February 2026 and March 2026 Book Clubs: The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bestar, and The Fountains of Paradise by Arthur C. Clarke

 February-

  

The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester 

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Category: Adult
Genre: Sci-Fi
Content: An off page rape, A rather gruesome murder

 

In Alfred Bester's classic tale of murderous revenge in the twenty-fifth century, Gully Foyle was a Mechanic's Mate 3rd class, a crewman with no education, no skills and no ambition. But he did want to live. And Gully Foyle had lived for 170 days, the only survivor of the wreck of the spaceship Nomad, drifting halfway between Mars and Jupiter, living in an airtight locker the size of a giant's coffin, when the spaceship Vorga passed by, leaving him to rot, giving him a compelling reason to make it back to earth.

 

This audio narrator I found for this on Youtube kept me listening but I did not enjoy this book. It's a sci-fi novel that was inspired by The Count of Monte Cristo so there's quite a bit of vengeance in the book. Where this diverges from The Count of Monte Cristo is that the main character here does some truly awful and unforgivable things including rape and murder. In my opinion it went too far. By the end when the main character suddenly realizes he was wrong and shouldn't have taken vengeance, too much damage is done and I just want him to pay for the things he's done. I also have a real problem with authors making rape victims develop romantic feelings for their rapists. It happens in this book, although it's subtly done, so some readers may not catch it. Despite not liking this I can give it credit for being ahead of it's time in some ways, and keeping my interest despite, for me, being an unenjoyable story. Thus the two star rating instead of one star.

 

 

 

 

March-

 

The Fountains of Paradise by Arthur C. Clarke 

My rating: 1 of 5 stars

Category: Adult
Genre: Sci-Fi
Content: Clean as far as I read

 

Renowned structural engineer Dr. Vannevar Morgan seeks to link Earth to the stars-through the construction of a space elevator connecting to an orbiting satellite 22,300 miles from the planet's surface. The elevator would lift interstellar spaceships into orbit without the need of rockets to blast through the Earth's atmosphere-making space travel easier and more cost-effective.

Unfortunately, the only appropriate surface base for the elevator is located at the top of a mountain already occupied-by an ancient order of Buddhist monks who strongly oppose the project. Morgan must face down their opposition-as well as enormous technical, political, and economic challenges-in order to make the project successful. 

 

This ended up being a DNF for me. Right off the bat I didn't care for the narrator, but I'm not sure a better narrator could have saved the story. It was just so uninteresting. Not much happens in the first half of this book, and the story as a whole seemed to be trying to pound the science versus god theme into our heads, with atheism being the clear preference here. I wouldn't have minded as much if it hadn't been so heavy-handed. Overall, the book seems disjointed with some things thrown in that are never really developed. 

In general, classic sci-fi hasn't worked for me, although there have been a few exceptions. I did like Rendezvous with Rama, despite some flaws. I also enjoyed The Rolling Stones by Heinlein. But I've found myself consistently disliking the way the female characters are portrayed in classic sci-fi. I also dislike the outdated takes on certain things, although it can be interesting to see how far off, or how close they came in their speculations of the future. Most of the time I just find the way they're written to be rather boring.