Commentaires client les plus utiles
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5.0étoiles sur 5
A child of perestroika, Jui 15 2000
This book is the fruit of a great feeling of optimism for a more united and free Europe, launched by the reformist communist leader Mikhail Gorbachev. Never popular in his own country, he was and still is in Europe and when I was reading this book 92, it sounded like an interesting perspective of the European future, with an integrated Russia... Nothing to do with the Cold Peace we experienced since shortly after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.Interestingly, this is not the first science fiction book treating the "immediate" future of our world, by showing us a very unpopular and isolationist United States, menace that everytime comes alive when you listen to Republican politicians talking about the role of the USA in world politics. For Europeans, this book caresses a dream of a future "common house" (to cite Gorbachev) where war is definitely a bad memory. What a contrast to the reality with wars in the Balkans and the Caucasus. Besides the social and political aspects of this book, this novel is also a wonderful story of a woman and a man from two different worlds coming together... Read about their fascinating lives and that of their children... You wont regret it.
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5.0étoiles sur 5
Don't read this book unless you're a true literate., Janv. 25 2000
Norman Spinrad did an extraordinary job in taking a snapshot of the world as it might (and should) have looked like these days, if things were a little different. Norman wrote this book in Paris, far from his native country, the United States, and I read it again and again in the United States, far from my home in Eastern Europe. So I can see there's sadness in his writing and his characters, the wise sadness of a man with too many shattered dreams, who can't feel comfortable anymore in this "brave(! ) new world". People focus excessively on the writer's gift to be a prophet and often forget to worry about the literary value. Still, the "Russian Spring" has plenty of both. OK, Russia went into turmoil deeper and more desperately than in the book, and the European Union is less effective than we hoped, but so what? Tragically, Spinrad is right about one thing: America is truly becoming provincial and narrow-minded. This is a book about people, their power to dream, and their dedication to bring the dreams to life, regardless of the sacrifices they have to make. The setting is less important, regardless of the glamour of the fantasy. The people you meet as you turn the pages are real, their qualities, defects, joys and sorrows are real, and the political games played on both sides of the Atlantic are just as disgusting as in real life. Alas that we don't have the road to stars, yet. Like the film "Contact", this book is easy to be overlooked by snobbish and arrogant critics, who can only think in terms of "thumbs up and down", easily digested by the masses. But there is a spark in Spinrad's book that I've rarely met in contemporary literature, and its catharthic quality hits you like a brilliant flash. As long as there'll be writers out there who do their job like Norman Spinrad, the human race still has a chance to evolve from the seemingly endless gutter of consumerism and cheap thrills.
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3.0étoiles sur 5
An interesting look at what might have been., Nov. 17 1999
In light of the events of the last few years, this novel (published in 1991) seems pretty dated. Some of the characterization also seems sketchy, and suggests that this book was written with too much haste. Still, it's an enjoyable, well-crafted story, and a good reflection of the concerns of 1991.
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