Two of the field’s pioneers join forces for a near-future story built around Ranjit Subramanian, a Sri Lankan mathematical genius.

Two of the field’s pioneers join forces for a near-future story built around Ranjit Subramanian, a Sri Lankan mathematical genius.

In the novel, drafted by Clarke and completed by Pohl before Clarke’s death, Ranjit, the sixteen-year-old son of a Hindu monk, comes across Fermat’s claim and becomes obsessed with proving it. After a series of adolescent adventures goes wrong, he is imprisoned. There, given time to concentrate on the problem, he succeeds—and upon being freed, immediately publishes it. Almost against his will, he becomes a hot property, invited to speak to learned societies, to give TV interviews and to accept honorary degrees.

He has also become of interest to high-level political players, including a former school friend whose father is a UN official. And while their interest makes his life much more comfortable for a while, it also raises moral issues that bother him a great deal. The lessons his father taught —even though Ranjit is for all practical purposes irreligious—stick with him.

Meanwhile, far from Earth, an intelligent race known as the super-Galactics is planning the extermination of human beings, whom they see as a long-range threat to the order of the universe. They send their operatives—a coalition of less powerful races—to do the job. But while they are in transit, the UN finally develops Pax Per Fidem—a brutally simple means to neutralize threats to peace on our own planet. The larger plot of the novel revolves around the tension between the approaching coalition and the pro-gress of the human effort toward solving its own problems, against which broad background the life of Ranjit and his family plays out.

While much of the overall shape of the book is clearly Clarke’s doing, Pohl’s hand is evident all through it. In fact, the book has several of the favorite themes of both authors. Clarke’s love of Sri Lanka, and his advocacy of space elevators as a means to overcome the high cost of putting people and materials into orbit is here, as is Pohl’s expert exploration of hard-nosed political maneuvering; and both authors’ fascination with alien races far advanced beyond human achievement. Those conversant with both men’s work will spot other familiar bits, as well—often in the form of little in-jokes for those long-time readers.

The plot is no barnburner. Most readers likely to pick this book up won’t be expecting one, in any case; slam-bang action was never Clarke’s stock in trade, and Pohl’s work, while edgier, has always had a cerebral turn as well. There are enough twists here to keep the reader guessing, and while the conclusion of the main plot can be seen coming a ways off, it’s satisfactory nevertheless.

Clarke’s death in 2008 means that this is likely to be one of the last books he took an active part in. Pohl is still with us, and seems likely to keep on writing his four pages a day as long as he can lift a pencil. But this will be their only collaboration, as Pohl makes clear in an afterword. Anyone who has enjoyed their work in the past should give this one a read.

Subtitled “A Novel of the War Between Science and Superstition,” this latest by Snodgrass sets a weird cosmic battle of supernatural forces against a realistically drawn urban landscape.

The plot begins with a teenage girl, Rhiana Davinovitch, running through the center of Albuquerque, unknown pursuers closing in on her. Also on her trail is a young cop, Richard Oort, trying to trace the cause of a string of electrical outages in the city. He finds Rhianna surrounded by three attackers and rushes to her aid, discovering in the process that the attackers are not men but monsters. Then, while he is still trying to figure out what to do, Rhianna casts a spell and shatters one of the creatures. The battle ends with the appearance of a homeless man, who says he’s been sent to save Rhianna—but then says that she should stay with Richard, because she’s invisible to her pursuers as long as she’s with him.

The weirdness builds from there. Snodgrass puts her troubled protagonist, Oort, in a web of political intrigue sufficiently grounded in reality so that the supernatural elements seem plausible. But more is at stake than mere political power. Richard and Rhianna learn they are pawns in an eons-old conflict between the Old Ones, godlike creatures that seek to control human minds and hearts, and the Lumina, a group dedicated to freeing us from oppression. On the one hand are the powers of religion and magic, on the other science and rationalism.

Richard finds himself torn both ways. Like many policemen, he has a strong religious faith. To learn that all religion—not just the dark pagan rituals he’s been taught to think of as satanic—is bent on oppressing humans is a hard lesson to confront. But events work to convince him that real hope lies with the Lumina, and he throws himself into the fight.

Snodgrass effectively connects her Lovecraft-like dark fantasy plot to real issues in today’s world, with strong conflict and well-drawn characters. Worth looking for.

Gaiman, who won a Hugo for his recent YA novel “The Graveyard Book,” turns to Norse mythology with this tale of a young boy caught up in the war of the Aesir and the Frost Giants. Once again he shows clearly that writing for young readers needn’t mean stripping the story of anything that might interest adults.

The novel begins in a small Norse village, where Odd is a young boy without a clear place in the larger society. His father has been lost during a raid, so he has no older man to teach him the ways of the community. On top of that, he is lame—the result of a tree he was attempting to fell landing on his foot. And if his own bad luck were not enough, what seems an endless winter has fallen on the land. That last detail should be enough to orient readers familiar with the sagas; the danger of the last days is upon the world. And, of course, Odd turns out to be the only one able to turn things right.

The tale itself begins when Odd finds himself in the company of three strange animals: a fox, a bear, and a one-eyed eagle. When Odd discovers that they can talk, he gets them to reveal their identities. They are, as knowledgeable readers will have guessed, the gods Loki, Thor, and Odin in animal form, exiled from their home in Asgard after a trick by one of the Frost Giants.

The story develops in authentic style from there, with each of the gods taking on his characteristic attributes. To cut to the chase, Odd overcomes the Frost Giant in a game of wits, and wins back Asgard for the gods. Gaiman gives the flavor of Norse tale-telling without a heavy load of background material, and the story moves smoothly to its foreordained conclusion, with the world put right again and Odd rewarded for his courage and cleverness.

Helquist, who is best known for his illustrations of Lemony Snicket’s improbable adventures, gives the characters and scenes a visual presence that adds to the tale.

Enjoyable myth-retelling for younger readers, with enough depth and wit to keep any of Gaiman’s grown-up audience interested as well.

Australian artist/storyteller Tan made a huge impression with his wordless story, The Arrival, portraying the life of an immigrant trying to make enough of a living to bring over the family he left behind in the Old Country. But while the theme is the stuff of mainstream fiction, the world of the story brims over with fantastic creatures and odd social institutions—all portrayed with a virtuoso graphic hand.

Here, he takes a somewhat more conventional approach—if that term applies to anything he does—combining prose stories with quirky art. The tales here cover a remarkable range, with the only common element being a suburban setting. But these suburbs are only superficially like the ones familiar to us; walking down one of Tan’s streets, one is likely to meet a water buffalo or a suited deep-sea diver. In the backyards, there may be ballistic missiles. Just beyond the next block, there may be an enormous chasm. And a visit from an alien can leave a family with a curious set of mementoes.

Some stories are largely illustrated prose, although such a description shortchanges the power of the art. Tan’s illustrations bring the quirky subject matter into the visual realm with wit and precision. Many of them are little stories—or little jokes—in and of themselves. Sometimes the art comments on the story, as at the end of “Eric,” the story of a small alien visitor that is summed up by a final display of what Eric has left behind; or the final illustration of “Our Expedition.”

In other stories, the visual presentation is a large part of the overall effect. In “The Amnesia Machine,” the tale is presented in the form of a newspaper story, with bits of other features (sudoku answers, a crossword puzzle, some sort of table of numbers) spread around the edges and a straight-faced picture taking up half the page. Others appear to be bits of torn-up paper with words or phrases strewn together in an order that adds up to a coherent tale.

The artwork takes on even more power in the stories that are told largely through images. While none are quite as thoroughly wordless as The Arrival, there are points—as in the middle of “Grandpa’s Story”—where Tan stops depending on language and just lets the pictures go to work for a few pages.

The incidental art on the end pages and the table of contents (just for two examples) is a delight as well. You can buy this book for the kids in your family, but be sure to get hold of an extra copy for your own enjoyment.