Ragged Astronauts [Hardcover]

Bob Shaw (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 310 pages
• Publisher: Baen (June 15, 1987)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0671656449
• ISBN-13: 978-0671656447
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.7 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,413,225 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Solid SF/Fantasy, May 29, 2002

By 

Jack Cade (New York, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Ragged Astronauts (Paperback)

This is a wonderful novel about twin worlds that share an atmosphere and what happens when the inhabitants of one world have to abandon it for the other via hot air balloon!! It contains suprising charactarizations and a very cool ecology all wrapped up in a fairly believable page-turning plot. What more could you ask for from SF? This is the first book i've read by Shaw and I now consider him to be one of the better SF/Fantasy authors.

His sentence by sentence prose is tight and scans easy. He knows how to describe a scene or scenes well without glutting the reader with oceans of words. He does fairly well with characters and although the protagonist is a bit of a Conan/type, we like him and find him fairly interesting.

I found myself remembering scenes days after I put the book down, and that's pretty damn rare. Check it out, if you can find it.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Solid Entertaiment, July 6, 2000

By 

R. Albin (Ann Arbor, Michigan United States) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Ragged Astronauts (Hardcover)

This is a good, entertaining fantasy/science fiction novel by an underrated author. Shaw wrote a number of good books and stories, many of which can be found in used bookstores. This is the first installment in a series set in an unusual alternative universe. In this world, pi is an even number and it appears that some aspects of physics are different. This is essentially an adventure story set in a solar system in which 2 planets orbit a sun as a pair and share an atmosphhere. The storyline concerns travel, by balloon, between the 2 planets. The basic idea is intriguing though the real differences in physics are never really explored but used a platform for a conventional adventure story. Worth picking up from used bookstores.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of my favorite SF Novels, June 28, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Ragged Astronauts (Hardcover)

Bob Shaw is on of the greates SF writers and is sorely missed. This novel is the first in a trilogy that represents some of his best work.