Emil
9/3/2012
This is not an optimistic vision of mankind conquering the solar system. Instead, it is a most challenging and mature narrative, dark and full of unforgiving criticism of the then prevailing space administration, cosmic Weltschmerz and joyless sex. Malzberg uses the unreliable narrator to great effect, sucking you in as Harry Evans regularly changes his story on what happened with or to the captain of the expedition to Venus.
It is not a plot-driven story, acutely post-modern and layered with metafictional elements; overall an uncomfortable read that focuses on the flaws rather than successes of mankind's ventures into space, particularly in its dehumanization effects. Controversial at the time, and so it remains.