The Man Who Fell to Earth - Walter Tevis

Author: Walter Tevis

Publisher: Penguin Modern Classics

First published:1963

Setting: USA
Read in March 2014

My Rating ★★★★  3.9

My Waterstones Review

Thomas Jerome Newton is an alien from planet Anthea who has landed in an isolated part of Kentucky. He is tall at six and a half feet with white hair, peculiar looking but not out of place; out of disguise he would have no fingernails and only slits for his eyes, he was human; but not, properly, a man. He is highly intelligent and uses his knowledge from Anthea to patent inventions that creates immense wealth. His mission is to construct a space ship to ferry the few remaining Antheans to Earth to stop it from destroying itself with Nuclear bombs. 

Nathan Bryce is a Professor at an Iowa University who is struck by the definition of the film he was watching at the cinema. At an all night drugstore he sees some 35mm camera film with the same brand name Worldcolour from World Enterprises Corporation. Intrigued by the claim to be self-developing he sets about analysing the chemical properties only to discover the process did not use conventional chemicals. His suspicions will lead him to applying for a position with W.E.Corp.

Set in the future in 1985 this science fiction book never strays too far from reality. In Kentucky Thomas finds that he tires easily under the 90 degree heat being physically unable to perspire and in a hotel elevator his body cripples with the multiplication effect of gravity. Here he meets a chubby, pretty woman, Betty Jo, who looks after him when he passes out. Betty Jo is a Gin alcoholic. Betty Jo and Nathan will become friends of Thomas but the inventions and gathering of scientists around his project will not go unnoticed by the American authorities.

The Man Who Fell to Earth is a short book of less than 200 pages, it is beautifully written. In 1976 it was made into a film starring David Bowie and it reached cult status.