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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great Work by an Underappreciated Author, November 1, 2004
This has always been one of my favourite Eric Frank Russell's, ever since first encountering it in my youth. It is set about five centuries in the future, and about four centuries after the discovery of an interstellar drive has allowed every religious, political or other discontented minority group to take off and find a world of its own. Only now, the bureaucrats and military brasshats back on Terra have decided that all the prodigals have been left alone long enough, and are sending out expeditions to weld the scattered worlds into one empire.
TGE is the story on one such expedition. A battleship, loaded with spacemen, troopers, civil servants and an Imperial Ambassador, visits three worlds. The first was settled by the descendants of exiled criminals, the second (this bit is hilarious) by a group of fanatical naturists who regard the wearing of clothes as obscene.
The final section (about half the book) had already been separately published as a novella _And Then There Were None_. Its settlers were and are non-violent anarchists, whose answer to any attempt to give them orders is an uncompromising "I won't". They never offer a hint of physical violence to the intruders - yet nonetheless succeed in frustrating them totally. A classic in itself.
All in all, it's a great read for anyone who likes to see authority taken down a peg or two. To be fair, authority, as portrayed here, is not all that malevolent or brutal, just stuffy, convinced that it knows what is best for everyone, and often inconsiderate to those who serve it. Sound familiar? The Ambassador is allowed the occasional telling criticism of the various utopias, but overall we are expected to cheer at his discomfiture, and most readers probably will.
Russell is, for me, one of the sf greats, and I often feel he isn't remembered as much as he deserves to be. For those new to him, TGE is an excellent place to start. If you haven't read it, do
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
"From now on I'm a Gand", September 12, 2003
If you haven't read Eric Frank Russell's ". . . And Then There Were None", you've managed to miss out on one of the genuinely great works of libertarian-anarchist SF (and incidentally one that helped to inspire James Hogan's _Voyage from Yesteryear_). I read it in my youth and I cannot possibly tell you how influential it was on me.This is the book it came from; it makes up about the latter third of the overall tale. The other two-thirds is very good too, and every bit as hilariously funny (especially the visit to the planet Hygeia). I won't tell you anything about it that could spoil the story for you. I'll just say that Russell not only envisioned a fully functional society on a foundation of complete individual liberty (based, by the way, on the exercise of volition and respect for each other's choices, not on "property rights") and explained how it might work, _and_ anticipated at least the flavor of much of the 1960s counterculture. The world of the Gands is my home planet. If you'd like to meet my people, read this book.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Brilliantly humorous and deeply thought provoking. GREAT!, November 21, 1998
By A Customer
I too had not read it in years, but it is still a surprisingly profound book, especially the part separated and sold as "And Then There Were None." It is a lot of fun, since Russell is able to write a slanguage no other writer I know of can match; it is stimulating, because no other writer, except maybe L. Neil Smith, has proposed a free society with such detail. It really seems possible.
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