Customer Reviews

Manifest Destiny

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

If you liked "Pulp Fiction" or Bradbury's "Illustrated Man", you'll love this book. Whilst "Enemy Mine" is an excellent story, the weaving of many short stories to give a timeline of what came before keeps me interested to this day. I read this book for the first time approximately twenty years ago and have had two copies "borrowed" from me since then. I came here to buy TWO more so I would be assured of having this excellent book around.

I enjoyed all of the short stories in this book, although my favorite was The Jaren. I was hooked immediately by the characters and their emotions. In all of these stories, "man's inhumanity to man" transcends men to include other species from other planets as I believe it would if we settled elsewhere. Prejudice, racism, and man's belief in his own superiority are the issues encased in four completely different stories about life on other planets. Barry Longyear makes each character easy to empathize with and care about. I loved these stories. I was so glad to find the original "before the movie" version of Enemy Mine in this collection and I loved the story as much as I had loved the movie.

Introduced to this volume in 1982 or so, I found myself enraptured by the eloquence of Longyear's story-telling. While "Enemy Mine" stood out as the obvious leader amongst 4 loosely connected short story themes, "The Jaren" still remained my favorite, becoming something for inclusive-worldview SF that _Dances With Wolves_ had become for compensatory Native American studies. (In fact, I've always considered that "The Jaren" had a greater cinematic appeal than E.M., what with the paratrooping exoskeletons and band-of-brothers alien tribal loyalty, and all--but that's only me.) I would rank the stories by the order which they appear in the book ("The Jaren", "Enemy Mine", "Savage Planet", "USE Force"), and frankly, the momentum is lost in the last story, which, to me, is the volume's greatest disappointment. Over the years I have re-read the stories many times, and, like other reviewers, I have loaned my copy out only to lose track of it until Amazon. For SF fans, this is a volume worthy of reading at least once; it's an overlooked collection. (And, despite my fondness for Wolfgang Peterson's films, I'll always consider the motion picture version of "Enemy Mine" so completely inferior to Longyear's story and atmosphere, it's almost painful.)

I can't check the copywrite dates to be sure. The only one I have left is 'Manifest Destiny'. I assumed it came first, as 'Enemy Mine' fits its place so comfortably in this collection illustrating the evolution of human's from elitist conquerors to an enlightened race who are willing to defend the rights and independence of other races...even against the depredations of fellow humans.

Much as I loved 'Enemy, Mine', the story that I found most inspirational was 'Savage Planet'. And that was long before I considered teaching as a profession.

This book is hard to find, or I'd have replaced it more often than twice. It does tend to walk away - in my case, usually with students I've given it to. Now I've found a supply, it will happen more often.

Longyear's "Enemy Mine" is such a wonderful piece of work on its own - I don't see why it had to be mucked up like this. This book expands on the war presented in E.M., making it one story in a framework of humans attempting to settle the universe, repeating history in the process. Two short stories and a framing sequence have been added which, while not too bad, are nowhere near the standard of the original. By putting E.M. in this context, its impact is lessened.