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3.29 AVERAGE
3.29 AVERAGE
adventurous
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
read the novella, not the full novel (thankfully)
long parts of the story that dont have any relevance. characters who arent important to the story that take up a lot of pages and dont make sense. poor writing also.
long parts of the story that dont have any relevance. characters who arent important to the story that take up a lot of pages and dont make sense. poor writing also.
The byline for this classic could have been - "The daredevil in love with Death! The scientist with a heart of ice! Can they conquer the Moon and the women they've left behind?" Honestly, this book left me in a weird position. I can see the influence this novel could have on, say, The Southern Reach Trilogy, but the 1950s of it all was very, very distracting. Prepare yourself for a lot of declamatory speeches about what it means to be a man and some seriously messed up gender roles (one of the characters actually says, "I'm a warrior's woman."). A modern writer may leave some of the themes of the novel a bit more ambiguous as well, because damn if Mr. Budrys loved to tell and not show. Anyway, worth the weekend read.
I received an ecopy from the publishers and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
I received an ecopy from the publishers and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
In these days of ten volume, backbreaking series, it’s easy to forget that sometimes brevity can equal quality.
Algirdas Jonas Budrys (1931-2008) is a writer who deserves greater recognition in the genre, though these days, if he is known at all, he is perhaps better known as a critic. For the record, much of his time was spent writing the Book Reviews column for Galaxy (1965-71) and The Magazine of Science Fiction and Fantasy (1975-93), as well as being a teacher at the Clarion Writers Workshop and an organizer, editor and judge for the Writers of the Future awards.
So: a stylist who didn’t publish just for the sake of it.
Although he published comparatively little SF himself, especially in novel form, what he did I’ve usually found to be pretty good. Who? (1958) became a film in 1973 and Michelmas (1977) was a novel that predated the internet but was fairly prescient in being a world where the lead character is involved in solving a mystery using his self-invented omnipresent computer. (We would probably call it MultiVac or the Internet these days.)
With that in mind, Rogue Moon, his most famous story, is sold to us under a bit of a misnomer. The title makes ideas of galactic-spanning Empires and FTL spaceships spring to mind: nothing could be further from the truth.
At the beginning this isn’t that clear. Rogue Moon seems to be initially a great exploration puzzle, about a large alien artefact found on the surface of the Moon. All attempts to explore it leads to the intrepid explorers being killed or going insane in various ways, but their deaths slowly reveal that the process of dying is the point: that and by dying in various ways by moving through it humans learn something about themselves, as presumably would the aliens, should they still exist. It is a Clarkean test, an ordeal that humans must pass in order to evolve and develop beyond their present state.
As this shows, Rogue Moon is a deeper and more complex novel than we expect at first. Though set on the Moon (of the title), its core, as Graham Sleight points out in his introduction, is more about death and the way that people approach it and deal with it.
There’s less space opera and more sociological analysis, which can throw some readers off-balance, expecting more flash and bang. It is less ‘outer space’ and more ‘inner analysis’.
The characters involved are interesting, because some of them are downright unlikable. Many of the characters are complex and at times shockingly unpleasant. Manipulative, selfish, demanding: these are not the clean-cut heroes and heroines we’re conditioned to expect.
Our main character, Edward Hawks, is a seemingly emotionally detached scientist who has sacrificed his morals and ethics in order to cope with the fact that he knowingly sends men to their deaths in the search for scientific knowledge. Al Barker is ‘the solution’, a deeply cynical and unpleasant character but whose nastiness to those around him is what seems to be needed in order to survive the transfer to the Moon and the tests set by the alien artifact. Claire Pack is a sexual predator who admits that she’s a bitch to everyone, knows what she wants and how to get it and how to both tease and ‘reward’ those who please her. Vincent ‘Connie’ Connington is the personnel expert who introduces Hawks to Barker, obsessed with Claire and yet rebuffed by her, a necessary target for Barker to use as a punchbag. Elizabeth Cummings is an artist who, in comparison to the other sociopaths, seems quite out of place as the nice girl who Hawks falls in love with.
Reminder: this is an SF novel, right?
It has been argued that Rogue Moon is one of the heralds of the 1960’s New Wave for that reason, though its origins is at least peripherally in the SF trappings of the 1950’s. We still have a desire to ‘beat the Russians’, for example, and much of it can be read as an intellectual puzzle.
There are some differences. The mode of transportation is a matter transmitter rather than a spaceship, for example. This use of matter transmission to access the artefact allows a discussion about identity, as the process creates two: one on the Earth whilst the transmitted version explores the alien realm, something which allows the explorer to die again and again.
After the 1950’s explosion of space exploration novels, this is a good example of how authors were trying to examine and push the boundaries of SF by the late 1950’s and early 1960’s that led to the New Wave. There’s more here about human relationships than spaceships. The downside of this is that some readers may find the navel-gazing and the deep intuitive analysis this thought-experiment creates rather wearying, although I would add myself that it is not as bad as some of the New Wave got to be later. Much of the book deals with this analysis through lengthy language so well honed that there is an element of unreality about them. It is not how people normally speak. At times it can be a tad hysterical, with lots of angsty speeches about the value of death and its relevance to life, the meaning of a man and the human race’s place in the universe.
I can see why readers at the time would’ve been perplexed by it, as something quite different to what else is out there. The ending is a resolution of sorts, yet also deliberately ambiguous and may annoy some readers expecting everything to be tied up at the end.
Though short - more novella than novel – Rogue Moon has some memorable scenes and dialogue that remain with the reader after reading. The deficiencies of its age are outweighed by the quality and maturity of its writing, which at the time of their original publication over fifty years ago must have been head and shoulders above the rest. In less than 200 pages it covers weighty ideas that belie their origin and questions the idea that all SF has to be starships and deathstars.
Often regarded with Bester’s Tiger! Tiger!/The Demolished Man, Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 and Walter M. Miller’s A Canticle for Leibowitz as a seminal book at a time of change and growing maturity in SF, Rogue Moon is a thought-provoking, even if unpleasant novel, that deserves the over-used term of ‘classic’. A recommended read, but not for everyone, and although it is one you should at least try, it’s not one you would read repeatedly.
It was nominated for Best Novel in the 1961 Hugo Awards, but lost out to Miller’s A Canticle for Leibowitz.
Algirdas Jonas Budrys (1931-2008) is a writer who deserves greater recognition in the genre, though these days, if he is known at all, he is perhaps better known as a critic. For the record, much of his time was spent writing the Book Reviews column for Galaxy (1965-71) and The Magazine of Science Fiction and Fantasy (1975-93), as well as being a teacher at the Clarion Writers Workshop and an organizer, editor and judge for the Writers of the Future awards.
So: a stylist who didn’t publish just for the sake of it.
Although he published comparatively little SF himself, especially in novel form, what he did I’ve usually found to be pretty good. Who? (1958) became a film in 1973 and Michelmas (1977) was a novel that predated the internet but was fairly prescient in being a world where the lead character is involved in solving a mystery using his self-invented omnipresent computer. (We would probably call it MultiVac or the Internet these days.)
With that in mind, Rogue Moon, his most famous story, is sold to us under a bit of a misnomer. The title makes ideas of galactic-spanning Empires and FTL spaceships spring to mind: nothing could be further from the truth.
At the beginning this isn’t that clear. Rogue Moon seems to be initially a great exploration puzzle, about a large alien artefact found on the surface of the Moon. All attempts to explore it leads to the intrepid explorers being killed or going insane in various ways, but their deaths slowly reveal that the process of dying is the point: that and by dying in various ways by moving through it humans learn something about themselves, as presumably would the aliens, should they still exist. It is a Clarkean test, an ordeal that humans must pass in order to evolve and develop beyond their present state.
As this shows, Rogue Moon is a deeper and more complex novel than we expect at first. Though set on the Moon (of the title), its core, as Graham Sleight points out in his introduction, is more about death and the way that people approach it and deal with it.
There’s less space opera and more sociological analysis, which can throw some readers off-balance, expecting more flash and bang. It is less ‘outer space’ and more ‘inner analysis’.
The characters involved are interesting, because some of them are downright unlikable. Many of the characters are complex and at times shockingly unpleasant. Manipulative, selfish, demanding: these are not the clean-cut heroes and heroines we’re conditioned to expect.
Our main character, Edward Hawks, is a seemingly emotionally detached scientist who has sacrificed his morals and ethics in order to cope with the fact that he knowingly sends men to their deaths in the search for scientific knowledge. Al Barker is ‘the solution’, a deeply cynical and unpleasant character but whose nastiness to those around him is what seems to be needed in order to survive the transfer to the Moon and the tests set by the alien artifact. Claire Pack is a sexual predator who admits that she’s a bitch to everyone, knows what she wants and how to get it and how to both tease and ‘reward’ those who please her. Vincent ‘Connie’ Connington is the personnel expert who introduces Hawks to Barker, obsessed with Claire and yet rebuffed by her, a necessary target for Barker to use as a punchbag. Elizabeth Cummings is an artist who, in comparison to the other sociopaths, seems quite out of place as the nice girl who Hawks falls in love with.
Reminder: this is an SF novel, right?
It has been argued that Rogue Moon is one of the heralds of the 1960’s New Wave for that reason, though its origins is at least peripherally in the SF trappings of the 1950’s. We still have a desire to ‘beat the Russians’, for example, and much of it can be read as an intellectual puzzle.
There are some differences. The mode of transportation is a matter transmitter rather than a spaceship, for example. This use of matter transmission to access the artefact allows a discussion about identity, as the process creates two: one on the Earth whilst the transmitted version explores the alien realm, something which allows the explorer to die again and again.
After the 1950’s explosion of space exploration novels, this is a good example of how authors were trying to examine and push the boundaries of SF by the late 1950’s and early 1960’s that led to the New Wave. There’s more here about human relationships than spaceships. The downside of this is that some readers may find the navel-gazing and the deep intuitive analysis this thought-experiment creates rather wearying, although I would add myself that it is not as bad as some of the New Wave got to be later. Much of the book deals with this analysis through lengthy language so well honed that there is an element of unreality about them. It is not how people normally speak. At times it can be a tad hysterical, with lots of angsty speeches about the value of death and its relevance to life, the meaning of a man and the human race’s place in the universe.
I can see why readers at the time would’ve been perplexed by it, as something quite different to what else is out there. The ending is a resolution of sorts, yet also deliberately ambiguous and may annoy some readers expecting everything to be tied up at the end.
Though short - more novella than novel – Rogue Moon has some memorable scenes and dialogue that remain with the reader after reading. The deficiencies of its age are outweighed by the quality and maturity of its writing, which at the time of their original publication over fifty years ago must have been head and shoulders above the rest. In less than 200 pages it covers weighty ideas that belie their origin and questions the idea that all SF has to be starships and deathstars.
Often regarded with Bester’s Tiger! Tiger!/The Demolished Man, Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 and Walter M. Miller’s A Canticle for Leibowitz as a seminal book at a time of change and growing maturity in SF, Rogue Moon is a thought-provoking, even if unpleasant novel, that deserves the over-used term of ‘classic’. A recommended read, but not for everyone, and although it is one you should at least try, it’s not one you would read repeatedly.
It was nominated for Best Novel in the 1961 Hugo Awards, but lost out to Miller’s A Canticle for Leibowitz.
adventurous
challenging
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Transporter clones and toxic masculinity.... or is it?
Taking the "artifact" as nothing more than a story framing device, I think this novel about consciousness and what makes you an individual was ahead of it's time. It explores what amounts to transporter clones and telepathic linkage, the growth from an immature, toxic view on masculinity into a mature, considered approach that there are all kinds of different ways to be a man, or just human. And all of this in 1960.
Another good run from Budrys.
Taking the "artifact" as nothing more than a story framing device, I think this novel about consciousness and what makes you an individual was ahead of it's time. It explores what amounts to transporter clones and telepathic linkage, the growth from an immature, toxic view on masculinity into a mature, considered approach that there are all kinds of different ways to be a man, or just human. And all of this in 1960.
Another good run from Budrys.
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I’m a sucker for books with a BDO. However dated attitudes, unlikeable characters and manly man stuff rather distract from the interesting premise.
challenging
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
N/A
Strong character development:
N/A
Loveable characters:
N/A
Diverse cast of characters:
N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus:
N/A
I sorted of zoned out through a lot of the book. It was not very engaging, I struggled to identify with any of the characters and the plot was just... meh. I made it to the end, but I think I should have quit when I zoned out the first time...taken it as the hint it was.
challenging
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
adventurous
dark
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
http://nhw.livejournal.com/1006777.html[return][return]Classic sf. It would actually be good material for a study of gender politics in the late 1950s (published in 1960, when the author was 29). The sfnal part of the story - our heroes' attempts to find a way through a mysterious alien artifact on the Moon, I guess foreshadowing both Clarke/Kubrick's 2001 and the Strugatskys' Roadside Picnic - plays second fiddle to the sexual tension among the alpha males of the research group, with the James Bond figure, the Scientist and the Manager; and the two woman characters are pretty obviously the Virgin and the Whore. At the same time as the men are fighting over the sexual pecking order, they have to confront the fact that the lunar exploration project is essentially a suicide mission many times over; sex and death are pretty closely linked here. A rather fascinating book, though not really an enjoyable one.