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Soldier Boy
A people who have never seen war and scoff at its mention are left to their own devices under the threat of an alien invasion. Captain Dylan, or Soldier Boy, is the only one remaining who can protect them.
191 pages, Paperback
First published March 1, 1982
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About the author
Michael Shaara
118 books986 followersMichael Shaara was an American writer of science fiction, sports fiction, and historical fiction. He was born to Italian immigrant parents (the family name was originally spelled Sciarra, which in Italian is pronounced the same way) in Jersey City, New Jersey, graduated from Rutgers University in 1951, and served as a sergeant in the 82nd Airborne division prior to the Korean War.
Before Shaara began selling science fiction stories to fiction magazines in the 1950s, he was an amateur boxer and police officer. He later taught literature at Florida State University while continuing to write fiction. The stress of this and his smoking caused him to have a heart attack at the early age of 36; from which he fully recovered. His novel about the Battle of Gettysburg, The Killer Angels, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1975. Shaara died of another heart attack in 1988.
Shaara's son, Jeffrey Shaara, is also a popular writer of historical fiction; most notably sequels to his father's best-known novel. His most famous is the prequel to The Killer Angels, Gods and Generals. Jeffrey was the one to finally get Michael's last book, For Love of the Game, published three years after he died. Today there is a Michael Shaara Award for Excellence in Civil War Fiction, established by Jeffrey Shaara, awarded yearly at Gettysburg College.
Before Shaara began selling science fiction stories to fiction magazines in the 1950s, he was an amateur boxer and police officer. He later taught literature at Florida State University while continuing to write fiction. The stress of this and his smoking caused him to have a heart attack at the early age of 36; from which he fully recovered. His novel about the Battle of Gettysburg, The Killer Angels, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1975. Shaara died of another heart attack in 1988.
Shaara's son, Jeffrey Shaara, is also a popular writer of historical fiction; most notably sequels to his father's best-known novel. His most famous is the prequel to The Killer Angels, Gods and Generals. Jeffrey was the one to finally get Michael's last book, For Love of the Game, published three years after he died. Today there is a Michael Shaara Award for Excellence in Civil War Fiction, established by Jeffrey Shaara, awarded yearly at Gettysburg College.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
December 22, 2017
This is a collection of Shaara's short stories & most are SF war based, but not all. Some could happen in any time & place, especially the 1950s when this was written. They might be evident from the magazines they were published in.
I've had this book in my collection for many years & vaguely recall reading it long ago. Some of the stories had stuck with me, but most didn't. The title one did, a plot that's been done before & since, but was still well done & poignant. Most of all this impressed me because I think of Shaara only in terms of The Killer Angels, one of the better books on the battle of Gettysburg in the US Civil War. In any case, he did a good job on this. Well worth reading.
Normally I'd give a short account of each story, but I didn't get around to that this time.
Introduction by Michael Shaara
“Soldier Boy” (Galaxy Science Fiction, July 1953)
“Grenville’s Planet” (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, October 1952)
“Opening Up Slowly” (Redbook, August 1973)
“The Book” (Galaxy Science Fiction, November 1953)
“Come to My Party” (Dude, August 1956)
“Time Payment” (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, June 1954)
“Citizen Jell” (Galaxy Magazine, August 1959)
“The Dark Angel,” original to this volume
“Wainer” (Galaxy Science Fiction, April 1954)
“All the Way Back” (Astounding Science Fiction, July 1952)
“2066: Election Day” (Astounding Science Fiction, December 1956)
“Border Incident” (Mississippi Review, November 1976)
“Starface,” original to this volume
“The Peeping Tom Patrol” (Playboy, September 1958)
“The Orphans of the Void” (Galaxy Science Fiction, June 1952)
“Death of a Hunter” (Fantastic Universe, October 1957)
Author’s Afterword by Michael Shaara
I've had this book in my collection for many years & vaguely recall reading it long ago. Some of the stories had stuck with me, but most didn't. The title one did, a plot that's been done before & since, but was still well done & poignant. Most of all this impressed me because I think of Shaara only in terms of The Killer Angels, one of the better books on the battle of Gettysburg in the US Civil War. In any case, he did a good job on this. Well worth reading.
Normally I'd give a short account of each story, but I didn't get around to that this time.
Introduction by Michael Shaara
“Soldier Boy” (Galaxy Science Fiction, July 1953)
“Grenville’s Planet” (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, October 1952)
“Opening Up Slowly” (Redbook, August 1973)
“The Book” (Galaxy Science Fiction, November 1953)
“Come to My Party” (Dude, August 1956)
“Time Payment” (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, June 1954)
“Citizen Jell” (Galaxy Magazine, August 1959)
“The Dark Angel,” original to this volume
“Wainer” (Galaxy Science Fiction, April 1954)
“All the Way Back” (Astounding Science Fiction, July 1952)
“2066: Election Day” (Astounding Science Fiction, December 1956)
“Border Incident” (Mississippi Review, November 1976)
“Starface,” original to this volume
“The Peeping Tom Patrol” (Playboy, September 1958)
“The Orphans of the Void” (Galaxy Science Fiction, June 1952)
“Death of a Hunter” (Fantastic Universe, October 1957)
Author’s Afterword by Michael Shaara
January 25, 2021
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 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.
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 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.
February 3, 2020
good short story
February 11, 2021
Soldier boy, by Michael Shaara
When everyone scoffs at the signs of pending war, only one man has the capacity to help. I can’t remember the rest. 2 stars.
When everyone scoffs at the signs of pending war, only one man has the capacity to help. I can’t remember the rest. 2 stars.
April 30, 2025
Timescape was a SF imprint, but not all of these stories are science fiction; by my count, 5 of 16 are mainstream or literary fiction. Most of these stories were published originally in the 1950s. Introduction and Afterword by the author are both interesting.
"Soldier Boy" 3/5 stars. This one started slowly but ended strong. A bildungsroman about a soldier coming to realize his purpose in life (although he is middle-aged by the standards of today; apparently people live longer in the future).
"Grenville's Planet" 2/5 stars. One of several stories about the Mapping Command, an interstellar exploration service. It seems Shaara was developing his own future history, but didn't get very far.
"Opening Up Slowly" 2/5 stars. The first of the non-speculative stories, a sentimental piece about a young family.
"The Book" 1/5 stars. Apparently it was taken as a given in the 1950s that intelligent species from other planets would look exactly like people from Earth. This is one of the few that I felt was badly dated.
"Come to My Party" 5/5 stars. Well-done piece about a down-and-out boxer and his last fight. Shaara boxed in his youth and uses that experience to good effect here. I felt this was the strongest story in the collection.
"Time Payment" 2/5 stars. I thought the time-travel premise was a promising one (a variation on Fermi's Paradox), but Shaara did little to develop it.
"Citizen Jell" 3/5 stars. Another sentimental piece, this time with an SF slant.
"The Dark Angel" 3/5 stars. A story about a boy coming to terms with his father's mortality. Non-speculative.
"Wainer" 1/5 stars. An SF piece about future human evolution that didn't work for me.
"All the Way Back" 2/5 stars. I found the cold sleep device here interesting, but not much else.
"2066: Election Day" 4/5 stars. Strangely topical to 2024, although written in 1956! It's about a future US in which the President is elected by administering a series of tests, judged by a supercomputer. I found it oddly entertaining.
"Border Incident" No rating. What to say about this? It's a self-consciously literary piece that found a home with the Mississippi Review in 1976.
"Starface" 0/5 stars. Journal entries by a man undergoing extreme cosmetic surgery. This has all the earmarks of something from the back of the drawer, that ought to have stayed there.
"The Peeping Tom Patrol" 3/5 stars. Well-written and published by Playboy in 1958. It reflects the misogynistic bent of that time period, but I would bet that a lot of cops even today could tell a story like this one. (Among his several careers, Shaara worked as a policeman for a time.)
"The Orphans of the Void" 3/5 stars. Another story of the Mapping Command. This time they discover a race of telepathic, self-reproducing super robots.
"Death of a Hunter" 4/5 stars. Somewhat reluctantly, I'm giving this one four stars. I've now read it three times. Shaara considered this one his best piece of SF, and after its cool reception he switched to writing mainstream fiction. (A move that apparently paid off, since he won a Pulitzer in 1974.) Its bleak mood must have appealed to David Drake, because he reprinted it as the lead story in his 1988 anthology Men Hunting Things, with high praise. It is a powerful story. I still find Shaara's choice of telling most of it through a long (very long) monologue by an outsider to be a strange one. We only get about a page at the beginning from the main character's POV.
"Soldier Boy" 3/5 stars. This one started slowly but ended strong. A bildungsroman about a soldier coming to realize his purpose in life (although he is middle-aged by the standards of today; apparently people live longer in the future).
"Grenville's Planet" 2/5 stars. One of several stories about the Mapping Command, an interstellar exploration service. It seems Shaara was developing his own future history, but didn't get very far.
"Opening Up Slowly" 2/5 stars. The first of the non-speculative stories, a sentimental piece about a young family.
"The Book" 1/5 stars. Apparently it was taken as a given in the 1950s that intelligent species from other planets would look exactly like people from Earth. This is one of the few that I felt was badly dated.
"Come to My Party" 5/5 stars. Well-done piece about a down-and-out boxer and his last fight. Shaara boxed in his youth and uses that experience to good effect here. I felt this was the strongest story in the collection.
"Time Payment" 2/5 stars. I thought the time-travel premise was a promising one (a variation on Fermi's Paradox), but Shaara did little to develop it.
"Citizen Jell" 3/5 stars. Another sentimental piece, this time with an SF slant.
"The Dark Angel" 3/5 stars. A story about a boy coming to terms with his father's mortality. Non-speculative.
"Wainer" 1/5 stars. An SF piece about future human evolution that didn't work for me.
"All the Way Back" 2/5 stars. I found the cold sleep device here interesting, but not much else.
"2066: Election Day" 4/5 stars. Strangely topical to 2024, although written in 1956! It's about a future US in which the President is elected by administering a series of tests, judged by a supercomputer. I found it oddly entertaining.
"Border Incident" No rating. What to say about this? It's a self-consciously literary piece that found a home with the Mississippi Review in 1976.
"Starface" 0/5 stars. Journal entries by a man undergoing extreme cosmetic surgery. This has all the earmarks of something from the back of the drawer, that ought to have stayed there.
"The Peeping Tom Patrol" 3/5 stars. Well-written and published by Playboy in 1958. It reflects the misogynistic bent of that time period, but I would bet that a lot of cops even today could tell a story like this one. (Among his several careers, Shaara worked as a policeman for a time.)
"The Orphans of the Void" 3/5 stars. Another story of the Mapping Command. This time they discover a race of telepathic, self-reproducing super robots.
"Death of a Hunter" 4/5 stars. Somewhat reluctantly, I'm giving this one four stars. I've now read it three times. Shaara considered this one his best piece of SF, and after its cool reception he switched to writing mainstream fiction. (A move that apparently paid off, since he won a Pulitzer in 1974.) Its bleak mood must have appealed to David Drake, because he reprinted it as the lead story in his 1988 anthology Men Hunting Things, with high praise. It is a powerful story. I still find Shaara's choice of telling most of it through a long (very long) monologue by an outsider to be a strange one. We only get about a page at the beginning from the main character's POV.
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May 3, 2019I have the german edition: Sternengesicht
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