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We Who Are About to (The Gregg Press Science Fiction Series)
  
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We Who Are About to (The Gregg Press Science Fiction Series) [Hardcover]

Joanna Russ (Author)
3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)


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Book Description

The Gregg Press Science Fiction Series January 1977
A multi-dimensional explosion hurls the starship's few passengers across the galaxies and onto an uncharted barren tundra. With no technical skills and scant supplies, the survivors face a bleak end in an alien world. One brave woman holds the daring answer, but it is the most desperate one possible.

Elegant and electric, We Who Are About To... brings us face to face with our basic assumptions about our will to live. While most of the stranded tourists decide to defy the odds and insist on colonizing the planet and creating life, the narrator decides to practice the art of dying. When she is threatened with compulsory reproduction, she defends herself with lethal force. Originally published in 1977, this is one of the most subtle, complex, and exciting science fiction novels ever written about the attempt to survive a hostile alien environment. It is characteristic of Russ's genius that such a readable novel is also one of her most intellectually intricate.
--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

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Editorial Reviews

Review

"This is an important science fiction novel." --The New York Times Book Review

"One of the pioneers and luminaries of women's science fiction!"--MS. Magazine

"If this were a film it could be one of Peckinpah's, violent, self-indulgent, obsessively contemptuous of humanity, nihilistic and fascinating."--Publisher's Weekly

"Wesleyan University Press, fortunately, has seen fit to reissue [We Who Are About To...] in a handsome trade-paperback edition. ...This is an important book. Read it afresh and let it speak to you." --New York Review of Science Fiction --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Review

"Perhaps the most subtle, complex, and exciting science fiction novel ever written about the attempt to survive a hostile alien environment. It is characteristic of Russ's genius that her most sheerly readable novel is also one of her most intellectually intricate." (Carl Freedman, author of Critical Theory and Science Fiction ) --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Details

  • Hardcover: 170 pages
  • Publisher: G K Hall & Co (January 1977)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0839824955
  • ISBN-13: 978-0839824954
  • Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #9,737,132 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

7 Reviews
5 star:
 (3)
4 star:
 (1)
3 star:    (0)
2 star:
 (1)
1 star:
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Average Customer Review
3.3 out of 5 stars (7 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars For those who believe in survival of none, February 25, 2000
By A Customer
This review is from: We Who Are About to (The Gregg Press Science Fiction Series) (Hardcover)
I was young when I first read "We who are about to..." Too young, really, to grasp the full concept of life and death, the two main currents that lie within the book.

A cruise vessel of the future manages to miss the point in space that it was attempting to fold to, spinning amazingly far off course and crashing into a planet that is in no way guaranteed not to kill the survivors. A politician, an upper class family, a "jock", a young sex object, a washed up waitress, a supposed tactical expert, and a musician (our heroine) all help make an ensemble from Hell. Nothing goes according to protocol, and chaos ensues as the musician experiments liberally with her psychoactive drugs.

While in a science-fiction setting, Ms. Russ manages to maintain a surprising lack of the technological; the underlying concept of the story being Gilligan's Island on Acid. As Social Darwinism takes its course, the value of life itself is called into question.

This is not a book for those who are set in their ideas of God and living; this is for those who remain unsure as to what lies in store for them, and what may be the meaning of life.

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8 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars wonderfully subversive, July 7, 2002
By 
anna genoese (brooklyn, nyc, usa) - See all my reviews
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If I had read this book when I was fifteen, I do believe my life would have been entirely different. This is wonderfully subversive stuff, addressing all the problems any science fiction fan has with the "starship separated from civilization" plot, with a protagonist you will love to be appalled by.
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10 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars One of the best SF novels I have ever read., June 9, 2005
This review is from: We Who Are About To... (Paperback)
John W. Campbell's formula for great science fiction was, famously, "ask the <em>next</em> question." That's exactly what this bracing, challenging, bleak, funny, deeply subversive novel does, elegantly undercutting decades of unexamined science-fiction adventure cliches.

Recommended for anyone who ever wanted to lay into Compulsory Optimism with a meat ax. "The human race is fine. We're just not there."
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