{"id":245,"date":"2008-09-14T20:50:47","date_gmt":"2008-09-15T03:50:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/?p=245"},"modified":"2009-07-04T12:54:21","modified_gmt":"2009-07-04T19:54:21","slug":"on-my-way-to-paradise-by-dave-wolverton","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/on-my-way-to-paradise-by-dave-wolverton\/","title":{"rendered":"On My Way to Paradise by Dave Wolverton"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"n17823603_36079523_8117\"<\/a>Senior Angelo Osic is a doctor in one of the refugee flooded neighborhoods of Panama.\u00a0 The United Socialist States of South America has launched a new war in its efforts to reshape the human race into something purer, but all of that is far away from the life Angelo lives–until an emaciated woman with a bloody stump at the end of her arm shows up and demands him to grow her a new one.<\/p>\n

Events rapidly spin out of his control, and Angelo flees on the first spaceship leaving earth–a mercenary transport taking hundreds of superhuman warriors to fight in a bloody planet-wide war among Japanese colonists.\u00a0 As he tries desperately to evade socialist assassins, he makes friends among the mercenaries on the spaceship–as well as deadly enemies.\u00a0 In the eerily realistic virtual reality world of the training simulators, Angelo dies a hundred times and slowly becomes desensitized to killing.<\/p>\n

As the ship reaches its final destination–a world awash in a genocidal bloodbath–and Angelo’s enemies finally start to catch up with him, how will he maintain his humanity?\u00a0 Will he ever be able to feel love and compassion again–or will he become the monster he fears the world is making him?<\/p>\n

This book is violent<\/em>.\u00a0 It is violent <\/em>and gritty.<\/em> Rape, murder, assassination, brutal disfiguration and torture, graphic battle scenes and massive acts of genocide–it’s all in there. That said, the book is not about the violence–it’s about moral dilemmas, how we respond to injustice, and how we can maintain our humanity in the face of the most horrific evil this world can see.<\/p>\n

Unlike a lot of cyberpunk, Angelo wants<\/em> to be good–he desperately<\/em> wants to be an upright, moral person–but time and again he finds himself in situations where he cannot avoid getting his hands bloody, sometimes up to his elbows.\u00a0 How he responds<\/em> to this evil, and how he endures it without becoming evil himself, is where the story has its meat.<\/p>\n

On My Way to Paradise <\/em>is a book that makes you think<\/em>, and after you put it down, you can’t put it out of your mind.\u00a0 It’s a book that has the power to change your life and how you see the world.<\/p>\n

I found it by listening to it as a free audiobook on a podcast that podfaded shortly after, so I only caught the first seven chapters.\u00a0 For the next year and a half, the story haunted me–I could not forget about it, or about the dilemmas and issues it raised.\u00a0 I hunted all the bookstores for it, but sadly it’s been out of print for over a decade.\u00a0 When I finally did find out that Pioneer Book had a copy in their warehouse, I ordered it and finished it a week or two later.\u00a0 If I regret anything, it’s that I didn’t order it sooner.<\/p>\n

This is honestly one of the best books I’ve read.\u00a0 It is a masterpiece.\u00a0 I’ve rarely read anything so real and down to earth, anything that resonates as truth so deeply.\u00a0 It’s definitely not for everybody, but this book is incredible.\u00a0 I’ve rarely read anythings so powerful–or so meaningful.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Senior Angelo Osic is a doctor in one of the refugee flooded neighborhoods of Panama.\u00a0 The United Socialist States of South America has launched a new war in its efforts to reshape the human race into something purer, but all of that is far away from the life Angelo lives–until an emaciated woman with a… Continue reading On My Way to Paradise by Dave Wolverton<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-245","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7iXK-3X","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=245"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":901,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245\/revisions\/901"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}