© 1960/1 by Algis Budrys
Hugo Award nominated novella-expanded novel
[Possible spoilers!]
Pardon my French, but what a bitch-fest!
What do I mean by this atypical outburst of vulgarity? Simply this. The two cool cutting-edge SF ideas that serve as the book’s foundations are drowned out by a half-dozen poorly-developed cliché of characters bitching and moaning about themselves, their empty lives, and the Meaning or Meaningless of It All.
Our main “tagonist” (don’t know whether to consider him “pro” or “an”) is driven scientist Edward Hawks. Envision Michael Rennie from The Day the Earth Stood Still, only one-dimensional. Doctor Hawks has a problem. Seems that a strange “alien” formation has been discovered on the moon. Any man entering it is killed fairly quickly. Since the author takes a hard stance on not filling in too much background (that would imfringe on the character’s self-directed soliloquys) it also seems he’s been charged to find out why, and to find a way to understand the formation.
Okay. That’s cool, I admit. That’s the reason I picked up the book and decided to read it, based on the back jacket synopsis (yes, I fell for that). “The formation” is cool idea number one. Cool idea number two is this: since the action seems to take place right after the Big One, WW II, space travel has not been extensively developed. At least, I think it hasn’t. Background exposition wasn’t a concern of Budrys’ here. So the way Doc Hawks sends his men to the lunar surface to investigate said “formation” is by creating a duplicate of the man and transmitting up to a receiving station on the moon.
Budrys’ clearly places a greater emphasis on this duplication/replication aspect as opposed to the alien formation. Okay, that’s his decision as a writer. I found myself much more intrigued with the big Who and Why of the formation, questions which are left unresolved at the novel’s end. That’s not to say that the duplication/replication wasn’t fascinating in its own retro 1950s intellectualized way. Indeed, there is a redeeming hook at the end that’s a natural result of the consequences of such a means of travel.
I hated Al Barker, Hawks’ foil who I think we’re supposed to sympathize with. Barker is the man for the job when all of Hawks’ other subjects go dead or insane should they manage to survive the duplication/replication and formation exploration at all. Part James Bond (complete with the token bikini-clad chick lounging at his pool), part Steve McQueen, with generous doses of Sir Edmund Hillary and Mario Andretti mixed in, he’s the he-man to Hawks’ egghead. But man does he bitch. And moan. Constantly. It almost cancels out his described physical bravery, this neverending nasty stream-of-consciousness griping. I mean it. I don’t think I ‘hated’ a literary character as much as I hated Al Barker. It frightens me, come to think of it.
Rogue Moon is short, that’s definitely a plus. If a novella is, say, 50,000 words, this novelization clocks in at about 60,000. It’s a book with potential, I won’t take that away, but potential unrealized as it fails in the execution. Budrys died recently this past June at the age of 77. I hate to speak ill of the dead – wait, it occurs to me that I’m actually speaking ill of one of the works of the dead – so let me end with a compliment. Mr. Budrys has far excelled anything I have done, so far, in that it is his book, one of a prolific published body of work, that is being reviewed here, while I have yet to accomplish that simple fact.
Oh, and I would not be adverse to exploring another book by Algis Budrys.
Hugo Award nominated novella-expanded novel
[Possible spoilers!]
Pardon my French, but what a bitch-fest!
What do I mean by this atypical outburst of vulgarity? Simply this. The two cool cutting-edge SF ideas that serve as the book’s foundations are drowned out by a half-dozen poorly-developed cliché of characters bitching and moaning about themselves, their empty lives, and the Meaning or Meaningless of It All.
Our main “tagonist” (don’t know whether to consider him “pro” or “an”) is driven scientist Edward Hawks. Envision Michael Rennie from The Day the Earth Stood Still, only one-dimensional. Doctor Hawks has a problem. Seems that a strange “alien” formation has been discovered on the moon. Any man entering it is killed fairly quickly. Since the author takes a hard stance on not filling in too much background (that would imfringe on the character’s self-directed soliloquys) it also seems he’s been charged to find out why, and to find a way to understand the formation.
Okay. That’s cool, I admit. That’s the reason I picked up the book and decided to read it, based on the back jacket synopsis (yes, I fell for that). “The formation” is cool idea number one. Cool idea number two is this: since the action seems to take place right after the Big One, WW II, space travel has not been extensively developed. At least, I think it hasn’t. Background exposition wasn’t a concern of Budrys’ here. So the way Doc Hawks sends his men to the lunar surface to investigate said “formation” is by creating a duplicate of the man and transmitting up to a receiving station on the moon.
Budrys’ clearly places a greater emphasis on this duplication/replication aspect as opposed to the alien formation. Okay, that’s his decision as a writer. I found myself much more intrigued with the big Who and Why of the formation, questions which are left unresolved at the novel’s end. That’s not to say that the duplication/replication wasn’t fascinating in its own retro 1950s intellectualized way. Indeed, there is a redeeming hook at the end that’s a natural result of the consequences of such a means of travel.
I hated Al Barker, Hawks’ foil who I think we’re supposed to sympathize with. Barker is the man for the job when all of Hawks’ other subjects go dead or insane should they manage to survive the duplication/replication and formation exploration at all. Part James Bond (complete with the token bikini-clad chick lounging at his pool), part Steve McQueen, with generous doses of Sir Edmund Hillary and Mario Andretti mixed in, he’s the he-man to Hawks’ egghead. But man does he bitch. And moan. Constantly. It almost cancels out his described physical bravery, this neverending nasty stream-of-consciousness griping. I mean it. I don’t think I ‘hated’ a literary character as much as I hated Al Barker. It frightens me, come to think of it.
Rogue Moon is short, that’s definitely a plus. If a novella is, say, 50,000 words, this novelization clocks in at about 60,000. It’s a book with potential, I won’t take that away, but potential unrealized as it fails in the execution. Budrys died recently this past June at the age of 77. I hate to speak ill of the dead – wait, it occurs to me that I’m actually speaking ill of one of the works of the dead – so let me end with a compliment. Mr. Budrys has far excelled anything I have done, so far, in that it is his book, one of a prolific published body of work, that is being reviewed here, while I have yet to accomplish that simple fact.
Oh, and I would not be adverse to exploring another book by Algis Budrys.
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