7.6 /10 1 Votes
Illustrator Leo and Diane Dillon Publication date 1968 Originally published 1968 Genre New Wave science fiction Country United States of America | 3.8/5 Goodreads Language English ISBN 978-0441653034 Publisher Ace Books | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Media type Print (hardback & paperback) Pages 191 pp (first edition, paperback) Nominations Hugo Award for Best Novel, Nebula Award for Best Novel Similar R A Lafferty books, Science Fiction books | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Past Master is a novel by science fiction writer R. A. Lafferty first published in 1968. The novel follows the attempt of a future Utopian society in preventing its decline, by bringing Sir Thomas More to the year 2535.
Contents
The novel was well received by critics, and was nominated for the 1968 Nebula Award and the 1969 Hugo Award. It is generally categorized as part of the New Wave of science fiction.
Plot introduction
Past Master is set in the year 2535 on the world of Astrobe, a utopian Earth colony that is hailed as Golden Astrobe, "mankind's third chance", after the decline of both the Old World and New World on Earth. Despite idealistic intentions, it is suffering moral and social decline that may be terminal for both Astrobe and the human race.
In an attempt to save their dying civilization, its leaders use time travel to fetch Sir Thomas More (chosen for his fine legal and moral sense) from shortly before his death in the year 1535 to be the president of Astrobe. More struggles with whether to approve of the Astrobian society, noting its possible connections to his own novel Utopia. His judgements soon lead him into conflict both with destructive cosmic forces on Astrobe and with its leaders who thought him a mere figurehead who could be manipulated.
Reception
The novel was generally well received by critics who praised both its style and story telling. R. D. Mullen commented that "The prose style is Besterian and page by page a joy to read, but the narrative technique is Vanvogtian not only in being pyrotechnic but also in being indifferent to causal consistency, and this is perhaps not the best technique for the theme. Judith Merril praised Past Master as "a complex, subtle, colorful, and highly sophisticated book", saying that "Lafferty magics me with humor, anger, and love, and with unpredictable corner-of-the-eye perspectives and perceptions, but above all, I suspect, with his word-music."
P. Schuyler Miller declared the novel showed Lafferty "writing like the heir to 'Cordwainer Smith', yet always completely himself -- more macabre, more cryptic, with more of the humor of the incongruous [that] Samuel R. Delany calls 'ultraviolet' on the cover." Alexei Panshin found Past Master "an eccentric, idiosyncratic minor masterpiece", saying "it has all of Lafferty's usual color and pyramiding of manic invention" as well as offering "easily the most real immediate problem of spiritual agony yet seen in science fiction".