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4.0 out of 5 stars
Sci-fi as a character study of men who live dangerously, Jul 3 2004
During science fiction's Golden Age, it was almost taken for granted that the characters of sci-fi were the same characters found in fantasy: consummate wizards who could solve any problem, helpless damsels in distress, and intrepid heroes who could slay the toughest dragon. True, the wizard wore a lab coat rather than a pointed hat, and the hero flew a rocket ship instead of riding a white horse, but at essence, they were the same types: flat, flawless, and wholly unbelievable. Budrys explodes the myth in this painfully honest look at what drives the kind of man who would risk his life, and the lives of others, in the name of Science.Dr Edward Hawks heads a project that, through the miracle of teleportation, puts men on the moon. He does this by transmitting taped copies of human beings across the void, where the men are then reconstructed alive from this data. Communication is handled by an inherent psychic link between the original and his copy. With unique insight, Budrys sees this journey as a one-way trip, since the men so sent are mere duplicates of their earth-side counterparts, with no lives of their very own to come back to. Thus Hawks' machine creates life, but it is life that has no real place in our world. While exploring the moon, these doomed men have found an inexplicable artifact. Attempts to enter this structure and learn its secrets have always resulted in the demise of the explorer. And staying in constant contact with "themselves" as they die again and again has taken a tragic toll upon even the hardened military men whose avatars are doing the investigating. So Director of Personnel Vincent Connington chooses fearless tough guy adventurer Al Barker for the job. But how will Al react to not just facing death, but actually experiencing it, dying day after day? And what of his beautiful and flirtatious girlfriend Claire, whose coquettish ways threaten to undermine the entire project? If life is this cheap, then how valuable are relationships? Originally published in the early sixties, perhaps in response to the Nedelin catastrophe in which 126 people were killed on a Soviet launch pad, this short but strangely gripping novel focuses on the people who undertake dangerous ventures, rather than on the science behind this sketchily-drawn quest. The point of view usually lies with Hawks, and his relationships with Al, whom he sends to his death on a daily basis, and Claire, who seems anxious to shatter his inscrutable composure. Fans of whiz-bang science fiction may be disappointed by the fairly weak and dated explanations of the science involved, and the fact that many of the more scientific questions remain unresolved at the end. But despite the outrageousness of the back story, this is a unique, gripping, and very hard-boiled book that takes a hard if somewhat simplistic look at what drives the people who do dangerous work.
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