o the last time I went back to sci fi in the eighties, it didn’t play out so well for me. I didn’t enjoy it and gave it up at the midpoint. It was simply a dead horse.

But in the same purchase, I’d picked up The Sudden Star by Pamela Sargent. Okay, so the premise here is that there are “white holes” (what black holes feed into (look, everyone in 1979 was all excited about black holes. They’d captured the imagination of the public back then. Even Disney cashed in), So we find Earth overlooked by this new star, an Earth fallen on hard times. Cities are hellholes run by elements of an army answerable to nobody. Travel is regulated. People live in rundown tenements without basic services.

The story starts with Lorren Rullman, a homeless transient who wanders about grubbing for food. He can remember when he was six, when the world was normal until the star came. Now his only son has abandoned him, he is alone, diseased and staggering. He meets some “rooftop people” (i.e. rich folk) who take him in (literally). And that leads to…

Chapter Two, with a new chapter devoted to a new character, Simon Negron, who is standing over the corpse of the person his star-crazed girlfriend has just stabbed to death (in a spray of knife-violence). And the corpse on the floor is poor Lorren.

And that’s how the book proceeds, hoping from character to character as we follow each person in the chain, learning different aspects, moving to even bleaker settings than chapters prior. And that’s what I really liked – I don’t think I’ve ever read anything like this and it was pretty unique. Oh, we had Escape from New York (1981) and Soylent Green (1973) so the idea of packed urban hellscapes were the thing. But this one told its story, and like Murder on the Orient Express, the killer wasn’t who you thought. Overall, it was a great book, one I enjoyed and was sad to finish.

So yes, old books do have a place on our shelves and hearts. This one will stay with me (not in a fond way, but in a writer’s way).

Worth a look-for.

>>>AS ARE MY NOVELS, STILL ON AMAZON<<<