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Title: The Status Civilization
Author: Robert Sheckley
Narrator: Frank Harrison
Format: Unabridged
Length: 4 hrs and 59 mins
Language: English
Release date: 12-21-17
Publisher: Audioliterature
Genres: Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Sci-Fi: Contemporary
Publisher's Summary:
"The Status Civilization" is a science fiction novel by Robert Sheckley. The protagonist is Will Barrent, who finds himself, without memory of any crime, or, indeed, of his previous life, being shipped across space to the planet Omega.
Omega, used to imprison extreme offenders, has a hierarchical society of extreme brutality, where the only way to advance (and avoid dying) is to commit an endless series of crimes. The average life expectancy from time of arrival on Omega is three years. The story tells Barrent's attempt to survive and escape Omega, and return to Earth to clear himself of the accusations against him.
Artist Bio Author: Robert Sheckley (1928-2005) was an American writer of science fiction. His numerous quick-witted stories and novels were famously unpredictable, absurdist, and broadly comical.
©2017 Audioliterature (P)2017 Audioliterature
Members Reviews:
It could have been a great book !
A novel of the fifties. The starting of the book is good enough to stand the passing of time. A planet where all criminals from Earth are sent, without their memory of their life on Earth, develops as a criminally bent society, where evil is worshippped, the way to reach a high status is to kill other Citizens. Also the weather is hellish, as it sometimes happens.
If you break the law, you suffer the consequences, but it is still within this hellish planet.
Will Barent does not remember well why he was sent there, he knows that he is a murderer, but he does not like to kill.
And there is strange girl who helps him from the very first day he lands.
The end of the book is not worth much, it could have been a great book, it becomes a good book.
A connection could be made to Dune, where the Emperor's guards, the Sardaukar were raised on a prison planet, and became the greatest warrior of the Universe, before the Fremen came to the Universe. Could it be that Herbert remembered this book ?
A 1950s Era Projection of the Future of Social Conformity
A man wakes up in a hospital with no memory, but it isn't a hospital. It's a prison ship taking him on an alien planet named Omega. When he is marched out of the ship with a group of other amnesiacs, they are informed that they are all criminals who have been exiled. They are told that their minds have been wiped of all information of their previous life on Earth for the safety of Earth. They are told their crimes and their names but nothing else. The man finds out that his name is Will Barrent and that he is a murderer.
Barrent and his cohort are then dumped into a society where evil is good and individuals advance in status by murder. Barrent advances quite successfully by his reflexes, intelligence and good fortune, rather than by any innate viciousness or sociopathy. He is helped at key times by a mysterious woman, who doesn't exist in the story as anything more than a plot device.
Eventually Barrent gets to the pinnacle of Omega society and discovers that its internal contradictions are about to rip it apart. He fortuitously falls in with the Omegan non-criminal underground and is smuggled back to Earth on a returning prison ship.
Because of the mindwipe, Omegans do not remember anything about Earth, although they have conjectures about a fierce police state ruled through informers. What Barrent finds, however, is a world of unthinking conformity. There is no police and there is no crime. There are no local or regional differences.