| ||||||||||||||||||||||||
 Trade In this Item for up to £0.25
Get an extra £5 when you trade in books worth £10 or more until June 30, 2012. Trade in Rogue Moon (S.F. MASTERWORKS) for an Amazon.co.uk gift card of up to £0.25, which you can then spend on millions of items across the site. Trade-in values may vary (terms apply). Find more products eligible for trade-in.
|
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
More About the Author
Product Description
Review
Book Description
Suggested Tags from Similar Products(What's this?)Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product)
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
It's anything but a slam-bang action story. It is, in every sense, an existential novel, about how to live in good faith in an utterly indifferent universe. If you're already recoiling, this is not the book for you. If you're intrigued, it's strongly recommended as a book which uses what's still an original SF idea to make an important point - and make it more effectively than mainstream novels could ever do. The plot isn't full of incident, but that's because the narrative is used to reflect and develop the ideas and characters in an unified manner. The characterisation is vivid and well-drawn, particularly in the context of SF of this vintage. On which point, the previous reviewer found this book dated. I felt the decision to set it in the year of publication (1959) was an effective way to prevent it from dating; the characters and technological speculation are of their time, so anachronisms don't get in the way of the themes, which are as relevant now as they were then. And the last chapter isn't a bit of tagged-on pulp action, but a sting in the tail which sharpens and clarifies everything that's come before.
It's not perfect: it does drag in places, and bits of the dialogue are overly theatrical. But for the most part it's a novel of great ambition which is largely realised, and, in its deep and unflinching look at human nature, a remarkable achievement from an author who was still in his late twenties when he wrote it. It sees SF as a genre capable of more than providing entertaining diversions (not that there's anything wrong with that) and is a highly honourable precursor of much of the good stuff to emerge from and follow the "New Wave" SF of the sixties.
Dr Edward Hawks heads a project that, through the miracle of teleportation, puts men on the moon. He does this by transmitting taped copies of human beings across the void, where the men are then reconstructed alive from this data. Communication is handled by an inherent psychic link between the original and his copy. With unique insight, Budrys sees this journey as a one-way trip, since the men so sent are mere duplicates of their earth-side counterparts, with no lives of their very own to come back to. Thus Hawks' machine creates life, but it is life that has no real place in our world.
While exploring the moon, these doomed men have found an inexplicable artifact. Attempts to enter this structure and learn its secrets have always resulted in the demise of the explorer. And staying in constant contact with "themselves" as they die again and again has taken a tragic toll upon even the hardened military men whose avatars are doing the investigating. So Director of Personnel Vincent Connington chooses fearless tough guy adventurer Al Barker for the job. But how will Al react to not just facing death, but actually experiencing it, dying day after day? And what of his beautiful and flirtatious girlfriend Claire, whose coquettish ways threaten to undermine the entire project? If life is this cheap, then how valuable are relationships?
Originally published in the early sixties, perhaps in response to the Nedelin catastrophe in which 126 people were killed on a Soviet launch pad, this short but strangely gripping novel focuses on the people who undertake dangerous ventures, rather than on the science behind this sketchily-drawn quest. The point of view usually lies with Hawks, and his relationships with Al, whom he sends to his death on a daily basis, and Claire, who seems anxious to shatter his inscrutable composure. Fans of whiz-bang science fiction may be disappointed by the fairly weak and dated explanations of the science involved, and the fact that many of the more scientific questions remain unresolved at the end. But despite the outrageousness of the back story, this is a unique, gripping, and very hard-boiled book that takes a hard if somewhat simplistic look at what drives the people who do dangerous work.
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
