The first Venus expedition returns to Earth.Review:Harry M. Evans, the lone survivor, has the shocking knowledge of its fate locked in his skull. Only he knows what deadly, mind-bending beings exist on Venus. Only he has experienced their awesome power and survived.
The world awaits in mortal fear for him to speak....
A Malzberg classic, and a classic of SF in its own right. Winner of the John W. Campbell Award as the year's best novel. Some brilliant moments of conversation between the protagonist and the aliens (that is, if they actually exist). Contains some excellent self-referentiality, and an overall feeling of paranoia/alienation/loss that resonates with every word (but then, that could apply to most books by Mazlberg). A few very funny moments, and a clever story. What more could you want?
Make this sure you read this one. I'd give it 9/10.
Review by Guy Salvidge:
The first winner of the John W. Campbell award, Beyond Apollo is Malzberg’s most famous book. It deals with the first manned mission to Venus (at the time of writing, no one knew how inhospitable Venus really was), and is told in the form of a recollection by the one surviving crewmember, Evans, who is going to write a book about it:
"In the novel I plan to write of the voyage, the Captain will be a tall, grim man with piercing eyes who has no fear of space." (Malzberg 3)
The narrator is notoriously unreliable, constantly changing his story as he tells it. In fact, he cannot even resolve his own identity:
"I have a wife. Evans has a wife. Evans and I are the same person, but it is easier sometimes to slip into a more objective tense." (Malzberg 10)
This line reminds me of a similar line in Philip K Dick’s Valis (published nine years later). The self-reflexivity continues; Evans tells us of the book he plans to write:
"I will use the short-chapter format because I do not have the patience for long chapters. The novel will be brilliant and everyone will want to read it." (Malzberg 37)
*SPOILERS WARNING*
The novel ends with a letter, supposedly from a publishing company to Evans, telling him that they would like to buy his novel about his trip to Venus. Beyond Apollo was notorious in its day, and opinions on it ranged from those who felt it was a masterpiece, "There are perhaps a dozen genius writers...Barry Malzberg is at least eight of them. Beyond Apollo put me out of commission for three days after reading it," (Harlan Ellison, in inside cover of Malzberg’s The Sodom and Gomorrah Business) to those who felt that: "Beyond Apollo is, to me, the epitome of everything that has gone wrong with sf in the last ten years or so." (Bob Shaw, in David Pringle’s The Ultimate Guide to Science Fiction.)
Beyond Apollo has the power to free sf readers and writers alike
from some of the constraints of the genre. It is revolutionary in both
style and content.