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One in Three Hundred #1
One in Three Hundred
He held their lives in his hands.
Earth was doomed. Only ten people of every 3,000 would be taken to Mars to begin a new colony. For the rest, there awaited only death.
Bill Easson was a nice, pleasant, straightforward guy. But as on of the pilots for the Mars expedition, he had to handpick the ten who would accompany him. Mobs surged through the streets, murder and mayhem was rampant . . . and the names on Easson's list changed again and again.
He had to stay alive, get out of the city with his passengers, and get them to Mars on an untested ship.
And the authorities had given him only a 60 percent chance.
Earth was doomed. Only ten people of every 3,000 would be taken to Mars to begin a new colony. For the rest, there awaited only death.
Bill Easson was a nice, pleasant, straightforward guy. But as on of the pilots for the Mars expedition, he had to handpick the ten who would accompany him. Mobs surged through the streets, murder and mayhem was rampant . . . and the names on Easson's list changed again and again.
He had to stay alive, get out of the city with his passengers, and get them to Mars on an untested ship.
And the authorities had given him only a 60 percent chance.
100 pages, ebook
First published January 1, 1954
5 people are currently reading
84 people want to read
About the author
J.T. McIntosh
132 books5 followersJ. T. McIntosh is a pseudonym used by Scottish writer and journalist James Murdoch MacGregor.
Living largely in Aberdeen, Scotland, MacGregor used the McIntosh pseudonym (along with its variants J. T. MacIntosh, and J. T. M'Intosh) as well as "H. J. Murdoch", "Gregory Francis" (with Frank H. Parnell), and "Stuart Winsor" (with Jeff Mason) for all his science fiction work, which was the majority of his output, though he did publish books under his own name. His first story, "The Curfew Tolls", appeared in Astounding Science Fiction during 1950, and his first novel, World Out of Mind, was published during 1953. He did not publish any work after 1980.
In 2010, following his death in 2008, the National Library of Scotland purchased his literary papers and correspondence.
Along with John Mather and Edith Dell, he is credited for the screenplay for the colour feature film Satellite in the Sky (1956).
Living largely in Aberdeen, Scotland, MacGregor used the McIntosh pseudonym (along with its variants J. T. MacIntosh, and J. T. M'Intosh) as well as "H. J. Murdoch", "Gregory Francis" (with Frank H. Parnell), and "Stuart Winsor" (with Jeff Mason) for all his science fiction work, which was the majority of his output, though he did publish books under his own name. His first story, "The Curfew Tolls", appeared in Astounding Science Fiction during 1950, and his first novel, World Out of Mind, was published during 1953. He did not publish any work after 1980.
In 2010, following his death in 2008, the National Library of Scotland purchased his literary papers and correspondence.
Along with John Mather and Edith Dell, he is credited for the screenplay for the colour feature film Satellite in the Sky (1956).
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
August 14, 2018
Dopo una prima parte eccezionale, tra la fine della Terra e la partenza verso un nuovo mondo, tutto viene ridotto a una ottantina di pagine di lotte interne per la presa del potere. Inizia da capolavoro finisce in fretta da romanzo rosa. In generale comunque godibile.
January 25, 2017
Most of you will have run into some variant of the “Lifeboat Problem” at some point. (In my youth, it was done with bomb shelters due to the strong possibility of atomic war.) A disaster has occurred, and a large number of people are going to die. There is one ticket to safety, but only a limited number of spaces available. As it happens, you are the person put in charge of filling those spaces. Here’s a list of people longer than the number of available spots, tell us who lives and who dies. Usually, some choices are easy (the person with vital medical skills lives, while the banker dies because seriously no one cares about money right now) but other decisions are more difficult (your beloved granny who’s partially disabled or the hot woman who dumped you in college but has many good years left?)
And that’s the starting dilemma of this book, originally published as three novelettes in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science-Fiction in 1953. The first section, “One in Three Hundred” reveals that in the very near future, the sun is about to become hotter, making Earth uninhabitable. However, this will also raise the temperature of Mars to the point it will be barely livable. In the limited time left before this insolation happens, the governments of Earth have pooled their resources to build a fleet of ten-passenger “lifeships” to allow approximately one in every three hundred Earthlings to have a shot at joining the small scientific colony already on Mars.
Bill Easson is one of the Lieutenants chosen to pilot a lifeship, and to pick the ten passengers that will be on board. For this purpose, he’s been sent to the small Midwestern town of Simsville. He wastes no time drawing up a preliminary list, but as the deadline approaches, the small-town tranquility is ripped apart as the citizens reveal their hidden sides and true natures, so Bill is forced to revise his list repeatedly, up until the last moment.
“One in a Thousand”, the second section, has Bill and his passengers discover that the lifeship isn’t quite as safe as they’d been led to assume. Turns out that the Earth governments, decided to give a maximum number of people a small chance to survive, rather than a small number of people a maximum chance to survive. Thus the lifeships have been built to absolute minimum standards. (Bill does some calculations and figures that to build the lifeships to the correct standards, the number of potential passengers would have to be one in one million Earthlings.)
The lifeship crew must find a way to survive the rigors of space travel and perhaps more importantly, the landing!
Finally, in “One Too Many” those of Bill’s complement that survived the journey (including Bill) must weather the many dangers of Mars if they hope to have a future at all…but the greatest danger may be one they brought with them!
The first part is the most suspenseful, since we know that Bill survives (he’s narrating the story from several years in the future) but everyone else is on the chopping block. On the other hand, it makes the narration feel oddly detached; Bill is doing his level best not to get emotionally involved, even though he’s making very emotional choices.
The second and third parts are more SFnal, though this was clearly written before any humans had gone into space, so the author has to guess what zero-gravity conditions are like, let alone the problems of surviving on Mars. It’s also notable that this potential future (deliberately, probably) has no technological advances beyond those needed to get to Mars–Bill has to make all calculations aboard ship with pencil and paper, apparently not even getting a slide rule to work with. Atomic power is mentioned as having stalled out.
And it’s very clearly a deliberate decision by the author not to have any social change whatsoever between the 1950s and “the future.” Simsville is very much an average American town of the Fifties, and the culture shock of what needs to be done to survive on the lifeship and on the new colony is from a very Fifties perspective. (The thought of miscegenation blows a lot of survivors’ minds.)
Some lapses are clearly down to 1950s standards and practices–there’s no mention of how waste elimination is handled aboard the lifeship. But others are just weird. The choices are kept secret until the absolute last minute so no one has time to pack, but none of the survivors had been carrying around a pocket Bible, or a pack of cards or even a family photo just in case?
And there are some skeevy bits. Okay, yes, the survivors on Mars are going to need to make lots of babies to ensure the human race has a future. But the standards listed for sexual assault are “if it’s a respectable woman who is trying to make babies with her respectable man, then the assault is to be punished severely, but if she’s a stuck-up rhymes with ‘witch’ that is denying society the use of her uterus, then the offender gets off with a wrist slap.” I can see, sadly, the male-dominated readership of the time going “Yeah, rough on the women, but got to be done.”
And then there’s the ending, where the bad guy essentially has Bill and his friends over a barrel and unable to act, so someone who’s gone “crazy” has to resolve the problem for them.
The cover is cool, but more symbolic than representative–in-story, the government has taken great pains to avoid such a scene. This was a Doubleday Selection of the Month, and the back cover copy is more about how science fiction is a popular and respectable literary genre now than it is about the book itself.
This is a good read, with the caveats mentioned above, but don’t think too hard because this is a “gee-whiz” story that will fall apart if you slow down to examine individual parts. Also, be aware that there are reprints that only have the first story, but don’t say so in the description.
And that’s the starting dilemma of this book, originally published as three novelettes in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science-Fiction in 1953. The first section, “One in Three Hundred” reveals that in the very near future, the sun is about to become hotter, making Earth uninhabitable. However, this will also raise the temperature of Mars to the point it will be barely livable. In the limited time left before this insolation happens, the governments of Earth have pooled their resources to build a fleet of ten-passenger “lifeships” to allow approximately one in every three hundred Earthlings to have a shot at joining the small scientific colony already on Mars.
Bill Easson is one of the Lieutenants chosen to pilot a lifeship, and to pick the ten passengers that will be on board. For this purpose, he’s been sent to the small Midwestern town of Simsville. He wastes no time drawing up a preliminary list, but as the deadline approaches, the small-town tranquility is ripped apart as the citizens reveal their hidden sides and true natures, so Bill is forced to revise his list repeatedly, up until the last moment.
“One in a Thousand”, the second section, has Bill and his passengers discover that the lifeship isn’t quite as safe as they’d been led to assume. Turns out that the Earth governments, decided to give a maximum number of people a small chance to survive, rather than a small number of people a maximum chance to survive. Thus the lifeships have been built to absolute minimum standards. (Bill does some calculations and figures that to build the lifeships to the correct standards, the number of potential passengers would have to be one in one million Earthlings.)
The lifeship crew must find a way to survive the rigors of space travel and perhaps more importantly, the landing!
Finally, in “One Too Many” those of Bill’s complement that survived the journey (including Bill) must weather the many dangers of Mars if they hope to have a future at all…but the greatest danger may be one they brought with them!
The first part is the most suspenseful, since we know that Bill survives (he’s narrating the story from several years in the future) but everyone else is on the chopping block. On the other hand, it makes the narration feel oddly detached; Bill is doing his level best not to get emotionally involved, even though he’s making very emotional choices.
The second and third parts are more SFnal, though this was clearly written before any humans had gone into space, so the author has to guess what zero-gravity conditions are like, let alone the problems of surviving on Mars. It’s also notable that this potential future (deliberately, probably) has no technological advances beyond those needed to get to Mars–Bill has to make all calculations aboard ship with pencil and paper, apparently not even getting a slide rule to work with. Atomic power is mentioned as having stalled out.
And it’s very clearly a deliberate decision by the author not to have any social change whatsoever between the 1950s and “the future.” Simsville is very much an average American town of the Fifties, and the culture shock of what needs to be done to survive on the lifeship and on the new colony is from a very Fifties perspective. (The thought of miscegenation blows a lot of survivors’ minds.)
Some lapses are clearly down to 1950s standards and practices–there’s no mention of how waste elimination is handled aboard the lifeship. But others are just weird. The choices are kept secret until the absolute last minute so no one has time to pack, but none of the survivors had been carrying around a pocket Bible, or a pack of cards or even a family photo just in case?
And there are some skeevy bits. Okay, yes, the survivors on Mars are going to need to make lots of babies to ensure the human race has a future. But the standards listed for sexual assault are “if it’s a respectable woman who is trying to make babies with her respectable man, then the assault is to be punished severely, but if she’s a stuck-up rhymes with ‘witch’ that is denying society the use of her uterus, then the offender gets off with a wrist slap.” I can see, sadly, the male-dominated readership of the time going “Yeah, rough on the women, but got to be done.”
And then there’s the ending, where the bad guy essentially has Bill and his friends over a barrel and unable to act, so someone who’s gone “crazy” has to resolve the problem for them.
The cover is cool, but more symbolic than representative–in-story, the government has taken great pains to avoid such a scene. This was a Doubleday Selection of the Month, and the back cover copy is more about how science fiction is a popular and respectable literary genre now than it is about the book itself.
This is a good read, with the caveats mentioned above, but don’t think too hard because this is a “gee-whiz” story that will fall apart if you slow down to examine individual parts. Also, be aware that there are reprints that only have the first story, but don’t say so in the description.
March 18, 2020
For most science fiction fans, I imagine this fix-up novel from the 1950s will only be a 2-star story. I love old forgotten SF from that era though, so I was enchanted enough to give it 4-stars. It's really a modest tale where McIntosh spins out a lot of ideas he was considering. But then, I like SF for its ideas. I wrote much more about this book at my blog:
https://classicsofsciencefiction.com/...
https://classicsofsciencefiction.com/...
September 14, 2012
Many sci-fi fans cringe when they read books about space travel that were written prior to the 1960's. Yet some of us love the simple and unlikely 'technology.'
Then there are the post-apocalypse folks. We enjoy seeing our present world destroyed somehow or other with just a few survivors trying to create society all over again.
One in Three Hundred offers entertainment for both. And it only takes a day or two to read.
September 8, 2025
J.T. McIntosh's 1954 One in Three Hundred is a middling mid-century novel of science fictional catastrophe: planet-wrecking premise, intriguing but rather unbelievable central plot device, bold eye-catching first-edition Mel Hunter cover art depicting spaceport panic that doesn't actually occur in the book, and decent though not remarkable execution.
In a future in which first-person narrator Lieutenant Bill Easson might remind us that "Mercury, Venus, Mars, and the asteroids" were "as far as any spaceships had gone so far," a professor concluded in an article "in the Astrophysical Journal two years earlier...that if and if and if and if, the sun was going to fry at least the first nearest planets to crisps very soon" (1954 Doubleday hardcover, page 17). Huh, quite the bummer, eh? After some working through the Kubler-Ross scale disbelief and whatnot, really, there appears to be nothing one can do about this upcoming non-nova-like "burn[ing] a little brighter for a while" with concomitant "shooting out spurts of flaming hydrogen" (page 17) to bring world temperatures up to perhaps 250 or 500 degrees Celsius (page 18) "for millions of years" (page 144) except, well...die.
"[I]t was a pity that [they] worked on wrong premises so long," because although the deadly bursts were "conclusively" predicted to start "on or about September 18," the intensity now has been recalculated, showing "that Mars, instead of sharing in the disaster, would almost certainly be more habitable after the solar change than before" (page 19). This is one of these classic '50s futures, you see, in which "the pre-space-travel calculations" of the Martian atmosphere "being too thin and with too little oxygen to support human life" had been wrong, for instead "Mars ha[s] just enough air, water, and whatever else [they] needed" (page 145). A colony of 7,000 (page 132) already exists there, after all, and in the early days of the recalculation, some Terrans escaped "simply by booking passages to Mars" (page 19).
The thing is, this corrected prediction of solar activity doesn't take place "[u]ntil well on in July" (page 19). Uh huh--two months before The End Of The World. Now that there no longer is Completely No Hope, "[t]he planners and the statisticians [get] to work," and they determine that if "every machine plant that could possibly be used for the job of feverishly producing" the quick-and-dirty craft called "lifeships" were employed, then "1 in 324.7 people could go to Mars" (page 19). This is where the book's title comes from, eh?
Now, the hardest part to believe, however, is that the survivors are to be determined not by gigantic government supercomputers with endless banks of vacuum tubes glowing while electric eyes evaluate punch cards, not by sinister eugenicists with calipers and chromosome graphs, not by random lottery, not by the chance of who happens to reach the launch sites before the grim-faced guards make their final retreat and shoot to kill, not even by money-grubbing shenanigans of the crooked and filthy rich, but by the pilots of the lifeships themselves. The only direction from above is that their "choice must be representative" (page 10). They simply have to "pick out a representative selection of ten people who seemed to deserve to live" (page 11)--that's all.
Yes, this is almost the craziest thing ever, but it's unique--for sure give McIntosh credit for that--and it's what drives the plot. That is, in the beginning, when Lt. Eason strolls down "the main street of Simsville (pop. 3261)" (page 10), where he has been posted for only "A little over two weeks" (page 10), although he "already had decided on [his] list early on," still he remains " prepared to revise it as various things happened... It seem[s] the best way to work--[he] could watch the people [he] had chosen and confirm their selection or change [his] mind. The list had changed rapidly in the first few days, but not much since then" (page 11).
Now, obviously, this seems all too easy to lead to a selection consisting almost solely of what a Black character of Robert Silverberg's 1969 time travel novel Up the Line wryly terms "nice white boys of all races, creeds, and colors," but McIntosh makes some motions against this. Eason asserts, for example,
"Men with color prejudices would have to face up to the idea that the catastrophe wasn't a special dispensation to remove all but pure whites from the human race; some lieutenants whose blood crawled at the thought would pick colored men to go to Mars, knowing that if they didn't they would never know peace again." (page 16)
Well... I very highly doubt this, but I can only shrug and allow the author his attempt.
And later, after the action reaches Mars, we are told that the "twenty thousand plus" humans there include "white men, black men, brown men, and yellow men, speaking English, French, Chinese, Russian, German, Italian, Arabic, Swahili, and scores of other languages" (page 175). The governing council eventually decrees "that mating between any female and any male should be permitted, outside the blood relationships which would exist again in the next generation" (page 175). That is, while "[s]ome of the Americans, Germans, and Africans were violently against miscegenation"--not to mention the fact that "[t]he South Africans and Australians wouldn't even talk about it"--somehow the council comes to its conclusion, broad-minded for the time the book's writing, "with surprisingly little trouble" (page 175). I'm not saying I believe it, but, oh, well.
In any event, Lt. Easson--"a more unremarkable young man it would have been difficult to find" (page 9), he admits--takes us from the first predictions of the catastrophe, through the desperation and hope of the unbelievable selection of Those Who Might Continue The Human Race, past the sterilization of the Earth that ends up with "not a square inch of ground that had not been seared by the new, more passionate sun" (page 90), and over the dangerous journey in one of the 700,000 ships that had been "thrown together in eight weeks" (page 63), to hardship and struggle on a harsh alien world with all-too-familiar human problems. Here and there the author will experiment with changes to the existing 1950s-ish sexual mores, race relations, governance, and economics, and of course there will be perils in technology, climate, and human relations.
J.T. McIntosh's One in Three Hundred is not especially profound or deeply thought out, but its conceptual weakness of the literally unbelievable plot device of the survivors of an Earth-killing catastrophe being chosen at random by the 700,000 schmoes piloting their own itty-bitty lifeships actually is what makes us want to read the thing, and the book ends up being a tolerable 3-star mid-'50s work.
In a future in which first-person narrator Lieutenant Bill Easson might remind us that "Mercury, Venus, Mars, and the asteroids" were "as far as any spaceships had gone so far," a professor concluded in an article "in the Astrophysical Journal two years earlier...that if and if and if and if, the sun was going to fry at least the first nearest planets to crisps very soon" (1954 Doubleday hardcover, page 17). Huh, quite the bummer, eh? After some working through the Kubler-Ross scale disbelief and whatnot, really, there appears to be nothing one can do about this upcoming non-nova-like "burn[ing] a little brighter for a while" with concomitant "shooting out spurts of flaming hydrogen" (page 17) to bring world temperatures up to perhaps 250 or 500 degrees Celsius (page 18) "for millions of years" (page 144) except, well...die.
"[I]t was a pity that [they] worked on wrong premises so long," because although the deadly bursts were "conclusively" predicted to start "on or about September 18," the intensity now has been recalculated, showing "that Mars, instead of sharing in the disaster, would almost certainly be more habitable after the solar change than before" (page 19). This is one of these classic '50s futures, you see, in which "the pre-space-travel calculations" of the Martian atmosphere "being too thin and with too little oxygen to support human life" had been wrong, for instead "Mars ha[s] just enough air, water, and whatever else [they] needed" (page 145). A colony of 7,000 (page 132) already exists there, after all, and in the early days of the recalculation, some Terrans escaped "simply by booking passages to Mars" (page 19).
The thing is, this corrected prediction of solar activity doesn't take place "[u]ntil well on in July" (page 19). Uh huh--two months before The End Of The World. Now that there no longer is Completely No Hope, "[t]he planners and the statisticians [get] to work," and they determine that if "every machine plant that could possibly be used for the job of feverishly producing" the quick-and-dirty craft called "lifeships" were employed, then "1 in 324.7 people could go to Mars" (page 19). This is where the book's title comes from, eh?
Now, the hardest part to believe, however, is that the survivors are to be determined not by gigantic government supercomputers with endless banks of vacuum tubes glowing while electric eyes evaluate punch cards, not by sinister eugenicists with calipers and chromosome graphs, not by random lottery, not by the chance of who happens to reach the launch sites before the grim-faced guards make their final retreat and shoot to kill, not even by money-grubbing shenanigans of the crooked and filthy rich, but by the pilots of the lifeships themselves. The only direction from above is that their "choice must be representative" (page 10). They simply have to "pick out a representative selection of ten people who seemed to deserve to live" (page 11)--that's all.
Yes, this is almost the craziest thing ever, but it's unique--for sure give McIntosh credit for that--and it's what drives the plot. That is, in the beginning, when Lt. Eason strolls down "the main street of Simsville (pop. 3261)" (page 10), where he has been posted for only "A little over two weeks" (page 10), although he "already had decided on [his] list early on," still he remains " prepared to revise it as various things happened... It seem[s] the best way to work--[he] could watch the people [he] had chosen and confirm their selection or change [his] mind. The list had changed rapidly in the first few days, but not much since then" (page 11).
Now, obviously, this seems all too easy to lead to a selection consisting almost solely of what a Black character of Robert Silverberg's 1969 time travel novel Up the Line wryly terms "nice white boys of all races, creeds, and colors," but McIntosh makes some motions against this. Eason asserts, for example,
"Men with color prejudices would have to face up to the idea that the catastrophe wasn't a special dispensation to remove all but pure whites from the human race; some lieutenants whose blood crawled at the thought would pick colored men to go to Mars, knowing that if they didn't they would never know peace again." (page 16)
Well... I very highly doubt this, but I can only shrug and allow the author his attempt.
And later, after the action reaches Mars, we are told that the "twenty thousand plus" humans there include "white men, black men, brown men, and yellow men, speaking English, French, Chinese, Russian, German, Italian, Arabic, Swahili, and scores of other languages" (page 175). The governing council eventually decrees "that mating between any female and any male should be permitted, outside the blood relationships which would exist again in the next generation" (page 175). That is, while "[s]ome of the Americans, Germans, and Africans were violently against miscegenation"--not to mention the fact that "[t]he South Africans and Australians wouldn't even talk about it"--somehow the council comes to its conclusion, broad-minded for the time the book's writing, "with surprisingly little trouble" (page 175). I'm not saying I believe it, but, oh, well.
In any event, Lt. Easson--"a more unremarkable young man it would have been difficult to find" (page 9), he admits--takes us from the first predictions of the catastrophe, through the desperation and hope of the unbelievable selection of Those Who Might Continue The Human Race, past the sterilization of the Earth that ends up with "not a square inch of ground that had not been seared by the new, more passionate sun" (page 90), and over the dangerous journey in one of the 700,000 ships that had been "thrown together in eight weeks" (page 63), to hardship and struggle on a harsh alien world with all-too-familiar human problems. Here and there the author will experiment with changes to the existing 1950s-ish sexual mores, race relations, governance, and economics, and of course there will be perils in technology, climate, and human relations.
J.T. McIntosh's One in Three Hundred is not especially profound or deeply thought out, but its conceptual weakness of the literally unbelievable plot device of the survivors of an Earth-killing catastrophe being chosen at random by the 700,000 schmoes piloting their own itty-bitty lifeships actually is what makes us want to read the thing, and the book ends up being a tolerable 3-star mid-'50s work.
March 4, 2019
This book was written in the 1950s and shows it in parts. For example, "She was obviously hysterical and I wondered if I should slap her." and literally writing "unprintable" rather than swearing in a book. In a way though, that made me like it more.
Bill Easson is in a typical small town in the US and has to select 10 people from around 3,000 as passengers in the small spacecraft that he will pilot to Mars. This is necessary as an abnormality in the Sun will fry the Earth in a few days. This was discovered a while ago, but there hasn't been enough time to evacuate the whole planet's population. In this version of the 'future' space travel is possible but not that common, and there is already a small colony on Mars. Almost all of the Earth's resources have been devoted to building small 'lifeships' that are very basic but have a chance of making it to the colony. Anyone left on Earth will die. Bill has to make his decision about who to take before society collapses and nobody gets to leave...
I really enjoyed this book. It was an interesting variation on the apocalyptic fiction theme, dealing with some fairly grim subjects and activities but without actually describing anything unpleasant!
WARNING: There appear to be two sequels listed. Without buying them and reading them, I'm 95% sure that they are just the second and third parts of this book, not new stories.
Bill Easson is in a typical small town in the US and has to select 10 people from around 3,000 as passengers in the small spacecraft that he will pilot to Mars. This is necessary as an abnormality in the Sun will fry the Earth in a few days. This was discovered a while ago, but there hasn't been enough time to evacuate the whole planet's population. In this version of the 'future' space travel is possible but not that common, and there is already a small colony on Mars. Almost all of the Earth's resources have been devoted to building small 'lifeships' that are very basic but have a chance of making it to the colony. Anyone left on Earth will die. Bill has to make his decision about who to take before society collapses and nobody gets to leave...
I really enjoyed this book. It was an interesting variation on the apocalyptic fiction theme, dealing with some fairly grim subjects and activities but without actually describing anything unpleasant!
WARNING: There appear to be two sequels listed. Without buying them and reading them, I'm 95% sure that they are just the second and third parts of this book, not new stories.
March 17, 2021
End of the world, but there is a chance for a limited number of people to survive. Only 1 in 300.
How the selection occurs, how they travel and arrive on Mars and survive...ish.
Early sci fi from 1953, however a light sociology story.
How the selection occurs, how they travel and arrive on Mars and survive...ish.
Early sci fi from 1953, however a light sociology story.
Read
May 2, 2019I have the german edition: Einer von 300
November 21, 2019
Nur jeder 300. Erdbewohner darf die Erde verlassen, um der totalen Vernichtung zu entgehen. Doch nur jeder 1000. Flüchtling erreicht das Ziel - den Mars. Ein grandioses SF-Epos!
Dieses Buch ist ein Fix-up aus drei Kurzgeschichten: One in a Thousand, One Too Many, One in Three Hundred
Der Teil der Handlung auf der Erde zieht sich wie zäher Kaugummi. Die Erdoberfläche wird verbrennen, die Ozean verdampfen, weil die Sonne eine Zeitlang stärker strahlt als sonst (Weshalb? Who cares!). Leutnant Bill Easson wird beauftragt aus einem Kaff von 3000 Einwohnern zehn Personen auszuwählen, sie in ein hastig zusammengebautes Raumschiff zu stopfen und zum Mars zu bugsieren.
Die problembehaftete Reise zum Mars wird relativ schnell abgehandelt. Man bemerkt, dass man zuviel Treibstoff verbraucht hat und eine Landung auf dem Mars schwierig bis unmöglich wird, aber die Landung glückt natürlich.
Einzig der letzte Teil auf dem Mars läuft einigermassen flüssig ab. Aufbau, Intrigen, ein Möchtegerndiktator, Katastrophen, Wiederaufbau, Happy-End.
Weder ein SF-Epos, noch wirklich grandios. Kann man lesen, muss man aber nicht.
2,5 Sterne
Dieses Buch ist ein Fix-up aus drei Kurzgeschichten: One in a Thousand, One Too Many, One in Three Hundred
Der Teil der Handlung auf der Erde zieht sich wie zäher Kaugummi. Die Erdoberfläche wird verbrennen, die Ozean verdampfen, weil die Sonne eine Zeitlang stärker strahlt als sonst (Weshalb? Who cares!). Leutnant Bill Easson wird beauftragt aus einem Kaff von 3000 Einwohnern zehn Personen auszuwählen, sie in ein hastig zusammengebautes Raumschiff zu stopfen und zum Mars zu bugsieren.
Die problembehaftete Reise zum Mars wird relativ schnell abgehandelt. Man bemerkt, dass man zuviel Treibstoff verbraucht hat und eine Landung auf dem Mars schwierig bis unmöglich wird, aber die Landung glückt natürlich.
Einzig der letzte Teil auf dem Mars läuft einigermassen flüssig ab. Aufbau, Intrigen, ein Möchtegerndiktator, Katastrophen, Wiederaufbau, Happy-End.
Weder ein SF-Epos, noch wirklich grandios. Kann man lesen, muss man aber nicht.
2,5 Sterne
March 23, 2012
I got about fifty-odd pages in, then gave up. The first section is a psychological/sociological piece about a man whose job is to select ten people out of about three thousand to survive Earth's demise, as society and human decency start to crumble. The second appears to combine the psychology and sociology of a small group trying to survive in the rickety spaceship. The third, I think, is a community of survivors on Mars attempting to build a society.
All of this is sort of interesting at the premise level--aside from 'rickety spaceship going to Mars' and 'people delegated to choose survivors'--but I couldn't get into it.
All of this is sort of interesting at the premise level--aside from 'rickety spaceship going to Mars' and 'people delegated to choose survivors'--but I couldn't get into it.
September 3, 2018
Bel libro, interessante. Soprattutto l'ultima parte, dove c'è una maggiore attenzione all'elemento psicologico legato al potere e alla politica.
Finale che, personalmente, mi aspettavo e che un po' mi ha "deluso".
Spero di leggere libri sf migliori in futuro.
13/12/2014
Finale che, personalmente, mi aspettavo e che un po' mi ha "deluso".
Spero di leggere libri sf migliori in futuro.
13/12/2014
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