ePub Ragged Astronauts download

by Bob Shaw

Author:

Bob Shaw

ISBN13:

978-0671654054

ISBN:

0671654055

Language:

English

Publisher:

Baen; First Edition edition (May 1, 1988)

Category:

Fantasy

Subcategory:

Science Fiction

ePub file:

1404 kb

Fb2 file:

1282 kb

Other formats:

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Rating:

4.2

Votes:

885

Bob Shaw Science Fiction English

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FREE shipping on qualifying offers. The population of Land, a technologically unsophisticated planet, must somehow escape to their twin world of Overland when their existence is threatened by the ptertha.

The Ragged Astronauts book. Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read. Start by marking The Ragged Astronauts (Land and Overland Series, as Want to Read: Want to Read savin. ant to Read. Land and Overland - twin worlds a few thousand miles apart .

The Ragged Astronauts. Through space to Overland. The Ragged Astronauts - first volume in an epic adventure filled with memorable characters, intense action, engaging notions, exotic locales. Won BSFA Award for Best Novel in 1987. Publisher: Gollancz, London, 1986. by. Shaw, Bob. Publication date. New York : Baen Books. Books for People with Print Disabilities. Internet Archive Books. inlibrary; printdisabled; ; china. Uploaded by PhanS on May 3, 2010. SIMILAR ITEMS (based on metadata). Terms of Service (last updated 12/31/2014).

The Land and Overland trilogy is a group of three science fantasy novels by Northern Irish writer Bob Shaw. The trilogy consists of the books The Ragged Astronauts (published in 1986), The Wooden Spaceships (1988) and The Fugitive Worlds (1989). In the United Kingdom, all three novels were originally published by Victor Gollancz. The Ragged Astronauts won the BSFA Award for best Novel in 1987.

The Ragged Astronauts - first volume in an epic adventure filled with memorable characters, intense action, engaging notions, exotic locales.

Land and Overland - twin worlds a few thousand miles apart . Winner of the BSFA Award for best novel, 1986.

Bob Shaw (1931 - 1996) Bob Shaw was born in Belfast in 1931. After working in engineering, aircraft design and journalism he became a full time writer in 1975. Although his SF novels and stories were for the most part serious, Shaw was well-known in fannish circles for his sense of humour, and his witty 'Serious Scientific Talks' were a favourite of attendees.

The population of Land, a technologically unsophisticated planet, must somehow escape to their twin world of Overland when their existence is threatened by the ptertha, a toxic life-form that has declared war on humanity

Taun

Pretty good !

Samut

The novel is set in an alternate universe where two planets orbit each other in close proximity, with a common atmosphere. The civilization on one of the planets is shown to be similar to the western civilization around the 16th century (they are on the verge of discovering the concepts of calculus, starting with limits…). The mathematicians, statisticians, astronomers, chemists, and academicians of similar fields – collectively called “Philosophers” – start raising concerns about energy shortages within a few decades, which finally leads to a mass migration using jet-powered balloons to the twin planet (poetically called “Overland”). Some of the details are very nicely done, though most of the novel is not mathematical in nature.

There is one mathematical curiosity: the geometry around the planets is conical in nature, with the value of pi set to equal exactly 3 (one of the mathematicians uses a rolling wooden disk to demonstrate to his brother that its circumference is exactly 3 diameters in length. He muses, “Even when we go to the limits of measurement, the ratio is exactly three. Does that not strike you as astonishing? That and things like the fact that we have twelve fingers make whole areas of calculation absurdly easy. It’s almost like an unwarranted gift from nature”). This is also reminiscent of the comical effort in 1897 by Indiana legislature to decree the value of pi to be 3.2...

There is a strong hint that the worlds might be “designed” but that angle is left dangling…a shame, for it is a nicely written novel which would have twisted very well if there were to be some denouement about the particular geometry.
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Trex

Just the other day, space sites buzzed about a yellow hypergiant star with a binary partner so close that they actually touch. So, if kissing stars exist, why not kissing planets, the basic idea in the Ragged Astronauts?

Now, I must admit I liked everything about the Ragged Astronauts, a novel which gives the feeling of being one piece Isaac Asimov always intended to have written, but somehow escaped him.

The Ragged Astronauts have everything, that lured us into science fiction, at tender ages. There is the breathtaking wow factor of a planet 5K kilometers above your head (I mean just imagine the eclipses!). There are characters, above the standard SF par.

There is mystery, there is a well thought and imaginative symbiotic ecosystem, and then, there is the idea of flying to another planet in a hot balloon, which is one of those rare A-list SF ideas, like Ringworlds and robotic laws.

I came across the term “science fantasy” regarding this Bob Shaw’s novel, but my two cents are that there is much more science than fantasy in the Ragged Astronauts.

I recommend this novel.

Arryar

Take a late medieval world which orbits along with a twin planet. Add a native balloon-like creature the pthertha, which is regularly hunted for sport, and which reacts by unleashing a deadly plague. You have the ingredients for interplanetary travel!
The twin planets are so close that there are two periods of daytime on the inhabited world, and a short night in between, with a longer night at the other end. There is a thin envelope of air, it turns out, linking the two planets, and if someone were to go up in a hot-air balloon he could just about cross over to the other world. But is the journey survivable and could an entire population be evacuated?

This first book in the series is definitely the best. The second, The Wooden Spaceships, deals with large-scale population movement and colonisation. Really Shaw could have left it at that but perhaps he was pushed into writing a trilogy. The Fugitive Worlds is readable but not so good or credible.

Bob Shaw was a Northern Irish writer who was a contemporary and friend of James White and Brian W Aldiss.
I consider his best work to be Other Days, Other Eyes, which is about slow glass.

Agamaginn

This is a wonderful novel about twin worlds that share an atmosphere and what happens when the inhabitants of one world have to abandon it for the other via hot air balloon!! It contains suprising charactarizations and a very cool ecology all wrapped up in a fairly believable page-turning plot. What more could you ask for from SF? This is the first book i've read by Shaw and I now consider him to be one of the better SF/Fantasy authors.
His sentence by sentence prose is tight and scans easy. He knows how to describe a scene or scenes well without glutting the reader with oceans of words. He does fairly well with characters and although the protagonist is a bit of a Conan/type, we like him and find him fairly interesting.
I found myself remembering scenes days after I put the book down, and that's pretty damn rare. Check it out, if you can find it.

Whitebeard

This is a good, entertaining fantasy/science fiction novel by an underrated author. Shaw wrote a number of good books and stories, many of which can be found in used bookstores. This is the first installment in a series set in an unusual alternative universe. In this world, pi is an even number and it appears that some aspects of physics are different. This is essentially an adventure story set in a solar system in which 2 planets orbit a sun as a pair and share an atmosphhere. The storyline concerns travel, by balloon, between the 2 planets. The basic idea is intriguing though the real differences in physics are never really explored but used a platform for a conventional adventure story. Worth picking up from used bookstores.

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