I enjoyed this book. It lit up my imagination, lots of visuals came throughout the story. MacDonald had a writing style that I thoroughly enjoyed, many choice sentences that could have have stood completely alone, which in this day of age, where internet "memes" are all the rage, is a wonderful plus. thoughtful, artful construction of words. which MacDonald also communicates his respect for in the way he illustrates the topic of communication throughout this book. it was less alien and spacey than most SciFi of that time, perhaps not dressed in all the reliably cliche trends of SciFi of the times, as MacDonald recognized in the afterward, but the scifis that really try to put a mirror on sociopolitical aspects of our world always intrigue me. I'm interested in reading his other work, sci fi or no.
This would have been a two star read until the last 4 pages. It was an odd science fiction story that didn't really make sense to me, and I nearly gave up part way through. However, the last 4 pages pulled the whole thing together in a very clever way. Left me thinking about what an ingenious plot line it was. First published in the early 50's and re-released in the late 60's, this story is set in the late 1970's after a series of devastating wars on Earth. Interesting to look at the state of the world today, and how similar it is in many ways, to the world imagined from so many years earlier.
Do You like book Ballroom Of The Skies (1968)?
This 1952 novel is John D. MacDonald's second science fiction entry of the three he wrote in his long career. AT this point, he had been writing novel length fiction for two years and was still learning his craft.SciFi - After WWIII, the United States has been reduced to a second rate country, tensions in the world are high, and Dake Lorin has taken a year to help Darwin Branson work out a peace accords with all the nations. He witnesses Branson accept watered down conciliations from Irania and knows that will cause the other nations to start waffling. What caused this aboutface?
—Ed
