The Prometheus Man

Timebinder #1

by Ray Faraday Nelson

Massive unemployment brought on by the automation of nearly everything leads to a crisis. Reminiscent of Vonnegut's Player Piano.

Cover and interior illustrations by George Barr

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction

233 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1982

About the author

Aka Jeffrey Lord (house pseudonym)

Radell Faraday "Ray" Nelson is an American science fiction author and cartoonist most famous for his 1963 short story "Eight O'Clock in the Morning", which was later used by John Carpenter as the basis for his 1988 film They Live.

Reviews

[Ernest Hogan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Northern California science fiction, with roots in both the beatnik/hippie tradition and the golden age of Astounding. Brings back memories of wild, crosstalk conversations in dark rooms filled with funny smoke and old school sff cons. I don't know if I am a Tech or an Unemployable, but maybe it's better that way.

[A. · Rating 1 out of 5]

It turns out that this is an important book in the genealogy of bad SF: I have read several books by the publisher "nrobooks" and they are all terrible. This, I believe, is the first place the word nrobook was used, and man is it bad.

So civilization is about to implode, and there's a blimp with a bunch of dudes on it who are going to reboot civilization a la Ron Paul. (What we need is a blimp!) Then the boyfriend of some girl who gets recruited on said blimp is put in jail for being useless. There he learns the secret of the dumb AlAnon-inspired "nrobooks", learns to play the tinwhistle real good, and in general becomes more annoying than he was when he wasn't doing bupkus. Then he accidentally destroys civilization.

The worst part of this book? I would have -loved- this shit when I was in high school. "The power of music is destroying the MAN! WOO!" Now? No thanks.