“Man of Earth” is a novel by Algis Budrys published for the first time in 1958. It starts in 2197 on an Earth more and more closed in on itself. After a period of expansion in the solar system in which colonies were set up on Venus and Pluto the earthlings’ laziness had encouraged the mother planet’s inhabitants to leave the settlers on their own.
In this situation Allen Sibley is a businessman who one day is contacted by Doncaster Corporation, a company that’s looking for special people who don’t accept the hedonistic society that basks in the comfort achieved thanks to technological progress. The man from Doncaster offers Sibley help from his company if he should have any problems in his business, showing that he knows details about his activities that should be secret.
Sibley is perplexed and puts aside the business card he was given thinking that it will be useless but when he gets involved in a case of corruption he turns to Doncaster, which creates a new identity for him in exchange for nearly all his savings. Unfortunately Sibley is also sent to Pluto, where his skills are useless so he’s drafted into the planet’s army but why is a colony training an army equipped with the most sophisticated weapons ever developed by humans?
Today the idea of colonies on Venus and Pluto looks just funny. Pluto was even downgraded to a dwarf planet and the idea that you can terraform it, making it like the Earth is absurd in light of the knowledge we have accumulated. In the ’50s the knowledge of the solar system planets was limited though Pluto’s distance from the Sun should have raised doubts about the possibility of having temperatures comparable to the Earth on its surface.
In “Man of Earth” two centuries in the future the Earth is decadent and its people have lost interest in the Venus and Pluto colonies so only misfits and people in trouble with the law emigrate from the mother planet.
Algis Budrys is one of the science fiction writers who cured the psychological side of his characters the most. In fact in “Man of Earth” we don’t just follow what happens to the protagonist but also the evolution of his mental state through those events. Allen Sibley is always psychologically off-balance because he’s driven by events he can’t control. This works in the first part of the novel, when he’s fleeing from an uncomfortable situation and finds himself on an unknown planet, unfortunately that seems forced during story in the Pluto’s army as he finds a stable situation and yet he seems incapable of regaining control of his life.
“Man of Earth” is Algis Budrys’ second novel and the impression is that the author was still refining his skills as a novelist. Apparently Budrys himself considered this one his least successful novel. The length is reduced – less than 150 pages – by the standards of that time which provided a linear plot with no frills.
“Man of Earth” would have benefited from a further consideration of Earth’s decadent future history and a more sophisticated psychological development of the protagonist. On the other hand in those years the adventurous part of the plot was considered more important and possibly Budrys was seeking a balance between action and psychological development of characters that is peculiar to his novels.
Overall “Man of Earth” is a decent novel, probably better than most of those published in that period, but it’s not the best one if you want to appreciate Algis Budrys. It makes sense to read it if you want to know the works of Budrys gradually being aware that you need to read his later novels as well to find the best of this author. For all the others this novel has little more than a “historical” value.
