Feddit.onlineThis was my absolute favourite book for part of my childhood
RanaldClouston
This was my absolute favourite book for part of my childhood. Does it hold up? Not really, sadly, as today I see clunky prose and dialogue, a ridiculously arrogant protagonist in an all-male cast, and repetitive action. Oddly I've read other #AEvanVogt in recent years and enjoyed them more - I appreciate his surreal side these days, which isn't featured so strongly here. This book is apparently important to the history of #SciFi , as the 1939 short story Black Destroyer which was expanded into this novel is considered by some the start of the genre's Golden Age, so that adds interest, as does the nostalgic factor of trying to remember exactly how this story plunged so deeply into my brain when I first encountered it. For all its flaws, there is *something* mind expanding and exciting here in its story of human explorers meeting increasingly powerful and threatening alien races. I can't go back to who I was when I loved this book, but it was still fascinating to revisit. #Bookstodon @bookstodon
@RanaldClouston @bookstodon I'm in a similar boat! I read a lot of Vogt's novels as a teenager and quite enjoyed them. Then a couple of years ago I found some in a second hand store and thought I'd have another read.
Oh boy. Toxic masculinity, sexual assault depicted as harmless (almost a joke!), women as incidental objects in the protagonists life which, iirc, ends up with him being on an alien world with a harem of beautiful women to "start a new civilization" with.
Ok, so, ignoring the grossness of all that, the story itself was ok with some interesting ideas and scenes. But geez you gotta work to ignore all the grossness.
So I'm in the position of enjoying the fact I have a small collection of nostalgia, with the sadness that I'm no longer inclined to read them for risk of wrecking the good memories.