After worlds collide, [Unknown Binding]

Edwin Balmer (Author)

Product Details

• Unknown Binding: 341 pages
• Publisher: Lippincott (1950)
• Language: English
• ASIN: B0006ASN9Y
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #9,305,131 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars See When Worlds Collide (Bison Frontiers of Imagination), January 15, 2005

By 

T. bailey - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: After Worlds Collide (Mass Market Paperback)

This book is available on another web page on amazon:

See When Worlds Collide (Bison Frontiers of Imagination) for 43 reviews and "Look inside this book"

5.0 out of 5 stars See When Worlds Collide (Bison Frontiers of Imagination), January 15, 2005

By 

T. bailey - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: After worlds collide (Hardcover)

See When Worlds Collide (Bison Frontiers of Imagination) for 43 reviews and "Look inside this book"

7 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Uninspired and dated sequel to "When Worlds Collide", July 10, 2005

By 

Rottenberg's rotten book review (nyc) - See all my reviews

This review is from: After Worlds Collide (Mass Market Paperback)

"After World's Collide" picks up right where "When Worlds Collide" left off. Earth has been destroyed after colliding with a wayward star which, luckily enough brought another planet along for the interstellar ride. A raw deal for Earth turns into a major jackpot for a few human survivors - the new planet settles into orbit perfectly. At this point, the novel could present its characters with the challenge of making a life on the new world for themselves. Unfortunately, this slim novel has little time for characters who rise to the occasion. Instead, "After" has our characters (already on a lucky-streak) discover a huge city left behind by the planet's original inhabitants. Apparently not that far removed from the human newcomers, the original natives did not survive the interstellar trip, but left their cities in perfect shape for the human refugees - right down to stocks of apparently edible food. In a more enlightened time, "After" would have had our characters discover that even a peachy-life in a new world has its downsides - as the Vikings discovered when they starved to death despite finding paradise in Greenland.

Rather than learn the natural limits of their new world, "After" turns dated and moralistic - pitting the good survivors against another group, the bad survivors who escaped on a rocket built by hardcore Stalinists. These enemies commandeer the largest of the alien cities, and choke off power to the smaller ones (meaning the ones occupied by the "good humans"). Will good win out over bad? I was more interested in whether the either of the two would wake up and realize that their war might threaten the planet. Just how dated is this story? The good survivors are led by a Moses figure who hints at the bad survivors in biblical terms - Midianites, he calls them. The novel never hints at the possibility that the miraculous feat of planetary physics that brought the new world to our solar system may have been off - with the planet either flying into the sun, or taking a hostile orbit, or simply careening away into the void again, looking for another, less complicated species with which to selflessly bring its promise of a new life.