elizafiedler's review against another edition
What even is this?? For example, the conversation with the private eye is just so bizarre, is he messing with Marvin? Is it supposed to be about the difficulties of communicating with the other? Or, it's just selectively literal and extremely irritating...
weaselweader's review against another edition
2.0
The absolutely incomprehensible destruction of a great idea!
It would be quite unreasonable to give Robert Sheckley less than top marks for putting together a wild and woolly imaginative premise to build a sci-fi novel around. Consider a world in which interstellar travel is possible but, not surprisingly, it's a long, arduous and crushingly expensive process. For those that can't afford the time or the money for the real thing, science has also developed the technology for a "mindswap" - a way for two consenting people to simply switch consciousness, even over galactic distances, and effectively trade bodies instantaneously for an agreed upon period of time.
The possibilities for a novel built on such an idea are virtually limitless - anthropological and social comment, moral, social and cultural study, recreation and adventure travel in off-world settings, sexual adventure and comic misadventure, criminal skulduggery and much, much more. Sheckley chose to take his novel down the road of comic misadventure and criminal activity but I believe that somewhere along the way, he lost his mind and got waylaid on the sideroads of the 1960s hippie and drug sub-culture.
Marvin, a college student who wanted nothing more than to visit Mars, swapped minds and discovered that he had been scammed by a Martian criminal who has found a way to abscond with Marvins's body. Marvin now has no way home and it seems his only option is to indulge in a series of every more complex mindswaps and body trades to track down and recover his dearly beloved earth body.
I'm grateful that MINDSWAP was a blissfully short novel because the reading, quite frankly, was tedious to the point of pain. Give Sheckly his due. His efforts at humour occasionally rose to the status of laugh-out-loud hilarity but, for the most part, they fell flat and resembled nothing more than overblown, pretentious, philosophical doublespeak pouring from the mouth of a 1960s flower child in the grasp of a bad batch of LSD mindblowers!
It might have seemed appealing to a young adult reading crowd at the time of its publication but it certainly aged poorly and I'm afraid I can't recommend it to any potential reader even out of purely historical interest.
Paul Weiss
It would be quite unreasonable to give Robert Sheckley less than top marks for putting together a wild and woolly imaginative premise to build a sci-fi novel around. Consider a world in which interstellar travel is possible but, not surprisingly, it's a long, arduous and crushingly expensive process. For those that can't afford the time or the money for the real thing, science has also developed the technology for a "mindswap" - a way for two consenting people to simply switch consciousness, even over galactic distances, and effectively trade bodies instantaneously for an agreed upon period of time.
The possibilities for a novel built on such an idea are virtually limitless - anthropological and social comment, moral, social and cultural study, recreation and adventure travel in off-world settings, sexual adventure and comic misadventure, criminal skulduggery and much, much more. Sheckley chose to take his novel down the road of comic misadventure and criminal activity but I believe that somewhere along the way, he lost his mind and got waylaid on the sideroads of the 1960s hippie and drug sub-culture.
Marvin, a college student who wanted nothing more than to visit Mars, swapped minds and discovered that he had been scammed by a Martian criminal who has found a way to abscond with Marvins's body. Marvin now has no way home and it seems his only option is to indulge in a series of every more complex mindswaps and body trades to track down and recover his dearly beloved earth body.
I'm grateful that MINDSWAP was a blissfully short novel because the reading, quite frankly, was tedious to the point of pain. Give Sheckly his due. His efforts at humour occasionally rose to the status of laugh-out-loud hilarity but, for the most part, they fell flat and resembled nothing more than overblown, pretentious, philosophical doublespeak pouring from the mouth of a 1960s flower child in the grasp of a bad batch of LSD mindblowers!
It might have seemed appealing to a young adult reading crowd at the time of its publication but it certainly aged poorly and I'm afraid I can't recommend it to any potential reader even out of purely historical interest.
Paul Weiss
truekatya's review against another edition
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
3.0
barryhaworth's review against another edition
5.0
Robert Sheckley's marvelous romp through the adventures of a man, bored with his everyday life, decides to vacation on Mars by swapping bodies with a Martian.
norma_cenva's review against another edition
1.0
Actual Rating 0,5 Stars
I am really sorry, but I just couldn't.
Perhaps it is written in a style I cannot identify with.
I had no choice but to DNF it in the end!
I am really sorry, but I just couldn't.
Perhaps it is written in a style I cannot identify with.
I had no choice but to DNF it in the end!
ellisknox's review against another edition
3.0
This is a great romp, as are many of Sheckley's works. It deserves a special place, though, because it is the source for the Theory of Searches, a theory I have used innumerable times while out shopping with my wife.
jayshay's review against another edition
4.0
A comic tale of a bored earth man, a thirty-one year old adolescent, swapping bodies with a Martian to go on vacation. Things go wrong almost immediately.
Put me on the side of people who really enjoyed the humour in this book. Sheckley jumps from parody to parody, most pulled off with great verve and skill. It benefits from being written before 'Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy' and I would argue it is probably a more timeless book than Adams' work - which seems much more locked in the 80s than Sheckley's 60s work.
Under the humour is the serious intent to investigate how we know anything. At one point the main character Marvin Flynn remembers he is not supposed to judge people by their appearances, unfortunately no one ever told him what he is supposed to the judge them by instead. A comedy of a hapless man careening through the universe - or to put it another way a totally realistic novel about the human condition.
You could argue that instead of a failed novelist Sheckley suffers (in some reader's eyes) from being too ambitious, almost experimental. In the final half of the novel Marvin suffers from 'metaphoric deformation' and so does the novel. I enjoy how everything spins off madly - and that in the end Sheckley refuses to tamp everything back down into a safe cognitive box for the reader. No, he gives us his joker's smile and bids us adieu.
Put me on the side of people who really enjoyed the humour in this book. Sheckley jumps from parody to parody, most pulled off with great verve and skill. It benefits from being written before 'Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy' and I would argue it is probably a more timeless book than Adams' work - which seems much more locked in the 80s than Sheckley's 60s work.
Under the humour is the serious intent to investigate how we know anything. At one point the main character Marvin Flynn remembers he is not supposed to judge people by their appearances, unfortunately no one ever told him what he is supposed to the judge them by instead. A comedy of a hapless man careening through the universe - or to put it another way a totally realistic novel about the human condition.
You could argue that instead of a failed novelist Sheckley suffers (in some reader's eyes) from being too ambitious, almost experimental. In the final half of the novel Marvin suffers from 'metaphoric deformation' and so does the novel. I enjoy how everything spins off madly - and that in the end Sheckley refuses to tamp everything back down into a safe cognitive box for the reader. No, he gives us his joker's smile and bids us adieu.
exeter_blvd's review
3.0
Man, I wanted to like this. But it's more of that 60s psychedelic stuff that just doesn't work on me, even if it was influential to DNA and Hitchhiker's Guide.