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\author{David Golombek}
\title{Summaries for Readings \#1}
\date{\today}
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{\large The Handler}\\

I'd swear I've met Pete a dozen times over in my life, all around the
world.  I really enjoyed this story for it's portrayal of Pete; the
way he handled the crowd, and the way it reacted to him.  However, I
felt the emergence of Harry and how the crowd reacted to him was
underplayed.  There is a lot more that could have been done with this
concept, but the author almost seemed to give up and just let the
story end without putting any development into it.

{\large Tandy's Story}\\

The beautiful interweaving of the recipe of events and thoughts
introduced at the beginning and the main plot line helped make this my
favorite story of the bunch.  Although the goals of the brownies were
never covered to the extent I hoped, the great character descriptions,
and new ideas easily made up for the lack.  I thought the children
were very well described, and had very interesting personalities,
which is rare for children in stories.

{\large Over the River and Through the Woods}\\

Perhaps it's because of this stories age, but it is now simply another
time travel story in an overly cliched field.  I didn't find the
concepts introduced in it to be anything new, nor was the final
``twist'' anything more than an expected conclusion.  With the plot
removed, there is little character development or setting description
to make this anything but a forgettable story.

{\large How Beautiful with Banners}\\

I found this to be another unremarkable piece of work, with neither a
character I liked, nor a particularly interesting plot.  I had
problems with the description that this was a scientific mission, yet
everything was being done in a most haphazard manner.  I was also
looking for a better description of the scenery, or the technology,
both of which were quickly introduced then assumed commonplace.  The
final quote about having waited for so long, and beginning something
that would resolve far in the future was interesting, but not enough
to make up for the rest of the story.

{\large A Woman's Liberation}\\

Although I never really empathized with Radosse Rakam, I greatly
enjoyed the world and politics of this story.  The history of the
world was brought in well, and nicely designed, as were the events
unfolding around Rakam.  I found Rakam herself to be interesting, and
liked the brief descriptions of her love of learning, but her feelings
about the planet and other people never quite clicked with me.  This
was primarily due to conflicting natural reactions to the
circumstances that surrounded her that were at odds with the ways in
which she reacted.  

{\large Starship Day}\\

There were enough interesting ideas in this story to fill an entire
novel.  The concepts behind dreaming while in cyrogenic storage, and
keeping on missing livable planets were great.  Unfortunately, I don't
think the short story did full justice to them, and instead spent too
much time dealing with one rather uninteresting character, and only
one day (as it appeared to him anyways).  I enjoyed thinking about a
lot of the ideas presented in the story, but wish they had been
treated better by the author.

{\large A Place with Shade}\\

This is another story with enough ideas to be expanded into a full
novel, but this time the short story itself was wonderful.  The
characters (Ula in particular) were well done, and the lessons about
the power of nature are well illustrated.  I finished the story
feeling that I still didn't fully understand everything about Ula, but
that's reasonable.


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