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Boyd, John
THE LAST STARSHIP FROM EARTH
book-date: 1968
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SFBC
1969

Hardcover
Paul Lehr

Book= VG+ to near-Fine
Dustjacket= VG+ to near-Fine

The first SF novel by John Boyd (pseudonym of Boyd Upchurch) - The Last Starship from Earth. Boyd was only active in SF for about 10 years (late Sixties to mid-Seventies) - but during that time, he was noticed. He had a vivid, satirical, and ribald style of writing, and I wish he had kept going.

Since I haven't read this, for a decent plot summary I'm quoting excerpts from a review from Analog (October 1969):

"…I don't know the author, but this book is an excellent one. It shows us a society in which specialization has been carried to the extreme of compartmentalization. As in the medieval guilds, you are born into your trade and class. A mathematician like young Haldane IV does not write poetry, does not read poetry, and certainly does not fall in love with a poet like Helix. But, of course, he does.

Mathematicians stand high in the status order, because it was a long-dead mathematician, Fairweather I, who rationalized and computerized this ultra-orderly society… even to the point of constructing a computer Pope and establishing a literal Hell on a distant planet to satisfy the state's religious needs and enforce lost discipline. Then Haldane learns that Fairweather was also a poet, and his world begins to come apart…" [P. Schuyler Miller]






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