The 10th Victim (Vintage Ballantine, U5050)

A really wonderful and interesting book: an essay, a novel, a screenplay, but it's enough to say "Sheckley in the best vintage". Maybe someone has seen Elio Petri's movie, with Marcello Mastroianni and Ursula Andress: well, the novel is even better. Really a classic.

A really wonderful and interesting book: an essay, a novel, a screenplay, but it's enough to say "Sheckley in the best vintage". Maybe someone has seen Elio Petri's movie, with Marcello Mastroianni and Ursula Andress: well, the novel is even better. A bitter father of Douglas Adams, a sharp and concrete Vonnegut. Really a classic.

To control violent tendencies in the future the state offers a game bases on those desires. If you chose to sign up, and possibly win a massive dollar award for abilities, you are assigned to kill, and agree to allow an unknown to try for your life as well. Should you succeed in killing your assignment, without dying first, you become a one. Continueing on, a two , a three, and so forth. If you make it to ten, you win all the prise money your little heart desires. The catch, if you accidently kill a civilian, not signed up for the game, it means your life. The main character of the book, Frelaine, is a nine. He has just spotted the person he needs to rid of in order to become a ten, but oops, he falls in love. So too does she. So do these two kill each other. They believe so until the real deal behind the game becomes known. To clean the world of the types of people that would play this game in the first place. OOT-O. My opinion.... fast paces, heart tuggin, adrenalin pumpin beats. The computer wizadry used in the future isn't too far from reality. The imaginable special effects are mind blowing. Its killing all right, but not a book of blood and guts, a book of out smarts, guarenteed to make anyone think, and then, think again. For any one like myself who finds passion in pure thoughts of the witt. If anything, one should read it simply to confirm their own talents, or not, of staying one step ahead of being on the ball.... a ball is hard to stand on, but amusing to kick. (computer nerds and art freaks find their competition. So do you brain-iacks........ I dare each of you to sign up for the game)