There are certain discernable rules about how the universe operates, but the one thing it does with unquestionable certainty is kill us, each in our own time and way. All men see the universe differently, all explore it or approach it in different ways. The rules are recordable, but otherwise incomprehensible.Īt one point the characters equate themselves to insects crawling inside a discarded tomato can, an artifact as far beyond the ken of the ant as the alien structure is to man.įor me, the death machine is a metaphor for the universe itself. Fall to your knees or crawl across the wrong bit of territory, you die. Turn in the wrong cardinal direction and you die. Raise a hand above your shoulder and you die. The only certainty is that once inside, men die. Once inside it, different men see different things: planes of light, crystal seas, veils of shadow and terror. The machine itself is vague, indefinite, multi dimensional. So called because within minutes of entering the structure, all stalwart explorers suffer an unenviable fate. The primary metaphor of the book appears in the guise of a “death machine” found on the far side of the moon. But even so, molecular disassembly and reassembly of living men at a distance is only one tool in Mr. Years before Star Trek, Algis Budrys was thinking about transporters and considering the possibilities more deeply than many an adventure and horror writer who has called upon the idea of teleportation.
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