Reviews and Comments

Looking back into the past, its easy to think of technological and social development as 'obvious'. But in the same way this is just a result of our present perspective and in the same way we are unable to know future shifts in paradigms, counting the things that any author got right or wrong about the future is a futile endeavour. Stapledons book is a great read for anyone interested in the paradigms of his time, and how people imagined the far future without computers or the perspective of humanity spreading through the universe. One very interesting aspect that might not be elusive is that Stapledon very, VERY rarely explains history through the actions of individual actors. And when he does, he makes it clear that that individual is either the product of its environment or has fertile ground for changing history. Still, with no characters to follow, it can become a bit slow. That and the cyclical nature of Stapledons story probably makes it a rather boring read for most readers.

Wonderful and well written book tackling more issues than you would think could fit into the pages it has. Le Guin manages a surprising shift in narrative well, giving us the perspective of an anarchist looking at a capitalist society. A particular joke stuck especially with me, flipping a common argument on its head:

"But all the people he met, and all the people he saw, in the smallest country village, were well dressed, well fed, and, contrary to his expectations, industrious. They did not stand about sullenly waiting to be ordered to do things. Just like Anarresti, they were simply busy getting things done. It puzzled him. He had assumed that if you removed a human being’s natural incentive to work — his initiative, his spontaneous creative energy — and replaced it with external motivation and coercion, he would become a lazy and careless worker."

Beyond that, she manages to describe certain phases of teenagers incredibly well. I never cared much for coming of age books as a teenager, but the few chapters she spends on the topic probably would have spoken more to me then than any coming of age book i know of.

While the story itself is interesting and entertaining, the pacing and similar aspects might not speak to most readers today, but people familiar with classic greek stories will feel at home. More interesting to me was its role as one of the first science fiction books, although this is obviously a modern perspective. The beginning of the book features a section in which Lucian explains his intentions and inspiration, dragging famous greek poets and historians and their obviously fantastic stories about supposedly "true" events, which is extremely funny and features sections such as:

"Therefore, as I myself, thanks to my vanity, was eager to hand something down to posterity, that I might not be the only one excluded from the privileges of poetic licence, and as I had nothing true to tell, not having had any adventures of significance, I took to lying. But my lying is far more honest than theirs, for though I tell the truth in nothing else, I shall at least be truthful in saying that I am a liar."

All in all, an interesting book, although you probably get his point in the first few pages if you arent that interested in the story and his style of story telling.