Conference noted::sf

978.0. "Budrys: "Falling Torch"" by SUBWAY::MAXSON (Repeal Gravity) Mon May 06 1991 14:17

    "Falling Torch", Algis Budrys, (c) 1990, Baen Books, $3.95
       ISBN 0-671-72033-3, cover art Wayne Barlowe
    
    In 2488 AD, Earth has spun colonies around her nearer stars, but
    the tired old Mother System is no match for a race of Invaders
    that come from the intrastellar darkness and win a brief but
    destructive war of occupation.  Earth president Ralph Wireman and
    his cabinet flee in a sublight ship and four years later, come
    hat-in-hand to the young colonies around Centauri A for help in
    overthrowing the invaders. The colonies, however, are in no great
    rush to engage a technologically superior enemy who is, so far,
    leaving them alone - and their ties with Mother Earth are distant
    ofter several centuries of independance.
    
    The Government of Earth in Exile meets fruitlessly in the shabby
    apartment of President Wireman for twenty-five useless years, and
    the dream of returning to Earth and winning her freedom grows fainter
    with each passing year, and as the cabinet ministers take day jobs
    as bankers, lawyers, and chefs, they put down roots in the new world
    that will someday be hard to break.
    
    But finally, a slight shift in posture by the Centaurian government
    offers the first substantial offer of aid for Earth's Government in
    Exile, now grown into old, timid men. Who will take weapons back to
    Earth and form a guerilla army of liberation?
    
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    Algis Budrys is a little known but highly skilled writer of Science
    Fiction, and this story is somewhat autobiographical, as the author
    concedes in his forward. A Lithuanian exile, Budrys notes that his
    homeland has been under the Invasion of the Red Army since 1948.
    His ease with his adopted tongue of English is transcendant, much like
    Jerzey Kozinski's (may he rest in peace); and his ability to spin
    solid and diverse characters is abundant. This is a fine story, thick
    with politics and surprises. Perhaps the best comparison I can draw
    is to another Soviet-sphere writer, Ayn Rand, in "Atlas Shrugged".
    
    Defintely worth a read, "Falling Torch" is a revised 1990 adaptation
    of a novella originally written in 1959 - but as always, the struggle
    for freedom from oppression knows no single era or season.
    
    This is a seven.
    
    - Mark Maxson,  6 May 1991
    

    *I* know him.  Although it tapers off in the end, I recommend 
    THE IRON THORN (published as THE AMSIRS AND THE IRON THORN).
    
    I think there's some discussion on it in this file somewhere,
    and I don't feel up to entering a review.  I will say, however,
    that the "footprints in the sand" opening for the "televised"
    Amsir Hon would stand up well in our cinema.
    
    							Don