The man who pulled down the sky [Hardcover]

John Barnes (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover
• Publisher: Congdon & Weed; First edition. edition (1986)
• ISBN-10: 0865531854
• ISBN-13: 978-0865531857
• ASIN: B000K1MT6W
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)

More About the Author

My thirtieth commercially published novel will be coming out in spring 2012. I've published about 4 million words that I got paid for. So I'm an abundantly published very obscure writer.

I used to teach in the Communication and Theatre program at Western State College. I got my PhD at Pitt in the early 90s, masters degrees at U of Montana in the mid 80s, bachelors at Washington University in the 70s; worked for Middle South Services in New Orleans in the early 80s. I do paid blogging mostly about the math of marketing analysis at TheCMOSite and All Analytics. If any of that is familiar to you, then yes, I am THAT John Barnes.

There are also many Johns Barneses I am not. I am not the British footballer, the Australian rules footballer, the former Red Sox pitcher, the Tory MP, the expert on ADA programming, the biographer of Eva Peron, the authority on Dante, the mycologist, the travel writer, the guy who does some form of massage healing that I don't really understand at all, the oil executive, the film historian, or that guy that Mom said was my father. I do wish I'd written that book on titmice, though.

I used to think I was the only paid consulting statistical semiotician for business and industry in the world, but I now know four of them. So now I have a large market share of a growing field.

Semiotics is pretty much what Louis Armstrong said about jazz, except jazz paid a lot better for him than semiotics does for me. If you're trying to place me in the semiosphere, I am a Peircean (the sign is three parts, ), a Lotmanian (art, culture, and mind are all populations of those tripartite signs) and a statistician (the mathematical structures and forms that can be found within those populations of signs are the source of meaning). The branch in which I do consulting work is the mathematics and statistics of large populations of signs, which has applications in marketing, poll analysis, and annoying the literary theorists who want to keep semiotics all to themselves.

I have been married three times, and divorced twice, and I believe that's quite enough in both categories. I'm a hobby cook, sometime theatre artist, and still going through the motions after many years in martial arts.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Praise for John Barnes, July 23, 2008

By 

Connemara (Lombard, IL) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The man who pulled down the sky (Hardcover)

The Man Who Pulled Down the Sky was John Barnes debut novel, chosen by Isaac Asimov to showcase raising stars of science fiction.

I was never a fan of this particular genre of science fiction, but was pleasantly surprised by how easily it was to be lured into the story. Barnes weaves todays political and social history into a not so unreal futuristic drama. His characters are truly believable with all the emotional pitfalls and frailties we all have. The story line flows smoothly, introducing a new realm that is very credible and thought provoking.

If you are looking for horrific life forms as a story line, you won't find it here. Barnes is the thinking mans science fiction writer, who produces a novel which slides you into a world that you take for fact that what you are reading can and will be in our future. Does H. G. Wells ring a bell?

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Praise for John Barnes, June 27, 2008

By 

Connemara (Lombard, IL) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The man who pulled down the sky (Hardcover)

The Man Who Pulled Down the Sky was John Barnes 1986 debut novel, chosen by Isaac Asimov to showcase rising stars of science fiction. I've never been an avid reader of this particular genre of science fiction, however I was pleasantly surprised by how easily I was lured into the story. Barns weaves todays political and social history into a not so unreal futuristic drama.

Sure anyone is capable of dreaming up horrific ideas of other life forms, but this isn't his style of writing. Barnes is the thinking mans science fiction writer. You truly believe that what you are reading can and will be in our future Does H. G. Wells ring a bell?