Night of Power [Mass Market Paperback]

Spider Robinson (Author)

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback
• Publisher: Berkley (1986)
• ASIN: B001E39JCW
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Night of Power too close to the truth., August 26, 1996

By A Customer

This review is from: Night of Power (Hardcover)

This is one of Hugo and Nebula award winning author, Spider Robinson's earliest books. The American-born author, now living in Canada paints a grim but possibly accurate picture of the possible future between white and African Americans. As with all of Robinson's books, the characterisation is excellent and the plot well developed. An excellent story that holds you until the last page.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not the Original Book, August 31, 2007

By 

P. Meese "rufflefern" (Oregon, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Night of Power (Mass Market Paperback)

I read this book in a college "Cultural Anthropology" class around 1986 or so, the same year "Eyes on the Prize" was airing on PBS. Both the book and the documentary series were real eye-openers for a small-town middle-America kid! I never forgot the book and its disturbing content, especially the very real statistics and news items with which the author preceeds each chapter. While this 2005 mass-market edition is still a good book, it is NOT the same book I read in college. At first I thought my memory was responsible for what felt like significant changes from the story I recalled, so I dug out my old, dog-earred copy and compared the two. Then I found a tiny footnote on the title page of the newer Baen edition: "Newly revised by the author for this edition." OH. This is not just an updating of research , statictics, etc. Some of the revisions are drastic and definately weaken and dilute the book and its message. I doubt I would have recalled the book so clearly for 20 years if I had read this edition first. I wonder what prompted the author to so dramatically alter the original?

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Grim but spideresque outlook on the future of race relations, September 9, 2005

By 

MixMeister - See all my reviews

This review is from: Night of Power (Mass Market Paperback)

Robinson had written this in the mid-eighties, when Reagan's policies seemed to indicate a less "melting-pot" but rather WASP-oriented domestic policy. When this book went out of print, it also seemed that the idea had gone out of fashion, and it read more like a fantasy instead. It appears this book has gone to "in print" status in a very timely manner - the criticism on the treatment of the people who were affected the most by the Katrina desaster seems to echo in the story of those who would not believe peaceful co-existence between the races was possible without segragation in the territorial sense. The thrilling story of a man who would come to New York City because his black wife, a dancer, would be able to dance once more in public before age would make her retire, is made all the more poignant because recent advances in technology would make success of a revolution much more likely. So go totally unprepared, read this story with as little information as possible, and you will enjoy it the most. Spider Robinson was in a peak of his creativity (in the 80s eclipsed only by "Mindkiller") when he wrote this one.