Rischio Calcolato

by Charles Eric Maine, Andreina Negretti (translator)

L'appuntamento è a Londra, attorno alla famosa fontana di Piccadilly Circus. Per riconoscersi, sia lui che lei, dovranno portare un fiore bianco e un fiore rosso, appuntati sul lato destro del vestito. Ma dietro questo incontro, non c'è un annuncio matrimoniale, e nemmeno una missione spionistica: c'è un esperimento condotto in condizioni disperate da due disperati, c'è quello che equivale a un duplice omicidio. Lui e lei, fuggiti da una civiltà in sfacelo, puntano verso una civiltà ignota, una città irriconoscibile, una fontana scomparsa da secoli: e lì, su quei gradini di pietra, fra pensionati, studenti, turisti, sperano di ritrovarsi dopo il grande salto. Un fiore bianco e un fiore rosso...

Copertina di Karel Thole

Genres: Science Fiction

168 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1960

About the author

Charles Eric Maine (pseudonym of David McIlwain; 21 January 1921 – 30 November 1981) was an English science fiction writer whose most prominent works were published in the 1950s and 1960s. His stories were thrillers that dealt with new scientific technology

Biography

McIlwain was born in Liverpool.

He published three issues of a science fiction magazine called The Satellite which he co-edited along with J. F. Burke. From 1940 to 1941, he published his own magazine called Gargoyle.

During World War II, he was in the Royal Air Force and served in Northern Africa in 1943.

After the war, he worked in TV engineering, and became involved in editorial work with radio and TV. During 1952, he sold his first radio play, Spaceways, to the BBC. Due to its popularity, it became a novel as well as a movie.

One of his best known stories, Timeliner, was about a scientist who experiments with a time machine, only to be maliciously thrust into the future by a fellow scientist who was having an affair with his wife. It was originally written as a radio play known as The Einstein Highway.

He died in London in 1981.
Bibliography

Spaceways (1953) (Variant Title: Spaceways Satellite)
Timeliner (1955)
Escapement (1956) (Variant Title: The Man Who Couldn't Sleep)
High Vacuum (1956)
The Tide Went Out (1958) (Revised in 1997 with Variant Title: Thirst!)
World Without Men (1958) (Revised in 1972 with Variant Title: Alph)
Count-Down (1959) (Variant Title: Fire Past the Future)
Crisis 2000 (1959)
Subterfuge (1959)
Calculated Risk (1960)
He Owned the World (1960) (Variant Title: The Man Who Owned the World)
The Mind of Mr. Soames (1961)
The Darkest of Nights (1962) (Variant Title: Survival Margin)
B.E.A.S.T. (1966)
Alph (1972)

Reviews

[Eden Thompson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Visit JetBlackDragonfly (The Man Who Read Too Much) at www.edenthompson.ca/blog

"For the man and the woman it was the only chance of escape together from the horror of atomic war. The risk was undeniable but the calculations were precise. Nothing had been overlooked - except the one point of detail that was to lead inevitably to the greatest horror of all..."

Wow, what a book. Calculated Risk was a random find and I now want to read all the novels of Charles Eric Maine. Maine is also the writer of the films The Electronic Monster (1959) and The Mind of Mr. Soames (1970).

In the devastated radioactive world of the future, Phillip and Kay fight for basic survival in one of the fenced in camps on the outskirts of a ruined London. The ramshackle corrugated tin shacks make up the primitive settlement, with searchlights, security teams and mutant patrols to keep the infected in. After the first hydrogen bombs exploded over London (and many other cities), the hard gamma radiation ravaged the bodies and minds of the survivors.
As a psychoneural scientist on the verge of a breakthrough just before the H-bombs, Phillip has a plan to escape with Kay. Through the night and the the perimeter barricades, they make their way to his underground lab. Using a compact nuclear generator unit and Loetze's experimental theory in psychoneural quanta, they take a calculated risk - they can send their minds back over 400 years to the twentieth century, inhabiting bodies already alive in that time. Thier current bodies will die and the minds of the new bodies will be replaced by theirs.
They are successful.
Philip wakes up in London in the body of young Nick Brent, with a beautiful fiancé and promising advertising job. He must learn his name, what money is, where he lives - all without arousing suspicion to those around him. He manages quite well and is pleasantly surprised by his new life.
When he looks for Kay at the agreed meeting place, with the agreed identifier, he does find her. She has been waiting for him for three months and is now in a new body - an aged, infirm and poor old woman! Does love cross all boundaries?

Nick/Phillip can either stay with his new young finance, job, and upper class life - or he can rescue Kay from loneliness and pain. She forces him to find a way to recreate the Loetze experiment, and Phillip sets out to reinvent his life as a scientist. Will he be able to reproduce the machine with current technology? Will they again be transported to another time? Seems like a simple premise, perhaps used before, but his style and attention to character makes it an enjoyable read.

The attention to scientific detail, even if it is fictional! - is engaging. I especially loved the explanations of cybernetic feedback of the four equations, the fourth being the imaginary number 'operator i', causing the neural data to move into the fourth dimension of time! A great combination of science, relationships, and action, the plot rolls right along building speed until the final exciting moments - a real roller coaster of emotions.

I haven't seen much online about Maine, except his Wikipedia page, and a blog by Lyn McConchie titled "Have You Overlooked Charles Eric Maine?". I hope with my reviews to throw some light on rare books and authors.
I read this in two days - one of those books you keep thinking about and can't wait to keep reading, and then literally on the edge of my seat, I was turning the pages to a finale I didn't see coming!
Shocking, exciting - A great science thriller! For me it was a real hit.

[Bruce · Rating 3 out of 5]

Compelling and entertaining pulp sf, filled with interesting moral quandaries. But if you are looking for a happy ending, look elsewhere.

[Francesco Granati · Rating 3 out of 5]

this was a really good one with quite the ending

[J McEvoy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Philip Calland and his mistress Kay escape the nuclear destroyed and despotic future by travelling back in time via a machine that allows consciousness to be imposed on a living being. The original inhabitant is overwritten. Philip finds himself in the body of a young and vibrant male, but Kay is not so fortunate. Thus begins a round of increasingly dynamic guilt trips, each one a little more disastrous than the one before, resulting, of course, in tragedy.

Maine is an accomplished writer - one of the best and most successful of his time - and here he does not disappoint. The absurdity of his premise is made purposeful by the dilemma of his characters; and while the 20th century remains but a shadow, Phil and Kay are seared upon it in a highly effective short-duration text. This one surely brings new and horrific meaning to the old trope of reversed polarity. Recommended.

[Elerwen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gli appassionati di viaggi nel tempo già conosceranno questo capolavoro.
Emozionante ti tiene incollato fino all'ultima riga per sapere come andrà a finire.