≫ Read Gratis The Thurb Revolution Anthony Villiers Trilogy Book 2 Alexei Panshin Vincent Di Fate 9780441808557 Books

The Thurb Revolution Anthony Villiers Trilogy Book 2 Alexei Panshin Vincent Di Fate 9780441808557 Books

Download As PDF : The Thurb Revolution Anthony Villiers Trilogy Book 2 Alexei Panshin Vincent Di Fate 9780441808557 Books

The Thurb Revolution Anthony Villiers Trilogy Book 2 Alexei Panshin Vincent Di Fate 9780441808557 Books

I just finished reading this book, but as the paperback is not listed anywhere on Amazon, I figured I'd go here.

Bottom line: I really didn't understand the point of this book. It's about a lower-noble in a future space empire who evidently wanders around from adventure to adventure, sometimes broke and sometimes flush, depending on how it goes. He gets involved with some hipsters and ends up going to a neighboring planet with them in order to basically be a future-space Boy Scout. They play some music, an assassin shows up for no adequately explained reason, God (or at least someone claiming to be God) shows up for no adequately explained reason, and then it all just stops. It's not so much a story as a bunch of stuff that happens, then ceases to happen.

Now, I didn't hate the book. Panshin is just a flat-out lovely writer with a laid back, conversational style that wanders from amiable to cool to funny. It's more like he's talking to you, the reader, than he is telling a conventionally structured novel, and I really enjoyed that intimacy.

But all that said, I didn't really get it.

I'm not super-smart. There are lots of books out there that are deeper than I can get, but in my defense, I'm unusually aware that I'm missing something, and that that something is important. Here, it's possible there's nothing to miss, and it's all on the surface. And if I *am* missing something, I have the hunch that it's nothing special.

Again, not a bad book, just I don't get the point.


Tags : The Thurb Revolution (Anthony Villiers Trilogy, Book 2) [Alexei Panshin, Vincent Di Fate] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. What can you do with Yagoots? Yagoots? That's what Pickles and Daisy Smetana, formerly the Toast of the Empire,Alexei Panshin, Vincent Di Fate,The Thurb Revolution (Anthony Villiers Trilogy, Book 2),Ace Books,B0007FN3MA,6562212,Science fiction

The Thurb Revolution Anthony Villiers Trilogy Book 2 Alexei Panshin Vincent Di Fate 9780441808557 Books Reviews

Building a library - excellent author.
Alexei Panshin's _The Thurb Revolution_ (1968) is the sequel to _Star Well_ (1968) and the second Anthony Villiers (Viscount of Charteris) adventure. Readers of the first adventure may recall that the antagonists were a couple of villains Up to No Good. Here, the main antagonist is a comical windbag determined to oversee the morals of others For Their Own Good

Admiral Walter Beagle, N.S.N. (Ret.)-- yes, _that_ Admiral Beagle; you have heard of him-- waved his fist in the air contentedly. His nephew and the other harum-scarum with him had disappeared down a flight of stairs but the Admiral did not pursue them. He hadn't the wind for it. Instead he turned to the nearest target of opportunity. That was Torve, rapt in his search for inner truth
"_Thurb_."
The Admiral was a failure. He was a peripheral member of an important family. His career had been without distinction. And he wasn't _really_ an admiral-- he was a commodore with a courtesy promotion upon retirement. (21)

One way that Admiral Beagle tries to control the morals of others is through censorship. He bans all books on the backwater planet of Pewamo except the children's books of Mrs. Waldo Wintergood (for reasons that become fully clear at the end of the novel). Beagle's nephew says of the books "They are old-fashioned and stodgy, but they speak to me. I don't want them replaced. I just want variety" (30). Just so. The revolution is how a bit of variety comes to Pewamo.

Space opera heroes like Jame Retief or Sir Dominic Flandry are men of action. They do unto others in order to solve planetary or even galactic problems. Anthony Villiers is more of a gentlemanly catalyst. He arrives at a setting, hardly seems to do much of anything himself, but he _allows things to happen around him_. Somehow, when the dust settles, things are better than they were before.

This time, however, an assassin has been dispatched by a party or parties unknown to dispatch Villiers. His name is Solomon "Biff" Dreznik, and his record might be considered mixed "His contract completion was good, but he had been killed three times when once was generally considered a limit for luck" (43). Not surprisingly, his plans go somewhat askew.

In the course of reading this novel, you will learn more about Villiers' past. (He was once married for two years to a woman who became a Unitarian nun.) You will also learn about yagoots, bladder bats, Beaver Chiefs, underground literary movements, pink clouds, and red tricycles.

Good fun-- for my money, a touch more lively and clever than the first book in the series. _The Thurb Revolution_ was followed by _Masque World_ (1969). If you can, get the Ace edition with the wonderful Kelly Freas cover.
This is a review of the Anthony Villiers trilogy, not just this volume. You can read the books in any order without losing any plot, although there are some amusing references from book to book. As the books go on the tone changes, but I'll discuss that below.

If you only read one book in the trilogy, this should be the one. It's the one I read first and it stands alone extremely well. Being the middle in the set it has the best of both ends of the tone shift that affects the run.

Samuel R Delaney intruduced book one (Star Well) begins with a note. It summed up the series nicely
[Star Well] is something I have never seen in science fiction before. It is the first in a series of novels that examines the proposition that the world is composed of small communities of mutual interest. When the pith of that statement is bared as astutely as it is in this novel, it does not matter which "small community" you belong to..."

The series follows the adventures of Anthony Villiers "By avocation he was a traveller. By profession he was good company." He is also Viscount Charteris, although he rarely uses his title. It is a classic space opera setting aristrocrats travel between worlds, the Emperor manages the next slow decline of humanity into decadence and apathy, and gentlemen of means play complicated games across dozens of worlds in between duels with energy pistols or old-fashioned swords. Aliens that integrate well into human society are appreciated; other aliens are Restricted.

Villiers is a gentleman in "reduced circumstances" he travels following his stipend from port to port so his father can keep him on the move. His travelling companion is Torve, a Trog. Trogs are one of those Restricted aliens. Only a handful have travel permits. Torve is not one of those handful. But Torve is an artist, and his muse requires him to travel. The confluence that results whenever bureaucrats question Torve--an always polite, six-foot tall, very literal-minded, furry frog whose philosophical system denies the concept of causality--are things of beauty.

Proceeding from book to book, we get closer and closer to Villiers' own community. The Star Well is a swashbuckling tale of space pirates, con artists, and g-men. The Thurb Revolution is slower-paced; Villiers meets up with an old friend--another aristrocrat--and decides to go camping. Of course, that camping trip leads to a two-world student rebellion, the downfall of a world-wide children's author, a meeting with God, and a change to the line of imperial succession. Masque World puts Villiers among family and imperial delegates, trying to find his elusive stipend check while the people go into hiding from a local fraternal organization's annual game of Marvels and Wonders. And Torve encounters the first bureaucrat who won't simply refuse to believe that he exists.

Oh, and through all three books he wants to know why there's an assassin after him.

These are hilarious books. The humor generally consists of the characters' ability or inability to interact with different communities/cultures (Villiers' most redeeming quality is the fluidity with which he crosses community lines--and take that as you will) or the author's wry and astute observations about the characters, their circumstances, and the reader's own expectations.

The Thurb Revolution opens with these words

Night is irregular. What is not done in the daytime becomes possible at night murder and sex and thought.

Go read the rest yourself.
I just finished reading this book, but as the paperback is not listed anywhere on , I figured I'd go here.

Bottom line I really didn't understand the point of this book. It's about a lower-noble in a future space empire who evidently wanders around from adventure to adventure, sometimes broke and sometimes flush, depending on how it goes. He gets involved with some hipsters and ends up going to a neighboring planet with them in order to basically be a future-space Boy Scout. They play some music, an assassin shows up for no adequately explained reason, God (or at least someone claiming to be God) shows up for no adequately explained reason, and then it all just stops. It's not so much a story as a bunch of stuff that happens, then ceases to happen.

Now, I didn't hate the book. Panshin is just a flat-out lovely writer with a laid back, conversational style that wanders from amiable to cool to funny. It's more like he's talking to you, the reader, than he is telling a conventionally structured novel, and I really enjoyed that intimacy.

But all that said, I didn't really get it.

I'm not super-smart. There are lots of books out there that are deeper than I can get, but in my defense, I'm unusually aware that I'm missing something, and that that something is important. Here, it's possible there's nothing to miss, and it's all on the surface. And if I *am* missing something, I have the hunch that it's nothing special.

Again, not a bad book, just I don't get the point.