Anchorite

by Randall Garrett, Phil Chenevert (Narrator)

Randall Garrett sticks a sharp needle into our government and society in this wonderful story. He projects the current trends towards paternalistic government into the future. Yes, we have attained a world government and everyone is equal whether they want to be or not; everyone is taken care of no matter how incompetent, stupid or sleazy they are and everyone is out to undermine everyone else. The author predicts (sadly only too well) what the trends of today will eventually produce if allowed to continue. But wait! there is hope in the asteroid belt where jerks and incompetents are weeded out by hard physical laws and only those who possess common sense and the ability to actually survive are allowed to govern. But will the Earth government allow this to continue? Of course not. Listen to this great story to have a peek into the future. Read in English by Phil Chenevert.

Genres: Fiction, Science Fiction

3 pages, Audiobook

First published December 21, 2007

About the author

Randall Garrett's full name was Gordon Randall Phillip David Garrett. For more information about him see https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?239

He was married to Vicki Ann Heydron

His pseudonyms include: Gordon Randall Garrett, Gordon Aghill, Grandal Barretton, Alexander Blade, Ralph Burke, Gordon Garrett, David Gordon, Richard Greer, Ivar Jorgenson, Darrel T. Langart, Blake MacKenzie, Jonathan Blake MacKenzie, Seaton Mckettrig, Clyde (T.) Mitchell, Mark Phillips (with Laurence Janifer), Robert Randall, Leonard G. Spencer, S.M. Tenneshaw, Gerald Vance.

Reviews

[Anders · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked this a lot. It started out thoroughly describing how to anchor an asteroid for later towing and processing. It felt like The Martian in that it seems quite likely this is how it would be done.
After reading the first few pages, I got the feeling that The Expanse series was a heavily inspired by this book.
Like many other books from around 1960, the book is more about different societies than awesome high-tech gear. It was a refreshing, but short, read.

[Vincent · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was expecting this to be about some exotic substance called anchorite, but it's actually a frontier-men-are-manlier-style story; not surprising since it was published in Analog.

[Alex W · Rating 2 out of 5]

Like spending three hours getting prattled at by eugenicists.

[Janelle]

Dnf. The Librivox narrator is normally excellent but this time some of the character voicing was annoying. I guess he was just following the text, so maybe I should blame the author rather than the narrator.

[Chris · Rating 2 out of 5]

Routine 1950s science fiction with a heavy libertarian propaganda element. Funnily enough the technique for asteroid mining may well be very accurate.

[Kyle Dougherty · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wasn't sure where this story was going at first, but I liked the socio-political topics discussed throughout.

[Katia M. Davis · Rating 2 out of 5]

An interesting vision of the future. I liked the way in which society was portrayed and the various philosophies. I did find the writing style extremely dry and boring though. Maybe this is the nature of these types of books as I've found quite a few older dystopian sci-fi novels/stories are simply great swathes of description and explanation of the world. Which is fine if you get super excited about world building, but if you actually want something to happen, then it is tedious.