The Killer Thing [Hardcover]

Kate Wilhelm (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover
• Publisher: Doubleday & Company, Inc; 1ST edition (1967)
• ASIN: B00005XKUG
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.7 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,387,974 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Rape, murder and strip-mining - verboten even in outer space!, September 25, 2008

By 

Mitchell Glodek (New York, NY United States) - See all my reviews
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I picked this up at a used bookstore because I thought the cover was amusing, and liked the idea of some guy trapped on a barren planet, mercilessly hunted by a killer robot.

The novel, 156 pages in this 1969 paperback by Dell, is a sort of Frankenstein story, welded to an anti-imperialism story. It really is about a guy stuck on a desert planet with a killer robot chasing him, but most of the novel consists of the guy's flashbacks, plus scenes the guy could not have witnessed that tell the story of the killer robot's creation and education.

In the far future, Earth is the center of an evil empire that is expanding throughout the galaxy. The lead character is an officer in Earth's space navy, a force which conquers one inhabited planet after another, raping the alien women, massacring the alien men and children, and strip mining natural resources. The victimized aliens, a bunch of poets in touch with nature, are artistic, peaceful and beautiful, no match for the murderous Earthlings; Earthmen are trained from the age of 12 to kill, live in huge skyscrapers, have arranged marriages, and eat horrible-tasting food from plastic tubes. On one of the conquered planets an alien scientist builds a robot, who, like the monster in Mary Shelly's novel, escapes its inventor and learns by eavesdropping on humans. And what does it learn? To kill, of course! The robot goes on a murderous rampage and the main character pursues it, and the two end up on the barren planet stalking each other.

Not a bad book, but not special; there are certainly better adventure stories and better denunciations of Western imperialism out there. The style is not very good; the characters are obvious symbols (the reader will be surprised to learn that the naval officer is a killer who thoughtlessly follows orders - just like the robot!) and there are too many minor characters whom we meet briefly and are discarded a few pages later. There are also some tedious (I guess you could call them "psychedelic") dream/stream of consciousness sequences. And the plot is vulnerable to the charge that it employs a cliched deus ex machina; as in "The Day the Earth Stood Still," a new bunch of aliens, who are not only more beautiful than the Earthlings but have better forcefields and ray guns, appears and quarantines the Earthmen, forcing them to abandon their empire and not leave the limits of the solar system.

I can't recommend that anyone seek out The Killer Thing, but if you see one maybe you could pick it up to give as a gift to that friend of yours who still hasn't got the memo on how you are supposed to feel about rape, murder, and strip-mining.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great sci-fi, May 2, 2008

By 

I. Simoncini (Switzerland) - See all my reviews
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A genre classic. A man is being hunted by a killer machine after both crash-land on a desert planet.
Beautifully written thriller, contains one of my favorite book endings.
Highly recommended!