Reviews for The Lucky Strike

The average rating for The Lucky Strike based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2020-09-05 00:00:00 Melissa Kit "His hands were made of atoms. Atoms were the smallest building block of matter, it took billions of them to make those tense, trembling hands. Split one atom and you had the fireball. That meant that the energy contained in even one hand ... he turned up a palm to look at the lines and the mottled flesh under the transparent skin. A person was a bomb that could blow up the world." This is one of those hidden gems, on which you stumble by chance. Structured in 3 parts, the book consists in the story, an alternate history about the bombing of Hiroshima, an essay in which the author draws a parallel between alternate history and quantum mechanics and an extensive interview with KSR. I must say all three are fascinating. The Lucky Strike - tells the story of Captain Frank January, a bombardier which has been appointed to drop the bomb from 'The Lucky Strike' plane on 9th of August, following the crush of Enola Gay and the death of its pilot, Colonel Tibbett. After learning what the bomb is capable of, January starts having second thoughts about the mission and its repercussions. What follows are the global effects stretched forward into the history, based on a single man decision. A Sensitive Dependence on Initial Conditions - the title of the essay is the scientific term for the butterfly effect which is discussed in relation to the possible paths history could take following a single apparently insignificant step in another part of the world. KSR also brings into discussion Feynman's 'sum over history' on which when Pauli's 'exclusion principle' is applied, "it indicates that some possible paths cause interference patterns, and cancel each other out; other paths are phased in a reinforcing way, which makes their occurrence more probable. Perhaps history has its own sum over histories, so that all possible histories resemble ours. Perhaps every possible bombardier chooses Hiroshima." Or not... It explores the moral, ethical and historical implications of the decisions made to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaky. "You are flying toward Hiroshima. You are the bombardier. You have been given the assignment two days before. You know what the bomb will do. You do not know what you will do. You have to decide." One of the best essays I ever lay my eyes upon. A Real Joy to be Had - was a real joy to read. The interview conducted by Terry Bisson in 2009 is very comprehensive and a great insight into the mind and work of KSR. On writing The Years of Rice and Salt (which I think it's a masterpiece): "So, once I had the idea, I knew I couldn't write it, that what it implied was beyond what I was capable of expressing. I wondered if I would ever be capable of such a thing (I have a couple of good ideas I've never written because I can't think how to yet), but after the Mars novels I figured I had worked out the method, and I was feeling bold. I'm glad I wrote it when I did; I don't know if I have the brain cells for it now. Although that's partly that book's fault, because I blew out some fuses writing that one that were never replaced." He wrote his PhD thesis on Philip K. Dick and when asked how he would fit into today's market, KSR replied: "I guess he is "the SF writer" in American culture now. I think it's fitting; we live in a PKD reality in a lot of ways, crazier than Asimov's vision. So many of PKD's visions now look prescient and like perfect metaphors for life now. He had a big gift that way. Many of his novels were written in two weeks on speed, and it shows. In today's market (especially if all his movies had been made) he would have been able to afford to slow down. He was skillful; if he had to start in today's market, he would do okay; if he were still alive and had his real start, he would be huge." I rest my case. Just read this gem.

Review # 2 was written on 2012-04-17 00:00:00 Sergei Chnaiderman Rating: 4.5* of five The Book Report: A fifty-seven page novella of alternative developments on Tinian Island in the run-up to the atom bombing of Japan in 1945. A sixteen-page essay on the nature of alternative history and its quantum influences. And a twenty-page interview of author Robinson by fellow author Terry Bisson. In short, my little corner of Heaven delivered early. My Review: I said some unkind things about talented writer[Ian Tregillis's novel[Bitter Seeds here recently, having to do with that novel's use of superhero-y claptrap. Here is the diametric opposite of that novel, and thus the almost certain recipient of my most celebratory smiles. I'd probably give even a crummy alternative history novel, one presented in prose so wooden as to be describable as carpentered not written, three stars after that thoroughly disagreeable experience. Happily, though, Robinson's accustomed prose mastery is intact and I needed no unhappy comparisons to convince me to award the story its four and a half stars. Frank January, bombardier of the Lucky Strike, is older than his crewmates, apart from them in social ways; they see him as Other, as he sees himself. Their responses to him help form his course of action when the Lucky Strike is called to duty as the carrier of the atomic bomb after the failure of the Enola Gay. Hiroshima is spared its place in history. Lives are lost, it's true, but January cannot bring himself to rain devastation down on the city most of us use in our mental inventory of metaphors as representative of annihilation. The story ends as January's fate is decided. And, had there not been an essay called "A Sensitive Dependence on Initial Conditions" included in the book, I might have given The Lucky Strike three and a half stars, because the implications of the events in the story are so, well, so monumental, so completely brain-bending, that leaving me where it did would produce readerly, ummm, well interruptus of literary sort, with attendant shouts of anger and dismay. The essay goes into some very interesting and convincing philosophical explorations of the nature of alternative historical fiction, likening the course of history to the particle-and-wave nature of light. Robinson uses The Lucky Strike as his lens of explanation, running through many possible outcomes of the facts as presented in the story used to explain the butterfly effect, the great man theory, and other established formulations of the central conundrum of history: Why did that happen the way it did? It's a terrific essay, one I want to have for my personal library, and it's been a struggle against my inner book-Gollum not to keep the liberry book and say I lost it.... Finally, the interview. I enjoyed reading the author's thoughts on SF, on writing, on politics (we're close on this subject), and I found his assertion that science and leftism are closely allied perceptive and heartening, since I believe that science and logic will eventually grind superstition and conservatism under their boot-heels. I sure as hell hope so, anyway, since I do NOT want to live in a future hag-ridden by viciousness.