The Man Who Melted [Paperback]

Jack Dann (Author), Robert Silverberg (Introduction)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 2, 2007

Introduction by Robert Silverberg

The Man Who Melted is a warning for the future. It is the Brave New World and 1984 for our time, for it gives us a glimpse into our own future—a future ruled by corporations that control deadly and powerful forms of mass manipulation. It is a prediction of what could happen...tomorrow.

The Man Who Melted examines how technology affects us and changes our morality, and it questions how we might remain human in an inhuman world. Will the future disenfranchise or empower the individual? Here you’ll find new forms of sexuality, new perversions, new epiphanies, and an entirely new form of consciousness.

Would you pay to "go down" with the Titanic?

In this dystopia the Titanic is brought back from the bottom of the sea and refurbished, only to be sunk again for those who want the ultimate decadent experience. Some passengers pay to commit suicide by "going under" with the ship.

The Man Who Melted has been called "one of the greatest science fiction novels of all time" by Science Fiction Age and is considered a genre classic. It is the stunning odyssey of a man searching through the glittering, apocalyptic landscape of the next century for a woman lost to him in a worldwide outbreak of telepathic fear. Here is a terrifying future where people can gamble away their hearts (and other organs) and telepathically taste the last flickering thoughts

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Jack Dann is a multiple-award-winning author who has written or edited over seventy books, including the international bestseller The Memory Cathedral; The Silent, a novel of the Civil War; The Rebel: An Imagined Life of James Dean; and a number of short story collections. Dann lives in Australia on a farm overlooking the sea and "commutes" back and forth to Los Angeles and New York.

Product Details

• Paperback: 274 pages
• Publisher: Pyr; Reissue edition (January 2, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1591024870
• ISBN-13: 978-1591024873
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,023,366 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars Australian SF Reader, July 31, 2007

By 

Blue Tyson "- Research Finished" (Legion clubhouse) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Man Who Melted (Paperback)

In a country that is falling apart through economic stratification, the pressures build into outbreaks of telepathic ability and rioting mobs converge after this happens. Retaliation is military.

Amidst all this, those with money do as they have usually done, and a man is obsessed with finding a woman that he had a past relationship with. This gives him problems relating to those currently around him.

The book incorporates variations of 'Blind Shemmy' and 'Going Under', in one of his former menage-a-trois lovers going organ gambling, and then trying to duck those after him by disappearing on a Titanic voyage.

5 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Surreal nightmare of Multiple Narratives, June 25, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The Man Who Melted (Hardcover)

This novel is an overlooked and underappreciated classic of science fiction. Every sciecne fiction fan should read this book. The tale is about one man's odyssey acros a post-apoclyptic landscape of the near-future. Sounds like standard fare. This rendering of a science fiction staple far surpasses many others. The nightmare landscape is truly surreal in all the definitions of the word. In The Man Who Melted Jack Dann shows talent that raises him far above the editorial responsibilities he was later to embark upon. Find it any way that you can.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars dark science fiction thriller, January 28, 2007

By 

Harriet Klausner - See all my reviews
(#1 Hall OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Man Who Melted (Paperback)

Artist Raymond Mantle is in France searching for his vanished wife Josiane, who disappeared during the first wave of the psychic Great Scream. Raymond does not miss his spouse as he has a lover, Joan, but hopes by finding her he can take back the crater sized gaps in his memory tied to her existence with him, apparently stolen from him by her during the Great Scream. All he has is videos of them together left behind when she became a Screamer channeling visions that turn into deadly realities as the world no longer has physical meaning or spiritual connection.

Raymond follows a clue that takes him to the Crying Church where he plans to hook into the mind of a dying Screamer to determine whether Josiane has stepped to the other side. As he does that with Joan looking more and more like his 3d videos of Josiane, Raymond begins to see the "dark spaces" of the minds of those dead and becoming telepathically connected to Joan and a friend Pfeiffer as reality twists in the winds of his mind while which sanity is blown away.

This is a reprint of a dark science fiction thriller starring an unlikable hero who garners audience empathy due to his plight anyway. The story line grips readers who wonder what Raymond is finding out about truth, ultimate reality and the essence of being in a world where hooking in can mean losing one's mind. Fans who appreciate a cerebral thought provoking tale will want to read this character driven surreal novel that challenges basic acceptable concepts starting with I think therefore am I going deeper into what makes a person.