The Outpost

Like many of the other reviewers have already said. This is really more of an anthology of stories than one solid one they are all interconnected through the backdrop of an impending war. I have never read a Mike Resnick story before but I found this one entertaining enough to want to read others. This story did a good job at being humorously entertaining while doing a good job of developing the characters. It did start to bog down a little in the third part but over all a very good read. I look forward to reading one of his novels.

A lot of unpretentious short stories whose main interest is to keep you imagining all those as-large-as-life characters in action. You will pick up your favorite guys but all will make you happy, and you will smile at them. You will also keep on reading, and when you turn the last page you will just wish it would last a bit more. The Plantagenêt System where the major plot takes place has got planets and moons named after the House of Plantagenêt's members and relatives (with some liberties). A rich and delightful idea contrasting great historical names with imaginative nicknames. I do like the way MR writes. His prose refreshingly flows right and left like a meandering river. One really must be gifted to write in such a simple way.

This is an old fashioned escapist collection of very short stories told in a bar room setting.A bar on the farthest reaches of the inner frontier of the gallaxy and patronized by only the toughest and craziest inhabitants of the universe. Both human and otherwise.It is reminiscent of the early Spider Robinson Callahan's series before that went downhill and serious.Anyone looking for the more dramatic Resnick stories needs to go elsewhere. This is humor pure and simple. No deep meanings or charectarizations. There's no time as the stories come fast and furious. This is the type of book I look for when I'm taking a break from more serious science fiction.It's full of interesting though lite charectors telling stories of shape changing aliens, space opera like adventures, fortunes (in the form of whole palnets and even systems) won and lost and even an interesting bar/card trick.Admitedly it's not exactly what I expected when I picked up the copy but I am more than pleasantly suprised. Hope you are too.

THE OUTPOST is the last stop bar on the planet Henry II just before the Milky Way's centric black hole. The tavern is a place where the hostilities of the solar system are left off-planet. Enemies come here to share a drink and a tall tale or two. The owner Tomahawk and his bartender Reggie the Robot run a clean establishment until the aliens invade. With Willie the Bard chronically taking notes, everyone has a story to tell and that they do in this humorous, intelligent, but quite biting satirical anthology starring interchangeable heroes and villains.Harriet Klausner