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Allies and Aliens collects two of Roger MacBride Allen's shorter SF works in a single volume, and the result is the cleanest possible introduction to his particular sensibility outside the Asimov continuation books. Both pieces deal with the early stages of human contact with other intelligences, and both treat the diplomacy with more care than the form usually requires.
Allen's great strength is that he writes the slow procedural work of first contact as if it actually matters. The negotiating sequences are interesting in the way negotiating sequences in real history are interesting. The aliens are alien rather than rubber-headed humans, which the genre often forgets.
Four stars. A useful starting point for new Allen readers. The Caliban trilogy is the more famous work but this one shows you what he does on his own.
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The Torch of Honor
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The Torch of Honor by Roger MacBride Allen 1985 review. A near-future SF novel about an Earth-led expedition arriving at the colony world of New Finland to find it under Guard occupation.
SuperNova
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SuperNova by Roger MacBride Allen 1991 review. A standalone hard-SF novel about a small team of physicists racing to interpret a nearby supernova that arrives ten thousand years earlier than astronomy predicted.
Blood Pact
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A late Gaunt's Ghosts novel. Abnett moving the series into a quieter and more political register.
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