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dustydigger
Posted 2015-03-17 1:26 PM (#9907 - in reply to #9162)
Subject: Re: The Definitive 1950s Reading Challenge
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In 1953 Campbell produced The Black Star Passes fix-up novel of three adventures of some young, brilliant and adventurous scientists, but the original stories had been written back in 1930 when he was a 19 year old MIT engineering student, and he specifically wrote for highschool maths and science students - the geeks! The book is full of interminable indigestible (to me, anyway, without a science background) chunks of scientific explanations, the characters are interchangeable, only differentiated by their names, the dialogue is very dull, and all in all the book would not be worth bothering with except for the descriptions of the aliens, which are interesting in that Campbell at least makes the effort to show how their appearances were influenced by their environments. Apart from these gleams of interest the book was dull, stodgy and almost unreadable. I read it for the 1950s Defining Books challenge, and I am afraid that this is one that is only surviving because of Campbell's illustrious and influential editorial career, otherwise it is very slight

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