Customer Reviews

Michaelmas

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

 

 

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.

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.

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.

This book seems to come alive by being uncovered. I found a copy recently in a 2nd hand sale at my children's school. What a find. Having read cyberpunk books since the late 80's this one stands shoulder to shoulder with the best of Gibson and Stephenson. It isn't as 'techie' as either of those; but it captures the essence of the hidden forces which guide our mediocratic world driven at the speed of technology. It exists to be uncovered, ironically like the strands of the plot. If you get it, enjoy it.

Michaelmas is a journalist who secretly runs the world with the help of his supercomputer. Although science fiction requires the willing suspension of disbelief, that premise is a bit hard to swallow. Moreover, as you might expect from someone who feels it's his right to run the world, Michaelmas is a bit pompous and is accordingly, his good intentions aside, a difficult character to like. Nonetheless, Budrys does some interesting things with the character and with the story, which surrounds the discovery that a beloved astronaut, long presumed dead, actually survived a crash and has been secretly rehabilitated at a Swiss Clinic -- or has he? Michaelmas tackles the story in both his role as a reporter and as the Earth's self-appointed savior.

Budrys creates an intelligent plot that challenges Michaelmas with an interesting alien race and some unsavory bad guys. Michaelmas is a memorable character although the surrounding characters are less so. The intriguing ideas presented in Michaelmas, together with the strong writing, might make this Budrys' most satisfying novel, although in the end, I was more taken with WHO? Still, Michaelmas is a rewarding read. I would give it 4 1/2 stars.

I read this book when it first came out and was stunned and gratified by its challenge to pay attention in order to follow the story. Great story, great characters, great writing. Brilliant! My vision has deteriorated, so I would LOVE to be able to find it on Kindle's list. (And then I'd love to be able to afford Kindle. So far as I know, Amazon STILL refuses to give a break to the visually challenged who could most use it and least afford it. When I inquired, I was unceremoniously blown off. But I digress...)

It's the year 2000 and an the appointed leader of a, wait for it, joint soviet-US space mission goes missing. But, low and behold, he shows up in a Swiss sanatory, of all places, and this represents a mystery for Michaelmas, a self-appointed leader of tne no-longer-free world, who through his gadget Domino (get the pun? as in world domin-ation! I'm still laughing!) is able to hear and act on anything electric anywhere in the world. No lost signal problems, bro! No screen either, even as a screen-on-a-wristwatch would have been way more retrocool.
The thing goes on and on, through boring descriptions, a bit of technobabble, remembered conversations with this or other character, and so on and so for until it arrives to a fuzzy and confuse end. There's very little tension, no likeable characters (Michaelmas himself is a bore, and domino is like HAL being channeled by a sports commentator), and, at the end of the day, it's a novella unduly stretched to novel size. So don't commit the same error I did: if you find it boring after the first few pages, drop it. It does not get any better.