The Man Who Used the Universe [Paperback]

Alan Dean Foster (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 1985

No one knows the true motives of Kees vaan Loo-Macklin. He’s a mastermind criminal who gave up his place at the head of the dark underworld to become a legitimate member of Evenwaith’s cities. But soon he was reaching out to powerful enemies—-the slimy aliens called the Nuel. Loo-Macklin negotiates an illusory peace agreement and gains precious alien secrets in the process. Is he after peace, power or pure evil? With enemy starships beginning to amass, we won’t have to wait long to find out.

--This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Warner Books (July 1985)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0446328197
• ISBN-13: 978-0446328197
• Product Dimensions: 6.5 x 3.8 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,866,311 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars enjoyable fluff, August 22, 2001

By 

Justus Pendleton (Colorado Springs, CO United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Man Who Used the Universe (Paperback)

If you approach this book as mindless entertainment you probably won't be terribly disappointed. Of course, neither will you be wholly satisfied. The book has an interesting premise but one that is perhaps impossible to deliver on fully.

The main character, Kees van Loo-Macklin is the most brilliant, ruthless human the known galaxy has ever dealt with. It is, of course, very difficult for an author to realistically portray characters who are smarter than themselves. Foster tries to get around this by rarely having Loo-Macklin in the narrative. Instead, most of the story is told from the viewpoint of the one alien who devotes his entire life to trying to understand Loo-Macklin. This has the unfortunate effect of making the alien Nuel seem more human than Loo-Macklin. So not only does the author seem unable to realistically portray Loo-Macklin, he further disappoints by giving us an alien that doesn't feel very alien.

The removal of Loo-Macklin from the main narrative, while understandable both because of the difficulties of accurately portraying such a supposedly brilliant and ruthless person and in an attempt to keep him as mysterious to the reader as he is supposed to be to the rest of the universe, ends up being the biggest problem with the book. The reader is simply left with very little reason to accept both Loo-Macklin's brilliance and motivation other than the author tells us so. The final denouement when the alien gets Loo-Macklin to answer the question, "Why?" ends up feeling, although not quite as empty and trite as Alfred Bester's The Demolished Man, not much better, either. Without having critical insight into Loo-Macklin a great many of the choices he makes don't make a whole lot of sense, even in retrospect.

One final complaint: the plotting was a little TOO pat. Loo-Macklin has schemes within schemes within schemes and they all seem to work out perfectly. It would have been nice to once, just once, have seen his first plan fail and have backup plans come into play. It would have been so much more impressive if Loo-Macklin's final scheme were realized even in the face of errors along the way.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A fun, fun read., January 24, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: The Man Who Used the Universe (Paperback)

A sci-fi story set in a non-Commonwealth(Flinx) universe,
it nonetheless has a rich and engrossing setting. (In fact,
it's a shame there weren't additional books set here) The main character is an enigmatic, brilliant, and incredibly driven man that we never really get to know. Instead, we perceive him through his interactions with a varied cast of interesting "side" characters. We track our mysterious and chillingly efficient protagonist as he works his way to the top, and along the way we get to look inside
the minds of the facinating supporting characters that his actions affect. Overall an engrossing, well-told story. One of Alan Dean Foster's best efforts.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Keeps Me Coming Back, June 12, 2000

By 

"qed7" - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Man Who Used the Universe (Paperback)

This book is one of my guilty pleasures. I have read it more times than I can count and am about to purchase my third copy, having worn out two previous copies. The main character is a man driven unlike any other. He seems at times to be in search of something (a theme I find in many of Foster's books), but in the process of his quest he reshapes the entire known universe. As intriging a read the twentieth time as it was the first.