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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3.0 out of 5 stars
One of Brown's weaker efforts,
By
This review is from: Rogue in Space (Mass Market Paperback)
Fredric Brown wrote some great science fiction. Unfortunately, it does not include Rogue in Space. While I wouldn't be as harsh on this short novel as Mike Smith was (below), I can't honestly give it more than three stars. Except for the settings (Mars, asteroid belt, etc.) this is more of a crime novel than a sci-fi epic. The protagonist, Crag, is an antisocial misfit who hates women and sells his services to the highest bidder. The first half of the book is more interesting than the second, which revolves heavily around Crag's drinking sprees and attempts to get into trouble. And the book's credibility is not enhanced by Brown's often-poor grasp of science -- e.g. two-day trips from Mars to the asteroid belt. Rogue in Space is readable, but well below Brown's two classic SF novels, What Mad Universe and Martians, Go Home.
2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
In the future, not much will happen.,
By
This review is from: Rogue in Space (Mass Market Paperback)
Sigmund Freud would have a field day with this book--any psychology-minded individual would--because it is so loaded with latent homoeroticism and homophobia that it's kind of funny--and definitely awkward. The main character, "Crag," openly hates all women and homosexuals, gets into fights with men that are described almost as dances of violent love, and goes out of his way to tear up gay pornography, threaten gay men, and kick in TVs showing sexually suggestive content.
The author describes men with descriptions that stop just short of abject adoration and seems to have a lot of personal issues to work through, no doubt amplified by the somewhat stifling decade in which he wrote this, the 1950s. Which is fine. We've all got issues, so, whatever, but it just makes the finale in which the main character may or may not get the girl--and his alleged yearning for her that precedes that finale--seem a little less than convincing. I bought this book because it has a great opening description of Albuquerque, New Mexico in the 23rd Century--as a machine-controlled city with a spacemen's district, the 2nd largest city in the solar system, a city where everyone walks around nearly naked (as if the always-nearly-nude local celebrity Don Schrader ultimately has some influence on the rest of the populace), but the story itself is only okay, and kind of lifeless. It has to do with a sympathetic killer being hired to steal a device from Mars, and much of the action takes place on Mars and on a conscious and God-like asteroid that becomes the main character's friend. Honestly, not too much happens, and the author alternately overdescribes and describes too little, including days of a mostly eventless stay in a hotel, and leading up to what you'd think would be huge scenes that get quickly summarized in a paragraph. Also, compared to even what life is like today, so much of this book is just not that imaginative--it's basically like the 1950s but with rockets and cities on other planets, different drugs and more open sexuality. I mean, seriously: 200 years in the future and doctors are still smoking as they examine patients? The writing is only okay, but the book is readable, and will probably go by quickly for you. If you're a resident of New Mexico, consider getting this for its description of our state in the future--but if you're not, I think you could easily find something better.
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