The Genesis Machine
ISBN 0-345-27231-5 | | |
The Genesis Machine is a 1978 science fiction novel by James P. Hogan.
Background
Hogan discussed the background of the novel in his essay "Discovering Hyperspace".
Summary
The protagonist Bradley Clifford is a scientist drafted into military research for the American government. Finding the establishment repressive, he leaves and forms a team to develop his methods to create a means of controlling gravity. As this research is also of military importance, the team soon find themselves back under state control. They reluctantly agree to use their methods to create a new and devastating super weapon, though Clifford's ultimate product, while indeed being capable of producing a devastating quantity of energy, is designed with a less mercenary ambition: to give humanity the stars and permanently prevent the use of the new super weapons.
Reception
John Clute characterised the book as playing to Hogan's strengths, in particular "his hard-edged sense of how scientists think."[2]
Kirkus Reviews was mixed in its reception, complaining that "[t]he style often suffers from ... tone-deafness, and the political analysis is not penetrating enough to support all the noises of moral outrage" but concluded that "Hogan succeeds where so many science-fiction writers fail: in creating and skillfully developing a scientific premise with enough teeth in it to be a source of pleasure rather than embarrassment."[3]
The Genesis Machine won the Seiun Award for Best Foreign Language Novel of the Year in 1982.
References
- ISBN 0-553-27288-8.
- ^ "Hogan, James P." The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, 3rd Edition. Retrieved 7 February 2013.
- ^ "THE GENESIS MACHINE by James P. Hogan". Kirkus Reviews. Retrieved 7 February 2013.