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griddleoctopus's review against another edition
4.0
A nightmarish little tale, bleak in every degree, with little love of humanity. Absolutely great.
ivsa's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
informative
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
2.75
kalyx_velys's review against another edition
adventurous
mysterious
reflective
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
hannahd02's review against another edition
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
Hate hate hate hate hate
This book is a masterclass in how to take a really good and interesting idea and somehow execute it in the most boring, meandering and aggravating way.
The plot is barely-there and it’s just so poorly written! So so dry, focusing on irrelevant details to extreme degrees that add nothing to the story, either to the sci-fi plot or the half-baked attempts at psychoanalysis (that get about as deep as a kiddy pool).
Hawks is the most irritating character I have ever had the displeasure of reading. He could never pull someone like Elizabeth in real life (although what we got to know of her could fit on a post-it note) and despite what she tries to say, he doesn’t treat her like a human being but like a blank wall to monologue at.
I’m not sure if Algis Budrys ever met a woman in his life, but if he did he definitely never attempted to actually know her because my GOD. No one who knows women in any intimate or personal way could possibly have written a woman this way. The female characters in this book are just beyond terribly written; it felt like a shabby self-insert for the most dull and self-obsessive man on Earth to get to talk to women as his inferiors, whilst also getting praise for treating them better than other men??! You can’t have it both ways! You can treat women poorly or you can be commended for treating them well but you can’t do both!
Overall though, the biggest insult of this book is just how goddamned BORING it is. Such an interesting premise and yet, and yet!
This book is just 175 pages of the most insufferable and poorly fleshed out people you could ever conceive of, monologuing at each other about their own self-importance (or being self-effacing about their own importance before being fawned over by the most 1 dimensional women and told just how very big and important they really are). It reads like a first draft of a very young and inexperienced writer who is in desperate need of sitting with and developing his thoughts before committing them to paper. He is also in desperate need of an editor.
This book was such a massive let down and such a waste of a fascinating sci-fi premise. If you can avoid reading it, AVOID READING IT! Please. For me.
This book is a masterclass in how to take a really good and interesting idea and somehow execute it in the most boring, meandering and aggravating way.
The plot is barely-there and it’s just so poorly written! So so dry, focusing on irrelevant details to extreme degrees that add nothing to the story, either to the sci-fi plot or the half-baked attempts at psychoanalysis (that get about as deep as a kiddy pool).
Hawks is the most irritating character I have ever had the displeasure of reading. He could never pull someone like Elizabeth in real life (although what we got to know of her could fit on a post-it note) and despite what she tries to say, he doesn’t treat her like a human being but like a blank wall to monologue at.
I’m not sure if Algis Budrys ever met a woman in his life, but if he did he definitely never attempted to actually know her because my GOD. No one who knows women in any intimate or personal way could possibly have written a woman this way. The female characters in this book are just beyond terribly written; it felt like a shabby self-insert for the most dull and self-obsessive man on Earth to get to talk to women as his inferiors, whilst also getting praise for treating them better than other men??! You can’t have it both ways! You can treat women poorly or you can be commended for treating them well but you can’t do both!
Overall though, the biggest insult of this book is just how goddamned BORING it is. Such an interesting premise and yet, and yet!
This book is just 175 pages of the most insufferable and poorly fleshed out people you could ever conceive of, monologuing at each other about their own self-importance (or being self-effacing about their own importance before being fawned over by the most 1 dimensional women and told just how very big and important they really are). It reads like a first draft of a very young and inexperienced writer who is in desperate need of sitting with and developing his thoughts before committing them to paper. He is also in desperate need of an editor.
This book was such a massive let down and such a waste of a fascinating sci-fi premise. If you can avoid reading it, AVOID READING IT! Please. For me.
smiorganbaldhead's review
5.0
I loved this book. However, I think how much a reader enjoys this book will depend a lot on expectations. This book is about the (very interesting) transporter technology used to reach the moon, its psychological effects on the people using it, and its philosophical implications. It's not really about the mysterious thing on the moon at all: that's just the catalyst for the story to happen, not the real point. I really enjoyed the explorations of the transporter and its implications, particularly the ending. The relationship subplots didn't work so well for me, but the big idea is sufficiently fascinating that those flaws weren't a big issue for me. In that way it reminds me a bit of Poul Anderson’s Tau Zero. Different aspects of the plot also remind me more directly of the Strugatsky brothers’ Roadside Picnic and Damon Knight’s A for Anything, both of which I read recently, but enjoyed far less than this book. This book considers some similar issues, but in a way I found much more interesting.
david_r_grigg's review against another edition
5.0
The Gollancz SF Gateway is a wonderful treasure-trove of classic science fiction in ebook format. In particular, their SF Masterworks series identifies and makes available truly great works in the genre. Rogue Moon certainly deserves to be among them.
Published in 1960, it stands out from other contemporary works in the genre by being strongly based on character rather than on speculative gimmicks. And its overriding theme is death.
Yes, there is a science-fiction gimmick. Well, there are a few, I suppose. Unbeknown to other nations, by 1959 the United States has secretly developed the capability of sending rockets to the Moon. One such unmanned probe, in its last moments before crashing, photographs a mysterious structure on the lunar surface which is clearly artificial, and not human-made.
As the novel opens, we know none of this. Instead we are introduced to Dr Edward Hawks, talking to Rogan, a man who it appears has become insane. Who has been driven insane, it appears, by something Hawks has had him do. It turns out that Hawks and his colleagues have developed a method of scanning objects and transmitting their ‘pattern’ to a remote receiver where they are reassembled. The original is destroyed in the scanning process. And the objects include human beings, with all of their thoughts and feelings. It is this system which has been used to send humans to a remotely-landed receiver on the Moon.
It’s not this process which has driven Rogan (and several other previous volunteers) insane. Indeed, the Navy has been able to send enough people safely to the Moon through the transmitter for them to establish a modest (and still secret) base next to the mysterious alien artefact. No, what has driven Rogan crazy is that he was one of those who volunteered to investigate the artefact itself. And the artefact kills people if they do the slightest thing wrong while inside it. What is ‘wrong’? Simple, anything which kills you. Discovering what these ‘wrong’ things are has taken the lives of quite a number of volunteers. Rogan was one of them, killed by the alien machine.
But if he was killed, how can Hawks now be talking to him? Simple. When transmitting a volunteer’s pattern to the Moon, a second copy is created on Earth. For a short period of time, the minds of the two copies are in a kind of synchrony (today we would say they are ‘entangled’) and the Earth copy can experience everything that the Moon copy sees and hears. But when the copy on the Moon is killed, the copy on the Earth suffers a tremendous psychic shock, which can kill them or send them mad.
A fascinating science-fictional scenario, that’s for sure. I have said, though, that this novel is primarily about character, and so it is. It’s remarkable, really, that the book doesn’t need to dwell much on the nature or origin of the alien construction itself. Instead, it’s all about the people involved.
Primarily it focuses on the character of Dr Edward Hawks, an engineering genius, but a humane man who suffers tremendous remorse for what he is doing to the volunteers yet feels bound to continue.
Then there’s the character of Al Barker, an ex-soldier who continually dices with death in reckless, near suicidal exploits. It is Barker, already drawn to death, who Hawks approaches to volunteer to explore the alien artefact, gambling that such a man will not be driven mad by experiencing the shock of death. In this he is correct.
Then we have the character of Claire Pack, Barker’s girlfriend, also seeking self-destruction but in a quite different way; and Connington, the sleazy HR man who first introduces Hawks to Barker, and who has lustful designs on Claire.
And finally we have the character of Elizabeth Cummings, a young fashion designer who Hawks meets by accident and falls in love with.
Some of the interplay between Claire, Barker and Connington verges on the histrionic and is a little overwritten; but is nevertheless engaging. Hawks’ mental struggles, though, are much more authentic and thought-provoking, as is the slow dawning of his love for Elizabeth. His interactions with her are again far deeper than those of most of the contemporary genre. And the author’s serious treatment of women is remarkable, I think, for the time in which he was writing.
"‘Do you want to know what it is with you and women?’
Hawks blinked at her. ‘Yes. Very much.’
‘You treat them like people.’
‘I do?’ He shook his head again. ‘I don’t think so. I’ve never been able to understand them very well. I don’t know why they do most of the things they do. I’ve — As a matter of fact, I’ve had a lot of trouble with women.’
Elizabeth touched his hand. ‘I wouldn’t be a bit surprised. But that’s beside the point. Now, you think about something: I’m a good deal younger than you are.’
Hawks nodded, his expression troubled. ‘I’ve thought about that.’
‘Now you think about this, too: you’re not charming, dashing, or debonair. You’re funny-looking, as a matter of fact. You’re too busy to spare much time for me, and even if you did take me out night-clubbing somewhere, you’d be so out of place that I couldn’t enjoy it. But you do one thing: you let me feel that my rules are as worthwhile to me as yours are to you. When you ask me to do something, I know you won’t be hurt if I refuse. And if I do it, you don’t feel that you’ve scored a point in some kind of complex game. You don’t try to use me, cozen me, or change me. I take up as much room in the world, the way you see it, as you do. Do you have any idea of how rare a thing that is?’"
This would be a refreshing passage to read even in much of today’s literary fiction (“Do you have any idea of how rare a thing that is?”). Certainly, these are complex characters a far cry from the flat 2D characters of much SF of the period.
At the same time, the novel raises serious philosophical questions. If two copies of a human being are made, which of them is the ‘real’ person? Does the soul exist, and is it lost when a duplicate human is made and the original destroyed? What is death? Could we face death calmly if we knew that a duplicate of ourselves could be recreated from a stored pattern?
The last sentence of the book, which I won’t spoil by quoting, is a punch to the gut.
A classic indeed, and well worth the read more than 50 years after it was written.
Published in 1960, it stands out from other contemporary works in the genre by being strongly based on character rather than on speculative gimmicks. And its overriding theme is death.
Yes, there is a science-fiction gimmick. Well, there are a few, I suppose. Unbeknown to other nations, by 1959 the United States has secretly developed the capability of sending rockets to the Moon. One such unmanned probe, in its last moments before crashing, photographs a mysterious structure on the lunar surface which is clearly artificial, and not human-made.
As the novel opens, we know none of this. Instead we are introduced to Dr Edward Hawks, talking to Rogan, a man who it appears has become insane. Who has been driven insane, it appears, by something Hawks has had him do. It turns out that Hawks and his colleagues have developed a method of scanning objects and transmitting their ‘pattern’ to a remote receiver where they are reassembled. The original is destroyed in the scanning process. And the objects include human beings, with all of their thoughts and feelings. It is this system which has been used to send humans to a remotely-landed receiver on the Moon.
It’s not this process which has driven Rogan (and several other previous volunteers) insane. Indeed, the Navy has been able to send enough people safely to the Moon through the transmitter for them to establish a modest (and still secret) base next to the mysterious alien artefact. No, what has driven Rogan crazy is that he was one of those who volunteered to investigate the artefact itself. And the artefact kills people if they do the slightest thing wrong while inside it. What is ‘wrong’? Simple, anything which kills you. Discovering what these ‘wrong’ things are has taken the lives of quite a number of volunteers. Rogan was one of them, killed by the alien machine.
But if he was killed, how can Hawks now be talking to him? Simple. When transmitting a volunteer’s pattern to the Moon, a second copy is created on Earth. For a short period of time, the minds of the two copies are in a kind of synchrony (today we would say they are ‘entangled’) and the Earth copy can experience everything that the Moon copy sees and hears. But when the copy on the Moon is killed, the copy on the Earth suffers a tremendous psychic shock, which can kill them or send them mad.
A fascinating science-fictional scenario, that’s for sure. I have said, though, that this novel is primarily about character, and so it is. It’s remarkable, really, that the book doesn’t need to dwell much on the nature or origin of the alien construction itself. Instead, it’s all about the people involved.
Primarily it focuses on the character of Dr Edward Hawks, an engineering genius, but a humane man who suffers tremendous remorse for what he is doing to the volunteers yet feels bound to continue.
Then there’s the character of Al Barker, an ex-soldier who continually dices with death in reckless, near suicidal exploits. It is Barker, already drawn to death, who Hawks approaches to volunteer to explore the alien artefact, gambling that such a man will not be driven mad by experiencing the shock of death. In this he is correct.
Then we have the character of Claire Pack, Barker’s girlfriend, also seeking self-destruction but in a quite different way; and Connington, the sleazy HR man who first introduces Hawks to Barker, and who has lustful designs on Claire.
And finally we have the character of Elizabeth Cummings, a young fashion designer who Hawks meets by accident and falls in love with.
Some of the interplay between Claire, Barker and Connington verges on the histrionic and is a little overwritten; but is nevertheless engaging. Hawks’ mental struggles, though, are much more authentic and thought-provoking, as is the slow dawning of his love for Elizabeth. His interactions with her are again far deeper than those of most of the contemporary genre. And the author’s serious treatment of women is remarkable, I think, for the time in which he was writing.
"‘Do you want to know what it is with you and women?’
Hawks blinked at her. ‘Yes. Very much.’
‘You treat them like people.’
‘I do?’ He shook his head again. ‘I don’t think so. I’ve never been able to understand them very well. I don’t know why they do most of the things they do. I’ve — As a matter of fact, I’ve had a lot of trouble with women.’
Elizabeth touched his hand. ‘I wouldn’t be a bit surprised. But that’s beside the point. Now, you think about something: I’m a good deal younger than you are.’
Hawks nodded, his expression troubled. ‘I’ve thought about that.’
‘Now you think about this, too: you’re not charming, dashing, or debonair. You’re funny-looking, as a matter of fact. You’re too busy to spare much time for me, and even if you did take me out night-clubbing somewhere, you’d be so out of place that I couldn’t enjoy it. But you do one thing: you let me feel that my rules are as worthwhile to me as yours are to you. When you ask me to do something, I know you won’t be hurt if I refuse. And if I do it, you don’t feel that you’ve scored a point in some kind of complex game. You don’t try to use me, cozen me, or change me. I take up as much room in the world, the way you see it, as you do. Do you have any idea of how rare a thing that is?’"
This would be a refreshing passage to read even in much of today’s literary fiction (“Do you have any idea of how rare a thing that is?”). Certainly, these are complex characters a far cry from the flat 2D characters of much SF of the period.
At the same time, the novel raises serious philosophical questions. If two copies of a human being are made, which of them is the ‘real’ person? Does the soul exist, and is it lost when a duplicate human is made and the original destroyed? What is death? Could we face death calmly if we knew that a duplicate of ourselves could be recreated from a stored pattern?
The last sentence of the book, which I won’t spoil by quoting, is a punch to the gut.
A classic indeed, and well worth the read more than 50 years after it was written.
weaselweader's review against another edition
3.0
Character studies and science philosophy in a fictional setting.
Pre-dating Arthur C Clarke's alien monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey by almost a decade, Rogue Moon tells of an equally bizarre alien construct on the moon called simply "the Formation". Dr Edward Hawks, a ruthless scientist is determined, at any cost, to plum the depths of the Formation and to puzzle out its origin and purpose, by sending a steady stream of hapless volunteers on a deadly one-way mission of exploration to the moon. Dr Hawks' recently built matter transmission device is capable of sending an exact duplicate of someone to the moon and into the Formation. The "original" of these intrepid explorers is held on earth in a type of stasis - a state of deep sensory deprivation - until the duplicate is killed in the maze inside the Formation. This frequently happens within minutes of their arrival on the moon. Although the nature of the process of matter duplication and transmission allows the original to share the experiences of his duplicate, the experience is so powerful as to drive every volunteer to hopeless insanity when they awake after the death of their doppelgänger.
Al Barker is an adventurer and utterly self-centered thrill-seeker - one might almost say, a sociopathic A-personality suicidally driven to ever greater heights of physical achievement regardless of the potential cost to himself and those around him. Hawks realizes that Barker may be the only person in the world with the physical strength and the ability to negotiate the intractable puzzles of the Formation combined with the mental strength to retain his sanity in the doing. Sure enough, a string of repeat missions ends in the death of Barker's duplicate but each trip finds him delving deeper and deeper into the mysterious path through the Formation. Likewise, against all odds, the original Barker remains sane and when he awakes, he is able to pass on the intelligence of his foray into the Formation to Hawks.
For this reader, it was a matter of some frustration to discover that even at the end of the story, the nature and purpose of the Formation remained undisclosed. While the hypothesized scientific nature of Hawks' matter-transmission device was discussed at considerable length, it became clear by the end of the novel that aliens, the Formation and science were not really the main themes of Budrys' Rogue Moon at all. The story was really an extended essay probing the nature of the ethics of scientific discovery and exploration. In addition, Budrys spent considerable effort talking about the philosophy of matter transmission and the possible meaning of a relationship between humanity and an alien species capable of creating a device like the Formation.
While much of this philosophical navel-gazing is delivered via stiff-necked dialogue between characters who would now seem very dated and out of place in this century, Rogue Moon does deserve kudos for having the courage to place theme over plot in a genre that is much better known for its guns ablaze space opera approach. I don't think I'd go quite so far as to call it the masterpiece that some have labeled it but Rogue Moon is worthy of a sci-fi fan's time and effort and deserves a place in any well-stocked library of classic science fiction.
Recommended.
Paul Weiss
Pre-dating Arthur C Clarke's alien monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey by almost a decade, Rogue Moon tells of an equally bizarre alien construct on the moon called simply "the Formation". Dr Edward Hawks, a ruthless scientist is determined, at any cost, to plum the depths of the Formation and to puzzle out its origin and purpose, by sending a steady stream of hapless volunteers on a deadly one-way mission of exploration to the moon. Dr Hawks' recently built matter transmission device is capable of sending an exact duplicate of someone to the moon and into the Formation. The "original" of these intrepid explorers is held on earth in a type of stasis - a state of deep sensory deprivation - until the duplicate is killed in the maze inside the Formation. This frequently happens within minutes of their arrival on the moon. Although the nature of the process of matter duplication and transmission allows the original to share the experiences of his duplicate, the experience is so powerful as to drive every volunteer to hopeless insanity when they awake after the death of their doppelgänger.
Al Barker is an adventurer and utterly self-centered thrill-seeker - one might almost say, a sociopathic A-personality suicidally driven to ever greater heights of physical achievement regardless of the potential cost to himself and those around him. Hawks realizes that Barker may be the only person in the world with the physical strength and the ability to negotiate the intractable puzzles of the Formation combined with the mental strength to retain his sanity in the doing. Sure enough, a string of repeat missions ends in the death of Barker's duplicate but each trip finds him delving deeper and deeper into the mysterious path through the Formation. Likewise, against all odds, the original Barker remains sane and when he awakes, he is able to pass on the intelligence of his foray into the Formation to Hawks.
For this reader, it was a matter of some frustration to discover that even at the end of the story, the nature and purpose of the Formation remained undisclosed. While the hypothesized scientific nature of Hawks' matter-transmission device was discussed at considerable length, it became clear by the end of the novel that aliens, the Formation and science were not really the main themes of Budrys' Rogue Moon at all. The story was really an extended essay probing the nature of the ethics of scientific discovery and exploration. In addition, Budrys spent considerable effort talking about the philosophy of matter transmission and the possible meaning of a relationship between humanity and an alien species capable of creating a device like the Formation.
While much of this philosophical navel-gazing is delivered via stiff-necked dialogue between characters who would now seem very dated and out of place in this century, Rogue Moon does deserve kudos for having the courage to place theme over plot in a genre that is much better known for its guns ablaze space opera approach. I don't think I'd go quite so far as to call it the masterpiece that some have labeled it but Rogue Moon is worthy of a sci-fi fan's time and effort and deserves a place in any well-stocked library of classic science fiction.
Recommended.
Paul Weiss