Pulps no longer: much more like Poe.
Matheson, now entering his later years, has been on a roll of late, especially with his last novel, Hunted Past Reason (p. 691). All but the title piece (from a 1971 Playboy) in this gathering of 18 tales are very early Matheson, from pulps of the 1950–56 era and, though no mention is made of it, probably all have seen earlier reprintings in his vast body of story collections. “Duel” (fans will recall Spielberg’s TV classic version) remains by far the best-written, while most of the other stories turn on much more far-out flights. In “Third from the Sun,” a man wakes up, with his wife, their talk filled with dangers common to the period, largely the fear that the planet (clearly not Krypton) will blow up, killing everyone. The one hope: flight to a new planet in a different solar system. “When the Waker Sleeps,” a typical pulp, though told largely in the second person (You did this, did that . . .), has heroic soldiers fighting to save The Machine, which runs the world from the twelve-legged Rustons—though it’s all a dream injected into them, for reasons we won’t reveal. Matheson’s virgin published work, “Born of Man and Woman” (1950), dreams up an eight-year-old that mother and father keep chained in the cellar. If beaten, it drips green. When really upset, it runs all over the walls and ceiling. “One for the Books” really is. One morning Fred Elderman, a university janitor, wakes up to find he can speak French—a language he doesn’t know. Then he absorbs math, physics, world literature, from the rooms he cleans—including, at last, the entire university library! How can this be?
Pulps no longer: much more like Poe.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-765-30695-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2002
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A modern day fable, with modern implications in a deceiving simplicity, by the author of Dickens. Dali and Others (Reynal & Hitchcock, p. 138), whose critical brilliance is well adapted to this type of satire. This tells of the revolt on a farm, against humans, when the pigs take over the intellectual superiority, training the horses, cows, sheep, etc., into acknowledging their greatness. The first hints come with the reading out of a pig who instigated the building of a windmill, so that the electric power would be theirs, the idea taken over by Napoleon who becomes topman with no maybes about it. Napoleon trains the young puppies to be his guards, dickers with humans, gradually instigates a reign of terror, and breaks the final commandment against any animal walking on two legs. The old faithful followers find themselves no better off for food and work than they were when man ruled them, learn their final disgrace when they see Napoleon and Squealer carousing with their enemies... A basic statement of the evils of dictatorship in that it not only corrupts the leaders, but deadens the intelligence and awareness of those led so that tyranny is inevitable. Mr. Orwell's animals exist in their own right, with a narrative as individual as it is apt in political parody.
Pub Date: Aug. 26, 1946
ISBN: 0452277507
Page Count: 114
Publisher: Harcourt, Brace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1946
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.
Written with quiet dignity that builds to a climax of tragic force, this book about the dissolution of an African tribe, its traditions, and values, represents a welcome departure from the familiar "Me, white brother" genre.
Written by a Nigerian African trained in missionary schools, this novel tells quietly the story of a brave man, Okonkwo, whose life has absolute validity in terms of his culture, and who exercises his prerogative as a warrior, father, and husband with unflinching single mindedness. But into the complex Nigerian village filters the teachings of strangers, teachings so alien to the tribe, that resistance is impossible. One must distinguish a force to be able to oppose it, and to most, the talk of Christian salvation is no more than the babbling of incoherent children. Still, with his guns and persistence, the white man, amoeba-like, gradually absorbs the native culture and in despair, Okonkwo, unable to withstand the corrosion of what he, alone, understands to be the life force of his people, hangs himself. In the formlessness of the dying culture, it is the missionary who takes note of the event, reminding himself to give Okonkwo's gesture a line or two in his work, The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger.
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.Pub Date: Jan. 23, 1958
ISBN: 0385474547
Page Count: 207
Publisher: McDowell, Obolensky
Review Posted Online: April 23, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1958
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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