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Kelly L
, February 24, 2012
(view all comments by Kelly L)
Gully Foyle is the Count of Monte Cristo in space. An ignorant brute of a man, he vows revenge when the S.S. Vesta ignores his plea for rescue from the derelict ship on which he is the only survivor. When he returns to Terra, at war with the Outer Satellites, he undertakes a scheme to figure out who is to blame, a plan that takes him to prison, to space, and to high society. Along the way, he runs into some of the richest men of the twenty-fifth century, men who have secrets they want kept, secrets that Gully Foyle doesn’t realize he knows.
This book, serialized in 1956, and sometimes called the greatest SF novel ever written, is a pulp classic. It’s got it all: sex, violence, tattoos, poverty and riches, radioactive hit men, telepathy and teleportation, circuses and freaks, femme fatales, and a tragic hero. (And an introduction by Neil Gaiman.) Though certainly a product of its time in its portrayal of some characters, it definitely merits inclusion on any true SF fan’s shelf. Because, frankly, while Gully Foyle isn’t always a hero to emulate, he does some fantastically cool stuff.
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