Skyfall

by Harry Harrison

Prometheus - A stunning triumph of Soviet-Americal technological cooperation.

Prometheus - Ultimate answer to the prayers of an energy-starved world.

Prometheus - Potentially the source of the greatest single disaster in human history.

Skyfall - A thrilling novel of near future catastrophe, a catastrophe with a chilling ring of authenticity in the wake of this year's nuclear satellite fall in Canada....

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Thriller, Science Fiction Fantasy, Ebooks

378 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1976

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Harry Harrison (born Henry Maxwell Dempsey) was an American science fiction author best known for his character the The Stainless Steel Rat and the novel Make Room! Make Room! (1966), the basis for the film Soylent Green (1973). He was also (with Brian W. Aldiss) co-president of the Birmingham Science Fiction Group.

Excerpted from Wikipedia.

Reviews

[Olethros · Rating 3 out of 5]

-Diferente a la mayoría de la producción del autor.-

Género. Ciencia ficción.

Lo que nos cuenta. El libro Catástrofe en el espacio (publicación original: Skyfall, 1976) nos presenta a Prometeo, gigantesca estructura que será puesta en órbita para convertir la energía solar captada en energía eléctrica en la Tierra mediante transmisiones de onda corta de alta potencia desde la estructura, un ingenio creado mediante la colaboración de la Unión de RepúblicasSocialistas Soviéticas y los Estados Unidos de América que, de manera inesperada, mostrará fallos en su control que amenazan con producir una catástrofe.

¿Quiere saber más de este libro, sin spoilers? Visite:

https://librosdeolethros.blogspot.com...

[Elessar · Rating 3 out of 5]

3/5

Catástrofe en el espacio de Harry Harrison es una novela de ciencia ficción que no deslumbra pero que tampoco decepciona. La idea del libro me parece interesantísima: una nave enviada al espacio, en una impensable y utópica colaboración entre Estados Unidos y la URSS, con el objetivo de acumular energía del Sol está descontrolada y supone una amenaza para la Tierra, dado que contiene uranio y el impacto podría ser tan letal como el de una bomba atómica; además, en el cohete viajan seis personas. Lo cierto es que la sinopsis ya desvela casi la mitad de la novela —no es muy larga—, así que al principio la historia se centra en alcanzar este punto. Y el resto en resolverlo.

El ritmo es un tanto caótico por momentos y te saca un poco de la historia, pero pronto vuelves a entrar, aunque esta sensación se repite bastante durante la lectura. El desenlace es correcto y uno siente que ha pasado un buen rato leyéndola.

[Tyrone · Rating 3 out of 5]

I stumbled across this in a 2nd hand bookshop and its rare to find one of those, let alone one that has a reasonable selection of SF novels. I especially love finding those slim 60s 70s and 80s corgi/orbit books that usually have such fantastic cover art. Its even rarer to find a Harry Harrison novel that i haven't yet read. I was really sad that he left us last year.

I also love watching 1970's disaster movies like The Towering Inferno, The Poseiden Adventure, Earthquake, etc... Well if you add those things together you get SKYFALL. It reads like the script for a 70 blockbuster, fusing together something that reads like a 70s SF Classic with one of the aforementioned disaster movies and a sprinkling of cold war thriller. It was so on the nose i was casting it in my head and yes Charlton Heston was playing the lead character. But just because it would have made a great movie it doesn't always follow that it makes a great novel...

It could be said that this was the perfect time to be reading such about this subject. The story is set in a time of energy crisis, this one happened almost 4 decades ago - it's almost as if we didn't learn anything because bingo...here we are again.

The good is that Harrison is a great writer who can crank up the tension and take you along for a thrilling ride. The bad...this has dated somewhat. The SF elements might well hold up but where it really becomes uncomfortable is the anachronistic attitudes to women (even the highly qualified ones who are featured here) nationalism, drinking and smoking. To somebody formed on our rather more PC world it was just a little too uncomfortable to be a completely enjoyable.

[Kevin Phyland · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Prometheus is the largest object ever to be put into orbit. A joint US-Russian mission with five enormous LOX boosters and a nuclear-powered stage for the construction of a solar-power beam satellite. But things go wrong from the start. A failed booster leaves them in a low, decaying orbit, then a separation goes badly amiss resulting in a solid impact on a small English town, obliterating it. Heaping peril upon peril there is the threat of a solar flare which will further decay the orbit, the risk of the entire remaining ship crashing back to Earth scattering radioactive debris far and wide, and the terrifying ramifications of the contingency plans of both the US and the USSR. Harry Harrison stacks the deck against the crew in this intense, suspenseful and entertaining disaster novel and has us breathless at each malevolent twist. Will the crew return safely? And what is that shuttle doing fully-fueled on the launchpad at Canaveral? You’ll enjoy this one as you frantically flip pages while it keeps you on the edge of your seat! (It needs a movie treatment!)

[Xabi1990 · Rating 4 out of 5]

8/10. Media de los 17 libros que he leído del autor : 7/10.

A Harrison le recuerdo sobre todo por su serie paródica de los héroes de la CF : "Bill, héroe galáctico". Que tiene otras obras que me han gustado más, pero esas novelas gamberras me resultaron muy divertidas. Burdas si se quiere, pero divertidas.

[Sean · Rating 1 out of 5]

Treats astronauts and doctors as total untrained idiots; completely unrealistic story on so many levels. Truly bad.

[Steve R]

Along with Dickson's Mission to Universe and Anthony's Mute this book somehow was on my headboard at the beginning of the 1980s. Reading these three works convinced me that science fiction (and, of course, fantasy) was the avenue I most wanted to go down. Now, five six-shelf bookcases later, I've read almost all of Asimov, Heinlein, Wells, Morris, Pohl, Herbert, Eddings, Tolkein, Feist, Brooks, Goodkind and Jordan as well as large amounts of Sanderson, Silverberg, Bradbury, Adams and many others. Strangely, the other half dozen Harrison works on these shelves remain unread.

I remember absolutely nothing about this particular novel, but if the above result is anything to acknowledge, it can't have been half-bad.

[Jay · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ugh. Dated and mediocre at best. I have enjoyed other HH stories but this one did not resonate.

[John Kirk · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is the equivalent of a disaster movie. If you liked "Starflight One" then you'll like this.

On the whole, I'd say that it's plot driven rather than character driven. However, early chapters have some vignettes from life in an English village, and the whole point is to establish the residents as people who the reader will care about.

This book was published in 1976, so some aspects feel a bit dated in 2023. That said, some parts are also ahead of their time. For instance, one of the village scenes involves a married couple, where the husband gives most of his salary to his wife (for household spending), but she's having trouble making ends meet. It's unusual to have a modern couple where only one person works, but concerns about the rising cost of living feel very topical.

As another example, there's a scene where two characters are having sex, then the woman zones out. The man stops, and says that he's "too old for rape". On the one hand, I think that stopping was absolutely the right thing to do, and that holds up well by modern standards (i.e. the idea that consent can be withdrawn at any time, and enthusiastic consent means more than just "she didn't say no"). On the other hand, there are worrying implications about what he did earlier in life! On balance, I interpret that as the male character saying that he's learned and grown as he's got older, so he won't repeat the mistakes of his youth.

Overall, this was a good story, which held my attention.

[Philip Guy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Written in 1976 by the prolific Harry Harrison, this book has aged remarkably well. The Cold War aspects are probably the most dated, though sadly becoming more relevant again.
The premise is that there is a US/Russian collaboration project to put a huge solar generator into space to solve the world's energy crisis, and it's polluting dependence on the finite resource of fossil fuels (yes, this was an issue in 1976, and 50 years later nothing has changed!) The launch goes wrong and the race is on to save the astronauts and prevent the massive rocketship from crashing to Earth.

One thing that stood out to me is the cultural changes; almost all of the men are hard-drinking womanisers, and the casual racism and sexism is very obvious. There are the usual tropes of war-mongering generals, duplicitous politicians, etc. However, the science of space travel is surprisingly the one aspect that has stood the test of time. The physics and dangers of space travel do not change.

It is the book equivalent of a SF summer blockbuster movie; large on spectacle, entertaining to read, but easily forgotten.

[Chris Sudall · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had low expectations for this book but ended up loving it. Harry is a master. Yes it does start off with some classic 70s sexist cliches but he makes up for some of them by the end.
It's a classic dramatic suspense story! Lots of a twists and turns.
Very enjoyable! One more book and I'll be into his 80s work!

Ugh. I just had a look at some of the reviews below. 'Dated' - why does everyone who reads books from this era as dated? Yes of course some of the stuff doesn't fit with modern times. If we read modern literature in 50 years it'll be similar. If you're reading older stuff you need to take that into account. It's like reviewing 'Hamlet' and saying "The language is dated". It's is but that's not why it's rubbish! Lazy and obvious!

[Chris Aldridge · Rating 3 out of 5]

A story about a setting up a project to beam down solar energy from the earths orbit, (which as of 2022 is currently being seriously considered). Written by the author of the story the film Soylent Green was based on, this one is set against a background of Cold War nuclear proliferation, it assumes rockets with reusable first stages and quaintly is supported by computers that force users to wait while they calculate trajectories. Rather dated now but still I was amused by the conflicts between the plan and the realities of execution.

[Melbourne Bitter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Yeah sure it’s got obvious characters, everyone drinks vast quantities of hard liquor, has suspense piled upon suspense and it really is a airport novel but it still is enjoyable and different to all the other “Big things slamming into the Earth si-fi disaster novels of the 70s and 80s” - in that it’s man-made and not an asteroid. What could go wrong with mounting nuclear material on top of a vast experimental rocket ?

[Sean Randall · Rating 4 out of 5]

There can't be much ofHarrison left that I haven't read now. I quite liked this, it has a great doomness about it, that pivotal knife-edge pull of US and Soviet cooperation which rarely works too well in practice but always comes across as very exciting in novels. The British pubgoer was a lovely bit of divergence too.

[Juan Antonio · Rating 4 out of 5]

Una de esas buenas novelas que no puedo darle ni 4 ni 3. Lo que vale mucho la pena son los minutos finales llenos de tensión y suspenso. Los personajes que menos me agradaron fueron los astronautas, a los que Harrison debió imprimirle más esfuerzo.

[Philip Talmage · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent hard SF using only contemporary known science.

[Alberto Martín de Hijas · Rating 3 out of 5]

No es lo mejor de Harrison, pero es un thriller entretenido con acción y tensión (Lamentablemente no incluye el humor del autor que para mi era uno de sus puntos fuertes)

[James Swenson · Rating 2 out of 5]

This space-emergency story is now uncomfortably dated.

[David Solly · Rating 3 out of 5]

A bit dated as of 2024 but still entertaining. You can see some modern action space movies getting inspiration from the plot

[Rosie Hanna · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed the ending, however the journey to it was slow at times.

[Raja99 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Why I reread this book: ... I'm not sure. For some reason I was reminded of it; maybe I saw a reference to it on the web?

This isn't great literature, and it seems a bit consciously written (and packaged) to become a bestseller. But I found it compelling reading nonetheless, and I'm absolutely stunned at how many little tidbits I remembered—after all, I only read this once before, and that was thirty-two years ago! Perhaps the golden age of science fiction really is 12 ;-)

On the other hand, there are elements I completely missed before: a couple of romantic threads, and some fairly strong parallels with the real-life events of Apollo 13. Harrison seems to really have done his research: The mission control culture seemed quite accurate (including a flight director who reminded me of Gene Kranz), and there are some nice descriptions of the Space Shuttle—which didn't have its first flight until five years after this book was published.

Speaking of packaging, although the ISBN is the same, the "enormous explosion" front cover art shown on Goodreads is on the back cover of my copy; the painting on my copy's front cover is a striking painting of (I presume) the main spacecraft (though it doesn't exactly match the description in the text—four boosters instead of five). I seem to remember that when I bought the book (I must have been about 13), half the copies had the spacecraft on the front and explosion on the back; the other half had the explosion on the front and the spacecraft on the back. I guess they were trying to appeal to SF fans with the spaceship and bestselling disaster novel fans with the explosion. I picked a copy with the spaceship. ;-)

(Finished <~ 2010-04-08 23:17 EDT.)

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a near-future, hard sci-fi story written in 1976. It prominently features some edgy-for-the-1970s concepts, like men and women working together (gasp!) and Russians and Americans working together (double gasp!) Fortunately, after a few chapters it overcomes its self-consciousness about those things and settles into a fairly good, suspenseful story about an orbital solar power generation mission gone badly wrong. It's to Harrison's credit that the mission described, and the technology used to achieve it, still seems plausible today. The political intrigue is perhaps laid on a bit thick early in the story, but it, too, eventually reaches a satisfying end. A good light read.

[Alyssa Macpherson · Rating 3 out of 5]

An enjoyable blend of techno thriller and science fiction, dated slightly by elements of the setting and the attitudes of the character. It lacks the Harrison's trademark humour and sense of character, and instead feels like a blockbuster movie in book form - characters are barely developed and formed entirely from tropes and stock, the plot roars on from dramatic scene to dramatic scene without a moment to breath for most of the book. It is still an enjoyable read but not one I think I will ever want to read again.

[Andrew · Rating 3 out of 5]

A kind of a bit like those seventies disaster movies,Towering Inferno and all that.
Well written anyhow and far better than I expected as I remember reading one of this authors'Stainless steel rat' books in my teens and finding it enjoyable yet light.
This however has some depth,plenty of turns although does overdo the disaster some times,they seem to go from one crisis to another much like in Dan Brown's books.
Bit of a corny ending too in some respects but ultimately not a waste of time.

[Mel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cold war feel between the US and USSR, as well as sexism/racism overtones blend into a fiction of real life energy concerns with a smattering of Space Flight gone wrong. Not a very strong piece of work due to the dated feel, though not a bad way to kill some time. Realistic enough for the time period and an attempt to limit too much technical jargon was appreciated.

[Dan Buchness · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is amazing. Though certainly dated, concepts in this book ring true today, and in fact, there is a project underway RIGHT NOW for which NASA could have borrowed the pages of this book (right down to being 'nucular' powered. w00t.

[Louise · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a real page-turner - as much now as when I bought it in the 1980s. Another good thing is that the technology is not really outdated either. This has inspired me to revisit more of Harry Harrison's books.

[colleen · Rating 3 out of 5]

read 04.15.84

[Foxtower · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of those novels where some things don't quite make sense until the punch line... but a good punch line or two or three! Slow to take off, then very exciting!

[Bradley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not bad for a hard sci-fi tale. =)