Choose your fantasy and enjoy it

By JIM EAGLES*

If the film version of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring has whetted your taste for science fiction and fantasy - and it should have - there's plenty more magic being conjured up where that came from. And a couple of the latest offerings are, like the film, at least partly homegrown.

HUMAN STOCK, a first novel by Vaughan Whitlock (Sid Harta, $29.95), is set in Australia but its author was born in New Zealand before escaping to a fantasy life in Queensland.

Perhaps inspired by New Zealand's political scene, Human Stock offers a thought-provoking scenario of what might happen if women were to take control, and pretty frightening it is, too.

In this case the grab for power follows a nuclear war, caused of course by Macho male stupidity, so some of the female survivors take steps to ensure that hairy-chested idiots don't get another chance to stuff up.

Fair enough, you might think, except that the womanly regime is far more brutal and oppressive than the masculine mess that went before. The female elite not only give themselves special privileges, they also move to progressively eliminate love, family and eventually men, first through a controlled breeding programme, later by creating a race of obedient clones ... and worse.

Fortunately lust, love and procreation prove a little harder to eliminate than the women might have hoped, and a few brave souls stage a fightback against the matriarchal tyranny.

Human Stock has an interesting twist on a couple of familiar sci-fi themes. It offers a good, stimulating read and the opportunity for a lively sexist debate afterwards.

Alma A. Hromic also lived for some years in this country and she promises that a fantasy with strong New Zealand roots is not far away. Meanwhile, CHANGER OF DAYS, volumes one and two (HarperCollins, $29.95 each), is an intriguing fantasy saga set in a world not too unlike our own.

It, too, is dominated by a woman, Anghara Kir Hama, rightful heir to the throne of Roisinan and possessed of a great gift, called Sight.

Robbed of her position by her half-brother Sif, she is forced to roam the world, learning to come to grips with her powers and preparing to regain her throne.

Eventually, in the harsh, forbidden deserts of Kheldrin, she discovers not only the awesome nature of her gift, but also that her destiny is even greater than the royal position she was born to.

Ironically, although Anghara's powers can literally shake the gods, they will not help her to regain her throne. For that task she will need more mundane qualities such as love, loyalty and justice, which will rally an oppressed people to her cause.

The two volumes of Changer of Days make up a classic fantasy story, easy to read and highly entertaining, and made all the better by the fact that it isn't necessary to buy a 28-part series to discover the world-shaking outcome.

David Gemmell has been widely hailed as one of the best writers of heroic fantasy and his latest efforts, RAVENHEART (Corgi, $24.95) and STORMRIDER (Bantam, $34.95), can only add to that reputation.

The books are the third and fourth volumes in his Rigante series, focused on the struggles of the Celtic-seeming Rigante against their Varlish oppressors, and against an ancient evil that is seeking to rise anew amid the chaos of war.

Gemmell has the marvellous gift of combining ripping yarns and bloody battles with gentle humour and intriguing characterisation to produce books that are entertaining, undemanding and hard to put down.

THE SCIENCE OF DISCWORLD II: THE GLOBE, written by Terry Pratchett with help from scientists Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen (Ebury Press, $59.95), is the latest volume in Pratchett's incredibly successful Discworld series.

Sad to say, I've never really come to grips with Discworld's blend of fantasy and humour and I find the format of the science volumes, where chapters of the latest story alternate with a tongue-in-cheek discussion of the scientific principles involved, even less accessible.

But, given that more than 40 Discworld books have been produced, all having sold zillions, and Pratchett has a cult following, I have to acknowledge I'm in a minority over this.

According to the back cover of this latest volume, Frontiers magazine described it as "An irreverent but genuinely profound romp through the history and philosophy of science" - which I'm willing to acknowledge is a fair indication of how others view this book.

After all, I know some seemingly intelligent people who can't get into the printed version of The Lord of the Rings.

* Jim Eagles is the Weekend Herald's business editor