Date: 7 July 1981 0643-EDT (Tuesday)
From: Dan Hoey at CMU-10A
To: SF-LOVERS
Subject: The Steel of Raithskar

It is my pleasure to mention a new title to the readers of
this list.  @i(The Steel of Raithskar) by Randall Garrett and
Vicki Ann Heydron is the first of a (planned?) trilogy named the
@i(Gandalara Cycle).  Mr. Garrett is well known for his tight
plotting, carefully constructed fantasy, and engrossing mystery to
readers of the Lord D'Arcy series.  At the risk of nit-picking, I
fault that series only on the basis of its dry, academic tenor, and
a slight tendency to concentrate on actions over people.  And at the
risk of excessive romanticism, I attribute the warmth, emotion, and
excellent characterization of the current work to collaboration with
Ms. Heydron, his wife.

At no risk, I highly recommend this novel.  I would draw the
parallels to the best of Asimov, Brackett, Bradley, Cherryh, Crowley,
Herbert, McCaffrey, and Tolkien, but when a book is this full of
surprises, it's a sin to tell.

I did run across one jarring note, for which I seek
clarification.  Midway through (and no spoiler) we find the following
narrative.

  A huge chrome-nickel-iron meteor had come smashing in
  through the atmosphere in the distant past at somewhere
  between ten and twenty miles per second.  At those velocities,
  plenty of hard radiation is given off during the time it takes
  to go through the atmosphere--between ten seconds and two
  minutes, depending on the speed and the angle at which it
  struck.  That radiation would be lethal to those creatures
  near enough to barely survive the impact, and disabling to
  those who caught a smaller dose....

Meteors have been blamed for many things, including physical
heating of the biosphere, the greenhouse effect, and heavy-metal
poisoning.  There was an overlong discussion of these effects and
their relation to dinosaur extinction either here or on Human-Nets;
I'd just as soon see that discussion follow the dinosaurs into
extinction.  But hard radiation?  This sounds like the sort of <EFM>
arrant pseudoscientific gibberish that infests so much of modern
fantasy <LFM>.  [It could be explained away as narration by an
uninformed character, but that would be reaching.]

So I ask for the experts' opinions.  If anyone can support the
described emission of radiation by a high-velocity meteor, please
send a note to Hoey@CMU-10A, and I'll collect and report.