Book description
There are too many men in a world governed by women. They're bored and
disillusioned and often resort to 'suicide missions' - jobs in
experimental space research. Jorn applies for such a job, is selected
and trained as a navigator for the huge ship Javelin, the first to
implement the recently discovered faster-than-light Evrak Effect.
Before the Effect is tested, however, it is discovered that life will
be extinct within nine years; the sun is burning up, preparing to
explode. The Evrak Effect will save a small percentage of mankind, take
civilisation to a yet unknown planet. Production on new ships is given
priority, the ruthless selection of passengers begins. Twenty-five
billion people will be left behind.
Led by Javelin, thirty ships wander in space through many light years
of promises, lost hope and death for the original crew and passengers.
But life does survive, children grow and learn, to inherit the beginning
of another world, another promise.
James Blish has written a compelling novel of gigantic moral problems
and of people who learn to cope with their own limitations in order to
deal with them. James Blish (1921-75) studied microbiology at Rutgers
and then served as a medical laboratory technician in the US army during
the Second World War. Among his best known books are A Case of
Conscience, for which he won the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1959, and
the Cities in Flight sequence: They Shall Have Stars, A Life for the
Stars, Earthman Come Home and A Clash of Cymbals (published in the US as
The Triumph of Time). He also wrote almost a dozen books adapting
episodes of the Star Trek television series, and the first original
spin-off novel, Spock Must Die!
