The Paradox Men

6.0 stars. On my list of "All Time Favorite" novels. The great novels of the "Golden Age" of science fiction, when done right, are some of the best stories EVER WRITTEN. After having just re-read this story (February 14, 2010), I would put this book in that category (along with other notable examples such as <a href="https://goodreads.com/book/show/582105.Fury" title="Fury by Henry Kuttner" rel="noopener">Fury</a> by Henry Kuttner, <a href="https://goodreads.com/book/show/333867.The_Stars_My_Destination" title="The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester" rel="noopener">The Stars My Destination</a> by Alfred Bester, and <a href="https://goodreads.com/book/show/46654.The_Foundation_Trilogy" title="The Foundation Trilogy by Isaac Asimov" rel="noopener">The Foundation Trilogy</a> by Isaac Asimov). This book is superbly written, has a compelling, fast-moving INTELLIGENT plot, and an outstanding ending with a message. HIGHEST POSSIBLE RECOMMENDATION!!

I picked up this book because it had been compared to Alfred Bester's "The Stars, My Destination," one of my favorite sci-fi novels, AND because it is listed as one of the Top 100 sci-fi novels in David Pringle's excellent overview book. Happily, I found the comparison to be a fair one, and the rating to be just. This is one terrific science fiction novel, as fast paced and colorful as the Bester novel, and featuring a similar use of colorful characters and extravagant imagination. It is really quite impressive how Charles Harness manages to incorporate some fantastic surprise or bit of mind-blowing scientific hypothesizing into every single chapter. Einsteinian theories of the universe, Toynbeean history and non-Aristotelian philosophy are all mixed into a swashbuckling and fast-moving pulp story, with a backdrop of a technologically advanced society on the decline. The story jumps from the Earth to the moon to Mercury and finally to a "solarion," a station that hovers over a sunspot to process the energy of the sun itself. It's all wild and improbable and quite irresistible stuff, if you're game. I highly recommend it.

Charles L. Harness' "The Paradox Men" is an uncanny prophecy of cool technology, considering the story was written in 1949! Contains echoes of Alfred Bester's "The Stars, My Destination", a dash of Arthur C. Clark's "2001 A Space Odyssey" (think cave men), a warped version of H.G. Wells' "The Time Machine", and a bit of PKD's "The Minority Report" starring a freaky precog called Meganet Mind. No, not DreamWork's Megamind, mind you. Unfortunately the story was bogged down by brain crushing hard science that would have given Einstein a brain haemorrhage...and endless psychobabble that would have driven Freud insane. Required reading for fans of classic SF.

Featured in David Pringle's "Science Fiction: The 100 Best Novels", and originally published in 1949, this is a forgotten Golden Age sci-fi would be classic. Set in a dystopian future where the poor masses are enslaved, the story follows the adventures of Alar, part of a secret society of thieves who steal from the rich in order to free slaves. Alar, suffering from amnesia, races across the solar system to unravel his mysterious past while avoiding capture by an oppressive, heavy handed government who believes he possesses special powers that could derail their plans for war.<br /><br />Packed with action, intrigue and a smart, fast moving plot the story holds up well today. However, as is common from sci-fi stories of that era, it bases itself quite a bit on some pretty flimsy pseudo-scientific psychological and biological concepts. The plot is actually quite similar, right down to the protagonist's amnesia, to A.E. van Vogt's classic The World of Null-A, published in 1945. And to some extent as well to Alfred Bester's classic The Stars My Destination, published in 1955. But it holds up well on its own as a fun, original, well put together story.

Read long, long ago -- I may still have a copy, unless it crumbled away. The review to read here is Jamie's 4-star:<br />"Packed with action, intrigue and a smart, fast moving plot the story holds up well today. However, as is common from sci-fi stories of that era, it bases itself quite a bit on some pretty flimsy pseudo-scientific psychological and biological concepts. The plot is actually quite similar, right down to the protagonist's amnesia, to A.E. van Vogt's classic The World of Null-A, published in 1945. And to some extent as well to Alfred Bester's classic The Stars My Destination, published in 1955. But it holds up well on its own as a fun, original, well put together story."<br /><br />This would be a novella by current definitions, I think. ISFDB lists many reprints:<br /><a target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow" href="https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?4862">https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.c...</a><br />AKA "Flight into Yesterday " (1953)<br />Date first read is just a guess. I may have the Ace Double.<br />

‘The Society of Thieves was the only organisation that flouted authority in America Imperial: they robbed the rich to buy freedom for the slaves. They were well equipped and trained for their job and had friends and informers in high places ready to reveal where the wealth of the nobles was hidden.<br />And Alar was the best Thief of them all – for he had senses not found in ordinary men, senses that accurately warned him when danger was near. But Alar had amnesia and did not know his true identity though sometimes he sensed that there was a purpose in his actions that was not entirely of his own volition.<br />When Keiris, wife of the Imperial Chancellor saw him, she sensed that he was something special and helped him to elude pursuit even though it out her own life in danger. And in tripe to the Moon and even the Sun itself, Alar begins to see what part he is destined to play in the struggle for men’s freedom.<br /><br />Blurb from the 1967 Four Square paperback edition.<br /><br /><br />Harness, like Bester, wrote far less than his fans would have wished. His style (as Brian Aldiss terms it in the introduction the Four Square SF edition) is Widescreen Baroque, and despite the paucity of his output, one cannot deny that his influence has been a major one on the genre. Twelve years before Frank Herbert gave us Dune we see Harness employing the idea of personal force-shields, which repel bullets and blasters but allow through the relatively slow-moving sword or knife. Thus Harness combines the swashbuckling sword-wielding hero with the Solarion ships, which skate the surface of the sun, and the experimental interstellar ship, which is at the centre of the novel’s mystery. One can see the influence of Harness in many authors’ work, not least Herbert. Echoes of his style and imagery crop up in the work of Moorcock, M John Harrison, Will McCarthy (Aldiss notes in the introduction that Harness ‘shares a weakness for regality (and female rulers) with Van Vogt’ which seems to be also shared by Harrison and also McCarthy – see ‘The Collapsium’) and possibly Brian Aldiss himself.<br />Far in the future, America is a feudal Empire, its titular head being the Imperatrix Juana-Maria, although in reality her ruthless Chancellor, Haze-Gaunt, controls the Empire. His wife, Keiris was once married to the revolutionary Kennicott Muir, who set up the Society of Thieves, a Robin Hood style organisation dedicated to robbing the rich and bringing about the end of institutionalised slavery. Muir is now thought to be dead.<br />One of the best of the Thieves is Alar, the central figure of the novel, a man with no past, since he can remember nothing beyond a few months back.<br />Alar begins a search for the truth, during which he meets Keiris, a woman who seems hauntingly familiar; the Microfilm Mind, a mutant who can deduce the future by memorising and analysing thousands of facts of the present.<br />Meanwhile a vast interstellar ship is being built, raising the hope that Mankind might now reach the stars, but Alar is beginning to suspect that the ship has already returned to Earth and crashed long before it was built, and that he might have been on board.<br />One can argue that the novel is no more than a chase in which relentless enemies pursue Alar, searching for the truth and his own memories, but it is far more than this. It’s a joyful piece of elaborate plotting, as complex and beautifully structured as an orrery, filled with bizarre and memorable characters and featuring a denouement both expected and unexpected.

This book is awesome, i love how the history progress eventualy, and the main character have a awesome history.

This is one strange book. Full of action (it starts with the main hero in middle of doing robbery some high aristocrat home). But it’s also full of physics theories about time and space with starship, lunar base and solar expeditions. Ah, and this world definitely is apocalyptically. But most of all this book is about people -their aggression, their petty squabbles that becomes the end of this civilization. I can’t say that I fully grasp all authors thoughts. Maybe I will reread it, but not in the near future-i need time to comprehend it firstly.

Heavy on ideas and plot, weak on characters and prose style. Fairly fun and with a great ending

2015 Review: <br /><i>The Paradox Men</i> loomed large in my mind for a while. I first read about it in Brian Aldiss's SF history, <i>Trillion Year Spree</i>, where he categorizes it as a exemplary example of Widescreen Baroque, comparing it favorable to some of my other favorite SF such as <i>The Stars my Destination</i> and <i>The World of Null-A</i>. I got a nice hardback copy with introductory essays and afterwards, but I had to let my internal hype die down before I gave it a shot. I'm pleasantly surprised to find that it holds up to those other classics, especially after reading a disappointing Charles Harness book (<i>Firebird</i>). There are some clunky expository explanations but it's otherwise a fast-paced novel that may have inspired the shield-based combat of <i>Dune</i>. Like <i>Stars</i> and <i>Null-A</i>, the main character is a man of superhuman potential with a mysterious background. But my favorite character was the villain, the brilliantly named cruel emperor Haze-Gaunt, who's given a strong back story motivated by jealousy and a great ending.<br /><br />2020 Update: <br />I reread this novel in 2020, after going on a long van Vogt reading jag, and this time I loved it! I don't think I was in the right headspace to appreciate what Harness was accomplishing with <i>The Paradox Men</i> the first time. But after rereading <i>The World of Null-A</i>, realizing how this novel was obviously inspired by <i>Null-A</i>, and considering how both of these novels grew out of serials in <i>Astounding Science-Fiction</i>, I can see how Harness took his inspiration from van Vogt but uplifted Vogtian tropes into a much greater novel. Both <i>Null-A</i> and <i>The Paradox Men</i> feature amnesiac men of action and are full of exciting twists and reveals. However, Harness bolsters <i>The Paradox Men</i> with a stronger sense of history and deeper emotions. Van Vogt's characters and worlds can feel a bit empty, void of affect and unmoored from reality. But Harness imbues his characters with vibrant feelings and shows us clearly how the Earth got from the present day to his dystopic future vision.