{"id":1171,"date":"1999-04-06T08:34:14","date_gmt":"1999-04-06T08:34:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/?p=1171"},"modified":"2012-04-25T08:35:03","modified_gmt":"2012-04-25T08:35:03","slug":"a-king-of-infinite-space","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/?p=1171","title":{"rendered":"A King of Infinite Space"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3><em>A King of Infinite Space<\/em> by Allen             Steele<\/h3>\n<p>Eight people attended the discussion, including one we             hadn&#8217;t seen for several meetings. Steele&#8217;s book             concerns a rich young man from the 20<sup>th<\/sup> Century who awakens from a cryogenic hibernation             several hundred years in the future, where he tries to             find a place for himself in the interplanetary             civilization he discovers.<\/p>\n<p>This book was the first futuristic space adventure we&#8217;d             discussed all year, and we welcomed the change after             several historical novels. Most of us had read Steele&#8217;s             work before, so we began with a discussion of his prior             body of work. Generally we&#8217;d liked earlier books but             not loved them, so were curious to see<!--more--> whether this             book represented a change.<\/p>\n<p>We liked the story&#8217;s premise and felt that Steele&#8217;s             engaging narrative voice got the book off to an             excellent beginning. The world building of the future             society was well thought-out. Steele cleverly worked in             several references to his favorite band, <em>The             Grateful Dead<\/em>. Several people enjoyed seeing the             spoiled rich kid forced to do manual labor to support             himself financially. The futuristic gangsters who play             a large part in the story were an innovate touch.<\/p>\n<p>The author couldn&#8217;t quite pull off some things             successfully in the narrative. The protagonist is             neither likable nor smart, which poses problems for a             book written in first person. We have a hard time             caring what happens to him. The character is so             clueless that he goes through most of the book without             understanding what is going on. Since he is our window             into the story we are in the dark too. When a couple of             characters actually sit him down in the end and explain             the big truths, we feel cheated and manipulated.<\/p>\n<p>We enjoyed reading a space story, and we appreciated             Steele&#8217;s ambition in trying challenging narrative             feats. While we thought that this book was flawed, we             ultimately felt that it was worth reading.<\/p>\n<p><em>&#8211;A. T. Campbell, III<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A King of Infinite Space by Allen Steele Eight people attended the discussion, including one we hadn&#8217;t seen for several meetings. Steele&#8217;s book concerns a rich young man from the 20th Century who awakens from a cryogenic hibernation several hundred years in the future, where he tries to find a place for himself in the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1171","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1171"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1171\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1173,"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1171\/revisions\/1173"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}