The Falling Torch
First edition cover
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| Author | Algis Budrys |
|---|---|
| Cover artist | Bob Engle |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Science fiction |
| Publisher | Pyramid Books |
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Publication date
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1959 |
| Media type | Print (Paperback) |
| Pages | 158 pp |
The Falling Torch is a 1959 science fiction novel by American writer Algis Budrys. A 1999 Baen Books edition was "very slightly rewritten, and includes one entirely new chapter.
The novel is about a group of freedom fighters who attempt the nearly hopeless task of liberating planet Earth from the grip of a race of alien invaders. The story has obvious overtones of freeing the author's homeland (Lithuania) from its Soviet occupiers.
The situation in the early chapters - of the Earth exiles maintaining a government in exile but losing hope of ever liberating their home planet - was clearly familiar to Burdis; his father Jonas Budrys was appointed as the Lithuanian consul general in New York in 1936, when his son was five years old and continued to hold that position, even though Lithuania was occupied by Nazi Germany and then annexed by the Soviet and made into a Soviet Republic - since the United States continued to recognize the pre-World War II Lithuanian government and the exile Lithuanian Diplomatic Service was subsidized by State Department. During most of his adult life, Budrys himself held a captain's commission in the Free Lithuanian Army. Thus he was in a personal situation similar to that of the protagonist Michael Wireman at the outset - though Budrys never tried to infiltrate Soviet-ruled Lithuania and start a rebellion there.
However, in the foreword to the Baen edition, the author firmly denies that such was the primary reason for writing the novel. Instead he aimed to produce a story of a man who, like others such as Timur, were in some way disabled and alienated from society, before coming to dominate it.
In 2513, in Geneva, Switzerland - capital of Earth and of the Solar System - a man named Michael Wireman is laid to rest. In life he was revered by people, almost to the point of worship. He personally laid down the design for a new city of Geneva, drafted a Constitution that would work for a populace accustomed to total regulation by an alien society, and ruled the Earth for 50 years. He was completely remote from common people, but whenever he was driven by in his official car they would cheer him. He was the kind of leader who features so strongly in peoples lives that they feel they cannot go on without him.
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Wikipedia