The Book by Michael Shaara

The Book Reviews

• 
  Joey Brockert

  In the space corps, there are those who explore unknown worlds. They are looking for other species like us, as well as other planets to colonize.
  The ships tend to have two crew members, but this one will have three because Beauclaire is new and Billy Wyatt will be giving him some notion of what all to expect and how to deal with problems. Poor Mr. Wyatt is to be reposted, exploring anymore, and Beauclaire is to be his replacement.
  On this trip they are being sent to an area that has not been explored because it is too dusty to be safe for space ships to travel light speeds. There has appeared in that area, though, a sun. It is the explorers job to see if the sun has any planets, and to find out about them.
  They make the trip, when they get there, lo and behold, there is a planet that humans can live on, and there are some already there. Because of the environment (meteors pummel the planet willy nilly, and pretty often), the people who live there have developed an unusual philosophy – it happens. They wrote a book that part of the explorers job is to learn the language (of course), and translate books and such. This philosophy is the subject of that book.
• 
  Brian

  A free short sci-fi classic originally published in Galaxy in 1953, Michael Shaara presents a hellish vision of heaven, or is that a heavenly vision of hell? Which you see probably reflects more about you than the story.
  
  I confess it didn't really work for me, but it might for you. It's a quick read
  freely available from Gutennburg, and well worth it if you enjoy classic sci fi short stories.