he didn't explain. It worked, too, and Mallory became the first pilot to enter the nebula and return. And he returned with a message from the nebula that the secret to immortality is written in the ancient DNA of mankind.
Back home, Mallory again states a rash quest. He will infiltrate the tribes of primitive humans and obtain their ancient DNA. At first the Timekeeper refuses to allow the expedition but suddenly changes his mind, with certain conditions.
Namely, that Mallory will not lead the expedition. Instead the leader would be Leopold Soli. And included in the expedition would be Mallory's mother, his aunt Justine (Soli's estranged wife), Katharine (Soli and Justine's adult daughter and Mallory's secret girl friend) and Mallory's best friend, Bardo. But Mallory and Soli really, really disliked each other.
Things don't go well. Katharine gets accused by the primitives of witchcraft and is murdered. A fight breaks out and Mallory receives a fatal wound. The remaining members of the expedition barely manage to escape.
Mallory's mother takes his body to a water-world who denizens have the skill to rebuild dead people, including damaged brains. They resurrect Mallory but they add enhancements (the godseed) to his brain that will give him abilities beyond normal people.
Mallory returns home only to find out that the DNA of the primitive people wasn't any more ancient than anyone's. He also realizes that someone has hired an assassin to kill Soli. In the midst of trying to stop the assassination, Mallory himself is accused of being the killer. The Timekeeper throws him into a dungeon without a trial and he languishes there for weeks. Bardo, his friend, engineers a jail break and he and Mallory and many other pilots flee the Timekeeper and head into space. But the Timekeeper is not willing to let them escape and sends pilots after them, resulting in a war between the two factions.

This was a long book, 458 pages. And it was pretty boring, for the most part. I skipped a lot of the philosophical and mathematical stuff. I also found the part where Mallory and company live with the primitives to be not to my taste. I just wasn't interested in the lives of the cavemen.

Review by Kirkus Reviews.

The Perfect Host : Volume V

By Theodore Sturgeon

A collection of stories, mostly science fiction, some fantasy and one cowboy story.

• Quietly A girl is raised by her anarchist father and abandoned by him when she turns 18.
• The Music Lunatic in a hospital eats a nurse.
• Unite and Conquer Scientist fakes an alien invasion to unite mankind.
• The Love of Heaven An evolved human race wants to return to the home world but discover they are poison to all life on Earth.
• Till Death Do Us Join A man who thinks he has an evil twin comes up with a plan to kill the twin.
• The Perfect Host  A string of mysterious deaths are caused by a "thing" that attaches itself to people it finds interesting and sympathetic. 
• The Martian and the Moron An empty-headed girl makes contact with Mars. Humorous story.
• Die, Maestro, Die!  Band announcer is deadly jealous of the band leader.
• The Dark Goddess  Woman wants her brother's common-law wife to make the marriage legal. Story has a good, brief description of life in the 1920s.
• Scars Cowboy rescues a woman.
• Messenger A rich inventor is planning to give all his wealth away. But his daughter's fiance tries to kill the rich man before he can do that.
• Minority Report A spaceship goes on on a mission and never returns. So another ship goes after it to figure out what happened.
• Prodigy After multiple wars and pollution, humans have developed many mutations. In order to stop these mutations from being passed on, children are put to death if they don't fit the standard norm.
• Farewell to Eden Two people escape Earth for a new world but it doesn't end well.
• One Foot and the Grave A man and a woman both have one of their feet change into a hoof. They are told it was caused by magic emanating from an ancient being chained in the nearby hills.
• What Dead Men Tell A guy stumbles upon a secret society of immortals and has to pass a deadly test to become one of them.
• The Hurkle Is a Happy Beast Story of an invasive species, only this species is an extraterrestrial. Humorous story.

This is a pretty good collection of stories. The author is very fond of the twist ending. For example, in Scars, the main character claims to be a gentleman because he rescued a woman and declined to take advantage of her, even though she indicated she was interested. [Spoiler]Turns out he is impotent.

Walkabout Woman

By Michaela Roessner

Raba is a young Australian aboriginal girl who has just turned old enough to attend the white man's missionary school. But Raba is not the typical little girl, she has a special connection to the land. She is going to be the link for the people to return to Dreamtime. Dreamtime is the story of the creation of life and its meaning and of mankind's place in the world, past and present and future. (Dreamtime is the white man's term for it.)
Anyway, Raba's path is not straightforward. First, there is interference by a well-meaning missionary teacher. Then when Raba is a teen, her chosen lover is being controlled by his malignant father, who wants to keep his son for his own purposes. Tragedy then sends Raba into a mental hospital for many months. After recovery, Raba goes off to college and into the teaching profession where she runs afoul of a student who is determined to use Raba's mystical abilities for her own ends.

The first part of the story was really good and very engrossing. But the last part, where Raba is a college professor just wasn't anywhere near as interesting and Raba comes off as weak and ineffective, in my opinion.

Review from Black Gate.

Guard of Honor

By James Gould Cozzens

This book is the Pulitzer Prize winner for fiction in 1949.

Set in a military base in Florida, 1943, this is the story of three days in the life of that base.
General Beal, base commander, is flying into the base when his plane is involved in a near miss with another plane. After the two planes land, one of the men that was riding in the plane with Beal punches the pilot of the other pilot, sending him to the hospital with a broken nose. The other pilot was a young black man, Lt. Willis, and a group of black officers takes umbrage at his treatment. So when the black officers are not allowed the use regular officer club, they become even more upset and a confrontation at the officer club occurs.
Meanwhile, the local newspaper is sniffing around and it soon becomes apparent that someone has been leaking information to the news that should not be in the public eye. Plus, a big celebration is being planned for General Beal's birthday and two generals from higher up the chain of command are flying into the base for the occasion and for other reasons, some relating to the incidents with Lt. Willis and the black officers. All this adds up to a lot of people stressing about a lot of different things, with lots of meetings and lots of memos. But in the end, it all pales in the face of a genuine tragedy.

What a pain in the neck this book was to read. I started reading it last year (2018) and I just now finished it in June 2019. The main problem was the huge number of characters to keep track of, their military ranks, their jobs & their personal stories. It was just too much to keep track of.
Also, the plot just wasn't that engaging.

Review from Kirkus Reviews. This review is from 1948.