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From: notes@ucbcad.UUCP
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Subject: Re: book review - (nf)
Message-ID: <839@ucbcad.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 19-Nov-83 11:20:34 EST
Article-I.D.: ucbcad.839
Posted: Sat Nov 19 11:20:34 1983
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#R:ihuxa:-33300:ucbcad:23400007:000:1696
ucbcad!moore    Nov 18 23:19:00 1983

Hold on.  Your are damning Bio. of a Space Tyrant, Part one, on the
basis of what you guess Part 2-3 are going to contain?  Slow up.  The
intro of the book describes the tyrant as being regarded BY MANY as a
man on par with Hitler.  The only explicit excuse offered in the book
for his behavior is in the epilogue, where the fictional author
explains that this chapter explains his ruthlessness against the
pirates.  Given the heavily stressed ignorance of the general
population to the actual behavior of the pirates, and the blackest of
black portrayal of the pirates,  you disagree with the tyrants alleged
future treatment of them?  I think you are projecting your own straw
men on the novel.

	If anything, the book is to be damned for its' 
heavy-handedness.  It seems pretty obvious to me that we are going
to see the tyrant as an almost pure white hero, but forced (through
circumstance and disregard for personal reputation over what he
knows to himself to be right) to earn a reputation of utmost
evil while doing, in fact, good.  This is  certainly the way
Part 1 worked out.  The plot is sort of similar to a recent book
entitled something like 'The Man who Betrayed the Earth', except
in Bio. the motivations are anything but a mystery.  

	I didn't mind the book, but I grew rapidly uncomfortable 
with the continuous theme of rape.  Part of this is certainly due
to my personal difficulties with this subject, but it seems as
well that we are an (unwilling) audience to Anthony's working
out of this difficulty for himself.  This is an important subject,
but it seems at times he is wallowing in it, to the service of none.

	Apologies for the flame-like nature,

	    Peter Moore