Customer Reviews

Sidney's Comet

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

 

 

I found this odd book on someone's favorite book list ... Since that person liked a lot of other books I liked, I figured I'd give it a look. What I found was one of the most bizarre futures (600 years hence) imaginable. I couldn't figure out if Herbert was trying to make a twisted anti-consumerism Brave New World or what, but all of a sudden I realized - this is a ... good story. The premise, about a "garbage comet", was really almost incidental to the story and should not be considered a negative.

This book is not only good and witty sci. fi., it is also aparody of the American obsessiopn with consumer's society and endlesscommercials. How would you like to live in a society where great majority of people has brain implants who emit signals for example of being itchy when there is a commercial for spray to ease itching, and symptoms subside as soon as you order the spray etc.

Why a publisher would choose to reissue this book is beyond me. I suppose it might have been more amusing in the mid `80s when it first came out, but even back then I'm afraid I would have found its treatment of those with physical disabilities ("cappies", from "handicapped") just as offensive, even if intended as some further indictment of American society (to go along with the anti-consumerist slant throughout).

Make no mistake: this is not science fiction. It's heavy-handed farce with some nifty neato gismos and a spaceship or two; a series of episodes from "The Jetsons" retold through a bad hangover.

Read this one only if you want to see what Brian Herbert's style was like when he was only influenced by his father and had not yet fallen under the shadow of Kevin J. Anderson; back when, apparently, he could still write.