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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Good novel, bad book,
By A Customer
This review is from: This Island Earth (Forrest J Ackerman Presents) (Paperback)
This Island Earth, the novel, is indeed different from the movie in the second half -- better, in my opinion, although less special-effects-driven. I don't remember the movie explaining the title, either; Jones is comparing Earth to the Pacific islands in World War II where the fighting washed back and forth, and the inhabitants were dragooned into helping build airstrips and such for either side. Here it's a war involving numberless galaxies (where the movie's was just between two planets).The novel is good, but the book is terrible. Pulpless.com's typesetters put in more typos than Raymond F. Jones could have made in a couple of centuries of writing. And the editors let it all slip by. But I don't believe there was any mass-market paperback, so this is the only game in town.
8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Great '50s science fiction,
By A Customer
This review is from: This Island Earth (Forrest J Ackerman Presents) (Paperback)
I was born in 1947 and first read this book when I was in junior high school. I also saw the movie around the same time (say, age 10-13), but it was not as good as the book. Leonard Maltin said of the movie something like "lacks the existential ending of the book." This *really* made me want to reread the book. About 10 years ago, I found a used copy, read it and loved it, then gave it to a friend. So I was thrilled to find this re-issue, produced by Forrest Ackerman, who was the literary agent of Jones and several other science-fiction writers of that era. Jones has a dark view of humanity. As someone who came of age in the '60s, I'm surprised to hear characters in the book (written 1952) express some of the thoughts my friends and I thought were so new during the anti-war movement. Jones is also intrigued by randomness and statistics. This fascination figures in the ending of this book as well as in the theme of his "Non-statistical Man" (also quite worthwhile). As for the existential ending, well, I agree, until we get to the last sentence, which Sartre never could have written. But read it and decide for yourself. Once you do, hook up your interociter and we can trade thoughts.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An imaginitive SF Classic! Dated, but has aged well.,
By Roger J. Buffington (Huntington Beach, CA United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER) (VINE VOICE) (REAL NAME)
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: This Island Earth (Paperback)
This is a true Science Fiction classic. I first read it when I was in Middle School, and it made quite an impression on me as a fantastic story with a wild premise, well-told. Picking it up thirty-five years later, the novel has lost none of its punch or impact. This is a true science fiction classic.The premise of the novel is simple enough: Earth is being visited by warring factions of a monstrously large inter-galactic conflict. Each side views Earth as an obscure planet of limited importance, much as the US Navy might have viewed certain obscure islands in the Pacific during the Second World War. The protagonists become caught up in this conflict in a very interesting way. More would be telling, but suffice to say, this is a really interesting story, and its premise has not been done better (to my knowledge) in any science fiction novels that have come later. This one is highly recommended to anyone who enjoys good science fiction.
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