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Loading... Lords of the Starship (original 1967; edition 1972)by Mark S Geston
Work InformationLords of the Starship by Mark S. Geston (Author) (1967)
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. I love this book for its complete nihilism. A desperate group of colonists create a plan to construct a starship to escape a planet that's over-exploited. The ship is actually under construction when events overtake the whole plan. I'm doing the best I can to operate without spoilers, so i'll quit. Note the rating and act accordingly. An interesting little SF book set in a post-apocalyptic world. Its written almost like a kind of future history about the attempt of a small feudal post-technological state to try and build a starship as a way to inspire a defeated and demotivated populace. If I'm not mistaken there are shades of post-war Empire-less British angst woven in these pages. no reviews | add a review
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The ship was to be seven miles long, a third of a mile in diameter and have a wing-spread of three and a half miles. It would take two and a half centuries to construct. Its announced purpose: to carry humanity away from its ruined world, from the world that had become a perpetual purgatory.To build this vast ship would require the undivided activity of an entire nation and would mean carrying out a ruthless program of war and conquest, of annihilation and reconstruction, and of education and rediscovery.But was this starship really what it was claimed to be? Or was there a greater secret behind its incredible cost - a secret so strange that no man dared reveal it? No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.5Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th CenturyLC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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In general this book was good at letting the reader piece together what is going on instead of hitting him over the head with it, but by the end of this volume I do not believe that it is possible to say with certainty what was going on at the macro level and which side, if either, was in the right.
A weakness of the story was that characters were introduced solely to move the plot forward, and so they felt insubstantial and not particularly sympathetic. To see a book manage to pull off characters more adeptly in a similar narrative structure check out The Carpet Makers by Eschbach.
A decent read, although being the first of a trilogy means that it feels only somewhat complete. ( )