The Black Corridor

Sailing to Utopia #2

by Michael Moorcock, Bob Haberfield (Illustrator)

The Black Corridor is a science fiction novel by Michael Moorcock, published in 1969, first by Ace Books in the USA, as part of their Ace Science Fiction Specials series, and later by Mayflower Books in the UK.
It is essentially a novel about the decay of society and the deep personal and social isolation this has caused, and tells of a man fleeing through interstellar space from Earth, where civilisation is collapsing into anarchy and wars. The author uses techniques ranging from straight narrative to entries in the spaceship's log, dream sequences and sixties-style computer printouts.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Fantasy, Horror, Dystopia, Novels, Science Fiction Fantasy

126 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1969

About the author

Michael John Moorcock is an English writer primarily of science fiction and fantasy who has also published a number of literary novels.

Moorcock has mentioned The Gods of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Apple Cart by George Bernard Shaw and The Constable of St. Nicholas by Edward Lester Arnold as the first three books which captured his imagination. He became editor of Tarzan Adventures in 1956, at the age of sixteen, and later moved on to edit Sexton Blake Library. As editor of the controversial British science fiction magazine New Worlds, from May 1964 until March 1971 and then again from 1976 to 1996, Moorcock fostered the development of the science fiction "New Wave" in the UK and indirectly in the United States. His serialization of Norman Spinrad's Bug Jack Barron was notorious for causing British MPs to condemn in Parliament the Arts Council's funding of the magazine.

During this time, he occasionally wrote under the pseudonym of "James Colvin," a "house pseudonym" used by other critics on New Worlds. A spoof obituary of Colvin appeared in New Worlds #197 (January 1970), written by "William Barclay" (another Moorcock pseudonym). Moorcock, indeed, makes much use of the initials "JC", and not entirely coincidentally these are also the initials of Jesus Christ, the subject of his 1967 Nebula award-winning novella Behold the Man, which tells the story of Karl Glogauer, a time-traveller who takes on the role of Christ. They are also the initials of various "Eternal Champion" Moorcock characters such as Jerry Cornelius, Jerry Cornell and Jherek Carnelian. In more recent years, Moorcock has taken to using "Warwick Colvin, Jr." as yet another pseudonym, particularly in his Second Ether fiction.

Reviews

[Lizz · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don’t write reviews.

“Space is infinite. It is dark. Space is neutral. Stars occupy a minute amount of space. They are clustered a few billion here. A few billion there. Space does not threaten. Space does not comfort. Space is the absence of time and of matter.”

So begins our journey with Ryan, traveling to an Earth-like planet at almost the speed of light. The only person awake on a ship of the few who’ve managed to escape their destroyed world. Have they really broken free?

Ryan is one of the classic unreliable narrators. (My favourite is still Hildred of “The Repairer of Reputations” by Robert W. Chambers). Ryan is paranoid, narcissistic and agoraphobic, like most of the people in the dying society of early 21st century Earth. Yet he claims something which sets him apart from his fellow man: rationalism. Ryan relies on this quality heavily as things become more desperate. I will say no more as not to ruin the story for you.

[Craig · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is my favorite of Moorcock's science fiction novels; it's a somewhat obtuse and ambiguous New Wave journey of darkness and depression, with quite a dollop of social and political criticism and observation, yet it's never boring and keeps you hoping for a happy turn you know is never going to come. But you keep hoping anyway. The writing is succinct and somewhat experimental, but never leaves you lost and confused as many of the similar novels from the U.K. from the late 1960's did. It doesn't fit into his multiverse continuity in any integral fashion, so it can be read as a fast stand-alone. Some few of the lines from the book were recorded by Hawkwind as Space is Deep, and is an excellent soundtrack to read by. The cover of this first edition is a very fitting work by Leo & Diane Dillon.

[Nate D · Rating 4 out of 5]

How many books did Michael Moorcock write in 1969? I've only read three of his and they're all from that year. The haphazard psychedelic/apocalyptic 60s spy meltdown The Final Programme (not so great), his set of psychotropic stories The TIme Dweller (decent), and now, at last, this actually quite fantastic paranoiac look at the twin dissolutions of order in world in and self.

The elegant parallel structure follows two time-lines. First the descent of England into xenophobia, racism, and paranoiac self-destruction, as people run out of scapegoats for world problems and turn on eachother. A dominant thread here seems to be that amid millennial overcrowding, essentially no one can bear the presence of anyone else, and the merest brush with a neighbor can prove disastrously disturbing. Juxtaposed, the utter isolation, loneliness, and creeping madness of a space mission attempting to escape from this scenario, from the perspective of the sole man awake and attending to 12 hibernating friends and family on a 5 year mission.

This is my hope for lost new wave sci-fi oddities like this -- at best they're an excellently compelling vehicle for both social commentary and formal experimentation. And at last Moorcock seems to be proving to have been worth my interest by delivering both of these in an eerie evocation of internal and external collapse, the maddening vast emptiness of space, the haunted unease of dreams, unreliable narration, inventive typography, unstable narrative -- basically all the things that drive my reading. All, of course, behind an utterly ludicrous pulp cover, which could be seen as the icing on the hidden depth of the experience.

[Shauny Free Palestine · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is my second Moorcock novel after Elric of Melnibone. Whereas Elric was fantasy, The Black Corridor is Science Fiction.

Society is collapsing. A man decides to take his family on a space ship in search of a new planet that takes 5 years to reach. The rest of the family are in hibernation, with him by himself for far too long. The dark, cold and lonely aspects of space have never seemed so terrifying. Few novels conjure up so much paranoia as this one.

The first half features a few too many flashback and dream sequences, but once the second half begins and the difficulties of being isolated for so long occur, the events becomes relentlessly creepy and compelling.

Some dated politics aside, there’s plenty here that’s timely, particularly regarding triblism, populism, a mistrust of authority, and previous generations fucking it up for everyone. Great stuff.

It’s quite interesting to find out Moorcock popularised the term “Multiverse”. Many of his book series are intertwined, with heroes and villains hopping from one world to the next. I plan to read them all. It’ll take me a while as he’s written more than a hundred books!


Series to Read:

•Elric
•Corum
•The History of the Runestaff
•Kane of Mars
•Sailing to Utopia
•The Roads between the Worlds
•The Dancers at the End of Time

[Timothy Mayer · Rating 4 out of 5]

A strange and short little book, Black Corridor is one of the best examples I can find of New Wave science fiction. Although the late writer Thomas Disch dismissed a lot of the New Wave as the triumph of style over substance, this particular school of SF literature did blow the cobwebs out of the older forms, obsessed with aliens and blasters. And the New Wave writers actually talked about sex, something difficult to find in much SF before 1964.
Written with his wife Hilary Bailer, Moorcock's novel concerns the trials of Ryan, a British businessman who has managed to place his family and himself on the sole starship to leave Earth. Ryan is the only person awake for the journey to a planet in another solar system which may be habitable. The other crew members, mostly his family and relatives, are in suspended animation for the duration of the trip. But Ryan is starting to have problems with the isolation and loneliness. He's beginning to hallucinate. He's also having nightmares about the Earth they left behind.
And the Earth left behind is not a pretty place. Ryan had been a successful toy manufacturer there, but shortly before the events in the novel, Earth began going insane. Mass paranoia began breaking out everywhere, infecting the population at large. Large rallies take place in the streets by a group called The Patriots, who want all aliens forced out of the country. By aliens, the Patriots mean the non-English kind, but some of them believe nonhuman aliens are in our midst. Eventually the world breaks down into a variety of mini-states, with different parts of England bombing each other.
Considering when the book was published, the terrestrial portions of The Black Corridor seem to reflect the current racial tensions which raged through parts of England at the time. Immigrants from the Caribbean were appearing n substantial numbers. Racial riots broke out in several major cities. Politician Enoch Powell had already made his infamous "Rivers Of Blood" speech. I can't help but wonder if these parts were penned in reaction.
Much of the book is also written in a stream-of-consciousness format. Ryan isn't sure if he's back on Earth or if he's having another nightmare. Many of the pages are written in typographical art, which can be a little bit confusing if you're used to everything being created with a word processor.

[Jonathan Norton · Rating 2 out of 5]

Preposterous slice of 70s apocalyptic psychosis, notable for being written in 1969, before the calamities of the Heath government. In this disintegrating world Britain is divided into warring city-states, Balham is an anti-feminist enclave, the French are dropping H-bombs on us and our top politician thinks there are alien infiltrators everywhere. A demented small businessman decides the only rational course of action is to seize the interstellar spaceship built in Siberia and fly to another planet with his in-laws. It doesn't go very well.

With hindsight we can now see this as a prophecy about Brexit.

[David Sodergren · Rating 5 out of 5]

I only read this book because I felt like a quick and easy read, not realising what a powerful, scary and provocative story it was going to be!

In the 40 years since it was written, The Black Corridor's seemingly far fetched science fiction has edged ever closer to chilling reality, with a hopeless dystopia of riots, desperate violence and the rise of extremism.

Meanwhile, this is intercut with what I can only describe as The Shining in space, as one man grapples with isolation and possible madness.

It's a stunning book.

[Tony Calder · Rating 4 out of 5]

Written at a time when the new wave of sci-fi (of which Moorcock was a strong contributor) was starting to gain significant traction, this novel exemplifies much of what it was about. This is not a space adventure where our heroes blast the bad aliens and save humanity (and the good aliens), rather it is a dark psychological story (almost more a horror story), which looks at the character flaws in humanity that would lead (45 years later) to Brexit and Trump.

It's a challenging book to read - it's hard to find much uplifting in this story, and the ending is, quite deliberately, left open and with several unanswered questions. It is an excellent example of new wave sci-fi, and very different from the fantasy stories that he is better known for (although they also bucked tradition for the time).

[Snakes · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this. The Earth becomes rife with tribalism and factions so a few families escape in a spaceship and head for Barnard’s Star where there is theorized to exist an earth like planet. One man is awake while everyone else rests in hibernation. He battles loneliness and paranoia. He starts hallucinating and using antipsychotic drugs. He’s dreaming and having nightmares. Or is he? Perhaps the ending was a bit too open since I was hoping for more explanation, but one of the few books I’ve read recently that I was always eager to pick up again.

[Gardy (Elisa G) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Un libro dagli inaspettati picchi horror.

pagina 15 - "e fingi di niente"
pagina 29 - "adesso che la droga (drug!) cominciava a fare effetto"
pagina 76 - "cerca di fare all'amore con lei"
pagine 93 - "la sagoma aggobbita della moglie"
pagina 112 - "non ha proprio nessuna voglia di pigliare quella droga (drug in inglese)"
pagina 113 - "i rumori negli orecchi continuano"
pagina 158 - "me non mi hai presa"

Oltre ai raggelanti picchi della traduzione di Gabriele Tamburini, troverete uno dei primi esempi di romanzo breve incentrato sugli effetti deleteri che la solitudine e la vastità dello spazio possono avere su un essere umano. Aspettate poi di vedere quelli provocati da una traduzione così irritante da leggere…

[Murph · Rating 3 out of 5]

This read like a psychological horror in space with two interwoven storylines (one of which working much better than the second.) Had some genuinely tense and scary moments and kept me questioning how much of what I was reading was real and what was due to the unreliable narrator.

3.5 stars

[Márta Péterffy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jajj....
Azaz: jó könyv ez, nem az űrutazás a lényeg, hanem ez egy vízió az emberiségről, jövőról-a totális elidegenedésről. Jól megírt, csak számomra borzalmas-valóban szörnyen fekete "folyosó".
Nem, és nem fogadom el, hogy ennyire és így legyen, hogy így lássam-láthassam a jövőt.
Kibontok egy üveg bort.

[Kuszma · Rating 5 out of 5]

Az én kezdetleges sci-fi definícióm szerint (sci-fi: amiben űrhajó van) ez vígan az: a nevezetes égi jármű a Föld irányából tart valami állítólag lakható bolygó felé, fedélzetén egy halom hibernált emberrel, és egy ébren lévővel, aki felügyeli az egész miskulanciát, miközben meglehetősen száraz beszélgetéseket folytat a hajó fedélzeti számítógépével. Az űr ebben a kontextusban tulajdonképpen metafora – a végtelen magányé, ami lassan kiszörpölgeti az emberből a józan észt –, az űrhajó pedig ezen belül a koporsónyi színpad, ami a szereplő(k)nek játszani rendeltetett. A regény másik fontos kérdése pedig az, vajon hogyan jutottak el hőseink odáig, hogy egy ilyen minimum kockázatos vállalkozásba kezdjenek. Ennek keretében pedig Moorcock méregerős visszatekintő fejezetek hadában mutatja be, ahogy a földi társadalom atomjaira hullik a nacionalizmus, az idegengyűlölet* és az általában vett emberi ostobaság hármas csapásai alatt, olyan helyzetet teremtve, amiből (talán) megmenthetik a szereplők a puszta bőrüket, de hogy az emberségüket nem, az biztos.

Olyan könyv ez, aminek a kérdései egy szemernyit sem koptak az eltelt kb. ötven évben. Sőt. És attól tartok, nem kopnak még el egy darabig. Engem lenyűgözött.

* Ha már idegengyűlölet. Érdekes volt látni, Moorcock mennyire máshogy kezeli az „idegen” fogalmát, mint A. C. Clarke. Clarke esetében ugyanis az „idegen” szó jelentéstartalma a feltérképezendő szóhoz közelít, és a szereplőkből kíváncsiságot vált ki. Ezzel szemben Moorcocknál a szóhoz az elpusztítandó kapcsolódik, tehát a szereplőkből gyűlöletet vált ki. Ez egyben remekül megmutatja a két szerző közötti különbséget: hogy Clarke-nál az emberiségből akár még lehet is valami, Moorcocknál viszont az egészet megette a fene. A szerző pedig egy politikus szájával zseniálisan fogalmazza meg, hogyan is kell felismerni az idegeneket: „Első látásra megismeritek őket. Mások. Más a szemük. Kételkednek, amikor ti biztosan vagytok a dolgotokban. Ők azok, akik összefognak az idegenekkel meg a kétes jelleműekkel; gyanú árnyékét borítják arra, amiért mi küzdünk. (…) Akik nevetnek, és gyanúsan sokat mosolyognak. Élcelődnek, hogy rossz fényt vessenek eszményeinkre. Ők azok, akik félreállnak, amikor terveket készítünk elő a haza megtisztítására.” (81. oldal) Ebbe nekem a hátam beleborsódzott. Talán ez a pár mondat billentette fel öt csillagra a könyvet.

[Brent · Rating 4 out of 5]

Allegedly co-written with his wife Hillary Bailey, Michael Moorcock’s 1969 standalone sci fi title Black Corridor is a clever, albeit pulpy, evocation of modern right-wing paranoia. Some of this would have seemed preposterous even a year before the January 6, 2021 domestic terrorism event at the US Capital. But now the women-hating “Patriots,” who see aliens everywhere they look, seem heartbreakingly believable. Without giving too much away, the alien paranoia extends even beyond the Earth. The space ship Hope Dempsey offers little respite from the Patriots' bad vibes and alternative facts. As good as the New Worlds-published novella Behold the Man, Moorcock’s time travel story from the same year, which won a Nebula Award.

[Laura Barnes · Rating 5 out of 5]

An absolutely phenomenal, astounding piece of work. If you look at many famous pieces of pop culture from horror, fantasy and sci-fi, you will hear echoes of Moorcock beneath the surface.

The Black Corridor follows the famously pragmatic Ryan as he flees an increasingly xenophobic and chaotic planet earth. With incredible control, Moorcock tracks his sanity (or lack thereof) using both words and space. The political message of this book is astute, cutting, and ahead of its time. You can't logic your way out of moral responsibility. You can't thrive under tyrants without becoming a tyrant yourself. If you think you are immune to misinformation, prejudice, and mob mentality: you aren't.

[Stephen Rowland · Rating 5 out of 5]

A brief but intense and harrowing little novel. Very Malzbergian. Totally unlike the other Moorcock science fiction novels I've read.

[Simon Mcleish · Rating 4 out of 5]

Originally published on my blog here in December 2001.

The wonderfully atmospheric first few paragraphs of The Black Corridor immediately make it clear what the purpose of the novel is to be. Science fiction of the fifties and sixties in particular treat space travel as a glorious adventure, mankind (almost always male) against the stars. Here, though, the pioneer is a selfish, paranoid man who wants to save himself from the worldwide descent into 1984-style dystopian states.

Ryan is the only member of his family not in hibernation as the ship travels to Earth-like planets around Barnard's Star; he carries out the checks needed by the ship's systems during travel. In the meantime, he experiences nightmares about the past, to the extent that the reader begins to doubt whether the spaceship is real or the hallucination of a lunatic in an asylum.

The Black Corridor is a clever psychological study, told in the form of a classic science fiction story like those which Robert Heinlein specialised in at the time. By the way it is written, it exposes the limited assumptions about people that such stories made (though that was not their purpose - their authors sought to share their enthusiasm about space travel).

[Paulo "paper books only" · Rating 3 out of 5]

So a Moocock book. After reading the review at Graeme's Fantasy Book Review I decided to buy and read it. In my opinion the book was not as good as he portrayed it. The book is divided in two parts... the first part is the ramblings of Ryan (our main protagonist) as he travels into another galaxy to settle there with his family. Inbetween chapters we learn about their society and why they must do the voyage. The book is quite easy to read but there are a lot of references of Moorcock own political ideology. That put me off my interest. I must say that I am most displease with all the authors out there simple minded that can don't know anything else than write novels that are more than propaganda fiction. Ken Macleod is another example. It just upsets me. I try to read them but they are so single-minded in their own convictions that they made an image than everything else is just stupid. Bah.

Returning to this novel the ending was quite interesting... It makes you think what a heck happen? Were the pods with only corpses? Weren't there any bodies at all? Was this all the fruit of his own imagination? I think that was the best part of the novel.

In the end I was not displease with everything but those "teachings" he gave about society was excusable.

[Jim Jones · Rating 3 out of 5]

Moorcock gets about half of the future right in this 1970 novel set in 2005. What struck me as most prophetic was that people hole up in their apartments with wall-sized screen TV's while the world outside slowly disintegrates. The world has caught some kind of paranoid virus which makes everyone suspicious of other people, other cultures, and other ways of thinking. Society is quickly unraveling. A small group of family and friends try to escape to a new planet. While everyone else is in stasis, the main character flashes back to his life on Earth and the events that have led him on this trip. He is an untrustworthy character, however, and his increasingly paranoid delusions force us to wonder what is real and what is in his mind. Character development is a bit weak and motives are not always clear. Otherwise this is a fine dystopian look at our limitations as humans. This book was very influential to the band Hawkwind and their Space Ritual LP uses parts of this book for inspiration.

[Warwick Stubbs · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not a bad novel, but it does nothing to convince me that I should read more Moorcock. A man commits some horrible acts and then has wild hallucinations while alone on a spaceship cruising through the blackness of the void, tormented by his past acts. It's OK. My memory of the first 2-3 Elric novels collected in the Fantasy Masterworks series was more enjoyable than this stand-alone science-fiction novel.

[Benjamin · Rating 3 out of 5]

How misanthropic. I can't say that I liked reading this book, since everyone in it was very unpleasant. But I'll bet you a dollar this gets made into a movie in the next few years; xenophobia and paranoia are the creeping horrors du jour. We're all monsters, really, and if monstrous behavior starts being encouraged rather than censured, it's a very quick slide down to nightmare-land.

[Erik Graff · Rating 2 out of 5]

A dark and, to me, frustratingly obscure science fiction horror story begun by Moorcock's wife and finished by him.

[Amanda Nuchols · Rating 3 out of 5]

Predictable and depressing, but interesting and well-written for the vein of dated sci-fi that it falls under.

[Newton Falkner · Rating 4 out of 5]

Found this book a bit dissapointing at the end, but like all Moorcock's books it's still a great read.

[Joel · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's been years since I read any Moorcock, and I doubt I'd have much time for his endless sword-and-sorcery rehashes, but this little piece of new wave scifi is excellent. Moreover, it's a very uncomfortable read in 2018. We see the world, in the early 21st century, breaking down into xenophoba and paranoia, as far right populist demagogues and rabble-rousers hold sway, everyone turns on those who look even a bit foreign, and the world becomes increasingly divided and Balkanised.

In the middle of this is Ryan, a successful but otherwise largely unremarkable business owner, who considers himself a Rationalist, a liberal, and with his small group of friends and family, perhaps the only Rational people left. As conditions get increasingly severe, a plan forms. And the plan works. Much of the book consists of Ryan on a spaceship, heading for a new Earthlike planet, tending to routine maintenance and checking on his friends and family group in suspended animation. We flash back and forth between the two settings, the declining Earth and the shipshape spaceship, and on the whole things seem to be going pretty well. The loneliness gets to him somewhat, or course. And the nightmares. And the sense that he's forgotten something important along the way - but those are minor concerns. He just needs to remain Rational.

This really is one of the best and most effective science fiction novels I've read in a while. Not least because of the aforementioned topical nature, but also for the portrait of a very believable person in Ryan and how he reacts to the chaos of his world collapsing and his plans for escape.

Well worth reading.

[Hex75 · Rating 5 out of 5]

appena chiuso questo "il corridoio nero" rimane una domanda: com'è possibile che non sia mai diventato un film? ma soprattutto: com'è possibile che nessuno ci stia pensando adesso?
dico "adesso" perchè il mondo raccontato da moorcock sembra l'esasperazione di certo pensiero folle di destra che circola adesso: un'inghilterra governata dalla paranoia (a tal punto da arrivare alla caccia ad immaginari invasori extraterrestri, una caccia che diviene scusa per ogni linciaggio), da un puritanesimo estremo che arriva a vedere un quartiere antifemminista in cui la presenza delle donne è proibita ed a rischio morte, mentre lo stato si balcanizza ogni momento di più.
basta leggere le parti più marginali di destra dei social network (certi movimenti complottisti, ad esempio) per ritrovare potenziali semi di questa follia, e moorcock li vedeva nel 1969.
e tutto questo non è che metà del libro: l'altra è un viaggio nella follia del protagonista, costretto a dover governare da solo un'astronave in viaggio verso una nuova meta: è facile intuire che una simile solitudine esasperata possa portare danni alla sua stabilità mentale, che a sua volta mette in dubbio le certezze del lettore su cosa stia realmente succedendo.
insomma, un libro ancora attuale e pieno di idee, figlio di quella new wave della fantascienza che già ci stava regalando l'immenso james ballard: da recuperare assolutamente, pure se non si è appassionati di fantascienza.

[Pete · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an unpleasant, but well written novel. At first, it appears to be a novel about interplanetary colonization, but in the end, it is really a dystopian novel about humanity gone mad.

An extended family is on a mission to colonize another planet. One member is awake to monitor the mission. He is very lonely and spends his time recalling what led them to their current circumstances. Turns out that society on Earth is breaking down. People are paranoid of each other and can barely stand ordinary society. Even running into a neighbor is a crisis. So, the family decides to steal the ship for the first interplanetary voyage. This last bit seems implausible, but society is so torn that it is possible. Gradually, it is revealed that the leader of the mission is quite mad, and he may already have murdered his family before, or possibly after, they were put in hibernation. A long episode in the novel deals with his hallucinations of his family members awake and supporting his leadership, and this episode really reveals the suppressed guilt of his actions.

An unusual novel for Moorcock, but I think this has been forced into the "Eternal Champion canon. (and I have read Elric, Jherek Carnelian, Jerry Cornelius, Bastable,...). Not sure if I would ever re-read this, but it is skillfully done.

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was looking for a little escape in the year of our lord 2017, and then dropped into this fresh hell of all our fears made real. Which isn't to say I didn't like it.

The Black Corridor, not to spoil too much, is the chronicle of the world's descent into madness, mirrored in the experience of one man. The entire world is swept by a wave of racism and paranoia and proceeds to tear itself apart, leading one small band of refugees to flee to outer space. Have they really escaped, or have they been followed by the madness destroying the Earth?

The most intriguing part of the story is why? The story leaves it ambiguous. There is an uptick in UFO sightings and rumors of aliens at work in human culture, it's left unresolved whether aliens are too blame or it's just another delusion suddenly gripping human society. It's not at all important to the story, but I thought a lot about it.

All in all it's a fairly chilling look at a human society that goes all in on xenophobia, racism and paranoia. Some lovely light reading!

[Devero · Rating 3 out of 5]

Non proprio un romanzo di SF, quanto un romanzo sulla follia e sulla psicopatia.
Decisamente cupo, molto cupo, questo romanzo breve narra della follia del mondo che si autodistrugge. Il punto di vista è quello di Ryan e dell'Inghilterra. Tra razzismo e xenofobia degli inglesi verso gli stranieri, in primis i gallesi, gli irlandesi e gli scozzesi, col mondo sconvolto da quella che, agli occhi di oggi, sembra essere la Terza Guerra Mondiale a Pezzi pontificata da papa Francesco I (e ultimo, aggiungo io) scopriamo come Ryan, unico sveglio di tredici persone su una nave spaziale diretta verso una nuova Terra, sia impazzito e cerchi di ritrovare la sua razionalità. Ma ha già fatto troppo e tutto è inutile...

In coda un lungo articolo di Feminò sui mezzi di trasporto futuristici nella fantascienza, decisamente godibile e molto più positivo.
Nel complesso 3 stelle per questo Urania Collezione di 11 anni fa.

[Joachim Boaz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Full review: https://sciencefictionruminations.com...

"In the Star Trek: Voyager episode “One” (1998), Seven of Nine, unaffected by a nebula’s subatomic radiation, must care for the crew while they’re placed in stasis. Alone on the ship, Seven experiences the prolonged effects of isolation including disturbing dreams and hallucinations. Ever since I saw “One” as a child, I’ve become fascinated with the strategies that humans might use in space to cope with isolation and the rituals they might enact to preserve sanity. Michael Moorcock and Hilary Bailey’s The Black Corridor (1969) (see note below), explores the effects of physical (a spaceship with a lone awake [...]"