The Black Star Passes

By John W. Campbell

A sky pirate armed with superior weapons of his own invention.... First contact with an alien race dangerous enough to threaten the safety of two planets.... The arrival of an unseen dark sun whose attendant marauders aimed at the very end of civilization in this Solar System.... These were the three challenges that tested the skill and minds of the brilliant team of scientist-astronauts Arcot, Wade, and Morey. Their initial adventures are a classic of science-fiction which first brought the name of their author, John W. Campbell, into prominence as a master of the inventive imagination.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Start Publishing LLC
• Release date: Mar 14, 2013
• ISBN: 9781625587831

John W. Campbell

John Campbell is a lawyer, magician, songwriter, photographer, video producer, adventure travel enthusiast, and history buff who lives with his family in the southern United States. John has been a trial lawyer for over twenty-five years, successfully handling cases all over the country. He graduated from the College of William and Mary in Virginia and from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock law school.John was the coauthor of a book on close up magic, Pure Imagination, before writing Cross-Examined: Putting Christianity on Trial, his dissection of Christianity and the case of apologists for the Christian God. John was raised in a Christian household but lost his faith in college, ironically in the process of tying to to strengthen it. Since that time he has had a profound interest in religion, especially Christianity.

Reviews for The Black Star Passes

[wova4 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

This anthology of three novellas published in 1930 is quite beyond its expiration date. If one chooses to read it, it is best appreciated from a historical basis. The science is off in many places and I found the ability of the protagonists to manufacture complete implementations of days-old scientific discoveries bafflingly unbelievable. The characters are flat and the plot only serves to setup more passages of rambling scientific speculation.

[ikeman100 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This was the prequel to Campbell's better written "Islands of Space". It is a few stories about how the genius men come to be a team. This book was written about the same time as E.E Doc Smith's "Skylark of Space" and Jack Williams' "The Legion of Space" but is not as good as either. Campbell did some good short story writing and was the best editor of the Sf pulps but this book was very average, boy's adventures in space, stories. It was average at the time and has not aged well.

[thomas64-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Although entertaining, this science fiction collection has not aged well. In fact, the stories were probably outdated by the end of the 1930s, after the appearance of Stanley G. Weinbaum's "A Martian Odyssey" and the stories of Campbell's own alter ego, "Don A. Stuart." Much of the science is improbable, and the dialogue contains too much expository technobabble.