Michaelmas [Hardcover]

Algis Budrys (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 253 pages
• Publisher: Berkley Pub. Corp. : distributed by Putnam (1977)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0399116532
• ISBN-13: 978-0399116537
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.4 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,884,279 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Michaelmas the precursor to Cyberpunk, January 4, 2000

By 

hyphenated "hyphenated" (Kuranda, Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Michaelmas (Hardcover)

So why did this one lapse out of print? This is a book I bought for 95 pence in the UK in 1979, and it wipes the floor with a large number of the 80's Cyberpunk generation output.

Michaelmas is one of the icons of his time, in a more automated but recognisable future that is a backdrop to events, not a substitute. He is one of the faces that report the news; a travelling reporter with enormous cachet and friends throughout the business. He is also the creator of a machine, Domino, which has evolved from a means of getting free trunk calls to his wife into something teetering on the brink of self-awareness. Between them, for all intents and purposes, they run the world; only the world doesn't know it - a benign nudging and manipulation rather than an overt exercise of power.

Then a news report starts engaging Michaelmas in paranoia; a swiss Nobel-prize-winner reports an astronaut believed lost in a shuttle explosion is alive, recovered and sitting in his sanatarium. The politics of space-flight are fully engaged, and as Michaelmas pursues his suspicions through the labyrinth more and more off-key notes are struck.

It's an excellent novel, well ahead of it's time, has a fascinating central character, numerous interesting protagonists, leaves you wanting more, and asking what-if questions for a year or two. If you see it, buy it. If you're in publishing, reprint it.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wow!, July 14, 2003

By 

Matthew A Callahan (Richardson, TX USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Michaelmas (Hardcover)

I am completely in agreement with my single fellow reviewer here. I read about this book in a recent Gene Wolfe reprint and decided to take a look. I found a beaten up copy at a local used book seller. That's the only place I've been able to locate it.

I won't go into details of plot because the other review already did, but WOW! This novel will knock your socks off. It never insults the readers intelligence. It makes you work for it. I don't like to be hit over the head by the novelist and Budrys never does that. He forces you to pay attention to the words and the action, to draw your own conclusions about some things.

This book made me feel hopeful. The character of Michaelmas felt so real, that I couldn't help but look out at our planet and breathe a sigh of relief that such wonderful people are not beyond our imagination.

Thank you Algis Budrys. One of the greatest experiences I've had in reading.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the best self aware computers depicted in the SF&F literature., January 1, 2010

By 

Joan White "whiteunicornbooks" (Dallas) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Michaelmas (Paperback)

Title: Michaelmas
Author: Algis J. Budrys
Edition Reviewed: Paperback, Berkley Publishing Corp., July 1978

Although the book only covers a short span of time, a lot is packed into that one day. So, don't be surprised if, after reading the book, you feel it might have been several weeks. Michaelmas is an independent TV Reporter, and Domino began as a device so that Michaelmas could talk to his wife without charge.

The action begins with the announcement by Reuters that Walter Norwood, an American astronaut, is not dead. Since the fact that Norwood is still alive when he can't be, at least according to Dominio, and that fact may interfere with some of the plans Michaelmas has, he is off to Switzerland from his apartment in New York to find out what is going on. What he finds out is that he and Dominio may not be the only ones running the world.

A very good story teller, Algis Budrys is more about the characters than about the gadgets. You even think of Dominio as belonging to the human species on Earth, although I am sure he would deny it strongly. There are moments where you just know he is still a kid growing into his job with Michaelmas as his teacher and telling him, for example, that he has to develope some intuition or maybe Dominio bragging a bit saying he has, at least a little. There doesn't appear to even be a real villain in the story. Just a group with a different view of what the world should be like and opposing, maybe without even knowing it, the way Michaelmas and Domino think the world should evolve.

Algis Budrys has written a delightful book and I am fully happy with the book. It is another of those that I would recommend to almost everyone I know and definately to the public at large. BUT, if it could have been done, I sure would have liked to have more on Michaelmas and Dominio.