The Book
A science fiction narrative written in the early to mid-20th century. The story follows the journey of a young navigator named Beauclaire as he embarks on his first mission into a mysterious cosmic phenomenon known as the Hole in Cygnus. He takes over a ship from the seasoned and troubled crewman Billy Wyatt, who is nearing the end of his career, and together with Cooper, an unpredictable crew member, they explore a planet hidden within the dust cloud, uncovering the lives and culture of its inhabitants. As Beauclaire arrives at the planet, he becomes fascinated by its people, who seem unnaturally calm and lacking curiosity about their world, even in the face of meteor strikes that have ravaged their land. As he learns their language and interacts with them, he discovers they possess a unique book that serves as their spiritual guide, preaching acceptance of pain and the futility of seeking divinity. While Wyatt finds solace in the beauty of the planet and his bond with a local woman named Donna, Beauclaire grapples with the existential implications of his discoveries and the inherent longing of humanity to search for meaning among the stars. The narrative weaves themes of purpose, human nature, and the contrast between the vastness of the universe and the simplicity of existence.
Editions
X-Ray
“There's nothing so much like a god on earth as a General on a battlefield.””
— Michael Shaara
“The truth is, Colonel, that there's no divine spark, bless you. There's many a man alive no more value than a dead dog. Believe me, when you've seen them hang each other...Equality? Christ in Heaven. What I'm fighting for is the right to prove I'm a better man than many. Where have you seen this divine spark in operation, Colonel? Where have you noted this magnificent equality? The Great White Joker in the Sky dooms us all to stupidity or poverty from birth. no two things on earth are equal or have an equal chance, not a leaf nor a tree. There's many a man worse than me, and some better, but I don't think race or country matters a damn. What matters is justice. 'Tis why I'm here. I'll be treated as I deserve, not as my father deserved. I'm Kilrain, and I God damn all gentlemen. I don't know who me father was and I don't give a damn. There's only one aristocracy, and that's right here - " he tapped his white skull with a thick finger - "and YOU, Colonel laddie, are a member of it and don't even know it. You are damned good at everything I've seen you do, a lovely soldier, an honest man, and you got a good heart on you too, which is rare in clever men. Strange thing. I'm not a clever man meself, but I know it when I run across it. The strange and marvelous thing about you, Colonel darlin', is that you believe in mankind, even preachers, whereas when you've got my great experience of the world you will have learned that good men are rare, much rarer than you think.””
— Michael Shaara
“He bent down, scratched the black dirt into his fingers. He was beginning to warm to it; the words were beginning to flow. No one in front of him was moving. He said, "This is free ground. All the way from here to the Pacific Ocean. No man has to bow. No man born to royalty. Here we judge you by what do, not by what your father was. Here you can be . Here's a place to build a home. It isn't the land--there's always more land. It's the idea that we all have value, you and me, we're worth something more than the dirt. I never saw dirt I'd die for, but I'm not asking you to come join us and fight for dirt. What we're all fighting for, in the end, is each other.””
— Michael Shaara
“Chamberlain closed his eyes and saw it again. It was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. No book or music would have that beauty. He did not understand it: a mile of men flowing slowly, steadily, inevitably up the long green ground, dying all the while, coming to kill you, and the shell bursts appearing above them like instant white flowers, and the flags all tipping and fluttering, and dimly you could hear the music and the drums, and then you could hear the officers screaming, and yet even above your own fear came the sensation of unspeakable beauty. He shook his head, opened his eyes. Professor's mind. But he thought of Aristotle: pity and terror. So this is tragedy. Yes. He nodded. In the presence of real tragedy you feel neither pain nor joy nor hatred, only a sense of enormous space and time suspended, the great doors open to black eternity, the rising across the terrible field of that last enormous, unanswerable question.””
— Michael Shaara
“Why do there have to be men like that, men who enjoy another man's dying?””
— Michael Shaara
“If men were equal in America, all these Poles and English and Czechs and blacks, then they were equal everywhere, and there was really no such thing as foreigner; there were only free men and slaves.””
— Michael Shaara
“The faith itself was simple; he believed in the dignity of man. His ancestors were Huguenots, refugees of a chained and bloody Europe. He had learned their stories in the cradle. He had grown up believing in America and the individual and it was a stronger faith than his faith in God. This was the land where no man had to bow. In this place at last a man could stand up free of the past, free of tradition and blood ties and the curse of royalty and become what he wished to become. This was the first place on earth where the man mattered more than the state. True freedom had begun here and it would spread eventually over all the earth. But it had begun HERE. The fact of slavery upon this incredibly beautiful new clean earth was appalling, but more even than that was the horror of old Europe, the curse of nobility, which the South was transplanting to new soil. They were forming a new aristocracy, a new breed of glittering men, and Chamberlain had come to crush it. But he was fighting for the dignity of man and i that way he was fighting for himself. If men were equal in America, all the former Poles and English and Czechs and blacks, then they were equal everywhere, and there was really no such thing as foreigner; there were only free men and slaves. And so it was not even patriotism but a new faith. The Frenchman may fight for France, but the American fights for mankind, for freedom; for the people, not the land.””
— Michael Shaara
“Southern women like their men religious and a little mad.””
— Michael Shaara
“Perhaps it was only that when you try to put it into words you cannot express it truly, it never sounds as you dream it.””
— Michael Shaara
