Rule Golden

By: Damon Knight

Narrated by: William Coon

Length: 3 hrs and 2 mins

Publisher's summary

As a newspaper publisher, Robert James Dahls found the news disconcerting; in fact, inexplicable. News items like two boxers simultaneously knocking each other out, prison guards sick and unable to guard the prisoners, policemen shooting fleeing culprits and collapsing themselves, battered wives with husbands suffering the same injuries that they inflicted.

Dahl catches wind of a large experimental facility that is being led by the U.S. Department of Defense. His suspicions coincide with the strange, beyond-coincidental behavior that he's been observing. For what's on the grounds of the facility is much more radical than anything that was claimed to be found in Roswell. Not just an alien but one that has a strange effect on the human race, where the Golden Rule in reversed: Be done by as you do to others.

How can we get along without conflict? What will happen to the human race? Dahl soon finds himself a fugitive helping a bizarre alien save or destroy the Earth!

©2009 Wonder Audiobooks (P)2009 Wonder Audiobooks

Classic, important Science Fiction of Ideas

Damon Knight is one of the masters of the short stories and short novels from the Golden Age of science fiction. His best work like this takes simple bold ideas, what if's, and anchors it in the mundane and practical.
An alien arrives on our plant and injures himself and is captured. What is he doing here? How is he treated? And is there a connection to the strange incidents and possible diseases that are starting to occur?
A small newspaper owner is drawn into the story while investigating what is the military doing in a locked down isolated faculty.
This is a classic story for those who think about government and religion and big ideas and what the world would be like if one simple change were made.
Other stories by Damon Knight include Why Do Birds, A For Anything, and The Man in the Tree. He is also known for the short story To Serve Man.

Loses its way...

I didn't really enjoy this book. The narration isn't bad (though the narrator struggles with English accents, which is funny but not distractingly so). It starts off with a really interesting premise, and the characters seem to develop well, and something of an adventure ensues. However, long before the book ever finishes, all this substance seems to really take a back seat to the author's desire to explore his "what ifs" and give us his view. What if there could be no violence of any sort?? Yes, well, the answer, ot rather the way he answers, turns out not to be as interesting as you'd suspect... He goes on to create his own bizarre, and I think unlikely, utopia. At times it feels a bit political, and like he has an agenda, but that isn't really the problem. The problem is that getting his view across in this way seems to trump the story - the plot and characters, etc, seem to fall by the wayside a bit. I had to pressure myself to finish it.

It is easy to be a critic though, I know, and with that in mind, others may not react this way, and would perhaps find his exploration even more interesting than the story it leaves behind.