We Who Are About To [Hardcover]

Joanna Russ (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover
• Publisher: Gregg Press, Boston, Massachusetts (1978)
• ASIN: B002JN0I8A
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars For those who believe in survival of none, February 25, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: We Who Are About to (The Gregg Press Science Fiction Series) (Hardcover)

I was young when I first read "We who are about to..." Too young, really, to grasp the full concept of life and death, the two main currents that lie within the book.

A cruise vessel of the future manages to miss the point in space that it was attempting to fold to, spinning amazingly far off course and crashing into a planet that is in no way guaranteed not to kill the survivors. A politician, an upper class family, a "jock", a young sex object, a washed up waitress, a supposed tactical expert, and a musician (our heroine) all help make an ensemble from Hell. Nothing goes according to protocol, and chaos ensues as the musician experiments liberally with her psychoactive drugs.

While in a science-fiction setting, Ms. Russ manages to maintain a surprising lack of the technological; the underlying concept of the story being Gilligan's Island on Acid. As Social Darwinism takes its course, the value of life itself is called into question.

This is not a book for those who are set in their ideas of God and living; this is for those who remain unsure as to what lies in store for them, and what may be the meaning of life.

8 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars wonderfully subversive, July 7, 2002

By 

anna genoese (brooklyn, nyc, usa) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: We Who Are About To . . . (Paperback)

If I had read this book when I was fifteen, I do believe my life would have been entirely different. This is wonderfully subversive stuff, addressing all the problems any science fiction fan has with the "starship separated from civilization" plot, with a protagonist you will love to be appalled by.

10 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the best SF novels I have ever read., June 9, 2005

By 

Patrick Nielsen Hayden - See all my reviews
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This review is from: We Who Are About To... (Paperback)

John W. Campbell's formula for great science fiction was, famously, "ask the <em>next</em> question." That's exactly what this bracing, challenging, bleak, funny, deeply subversive novel does, elegantly undercutting decades of unexamined science-fiction adventure cliches.

Recommended for anyone who ever wanted to lay into Compulsory Optimism with a meat ax. "The human race is fine. We're just not there."