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ashleylm's review
2.0
Not completely horrible, but not engaging enough to want to keep reading after I gave it the old college try (35 pages or so). The author's style is both plain-spoken and verbose, so many long, uninteresting passages, instead of long, poetic passages, or short, interesting passages, either of which would be preferable.
The machine that they built might as well be called McGuffin for all the sense it made. Any account of it's conception, creation, or effect is essentially pointless. (I prefer science fiction to either be especially pointed--let's change this 1 thing and see what would happen--or admittedly space opera--let's just go have fun in a future universe setting.)
The opening sequence of our protagonist misdirecting detectives was interesting enough, but the morass quickly set in, and with about 1,000 unread books on my own bookshelves, I'm sure I can find something more suited to my tastes.
(Note: 5 stars = amazing, wonderful, 4 = very good book, 3 = decent read, 2 = disappointing, 1 = awful, just awful. I'm fairly good at picking for myself so end up with a lot of 4s). I feel a lot of readers automatically render any book they enjoy 5, but I grade on a curve!
The machine that they built might as well be called McGuffin for all the sense it made. Any account of it's conception, creation, or effect is essentially pointless. (I prefer science fiction to either be especially pointed--let's change this 1 thing and see what would happen--or admittedly space opera--let's just go have fun in a future universe setting.)
The opening sequence of our protagonist misdirecting detectives was interesting enough, but the morass quickly set in, and with about 1,000 unread books on my own bookshelves, I'm sure I can find something more suited to my tastes.
(Note: 5 stars = amazing, wonderful, 4 = very good book, 3 = decent read, 2 = disappointing, 1 = awful, just awful. I'm fairly good at picking for myself so end up with a lot of 4s). I feel a lot of readers automatically render any book they enjoy 5, but I grade on a curve!
armamix's review
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
mburnamfink's review
2.0
Rumor (okay, other reviews on Goodreads) has it that this is the worst book ever to win the Hugo. I don't know if that's true-yet. I do know that this is not a good book from any kind of literary perspective, and one that buries its occasional good ideas under tedious essays.
The story begins with Joey, an 8 year old boy in a working class family who is a telepath. Unique in the world, a basic extrapolation of 1950s America, he discovers a sympathetic university psychiatrist who tells him to conceal his gift from the world. The plot then skips forward 14 years, with Joey as a college senior working in the lab of Dr. Billings, the great psychosomaticist, some sort of combination of behavioral therapist and neuroscientist. Dr. Billings is given a government grant to develop an automatic pilot for automobile and airplane that will avoid collisions. Billings decides the request is actually for a general purpose AI capable of moral reasoning, and with the help of Joey to coordinate an interdisciplinary research team, achieves the first genuine breakthrough in decades. The AI, named "Bossy" for its resemblance to a cow, prompts a public outcry, and Joey and Billings and another member of the research team are forced to go into hiding in San Francisco. They perfect Bossy in a warehouse owned by an Mable, an old retired prostitute, use the completed Bossy to psychosomatically rejuvenate Mable, opening a path to immortality. They then seek shelter with Kennedy, the last independent industrial titan, and then re-use a public outcry about the potential of immortality to get Bossy approved by the government and sold as a mass-market consumer device.
So yeah, as you can see, the plot has grand ideas, but does almost nothing to link them together. There are some really interesting ideas about the relationship between science and society, innovation being crushed by government dominance, the exigencies of the Cold War turning American into a totalitarian dictatorship more-or-less identical to the USSR, the next stage in human evolution and its relationship to artificial intelligence. The problem is that instead of demonstrating these ideas in plot, the story pauses for a character to have a long internal monologue. There's something here for say, a literary critic tracing the genealogy of certain Big Ideas in science-fiction, but this book isn't just old, it's positively musty--and not in a way that inspires any kind of nostalgia or imagination.
The story begins with Joey, an 8 year old boy in a working class family who is a telepath. Unique in the world, a basic extrapolation of 1950s America, he discovers a sympathetic university psychiatrist who tells him to conceal his gift from the world. The plot then skips forward 14 years, with Joey as a college senior working in the lab of Dr. Billings, the great psychosomaticist, some sort of combination of behavioral therapist and neuroscientist. Dr. Billings is given a government grant to develop an automatic pilot for automobile and airplane that will avoid collisions. Billings decides the request is actually for a general purpose AI capable of moral reasoning, and with the help of Joey to coordinate an interdisciplinary research team, achieves the first genuine breakthrough in decades. The AI, named "Bossy" for its resemblance to a cow, prompts a public outcry, and Joey and Billings and another member of the research team are forced to go into hiding in San Francisco. They perfect Bossy in a warehouse owned by an Mable, an old retired prostitute, use the completed Bossy to psychosomatically rejuvenate Mable, opening a path to immortality. They then seek shelter with Kennedy, the last independent industrial titan, and then re-use a public outcry about the potential of immortality to get Bossy approved by the government and sold as a mass-market consumer device.
So yeah, as you can see, the plot has grand ideas, but does almost nothing to link them together. There are some really interesting ideas about the relationship between science and society, innovation being crushed by government dominance, the exigencies of the Cold War turning American into a totalitarian dictatorship more-or-less identical to the USSR, the next stage in human evolution and its relationship to artificial intelligence. The problem is that instead of demonstrating these ideas in plot, the story pauses for a character to have a long internal monologue. There's something here for say, a literary critic tracing the genealogy of certain Big Ideas in science-fiction, but this book isn't just old, it's positively musty--and not in a way that inspires any kind of nostalgia or imagination.
the_graylien's review
2.0
This book has multiple times been dubbed the "worst book ever to win the Hugo". While it wasn't absolutely awful, I can't say that it blew me away.
When Professors Hoskins and Billings build a sort of cybernetic brain machine that runs folks through a rigorous transformation process to modify them into younger, stronger, smarter, telepathic versions of themselves, the world goes crazy. The people want the machine, the government wants the machine, everyone wants the machine...
Touching on the idea that only certain people can be transformed by this machine, the story escalates from there...
I'd call this a great idea, poorly executed.
*-This book was the Hugo Award winner for Best Novel, 1955
When Professors Hoskins and Billings build a sort of cybernetic brain machine that runs folks through a rigorous transformation process to modify them into younger, stronger, smarter, telepathic versions of themselves, the world goes crazy. The people want the machine, the government wants the machine, everyone wants the machine...
Touching on the idea that only certain people can be transformed by this machine, the story escalates from there...
I'd call this a great idea, poorly executed.
*-This book was the Hugo Award winner for Best Novel, 1955
popestig's review
1.0
Horrible. The authors should have been hit with rolled-up newspapers. Bad authors!
henryarmitage's review
4.0
This novel won the 1955 Hugo for best novel. Sometimes characterized as 'the worst Hugo.' I enjoyed it.
There's a cyber-MacGuffin named Bossy which has the ability to confer rejuvenation and eternal life through cellular-level psychosomatic therapy. The catch is, it only works if you have a flexible and open mind, not burdened by any strong convictions.
Another benefit conveyed by this treatment turns out to be telepathy, and we discover the whole process which made Bossy possible was orchestrated by a lonely telepath who hoped for this outcome so a telepathic companion for himself, and eventually a race of telepaths, would be created for himself.
The title refers to this dilemma. Would you rather keep stubbornly clinging to what you believe now, or would you possibly have an open mind to something different, especially with the reward of eternal life at stake? I couldn't help thinking of the message of salvation with Jesus Christ, which offers the same reward.
Like a lot of older SF, the prose is clunky and the science is off and sometimes laughable.
There's a cyber-MacGuffin named Bossy which has the ability to confer rejuvenation and eternal life through cellular-level psychosomatic therapy. The catch is, it only works if you have a flexible and open mind, not burdened by any strong convictions.
Another benefit conveyed by this treatment turns out to be telepathy, and we discover the whole process which made Bossy possible was orchestrated by a lonely telepath who hoped for this outcome so a telepathic companion for himself, and eventually a race of telepaths, would be created for himself.
The title refers to this dilemma. Would you rather keep stubbornly clinging to what you believe now, or would you possibly have an open mind to something different, especially with the reward of eternal life at stake? I couldn't help thinking of the message of salvation with Jesus Christ, which offers the same reward.
Like a lot of older SF, the prose is clunky and the science is off and sometimes laughable.
josephfinn's review
1.0
Dull, pedantic and vaguely sexist. An inexplicable Best Novel Hugo winner from back in the day.
snaomiscott's review
2.0
Initially published between August and November 1954 as a four-part serial in Astounding Science Fiction magazine, They’d Rather Be Right explores the concept of a machine with the power to grant eternal youth and telepathic powers, but only to those subjects who are willing to let go of their ingrained prejudices and beliefs.
The novel itself is a sequel to the earlier stories Crazy Joey and Hide! Hide! Witch!, the first of which introduces the telepathic protagonist Joe “Joey” Carter as a young child just beginning to understand his psychic powers, while the second covers the initial creation of the cybernetic brain, “Bossy”, and the way her creation leads to an almost literal witch hunt.
Picking up more-or-less immediately after the second of these stories, the novel follows Joe Carter and the two professors most involved in Bossy’s creation as they attempt to rebuild the machine in secret. For the two professors, Bossy is a tool for optimising the way people think, though they’re unaware that Joey has other hopes for the machine’s powers.
When Bossy’s first test subject inadvertently finds herself in the public eye, Joe and his colleagues call upon the help of wealthy industrialist, Howard Kennedy, to bring the machine out of hiding and to get the public on their side before the government can confiscate it from them.
Exactly how this book managed to win the Hugo Award for Best Novel is something of a mystery. It is regularly described as the worst book to ever win the award, and there are a number of theories about how it got there in the first place, though nothing concrete. One suggestion is that it benefited from a block vote by Scientologists, a plausible explanation if you consider the way in which the narrative identifies psychology as a self-serving cult. Another block-voting theory suggests that fans of Astounding nominated it en masse as a kickback against the previous winner being from the pages of Galaxy, a publication they didn’t consider to be a true Sci-Fi magazine. However, the most likely explanation is that most of the voters cast their ballots for the book without reading it, relying on author Mark Clifton’s popularity as a short story writer to carry the result. Whatever the truth it’s plain to see that controversial outcomes have been a part of Hugo history for almost as long as the awards themselves.
In terms of the writing itself this is a fairly adequate novel. There’s nothing particularly outstanding about the narrative or the way in which the characters are presented, to the point that none of the protagonists really stand out as anything special. Likewise, the themes explored aren’t exactly groundbreaking, and there are a lot of loose ends by the close of the story that it simply feels unfinished.
It has to be said that there isn’t anything inherently bad about this book, but there really isn’t anything to commend it either. When you stack it up against the wide array of other books to win the Hugo over the years it definitely doesn’t stand up well. In fact, it’s hard to imagine a book like this even finding a publisher today. There’s a reason it’s barely been in print for the last sixty-five years.
At best, it scores two-and-a-half stars out of five, and if I’m being honest that’s a kindness. If you’re really determined to read every Hugo winning novel ever then go for it, but don’t expect anything too spectacular from this one.
The novel itself is a sequel to the earlier stories Crazy Joey and Hide! Hide! Witch!, the first of which introduces the telepathic protagonist Joe “Joey” Carter as a young child just beginning to understand his psychic powers, while the second covers the initial creation of the cybernetic brain, “Bossy”, and the way her creation leads to an almost literal witch hunt.
Picking up more-or-less immediately after the second of these stories, the novel follows Joe Carter and the two professors most involved in Bossy’s creation as they attempt to rebuild the machine in secret. For the two professors, Bossy is a tool for optimising the way people think, though they’re unaware that Joey has other hopes for the machine’s powers.
When Bossy’s first test subject inadvertently finds herself in the public eye, Joe and his colleagues call upon the help of wealthy industrialist, Howard Kennedy, to bring the machine out of hiding and to get the public on their side before the government can confiscate it from them.
Exactly how this book managed to win the Hugo Award for Best Novel is something of a mystery. It is regularly described as the worst book to ever win the award, and there are a number of theories about how it got there in the first place, though nothing concrete. One suggestion is that it benefited from a block vote by Scientologists, a plausible explanation if you consider the way in which the narrative identifies psychology as a self-serving cult. Another block-voting theory suggests that fans of Astounding nominated it en masse as a kickback against the previous winner being from the pages of Galaxy, a publication they didn’t consider to be a true Sci-Fi magazine. However, the most likely explanation is that most of the voters cast their ballots for the book without reading it, relying on author Mark Clifton’s popularity as a short story writer to carry the result. Whatever the truth it’s plain to see that controversial outcomes have been a part of Hugo history for almost as long as the awards themselves.
In terms of the writing itself this is a fairly adequate novel. There’s nothing particularly outstanding about the narrative or the way in which the characters are presented, to the point that none of the protagonists really stand out as anything special. Likewise, the themes explored aren’t exactly groundbreaking, and there are a lot of loose ends by the close of the story that it simply feels unfinished.
It has to be said that there isn’t anything inherently bad about this book, but there really isn’t anything to commend it either. When you stack it up against the wide array of other books to win the Hugo over the years it definitely doesn’t stand up well. In fact, it’s hard to imagine a book like this even finding a publisher today. There’s a reason it’s barely been in print for the last sixty-five years.
At best, it scores two-and-a-half stars out of five, and if I’m being honest that’s a kindness. If you’re really determined to read every Hugo winning novel ever then go for it, but don’t expect anything too spectacular from this one.
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