Wednesday 23 May 2018

A Long Way Back by Ben Bova

I found this story less plausible, so I had trouble getting behind the premise.

In America, after a nuclear exchange, society has devolved as you might expect - into tribal behavior.  One enclave is formed where the leadership decides to rebuild society by first scavenging rocket parts and then sending one volunteer into orbit to assemble a power satellite that has been parked there since before the war.

He has been trained by hypnosis (really?) and barely has enough oxygen to get the job done (odd).

Once the true nature of the mission is discovered, and the manipulations that took place to get it done, our poor hypnotized astronaut changes the rules.

There was something that could have worked in the story but placing it in a post-apocalypse setting threw the whole thing off balance .  At least for me.

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