The Rackham Files

"Pulling Through" was a very good story of weathering a nuclear attack in a fallout shelter, as I was led to believe by other reviews. The other stories were entertaining, but I kept catching myself skipping ahead so I could get to the last story....if for nothing else, buy this book for that one.

This reprint collection collects two novellas and a short novel featuring Harve Rackham, Bay Area PI, bounty hunter and survivalist. "Inside Job" (2001), the most recent, is the earliest in Rackham's timeline -- but his timeline doesn't make sense, as "Inside Job" is a near-future piece, while the last, set about 10 years later in Rackham's life (but written first, in 1980), features a Soviet nuclear attack on the US! Well, let's call it an incompletely-retconned alternate-history, and move on to the stories themselves, which are all worth reading. "Inside Job" is a pretty routine techno-thriller, featuring an attempted large-scale terrorist attack on San Francisco by dastardly Middle Easterners. The pages turn, and I enjoyed it. The second novella, "Vital Signs" (1980), has Rackham the bounty-hunter hunting a savage ET hunter-killer, with a sweet twist ending. Slight, but nicely done. "Pulling Through" (1983) , the only one of these I'd previously read, is a story of surviving a (then) near-future full-scale nuclear attack on the US, by the USSR. It was intended as somewhat of a didactic civil-defense preparedness message, the utility of which has (probably, and fortunately) mostly passed, but it still works pretty well as a story. Ing is an underrated writer, imo. These aren't among his best works, but they're all competent or better commercial fiction, and well-worth reading if you're a fan of this sort of thing. Happy reading-- Peter D. Tillman

The Introduction, by Larry Niven, is worth the price of this book [IF you are a fan of "Lucifers Hammer" or "the Mote in God's Eye"]! I had read 1/2 of what's in this Hardbound, in used ING paperbacks. But I was Delighted to get a "Keeper Edition" for Christmas!