SF/Fantasy/Horror Notes

Love's stronger than "the machine of destiny" in "The Ruler of Fate," a glacier possesses a life force in "The Ice Entity" and time gets reversed and cause and effect are upended in "Released Entropy." Spider Island— the fourth volume of short fiction and pulp serials by SF Grand Master (and "American god," according to Edward Bryant's introduction) Jack Williamson—contains 12 gripping stories, an afterword by the author and an appendix with an interview and several nonfiction articles. (Haffner [5005 Crooks Rd., Suite 35, Royal Oakes, Mich. 48073-1239], $35 603p ISBN 1-893887-14-6)

Steve Lyons, the author of a dozen Doctor Who novels and a contributor to various Marvel anthologies, launches a new trilogy with X-Men: The Legacy Quest (devotees take note: the books are set shortly after X-Men issue 87). Beast Hank McCoy wants to discover the cure to the Legacy Virus (to which only mutants are susceptible), but so does the villainous Sebastian Shaw, aka the Black King, who's just kidnapped X-Men pal Moira McTaggart; it's up to Hank to determine whether joining forces with an old enemy will save the day in this solid cliff-hanger. (BP Books [Simon & Schuster, dist.], $14 paper 262p ISBN 0-7434-4468-X)