 | |
| Author | John Boyd |
|---|---|
| Cover artist | Paul Lehr |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Science fiction |
| Publisher | Weybright & Talley, New York |
Publication date | 1968 |
| Publication place | United States |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover & Paperback) |
The Last Starship from Earth is a 1968 science fiction novel by John Boyd, and is his best known novel.
The novel is set in a dystopian society in the very near future. Although it is not obvious at first, this is also an alternate history story.
In this world, instead of preaching peace and forgiveness and being crucified, Jesus became a revolutionary agitator and assembled an army to overthrow the Roman Empire, establishing a theocracy before being killed by a crossbow, which becomes a religious symbol similar to the cross in our timeline. The regime established by Jesus continues to the present day, having dominated the entire world and mingled with scientific ideas and advanced technology, including a Church led by an AI pope.
Marriage and mating are related to genes, so there is a strong system of castes.
The central character is Haldane IV, a mathematician who forms a caste-forbidden relationship with Helix, a poetess. He also becomes interested in investigating Fairweather, a famous mathematician who lived shortly before his time, and his son Fairweather II, whom he discovers led a failed rebellion.
Haldane and Helix are discovered and there is a show trial, which results in Haldane being exiled to "Hell" (a planet orbiting a distant star), where he meets Fairweather II and is reunited with Helix. It is revealed that Helix is Fairweather II's daughter; Fairweather II needed a mathematician for his time machine, and Helix was sent to Earth to engineer the exile of a mathematician to pilot an experimental time machine. Fairweather II makes Haldane immortal and sends him on a mission to go back in time and kill Jesus under his new name, "Judas Iscariot".
In an epilogue, Haldane captures Jesus, puts him in the time machine and sends him back. He returns to the present day, which is much more similar to our timeline, and meets a girl who is very similar to Helix.
The book is supposedly the first in a trilogy.[ citation needed ] The other books appear to be The Pollinators of Eden , and The Rakehells of Heaven.
Robert A. Heinlein said, "It belongs on the same shelf with 1984 and Brave New World ," and the Los Angeles Times noted, "In the literate tradition of Huxley, Orwell, and Bradbury, it is a work of extraordinary impact." Joanna Russ, in her review of the book in 1969, was highly critical and wrote, "I forgive Mr. Boyd the anguish his novel caused me and hope he will eventually forgive me the anguish this review may cause him, but for Berkley there is no forgiveness. Only reform. Don't do it again." [1]
Spider Robinson, however, praised the novel as "delightful, with a rigorously consistent internal logic that doesn't really become apparent until the very last chapter." [2]
Joanna Russ was an American writer, academic and feminist. She is the author of a number of works of science fiction, fantasy and feminist literary criticism such as How to Suppress Women's Writing, as well as a contemporary novel, On Strike Against God, and one children's book, Kittatinny. She is best known for The Female Man, a novel combining utopian fiction and satire, and the story "When It Changed".
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Naomi Mary Margaret Mitchison, Baroness Mitchison was a Scottish novelist and poet. Often called a doyenne of Scottish literature, she wrote more than 90 books of historical and science fiction, travel writing and autobiography. Her husband Dick Mitchison's life peerage in 1964 entitled her to call herself Lady Mitchison, but she never did. Her 1931 work, The Corn King and the Spring Queen, is seen by some as the prime 20th-century historical novel.
In Christian hamartiology, eternal sin, the unforgivable sin, unpardonable sin, or ultimate sin is the sin which will not be forgiven by God. One eternal or unforgivable sin, also known as the sin unto death, is specified in several passages of the Synoptic Gospels, including Mark 3:28–29, Matthew 12:31–32, and Luke 12:10, as well as other New Testament passages including Hebrews 6:4–6, Hebrews 10:26–31, and 1 John 5:16.
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The Xeelee Sequence[a] is a series of hard science fiction novels, novellas, and short stories written by British science fiction author Stephen Baxter. The series spans billions of years of fictional history, centering on humanity's future expansion into the universe, its intergalactic war with an enigmatic and supremely powerful Kardashev Type V alien civilization called the Xeelee, and the Xeelee's own cosmos-spanning war with dark matter entities called Photino Birds. The series features many other species and civilizations that play a prominent role, including the Squeem, the Qax, and the Silver Ghosts. Several stories in the Sequence also deal with humans and posthumans living in extreme conditions, such as at the heart of a neutron star (Flux), in a separate universe with considerably stronger gravity (Raft), and within eusocial hive societies (Coalescent).
Up the Line (1969) is a time travel novel by American science fiction author Robert Silverberg. The plot revolves mainly around the paradoxes brought about by time travel and is considered an example of the more sexually-permissive era of late 1960s American science-fiction, a reflection of the counterculture of its day. It was nominated for a Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1969 and a Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1970 but lost to Ursula K. Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness both times.
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Anthropology is the science of man. It tells the story from ape-man to spaceman, attempting to describe in detail all the epochs of this continuing history. Writers of fiction, and in particular science fiction, peer over the anthropologists' shoulders as the discoveries are made, then utilize the material in fictional works. Where the scientist must speculate reservedly from known fact and make a small leap into the unknown, the writer is free to soar high on the wings of fancy.
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