12 Monkeys [Import] [Paperback]

Elizabeth Hand (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Boxtree Ltd (1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0752202111
• ISBN-13: 978-0752202112
• Product Dimensions: 6.6 x 4.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,510,328 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

A couple of years after seeing Patti Smith perform, Elizabeth Hand flunked out of college and became involved in the nascent punk scenes in DC and NYC. From 1979 to 1986 she worked at the Smithsonian Institution's National Air & Space Museum; she was eventually readmitted to university to study cultural anthropology, and received her B.A. She is the author of many novels, including Winterlong, Waking the Moon (Tiptree and Mythopoeic Award-Winner), Glimmering, and Mortal Love, and three collections of stories, including the recent Saffron and Brimstone. Her fiction has received the Nebula, World Fantasy, Mythopeoic, Tiptree, and International Horror Guild Awards, and her novels have been chose as New York Times and Washington Post Notable Books. She has also been awarded a Maine Arts Commission Fellowship. A regular contributor to the Washington Post Book World and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Hand lives with her family on the Maine Coast.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Wonderfully captures the movie better than most movie novels, October 6, 1997

By 

Pyanfar Chanur (USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: 12 Monkeys (Paperback)

"12 Monkeys" is an excellent movie that tells a very fragmented, eclectic science-fiction tale. Part time-travel story, part rogue disease tale, part world-gone-mad, the main concept is this: somewhere in our future, something went wrong. A disease was released that almost destroyed humanity. Because no cure can be found, the only solution seems to be to send people back in time to try and find the moment at which the outbreak hit. If that bit of history can be found, perhaps it can be changed.

As a film, this is not to be missed - Bruce Willis makes a good malleable action-hero, but Brad Pitt steals the show with his half-insane role. But here we're discussing the novel.

Movie adaptations usually seem lackluster and play-by-play to me, but Elizabeth Hand was the perfect choice for this book. Her writing style is sardonically strange, and she seems to capture the spirit of Gilliam's dark vision of the future. For similar material, check out Gilliam's movie "Brazil" or Hand's novel "Winterlong" (recently reprinted in trade paperback form).

Put simply, Hand's voice is exactly what you need to read this tale: she tells it with the same atmosphere that Gilliam tries to convey in the film. Recommended reading, and the movie is definitely recommended viewing.

5 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Unusual enough to be called science fiction!, May 17, 1996

By A Customer

This review is from: 12 Monkeys (Paperback)

The imagery and spectacle created in your mind by this excellent novel is comparable with that of Robert Hienlin, Author C. Clark and Ray Bradburry. It provides a truly unique picture of a possible future of todays society