To the Stars
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
<p>Space is deep
Man is small
and Time is his relentless enemy…
<p>How far is too far?
What price do we pay for expanding our knowledge to the limit, for
exploring the farthest reaches of the universe, for extending our reach To the Stars?
<p>Alan Corday, a smart yet desperate young man, is
about to find out. His family fortune
squandered and the woman he loves unattainable, Corday will go to almost any
length to change his luck. But his
desperation leads him into harm’s way—and into the hands of one Captain Jocelyn
and his crew.
<p>Shanghaied from the spaceport at New Chicago,
Corday is taken aboard the Hound of Heaven, a craft bound for the stars…on a
journey through hell.
<p>186,000 miles per second. The speed of light. The Hound of Heaven approaches this speed to
reach its distant destinations. But three months traveling at that speed is equal
to half a century on earth—and the world they left behind is fast vanishing
into the past.
<p>Everything Corday loves, everything he believes
in—is history. He is a wanderer in
eternity, and nothing in the cold, dark forbidding reaches of space can prepare
him for the astounding discovery he will make upon his long-awaited return from
the stars.
<p> “Just as timely, just
as awe-inspiring, just as profoundly moving as it was in 1950.”
―<i>Barnes & Noble Explorations Blog
<p>“Remarkably powerful
novel.” —John W. Campbell, Jr., Astounding
Science Fiction
<p>“One of his finest works.
Hubbard brilliantly evokes the vastness of space and the tragedy of those who
would conquer it.” —Publishers
Weekly starred review
<p>You will love To the Stars because
you’ll experience space exploration in a way you will not forget.
<p>Get it now.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Hubbard (1911 1986) was one of the great pulp writers, and this brief SF novel, initially published in two parts in 1950 by John W. Campbell in Astounding Science Fiction, is one of his finest works. In it, Hubbard embraces one of SF's deepest goals, to explore the emotional consequences of technological advance, by imagining the effect upon star-faring humans of the "basic equation of mass and time.... AS MASS APPROACHES INFINITY, TIME APPROACHES ZERO." That is, as those who travel to distant stars at near light speed experience, say, the passing of a year, those left behind will experience the passing of decades, centuries. And so young nobleman Alan Corday responds in horror when, on Earth, he's kidnapped to the interstellar trader Hound of Heaven by order of its notorious Captain Jocelyn, who needs a new officer. Alan resists joining starship society, but when he returns home from several adventures in hopes of rejoining his fianc e, he finds her an ancient amnesiac and himself a man out of time, with no real home but that of the cursed starship. In heated prose ("The quivering Hound of Heaven hurled herself on course, blazing bow to bridge with particle flame..."), Hubbard brilliantly evokes the vastness of space and the tragedy of those who would conquer it. The novel's turning point Alan's reckoning with time's implacability is narrated suspensefully, but comes as no surprise; what does impress immensely is Hubbard's handling of the bitter consequences of Alan's realization, as well as his believable detailing of starship society. Readers used to today's bloated SF tomes will appreciate Hubbard's ability to pack an epic into relatively few pages this is indeed golden SF from the Golden Age.
