The Man Who Fell To Earth
The Man Who Fell To Earth by Walter Tevis
Sometimes you just instantly know you’re going to like a book. Nothing has to have even happened early on, you just enjoy the writing style, or the way the characters are presented. A chapter into The Man Who Fell To Earth I knew i’d blast through the book in no time and be thoroughly happy with the read.
The story follows an alien called Newton who arrives on Earth with initially unknown intentions, outside of making a lot of money for a secret project. Using his superior technological knowledge he accrue’s a vast fortune quickly, and only then do we begin to discover his real motives, and the effects the Earth and Humans are having on him.
The book reads as a bit of a mystery, but is more of a character study, and a loney and somewhat depressingly beautiful one at that as Newton discovers alcohol and tries to shed some of his loneliness. The story feels poetic a lot of the time, without ever over-indulging––unlike some of drinking habits throughout.
The central three characters all just want to make human connections, but ones an alien, ones past her best days, and the other is getting on in life and choose work over love. They all like to drink, and they all want to be loved. Without knowing much about the author himself, you can feel his pain dripping off the page.
Outside of the well crafted and all to real––despite one being an alien––characters, the book has plenty of sci-fi ideas and world building. You learn about Newton’s planet and the mistakes his civilisation made, while we also see a bunch of technology made on Earth which was actually surprising accurate to what we ended up with. And then there’s the project itself, and what that could mean.
The massive turning point in the book is somewhat predictable, but not remotely in a bad way. It completely makes sense to the story, and the isolation of the lead character. You can’t help but feel angry at the turn of events, and then in a full on rage when things get even worse for Newton.
It’s one of those stories where I was rooting for all our heroes, but also, you can’t help but think they’re kind of doomed. A sad but beautiful sci-fi read. The story had some great ideas, and the writing was very clean and precise. Things skip ahead at times, but never at the expense of the characters.
I really liked this one start to finish, and i’m definitely going to read more of Walter Tevis work as I very much enjoyed his writing style. The Man Who Fell To Earth is one of those books in which the main concept has been copied plenty since, but i’d struggle to name any better versions than this one.
