Algis Budrys (1931–2008)

With "Rogue Moon," Budrys struggles to play out philosophical discussions on life, death, the meaning of True Manhood, and whether memory is immortality or not. To cause these to play out, he's whipped up an alien puzzle box much like that the Strugatski Brothers would perfect in "Roadside Picnic" and put it on the Moon, but it is more a MacGuffin than anything else; also, the matter transporter central to the plot presages that in 'Star Trek' by five years but ends up being the source of a show more massive, unspoken moral dilemma. Having created sentient, slave dopplegangers that have no rights or individual futures just seems to be a part of the job to everyone involved: ain't that nice?

The SF value is moot, though. The philosophical digressions are banal and blustery; the overarching frame of the story is both dated and unbelievable. But what makes this book nearly unreadable is the reduction of characters to theatrical masks, like in Greek tragedy: they are archetypes. There's the Rational But Clueless Man (Hawks), the Arrogant & Toxic Male (Barker), the Whore of Babylon (Claire), the Superficial Fool (Connington), the Blowhard Boss (Cobey), and the Patient Penelope (Elizabeth). What forgiving reviewers call "character development" reads to me like episode after episode of toxic posturing bathed in cigar smoke, Scotch, and pheromones.

This book is not just dated, but fails. Stanislaw Lem wrote a better, similar book then ("Eden," publ. 1959) and Alastair Reynolds intentionally improved on this more recently (novella "Diamond Dogs," 2001). Perhaps its air of sophistication and cerebral ruminations wowed the audience in 1960, but this is nothing more than an artifact now and should be read as such. show less

If there is such a thing as science fiction noir then Budrys is certainly one of its most important voices. He is not an author one goes to for juvenile wish fulfillment or escapism. Who? offers complex, nuanced characters who try to do what’s right in a suspicious and unforgiving world. I seem to have enjoyed this gritty cold war rumination on identity and futility more than most.

The best science fiction is about ideas, and Rogue Moon wrestles with at least a couple of big existential ones, e.g. what meaning can there be living in an impersonal universe? In its day (the late 1950s), the book was considered pretty ground-breaking, and perhaps it was. After all, Americans at that time were fairly confident they knew their place in the universe: few questioned America's dominance and with the churches full on Sunday mornings, everyone could easily ride the complacent show more wave that that's exactly the way God wanted it.

In the half-century since, however, there have been enough crises of confidence that it is no longer considered heresy to entertain the belief that our universe is indeed impersonal and that surrendering to that "truth" and discovering personal meaning within it can be a real struggle. In short, while Budrys' ideas may have been challenging at the time of Rogue Moon's publication, a reader of today's generation will probably come to it already having considered them in other contexts.

I'm a creature of the post-Rogue Moon generation. While I liked the book in its presentation of the question, it's nothing that knocked my socks off. show less

Very well written though a bit dated. Psychological study of what drives men (use men intentionally) to achieve what is ultimately a pointless goal.