Customer Reviews

Space Prison

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Tom Godwin (1915-1980) has a strange career as a sci-fi writer. He has written only three novels and around thirty short stories. With such exiguous production he managed to deliver an outstanding tale: "The Cold Equations" (1954) and a very readable novel: "Space Prison" (1958) (aka "The Survivors").
His works are very representative of the sci-fi from the `50s: not so great character development, action centered storyline, young adult readers oriented.
Nevertheless the present book managed to have a Gnome Press edition and at least two Pyramid Books edition, a good performance for a little known author.

The story starts when war between Humans and Gerns erupted. In this context a human interstellar ship with eight thousand colonists is captured. Half of the group is stranded in a hellish planet very suitably named Ragnarok.
The four thousand Rejects has to face 1.5 gravity pull, prowlers (a deadly mixture of wolf & tiger), unicorns (massive murderous bulls), Hell Fever, rotten weather (in short term and long term) amongst other "hazards".
Their numbers soon dwindle to forty nine!
From that point on generation after generation the Rejected, steel themselves with only one aim: take revenge on the Gerns.

One special attribute of this novel is, not being centered on a character but on successive generations of them, encompassing a two hundred years span.

This is a good sample of 50's sci-fi lit.
Reviewed by Max Yofre.

This is a fantastic book, but the formatting is terrible. All italics are rendered in straight text with dashes on either side. I thought I could put up with this but it gets really annoying after a while. The other Kindle version of this, costing 99 cents, is beautifully formatted so definitely go with that one.

It is certainly worth it!

My father read this to me as a kid over thirty years ago and so started my love of science fiction. I've always loved this book and still carry one of the first editions. I've probably read this book a dozen times over the years. I love the characters and how they survive their environment and finally get revenge on the Gerns. This is just a good old fashion sci-fi story.