Tiger! Tiger!

I've been rereading this book at intervals for more than 50 years, though less frequently in recent decades. It's bracing and it gives me a jolt, and overall it's optimistic, although the future it describes is certainly no paradise.

It's a fast-paced action-adventure that finds time for some thoughtful moments. The characters are not subtle, but vivid and bold. Most of the story is full of energy, imagination, colour, and spectacle—cinematic in its impact, as we rush from one dramatic scene to another.

Part of the optimism I feel in it comes from the hero's extraordinary though implausible character development during the course of the story.

For most of the story the writing style is good enough, at least by the standards of 1950s sf, but it gets off to a bad start in the prologue and Chapter 1, where the pace is slower. I also find the finish somewhat unconvincing, but that's a matter of plot rather than writing style. I give it 5 stars despite these flaws because it's a classic: much of it still holds up as cinematic spectacle, a series of memorable images. It's dated in some ways, but in other ways remarkably timeless.

The story was written in the mid-1950s but set in the 25th century. It omits any mention of computers or computer technology, apart from a few unimpressive robots and ‘memo-beads'. But this isn't obvious, because the story offers few scenes in which computers might have been used.

Near the end, a defective robot seems to act as a mouthpiece for the author in saying (among other things) that “A man is a member of society first, and an individual second. You must go along with society, whether it chooses destruction or not.” I disagree with this notion. It's true that being the lone survivor of humanity wouldn't be a happy existence; but, in context, that's not what the statement was referring to. I think it was intended as an expression of faith in direct democracy, and I'm not of that faith.

I'm not sure what I'd do with the PyrE if I were in Foyle's place; but then, if I were in his place I'd have died at the start of the book, and dead men have no decisions to worry about.

Nicholas Whyte comments that “Gully Foyle is a deeply unpleasant protagonist”, which I suppose he is for much of the story; but that follows naturally from being obsessed with revenge. Other people's welfare is either irrelevant or of secondary importance to him. He gradually improves over the course of the story, and seems completely reformed by the end of it—having lost his obsession at last. In fact, you might regard the story as one of character reformation, as in the film Groundhog Day.