Sidney's Comet

...The novel contains so many impossibilities and absurdities that the only way for it to work is for the satire to grab the reader. For me it didn't. I got the impression that Herbert was aiming at something of a cross between Kafka and the kind of humour his father employed in his short story the Tactful Saboteur. Maybe with a little Douglas Adams thrown in for good measure. Fact is, that most of the book isn't funny enough to pull this off. For most of the novel the exaggeration and ridicule is there alright but the comical element that would have turned it into a good satire failed. Maybe Herbert was shooting at too many targets. Religion, capitalism, consumerism, government, democracy... he takes on quite a lot. Sidney's Comet is show more an ambitious debut, I have to give him that, but in the end I didn't think it was a very good read.

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Sidney's Comet is a rich political satire of prosperity theology, imagining a future world governed by the principles of "Faith, Consumption, Freeness" controlled by a brotherhood of immortals from within the Black Box of Democracy. Sidney Malloy, the titular hero of the novel is almost an afterthought among several point-of-view characters. Having left too many loose plot ends, I felt that the ending undermined an otherwise competent effort.

First edition