A science-fiction classic, many of whose contours have become all too real.
The founding document of dystopian literature, written in the Soviet Union in 1921, comes in for a fresh translation.
As Margaret Atwood notes in her introduction, this novel can be seen as a blueprint for the totalitarian regimes that would arise in the 20th century: Stalinism, fascism, Maoism, all those political entities in which the state is a machine that feeds on its people. Set in the 26th century, the novel imagines a world in which, following a Two Hundred Years’ War that concluded five centuries before—in our century, that is—the human world is organized under the aegis of the One State. Its protagonist, a “number” called D-503, is “just one of the One State’s mathematicians,” part of a crew that is building a spaceship called the INTEGRAL whose occupants will likely, the official newspaper proclaims, “encounter unfamiliar beings on alien planets who may yet live in savage states of freedom.” No such problem in the One State, where everything is under the “beneficent yoke of reason.” The One State is made up of cities walled off against nature and its “dense, green wildernesses,” all gleaming steel and glass. A smoothly turning cog of the machines that run the place, D–503 encounters a bohemian woman named I–330 who smokes cigarettes and drinks booze, all very much verboten, and who leads him to question his place in the brave new world. His unexercised loins stir, and he begins to think that visiting the other side of the wall might be a good thing. Alas, in a regime where “We sacrifice to our God, the One State, offering a calm, thoughtful, rational sacrifice,” such thoughts do not go unpunished. The plot is thin, but Zamyatin’s all-seeing state is sufficiently chilling all the same. Translator Shayevich does a good job of preserving his affectless, sometimes nearly robotic prose, and the book is highly readable—and indeed should be read.
A science-fiction classic, many of whose contours have become all too real.Pub Date: Nov. 2, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-06-306844-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 28, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2021
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
This rip-roaring romp pivots between past and present and posits the future-altering power of love, hope, and forgiveness.
A time-toying spy romance that’s truly a thriller.
In the author’s note following the moving conclusion of her gripping, gleefully delicious debut novel, Bradley explains how she gathered historical facts about Lt. Graham Gore, a real-life Victorian naval officer and polar explorer, then “extrapolated a great deal” about him to come up with one of her main characters, a curly-haired, chain-smoking, devastatingly charming dreamboat who has been transported through time. Having also found inspiration in the sole extant daguerreotype of Gore, showing him to have been “a very attractive man,” Bradley wrote the earliest draft of the book for a cluster of friends who were similarly passionate about polar explorers. Her finished novel—taut, artfully unspooled, and vividly written—retains the kind of insouciant joy and intimacy you might expect from a book with those origins. It’s also breathtakingly sexy. The time-toggling plot focuses on the plight of a British civil servant who takes a high-paying job on a secret mission, working as a “bridge” to help time-traveling “expats” resettle in 21st-century London—and who falls hard for her charge, the aforementioned Commander Gore. Drama, intrigue, and romance ensue. And while this quasi-futuristic tale of time and tenderness never seems to take itself too seriously, it also offers a meaningful, nuanced perspective on the challenges we face, the choices we make, and the way we live and love today.
This rip-roaring romp pivots between past and present and posits the future-altering power of love, hope, and forgiveness.Pub Date: May 7, 2024
ISBN: 9781668045145
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
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