The Long Run: A Tale of the Continuing Time [Paperback]

Daniel Keys Moran (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Quiet Vision Pub (April 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1576466396
• ISBN-13: 978-1576466391
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,654,704 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I don't give out 5-Star Ratings to just any book . . ., July 9, 2003

By 

indanthrene (Salt Lake City, UT United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Long Run: A Tale of the Continuing Time (Paperback)

What good things can't be said about this book? It is probably the single strongest cyberpunk novel ever written, with only Walter Jon Williams' Hardwired coming close. The action rocks, the humor is dark, sardonic, and counter-authoritarian, just the way I like it. The hero is strong but not unbeatable (if only his enemies could think like he did).

The hero of the story, Trent, is now in his early twenties, and is a professional high-tech thief and con-man extraordinaire, living his life this way as a statement of principal (and a matter of necessity) against the authorities who used a nuclear weapon to kill his small collective family years before, and in the process, kill hundreds of thousands of bystanders and render millions more homeless.

Trent is thrown from his life as a buccaneer among the underbelly of polite society (or so he sees himself) and is once again pitted against his family's old adversary. The two play cat and mouse for the rest of the book, with Trent one step ahead of his opponent, and thus the title of the book, "The Long Run".

I enjoyed reading every page of this book, I bought it long ago, in it's original paperback version. I loaned it to a friend, never saw it again, and did not hesitate to buy it once more after an extensive search. Now I have this version on order, and will consider that money well-spent, too. I've read the whole novel six times, and will read it many more times in the future.

Simply outstanding.

5.0 out of 5 stars My favorite SF book, May 2, 2011

By 

Dana Flood (Burke, VA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Long Run: A Tale of the Continuing Time (Paperback)

The Long Run is, in essence, a caper book in a science fiction setting. Like most soundbites, that doesn't remotely adequately explain it.

The world is vibrant and real in a way that most sci fi universes aren't. The writing is crisp, with excellent dialogue, unselfconsicously witty banter, and a solid plot. As a bonus, it features a pair of antagonists (Mohammed Vance and Melissa Du Bois) who are sympathetic characters rather than villains.

And, even having been written two decades ago, Moran manages to capture existential horror in four words: "The network was down."

Read it. Just trust me on this one. Read it.

4.0 out of 5 stars Fantastic Novel - corrected version though, July 22, 2009

By 

K. Franklin "KFranklin" (East Coast) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Long Run: A Tale of the Continuing Time (Paperback)

Daniel Keys Moran (DKM) launches straight into the story, which I love. And once the story gets going there are very few breaks in the action. The book is set in the Manhattan of the future (about 200 years out) but DKM writes as if it's modern day. What I mean by that is he doesn't explain the technology he invents for the future. A modern day author wouldn't write "The phone rang [a phone is a device that one holds to their ear so they can speak with a person any distance away]." DKM doesn't either, as the story continues you understand what these items are from context. Some readers might find this frustrating. Personally I felt like it made the world more real and that DKM thought his readers had the intelligence needed to figure it out. IE he didn't talk down to us.

I found the world very realistic. I like Star Trek and all that, but most future stories the world is either a post apocalyptic cesspool or a sterile everything is solved utopia. In TLR the world is exactly as it is today - corrupt politicians, good politicians, well intentioned government institutions gone awry etc. It might feel a little more apocalyptic because the main character is a thief who just moved away from the slums but the whole world isn't like that.

It is a classic anti-hero story: a guy who didn't plan to take a stand but wound up doing so anyway. He is a very principled bad guy, a pacifist who crusades against drug dealers, a sort of Robin Hood thief. The book isn't about any of those things, that's just a snapshot of what the main character is like.

I found it to be wildly entertaining, riveting, and witty. It is the second of 3 books. I would read this one first however. The first book, Emerald Eyes, is much harder to read (not as well written) when you go into it cold. If you read TLR first then you already understand the world and you are interested in the lives of the characters, so it's easier to get immersed in and care about the plot of EE. The Last Dancer is the third book. I personally thought it was the most boring of the three, but I am in love with the character Trent and he is barely mentioned in TLD, so that may be why.

I find all three to be a worthwhile read and would wholeheartedly endorse them. I hope you love them as much as I did.

On a related note, the author planned 26 (I believe) books in this series and references those other tales. He knows the birth dates, death dates, and major life events of all the characters he introduces and I believe his books benefit greatly from this. He has a real world and real characters in his head. Sadly of the 26 books he has, to my knowledge, only written these 3. Equally sadly about 20 years after writing The Long Run he went back and "improved" it on it's re-release. I did not find any of his changes to be improvements and indeed there are many typos in the new version. Presumably he started changing sentences and didn't finish or changed his mind. This is his corrected version, I would recommend you obtain the original. If you are a diehard fan of the trilogy (or are shopping for a diehard fan) than this version would round out the collection nicely but it is the minorly altered version.