THE OVERLORDS OF WAR. Translated by John Brunner.

by Gérard Klein

Hardcover, 1973

Status

Available

Genres

Science Fiction

Fiction

Collection

Edwin Mitoma Collection

Publication

Doubleday & Company (1973), Edition: 1st

Description

« Pendant toute la durée du voyage, Georges Corson avait essayé de s'entretenir avec le Monstre. Il le savait accessible à différents modes de raisonnement, mais, pas plus que ses prédécesseurs, il n'avait jamais pu mener avec lui une conversation suivie. Pour une seule raison apparente : l'hostilité irrémédiable que le Monstre entretenait à l'égard de l'espèce humaine. »Dans la guerre qui oppose les Puissances solaires aux Princes d'Uria, la mission de Corson est de déposer sur la planète ennemie un monstre aux pouvoirs destructeurs. Mais leur vaisseau s'écrase sur Uria. Seul survivant de l'équipage, il doit désormais échapper au Monstre. Et il découvre, avec l'aide d'une jeune Terrienne, Antonella, qu'il ne se trouve ni où ni quand il croyait être. Sinon dans une situation désespérée, au cœur d'un tourbillon spatio-temporel qui va les jeter en Aergistal, le lieu de toutes les guerres.L'un des meilleurs romans de Gérard Klein. Préface inédite… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member SkellyJak

Before this, Science fiction was still within the realm of normal imagination - but this book takes the genre where no other had boldly gone. My all time and always favorite piece of literature

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LibraryThing member ChrisRiesbeck

For the first third of the book, each chapter seems to be from a different subgenre of SF. The opening chapter seems presciently modern space opera, a la Hamilton (Peter, not Edmond). Our hero and a monster plummet to a planet from an exploding spaceship, and it's revealed our hero is bringing the

monster so it can reproduce and kill everyone in a year, and our hero's primary goal is to kill himself in such a way that no traces of his presence are left. But all that is thrown away in chapter 2, where our hero has been thrown 6000 years into the future, meets a woman named Floria, who speaks his language, and the story now seems like a throwback to the 1930s. Then, a few chapters later, he finds himself on a world where battles are fought endlessly between soldiers resurrected from history, in a setting not unlike Farmer's Riverworld, including everyone is brought back to life when they die. I'll go no further than these initial chapters to avoid spoilers, except to say this is a time travel novel through and through, with all that entails. Towards the end the hero takes a disturbing action that spoiled the novel for me. The context and outcome was such a stretch that it's presence can't be argued as necessary in any way. I docked it a point for that. Your mileage may vary. Note: translated by John Brunner and there are speculative detours that are much like Brunner's work of this period.

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LibraryThing member majackson

It starts off pretty lamely, but eventually morphs into a time-bending saga redulent of van Vogt; good story, but weak ending

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