Customer Reviews

Dark Star (An Orbit book)

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Unlike so many movies, which have screenplays based on chopping up a book into some barely recognizable story to fit in an hour and a half, Dark Star, the book, is a novel based on the movie of the same name.

And while the movie, John Carpenter's first attempt at science fiction movie making, is a pretty amateur effort, the book shines by comparison.

In this story, a crew find themselves on a mission to find solar systems with habitable planets, suitable for human colonization, and destroy any wobbly, unstable planets in those systems. The ship they fly on is slowly falling apart around them, and the interpersonal relationships are pretty much doing the same.

This book is much like Catch-22 in space, only less optimistic. Dark and unescapable, the stories of the crew members of this ship slowly draw you in, until you really do get the feeling you're on the ship with them, sharing their lives and their fates.

Also, this book has one of the THE most memorable closing lines in the history of science fiction, and to this day, I can remember the chills that ran down my spine as I read it and closed the book. At 14, the age when I first read it, this book affected me deeply, leaving impressions in my mind that would later make me agree with Kevin Smith that "The Empire Strikes Back" was the best fo the Star Wars movies, and I would find myself thinking back on this story when reading many other pieces of literature.

While Alan Dean Foster is often known for writing fluffy, simple juvies, this book is much more complex than most of his stuff. As usual, his florid prose either works for you, like it does for me, or it doesn't. If you're a fan of ADF, you must read this book. If you're not, this book might change your mind.

Dark Star was one of the first sci-fi books that I read, almost twenty years ago and my recollections of this title are very positive. Indeed, Alan Dean Foster has created a inquisitive, strange, thoughtful tale of loneliness, friendship and hopelesness among the distant stars. In fact, "Dark Star" is a book about the loss of hope that assailed the mankind, mainly in the 70's years. But it's not a dated book. You can read it now and certainly you'll find some great images completely acuratte for the nowdays.

I read every Alan Dean Foster book when I was 13-18, and this was probably my favorite one. I also loved the movie, but not as much as the book. Foster wrote a lot of novelizations. He wrote the great novelization of Star Wars that has George Lucas's name on it, and that was great too. But that was directly lifted from the screenplay with little additional material, but in Dark Star he was able to flesh out the characters and situations from the simplistic movie to create a deep and memorable story that is perfect for anyone who feels awe when looking at the stars.

One thing that always bugged me about the movie, however, is that the great ending is 'borrowed' directly from a Ray Bradbury short story called Kaleidoscope. It's a great short story, and is so much like the end of the movie, I was suprised that he wasn't credited. Ah well. If you're going to steal, steal from the best I guess.

The story definitely has that Ray Bradbury melancholic tone that made his so great. This is perhaps why this book feels so much deeper and impressive than other books by Foster, which are more optimistic in tone.

If you are a fan of Alan Dean Foster or the movie this book is a MUST READ!!

cb

Dark Star is the story of four men, a spaceship, an alien, and a bomb (some or all of whom may be a bit unhinged), in the final days of their twenty year mission.
It is a darkly funny take on an interesting science fiction premise. Although the book was adapted from the script of a not-so-good seventies movie, it goes deeper into the story, the setting, and the characters than a movie ever could. The result is a surprisingly good novel.
This book is part innovative and thought-provoking SF, part hilarious dark comedy, and part touching character study--and wholly enjoyable.

I was going to release this book into the wild (...) without reading it but I read the first few pages and got sucked in. I think that the first part of the book is pretty good, right up to where PinBack has to feed the ship alien mascot. Then it gets alittle slapstick in places.

Since the book was essentially about a bunch of bored lonely men confined to a space ship and therefore a bit light on action, I would have liked to have alittle more character development... The same aspects of each character were described repeatedly and the writing was a bit formulaic. But it was a good read, with a thought provoking ending.