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    Master of Life and Death
    Master of Life and Death
    Master of Life and Death
    Ebook140 pages3 hours

    Master of Life and Death

    By Robert Silverberg

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    By the 23rd century Earth's population had reached seven billion. Mankind was in danger of perishing for lack of elbow room--unless prompt measures were taken. Roy Walton had the power to enforce those measures. But though his job was in the service of humanity, he soon found himself the most hated man in the world. For it was his job to tell parents their children were unfit to live; he had to uproot people from their homes and send them to remote areas of the world. Now, threatened by mobs of outraged citizens, denounced and blackened by the press, Roy Walton had to make a decision: resign his post, or use his power to destroy his enemies and become a dictator in the hopes of saving humanity from its own folly. In other words, should he become the MASTER OF LIFE AND DEATH?
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWildside Press
    Release dateOct 22, 2015
    ISBN9781479407569
    Master of Life and Death
    Author

    Robert Silverberg

    Robert Silverberg (b. 1935) sold his first science fiction stories to the lower-grade pulps in the mid-fifties, moved swiftly to the three prestigious magazines (Astounding, Galaxy and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction) and as his style deepened and themes expanded in through the next reached the first rank of science fiction writers. He is regarded as the greatest living writer of science fiction, an SFWA Grandmaster, ex-President (in the 1960’s) of that organization, winner of five Nebulas, four Hugos and many other domestic and foreign awards. Among his famous novels are Dying Inside, The Book of Skulls, Downward to the Earth, A Time of Changes; his novella Born with the Dead (1974) is perhaps the finest work of that length published within the genre. Shifting to a predominating fantasy in the late 1970’s (Lord Valentine’s Castle and the attendant Majipoor Series), Silverberg continued to write science fiction and won a Nebula in 1986 for the novella Sailing to Byzantium, and Hugos for the novelettes Gilgamesh in the Outback and Enter a Soldier: Later, Enter Another. He was editor of the long-running original anthology series New Dimensions and of important reprint anthologies such as The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Alpha, and The Arbor House Treasury of Modern Science Fiction. 

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    3.5/5

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    • 4/5
      This short novel is set in a 23rd century Earth at a time when the population explosion in most of the world is causing severe overcrowding, such that a Bureau of Population Equalisation (Popeek) has been established by the UN more or less to forcibly redistribute parts of the world's population to less populous areas (though it should be said that the world population in 2232 is stated to be 7 billion, which is actually what it reached in 2011). Despite this grim backdrop, this novel has quite a humorous feel when read today; it was published in 1957 and the attitudes towards both the science fiction elements, and wider social attitudes, are of their time. There are pulp fiction aliens from a neighbouring solar system that Popeek wants to use as a refuge to relieve the overcrowding on Earth; there is an expedition landing on Venus to try to terraform it. At another level, though, the story is about the moral dilemmas faced by one man, Roy Walton, the head of Popeek, who comes into office unexpectedly following the assassination of his predecessor as part of a plot by anti-population equalisers. Walton finds that that predecessor had kept much of his work secret, and the decisions he needs to take to do his job and combat the conspiracy require him to assume arbitrary and even dictatorial powers as the novel's title suggests, though he genuinely believes himself to be doing these actions for humanity's long term benefit. My description probably makes this novel sound like a bit of a mess, but it is actually an enjoyable read that packs a lot into its 144 pages, but does so effortlessly as the narrative flows very easily with the minimum of effort and extraneous description. Not a classic SF novel, but definitely worth a look.

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