Customer Reviews

Tom Paine Maru - Special Author's Edition

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4 star:		(1)
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I purchased a copy of this when it was only available in digital form, and am convinced that it is one of the great space operas of our time. Note, I did not say science fiction - I said SPACE OPERA - this story is larger than life, grand, and speaks to great themes that most science fiction is too timid (or pessimistic) to address any more. Not only that, it presents a coherent ethical and social view of the universe that is far more hopeful and compelling than anything we see from the average writer these days.

If you enjoyed the original Star Wars, or remember Robert Heinlein with fondness, this is a book you simply will not be able to put down. Read this book, and enjoy a universe in which governments are treated as the vile, parasitic cancers that they truly are.

Regardless of whether you're a Blue state koolaide drinker or a Red state iconoclast this book is more than just science fiction. It lays bare the useless and destructive nature of politics in general and government in particular. Thought provoking and argument starting from cover to cover.

A darn fine read indeed!

Remember watching Star Trek for the first time? Or Star Wars?

Back before infinite special-effects budgets, when actual actors brushed dirt off their clothes when they fell down.

I wanted to join Star Fleet, even if it meant wearing a red shirt. I wanted to fly the Millennium Falcon, even if it meant being on the edge of broke or running scared once in a while. Still do.

This is how _Tom Paine Maru_ feels to me. Real people, doing stuff I can see myself doing in their place.

Not just see myself doing, the world (multiverse?) Smith has put together is one I would jump into with both feet without hesitation if the opportunity came up.

Tom Paine Maru is one of those books that once you get started you won`t want to put it down until you are finished.
The basic story is about two men from a barbarous authoritarian culture come into contact with a starship from earth. The two men
are quite different. One is of the nobility and one is a peasent/servent. Their society has been cut off from earth for hundreds
of years, and they experience major culture shock. Earth culture, and the culture aboard the starship is very different from
anything they have ever experienced. A free society where individual rights and individual freedom has become almost the
cultural religion.
The peasent suddenly discovers he is a free man and the other discovers that not only does his nobility mean nothing in this new
culture, they are openly hostile to the very concept of it. He is a free man, but basicly has become a bum without any useful
skills in a high tech society where everyone is equal and expected to pull their own load.
Both have major problems adapting, but from different ends of the spectrum.
A good read with much food for thought long after the book is finished.

I'm a huge Heinlein fan, and have read just about everything in the genre ... Weber, Ringo, etc. That being said, I just couldn't get into this book. It was dissociative writing at it's finest, with little of the libertarian satire wrapped in an engrossing story I have found Smith's other books to be. I had to put it down twice but returned each time to finally reach the end.
Definitely not what I was hoping for!

This book was only OK. It's pretty much all about Libertarian Philosophy with a space ship as the setting. Very little story to it.

This is not great literature, but it us lots of fun. The point of the story is to showcase someone from a "conventional", feudal background who is thrown into one of Smith's no-holds-barred ultra-libertarian societies. A pleasant conceit.