I can understand that people were amazed decades ago. As a modern reader I have trouble enjoying the story. Only the main character is well developed, but even his actions are sometimes not easy to follow. At certain points I thought "there must be missing something?!" - but there wasn't. The story gets better at the end and the basic idea of Null-A is really exciting. Nevertheless, only die-hard SF fans should read the book. ( )

I can understand that people were amazed decades ago. As a modern reader I have trouble enjoying the story. Only the main character is well developed, but even his actions are sometimes not easy to follow. At certain points I thought "there must be missing something?!" - but there wasn't. The story gets better at the end and the basic idea of Null-A is really exciting. Nevertheless, only die-hard SF fans should read the book. ( )

Extra brain galactic empire immortality plot.

An odd book, detailing a philosophy to select the top guys, a machine running the place, and a plot to get involved in a Galactic War.

The main character Gosseyn makes a bunch fo discoveries about the latter after he tries out the former.

You don't find out much about the whole space war thing though, as most of it is about the manipulations in the solar system.

http://notfreesf.blogspot.com/2009/01... ( )

Dated, but still fun: As a classic Sci-Fi novel it reads pretty good. Much of the futuristic speculative science is not yet either obsolete nor proven impossible 60 years later. Some of the high-tech foreseen by Vogt includes a society run by a mega-computer which selects leader based on a mental discipline and philosophy called "Null-A." Our hero enrolls in the annual selection by the computer after some years of study. Selected winners are sent to an imaginative colony on Venus. Everything in perfect order, until he finds out that his brain has been tampered with, he isn't who he thinks he is, and nothing is as it seems. The Earth is a pawn in a galaxy wide political plot wherein one evil dictator is planning to destroy Earth and Mars as and use it as justification to start a huge interstellar war. Our hero finds out that his brain has been genetically augmented to give him extra abilities, and his body is being cloned and the clones receiving his mental patterns so that when he is killed the clone takes over without loss, a sort of immortality. Typical of early sci-fi the characters are mostly cardboard cutouts. There is a woman in the plot, and he almost but not quite manages a relationship. In Vogt style it ends when he gets tired of writing without the reader finding out what ever became of the space war. Still, it's an entertaining read on a lazy afternoon.

Storyline made little sense; confusing and disjointed; not satisfying. Poor character development. ( )