Saturday, December 10, 2005
 
Book Report: Man Plus by Frederik Pohl (1976)
I bought this book as part of a sack of books for a buck on the last day of a library book fair in some rural southwestern Missouri county earlier this year. It's a Stated First Edition, woo hoo! Unfortunately, it's also a former library book, with all the stamps, scrawlings, and pockets, but a nice acetate cover anyway. Oddly enough, it's a former Granite City library book, which means this book has been to Springfield and back in its limited lifetime.

But I digress. This book describes the progress of the Man Plus program, a program designed to modify a man to survive on the surface of Mars and to get that man to Mars. It's a good old school science fiction piece, set in the near future for the time (the president in the book is the 42nd President, which we all know served in 1993-2001. It features an limited omniscient narrator who uses the third person the identify interested onservers who are not a part of the Man Plus project, but who direct it from behind the scenes. This compelling little mystery kept me turning the pages and offers some foreshadowing that keep the story moving.

Overall, a good book, the kind I ate up in my formative years to make me the lesser geek I am today.

And for those of you keeping score at home, this book marks my 94th read of the year. Unless I start hitting the coloring books, I won't make 100 this year, but my goal was 70, so I did well. Of course, I haven't met any of my other personal goals this year, and I likely won't read this many next year with the impending lifestyle change upcoming, but I'm rather pleased with my bookishness this year.


- posted by Brian J. @ 2:19 PM
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