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STARFARERS

Far-future cosmic epic from the veteran author of The Fleet of Stars (1997), etc. Early in the next century, speed-of-light starships become feasible, while astronomers discover that, 5,000 light-years distant, another race is already using starships. So, as various colony vessels depart for nearby stars, an expedition to visit the distant “Yonderfolk” gets under way. After a tedious introduction to the crew’six males and four females encompassing the necessary specialties and their various sexual pairings’starship Envoy departs on a round trip wherein 10,000 years will pass on Earth, while the voyagers age only a few years. As they approach the Yonderfolk’s location, however, their starship traces dwindle, and the crew debates whether to continue or return to Earth. Meanwhile, as time passes nearer home, the “Kithfolk” of the starfarers become more and more isolated from ordinary society (many of these interludes are stories in their own right). Finally, Envoy encounters the centaur-like Tahir, a race that, having abandoned starfaring, achieved an advanced, stable culture. Humans and Tahir evolve a common language and decide to visit a nearby black hole where an extraordinary intelligence, called the Holont, has been detected. Rejecting the prospect of spending more years in space, megalomaniac crewman Al Brent mutinies, two other voyagers die in the struggle to retake the ship from Brent, and while investigating the Holont, pilot Jean Kilbirnie is killed, though the survivors learn a method to send messages through time. Finally, Envoy returns to Earth, where 11,000 years have passed and their voyage is forgotten. They go back in space, then, to join the colony worlds, where the starfaring urge has not yet been extinguished. An episodic, disconcerting mix of mind-boggling ideas, thrilling storytelling, dull padding, and characters-by-numbers, set forth in Anderson’s patented outlandish, antique prose: probably his best-ever full-length outing.

Pub Date: Nov. 24, 1998

ISBN: 0-312-86037-4

Page Count: 384

Publisher: Tor

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1998

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TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.

Pub Date: July 11, 1960

ISBN: 0060935464

Page Count: 323

Publisher: Lippincott

Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960

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THE CATCHER IN THE RYE

A strict report, worthy of sympathy.

A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.

"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….

A strict report, worthy of sympathy.

Pub Date: June 15, 1951

ISBN: 0316769177

Page Count: -

Publisher: Little, Brown

Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951

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