Customer Reviews

Eight keys to Eden (Starblaze editions)

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I read this book the first time when I was about 12, and it totally changed the way I thought. Basically, it's about perception, about the way we filter all our thoughts through our already existing experiences. By doing so we miss opportunities to process truly new information. Although I recommend this work on the strength of what I got out of it, it also works simply at the level of a good story: well written, easy to read, creating a believable future world. I certainly agree with the assesment of another reviewer that this classic deserves to be much better known!

One of the great unknown classics of science fiction, this novel begins with a minor problem. Contact is lost with a colony. A brilliant man which may be best described as a sort of super social scientist, though young, is sent to solve the problem. It turns out to be larger than expected, of course, with all technology and artifacts being destroyed and the minds of the colonists controlled. It turns out to be that the . . . Oh that's right, I'm not allowed to say. His originality wins out in the end with some surprizing benefits. Well, I found it very satisfying as a story when I first read it a long time ago. I still read it every couple of years.

In my not so humble opinion it is truly a great sf classic, the original from which many other stories have been um researched/derived/filched from. Written better than the previous sentence, you will find it way too short, and very enlightening.

"Eight Keys to Eden" is a wonderful science fiction novel dealing with the limits of human perception and perspective, and the effect that these limits have had on human advancement. In the future, the author postulates, a group of highly-trained and exceptional persons known as "Extrapolators" exist, specifically exempted from all restrictions and laws for the purpose of solving problems. Extrapolators (or "Es" as they are called) are trained to think "outside the box" and not be bound by preexisting and unproven notions. Mark Clifton proposes the intriguing concept that mankind's beliefs about the universe are distorted by mankind's anthrocentric viewpoint. From the time of the first sentient human beings, he notes, the universe appeared to be centered on the individual human being, the sun revolved around the earth, etc. Slowly, Clifton notes, mankind has managed to correct this erroneous thinking. In the novel, that is the job of the "E" when dealing with problems.

The basic storyline here deals with a specific problem. An Earth colony on a distant planet loses communication with the Earth. A junior E is dispatched to deal with the problem. Earth Government factions want him to fail, as their first assault on the authority of the Es, who they resent for the fact that the Es are not under the authority of the Government. This all combines to make for a very interesting story with an imaginative ending.

Despite its intellectually-oriented theme, this is a well-written novel that is not at all heavy going for the reader. Clifton writes with clarity and simplicity. There is a solid plot and storyline here, and no shortage of both imagination and humor. I first read this book as a teenager. I recently picked it up again, and found that there was more here than I had appreciated at the younger age. This is a truly fine novel, with something to say, and does a superb job saying it.

This is one to keep in your personal library.

This science fiction novel starts a bit slowly, but is well worth sticking with. There is little overt action--space opera, this isn't-- but the novel presents an intellectual puzzle that challenges the reader as much as it challenges the "Extrapolator," a super-scientist (albeit a young, inexperienced member of the Extrapolator's guild) sent to an idyllic planet to find out why the Earth colonists' technology has failed them. The solution is nothing less than a new way of seeing the universe.

Science fiction used to pride itself on being a literature of ideas. It didn't always live up to that label, but Clifton's novel does admirably. Recommended.

This book, along with the Foundation Trilogy by Isaac Asimov, had a tremensoud impact on my life and philosophy as a child under ten. My mother had bought it for me for summe rreading. I never ever forgot aout the lessons it spoke to me and now, over 40 years later - Ijust had to read it again and add it to my library.

Check out my newest Thriller - Bound By Birth - by Randall R Wheeler
Bound By Birth

This book comes from the optimistic phase science-fiction went through, where aliens were benign, it was humans who were the problem but the problem is fixable by those aliens. The plot is largely a mechanism for delivering a specific world-view, which is spelled out very clearly many times. As such, the story can be simplistic in places. Arguably, the book fits into a special category of science-fiction termed "speculative fiction". These speculations are more philosophical than scientific, but it does make for a good read. It was definitely written with a libertarian mindset, so if that's not your cup of tea, this probably isn't a book for you. This is not High Adventure, but Intellectual Adventure, and those who enjoy such stories will likely enjoy this book.