What do you think?
Rate this book
Target
Eine wissenschaftliche Expedition, die auf dem unerforschten Planeten Target einen fremdartigen "Wald" erkunden soll, sieht sich zunehmend mit unlösbaren Rätseln konfrontiert. Die inneren Spannungen in der Gruppe, der Widerstand des "Waldes" und die Inkompetenz des Kommandanten treiben die Geschehnisse in die Katastrophe.
- GenresScience Fiction
121 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1998
1 person is currently reading
8 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
March 19, 2017
Target is about failure. This becomes clear on the very first page when the narrator starts his tale of how he ended up stranded on the planet Target without any hope of rescue. He's now waiting for his batteries to run out. He is VED, a scientific expedition robot with human traits causing in him something akin to emotions. He regrets, he has a sense of guilt. His staying in the same place where the last of the human expedition members died is motivated by an equivalent to compassion.
The failure is manifold. The failure of the group of four humans and the VED to act as a team. A team leader greedy for power, a psychologically instable scientist, a traitor being a member of an alien human race. It's not clear if the mixture of the group was set up this way to ensure failure. There are indications that support for the expedition after its launch was cut off intendedly. The VED makes mistakes as well due to his pseudo-human nature instilling him with a sense of pride that restrains him from establishing communication with a military brothel satellite in the orbit around target. Finally, it's a failure to understand what the expedition is facing on Target. What is this forest they are investigating? The strange creatures they encounter? Is it a single organism evolving extremely rapid?
Target disregards conventional SF tropes. No positive heroes, no won battles, no extrapolation of trends, no resolution. Instead of escapism the reader is confronted with human failure in an SF setting.
The failure is manifold. The failure of the group of four humans and the VED to act as a team. A team leader greedy for power, a psychologically instable scientist, a traitor being a member of an alien human race. It's not clear if the mixture of the group was set up this way to ensure failure. There are indications that support for the expedition after its launch was cut off intendedly. The VED makes mistakes as well due to his pseudo-human nature instilling him with a sense of pride that restrains him from establishing communication with a military brothel satellite in the orbit around target. Finally, it's a failure to understand what the expedition is facing on Target. What is this forest they are investigating? The strange creatures they encounter? Is it a single organism evolving extremely rapid?
Target disregards conventional SF tropes. No positive heroes, no won battles, no extrapolation of trends, no resolution. Instead of escapism the reader is confronted with human failure in an SF setting.
Displaying 1 of 1 review