About this title: A novel by the four-times winner of the Hugo Award. Earth has become overcrowded. Humanity has spread throughout the solar system, but the planets are frozen or burning or airless, unsuited to homo sapiens. As the demand for living space grows, it becomes ever more urgently "time for the stars".
Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Description: Good. Light shelf wear and minimal interior marks. Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More. read more
Description: Good. Former Library book. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers! Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: BALLATINE BOOKS
Date Published: 1978
ISBN-13:9780345260734ISBN:0345260732
Description: Very Good. No names, no marks, no stickers. Text is clean and bright. Binding is tight and square. We recommend PRIORITY MAIL for even faster delivery! read more
Binding: Softcover
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Date Published: 1984
ISBN-13:9780345323859ISBN:0345323858
Description: Good. An average used book that has all pages intact. Could have some creasing on the spine or covers. Our ultimate goal is to provide you with a satisfying customer experience. read more
Edition: Later Printing
Binding: Trade Paperback
Publisher: Ace
Date Published: 1956
Description: Good. As issued No Jacket. Spine lean, corner bumps, small chip missing from upper right corner of front cover, small stain to right edge of book, reading crease front cover along spine, pages age toning, corner crease rear cover, small corner missing from upper left corner rear cover, and other moderate shopwear. Reading copy only. Novel by the author of Stranger in a Strange Land. read more
Edition: 1st 05/1978
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Publisher: DEL REY / Ballantine
Date Published: 1978
ISBN-13:9780345260734ISBN:0345260732
Description: Reading Copy or Better (Will pro. Mass Market Paperback: DEL REY / Ballantine: 26073: 1st 05/1978: Reading Copy or Better (Will provide a more complete description upon request): Cover Artist: Sweet, Darrell. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Scribner
Date Published: 1956
Description: VG Used, Very Good in Good jacket. PAPERBACK, VG/Good, Scribner, 1956, 3.7 oz. This copy has visible but minimal creasing of the spine, is in otherwise Very Good condition. Special Notes on this book: large chip from rear cover Note: expect tanning of any paperback more than a few years old, regardless of condition. read more
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Publisher: Ace Books
Date Published: 1956
Description: Good Plus. 81125; reprint. Light wear to edges; along spine; tight book; sticker on cover; clean inside. Cover by Steele Savage. Quantity Available: 1. Shipped Weight: Under 500 grams. Category: Science Fiction & Fantasy Inventory No: 055277. read more
Description: Mass Market Paperback, reprint edition, Near Very Good /pictorial wrappers; spine reading crease, light browning of pages, some wear and chipping to edges and spine., read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Ace
Date Published: 1956
Description: Used: Good. Time for the Stars by Heinlein, Robert A., Published by Ace 1956, Paperback-Showing some exterior wear/creasing, contents are overall clean with no owner markings. Images available upon request. Please email us with any questions. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Date Published: 1978
ISBN-13:9780345260734ISBN:0345260732
Description: Very Good. Tom and Pat were identical telepathic twins, one would age and one wouldn't, they both had to be kept alive at all costs. Very good cond. read more
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine, New York
Date Published: 1978
ISBN-13:9780345260734ISBN:0345260732
Description: Very Good/Wraps. A very good pocket-size paperback with lightly rubbed covers. This book is clean, tight, unmarked. Padded envelopes are used to protect the book.... read more
"I love Robert Heinlein! But this one was just okay. A really fun idea though: scientists discover that some identical twins are telepathically linked, so they send one half of each pair out on a faster-than-light spaceship to explore the stars. Very short and fun to read, as most of his books are."
"Pop culture is often dismissed as simply low culture - in contrast to the high art of opera or classical music or abstract expressionism. And there's good reason: As long-ago scifi author Theodore Sturgeon once pointed out, "Ninety percent of everything is trash."
A simple tour through the cable channels, or spin of the radio dial, will prove Sturgeon right, and in the mass of modern pop culture it's much harder to filter out the signal from the noise. In classical music, for example, the bad symphonies simply never get played because time has winnowed the field to only the best.
But even if pop culture doesn't always deliver quality, it does have something else to offer: a window on the modern world. Though movies, books and music take time to work their way from inspiration to dissemination, they still have a relatively brief gestation, and taken as a whole, they reflect and amplify some oftentimes hidden aspects of our culture.
Since this is a science fiction and fantasy column, it's pretty obvious what the focus will be, but the same arguments apply across a much broader spectrum - and the same insights emerge.
Recently, publishers sent me a couple of books by writers from the so-called Golden Age (which shines much more brightly because, like classical music, the trash has been forgotten). The first, "The Voyage of the Space Beagle" (Orb, $14.95, 215 pages), by A.E. Van Vogt, holds up remarkably well, while Robert Heinlein's "Time for the Stars" (Orb, $14.95, 244 pages) shows it age. Nonetheless, both share a quality that is almost always missing from modern scifi: optimism.
In both books, there's a sense that problems will be solved, both individually and collectively. The future is bright, human beings are capable (if not exceptional) and the triumph of progress (and thus the good) is inevitable. You can read far and wide in 21st century scifi (especially that with a serious intent) and not find much to bolster any of those beliefs.
Two other veterans who worked in the 1950s ("The Voyage of the Space Beagle" came out in 1950, "Time for the Stars" in 1956) combined for a new book, "The Last Theorem" (Ballantine Books, $27, 299 pages). It's not up to their best work, which is not surprising, but even so, that sense of optimism shines through. Human beings will still struggle and make mistakes but Arthur C. Clarke (who died recently) and Frederick Pohl not only acknowledge, but celebrate, humanity's abilities.
Most writers whose careers are firmly rooted in the 21st century have little truck with such sunny outlooks. At a surface level, the books are full of blood and pain. Authors make sure that their heroes fight realistically - the crunch of bone, the burst of blood, the tide of pain, are always meticulously recounted. But beyond that, there is an underlying despair that humanity will ever get it right. If it's not environmental disaster, it's the inability to control technology; if it's not escaped microbes gone wild, it's war with civilization-destroying weapons.
And that, to this American who remembers when the United States did not invade foreign countries for no apparent reason (from Vietnam to Iraq), when the promise of technology was greater than the dangers of terrorism, when Mother Nature seemed to be kind rather than vengeful, is more than a little depressing. For if the light shone on modern culture by science fiction in particular and pop culture in general is so obscured by the grey fog of despair, does it mean that the 21st century world is on the way to giving up? If the heroes can't solve the problems, or are turned into antiheroes who cannot find a way to glory without compromising their ideals and values, then who will stand up and lead? If these dark visions are correct, what will the world our children and grandchildren inherit really look like?
Of course, every older generation always thinks the world is going to hell in a hand basket - and the phrase itself gives the lie to its prediction. I don't even know what a hand basket is, which reminds me that the pessimism of the elders does not necessarily doom the young ones. And in fact, there are some science fiction authors who still cling to the old tropes, the vision of humans as problem-solvers and not carriers of a culture-killing disease.
At the top of that list for me is John Scalzi, who has a new book out ("Zoe's Tale" (Tor, $24.95, 336 pages)) that brings a different narrator to some of the events from the satisfying "The Last Colony." "Zoe's Tale" isn't completely successful, as its depiction of its female teen-age heroine seems to me - someone who has coached teen-age girls for more than 20 years - impossible to credit, but it is still a book in which problems are solved, and positive resolutions are reached.
The same is true Scalzi's "Agent for the Stars" (Tor, $14.95, 352 pages), which he wrote more than a decade ago but is just now getting widespread distribution. "Agent for the Stars" is also funny, and not in a dark, vein-slicing way, which is another rarity as the young century wears on.
A pair of writers - Gary K. Wolf and Archbishop John J. Myers - went all-out for the past with "Space Vulture" (Tor, $24.95, 333 pages), an unabashedly old-fashioned space opera with heroes, villains, coincidences, and all the trappings of old-time science fiction - and old-time westerns, as far as that goes. But simply re-working the old themes doesn't make this book more than just a diversion, while the Isaac Asimovs and Clifford D. Simaks of the '50s and '60s were reflecting the underlying positive attitudes of an entire culture.
Scalzi echoes that optimism, but the vision of most of the writers working in this pop culture field is generally darker, more depressing and seldom ends well. Even when the heroes win, the scars take long to heal, and there's no sense that the most serious problems will be solved, or that progress has been made. Usually, in fact, the protagonist is pretty much back where he started, after much pain and suffering, and more blows to any belief that the world can be made a better place.
Of course, it's not possible for scifi and fantasy writers, or anyone involved in pop culture, to truly shift the direction of the great mass of people, and if they are too far from the edge of the pack, they will simply be ignored. Nonetheless, the message that's being sent - that the future is dark and getting darker -- is not one that should be ignored, as it's just one more warning sign that the road the worldwide culture has been traveling does not appear to lead to many happy endings."
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