SOLDIER BOY by Michael Shaara

 



Published in 1982 by Pocket Books (a Timescape book)

Back in the 1980's Simon and Schuster had a division called Pocket Books that specialized in paperback books. Pocket Books had an even smaller division called "Timescape". Timescape published sci-fi books, including some of the earliest of the Star Trek novels so they were quite a successful line. This collection is part of that Timescape line.

Michael Shaara (1928-1988)
Michael Shaara won the Pulitzer Prize for his 1974 novel about the Battle of Gettysburg, The Killer Angels. Shaara had knocked out a few novels before then, but none were about the Civil War. Instead, a great deal of his writing was sci-fi. He started out selling stories to magazines in 1951. This book is a collection of 14 of those short stories.

If you read this book, I recommend reading the Author's Afterword first. He wrote commentary on every story and I used those notes as an introduction to each one.  Like all short story collections, they vary in quality. The book is named after the first story in the collection. Shaara really likes the story, but I found it so-so. But, I enjoyed most of them. There were a lot of them with a Twilight Zone gotcha moment at the end. I really enjoyed those.

This collection was an enjoyable read. I rate it 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Soldier Boy by Michael Shaara.

Note: Amazon is selling all of these short stories as individual Kindle stories. Be careful if you buy the one named "Soldier Boy" - it is not this book, it is just the first story. 

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