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The “beautiful” novel that inspired the Showtime series, from a Nebula Award finalist (The New York Times).
 
The Man Who Fell to Earth tells the story of Thomas Jerome Newton, an alien disguised as a human who comes to Earth on a mission to save his people. Devastated by nuclear war, his home planet, Anthea, is no longer habitable. Newton lands in Kentucky and starts patenting Anthean technology—amassing the fortune he needs to build a spaceship that will bring the last three hundred Anthean survivors to Earth.
 
But instead of the help he seeks, he finds only self-destruction, sinking into alcoholism and abandoning his spaceship, in this poignant story about the human condition—which has inspired both a film starring David Bowie and the new series starring Chiwetel Ejiofor—by the acclaimed author of Mockingbird.
 
“Beautiful science fiction . . . The story of an extraterrestrial visitor from another planet is designed mainly to say something about life on this one.” —The New York Times
 
“An utterly realistic novel about an alien human on Earth . . . Realistic enough to become a metaphor for something inside us all, some existential loneliness.” —Norman Spinrad, author of The Iron Dream
 
“Those who know The Man Who Fell to Earth only from the film version are missing something. This is one of the finest science fiction novels of its period.” —J. R. Dunn, author of This Side of Judgment

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B07H19K4HB
Publisher ‏ : ‎ RosettaBooks (September 29, 2014)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ September 29, 2014
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 979 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Print length ‏ : ‎ 226 pages
Reviewer: The Casual Nerd
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: This is a slow, saddening excursion into the depths of humanity and existence that remains very relative to this day..
Review: Finding the words to articulate my feelings for this poignant story is no easy task. It is one I have chosen to minimize as I feel this a novel best left interpreted by the individual reader. There is much to be gained during the small time spent with this classic novel.Initially I did not fully discern just how much was happening within this misleadingly simple story of an alien from the planet Anthea sent to Earth in hopes of securing a means to save his own race.The plot is very basic. Our protagonist and the message he carries is anything but.The Man Who Fell To Earth is not your typical speculative fiction. You will not find yourself whisked away to futuristic planets among incredible alien races. The only spaceship in this story no longer functions. There are no magical worlds and fantastical events occurring. No, this is not about any of those things. This is a journey of exploration that will take you much further than that. And that journey begins and ends with one man..Meet T.J. Newton (Tommy). He has been sent to Earth in hopes of saving his race from their dying planet. His plan is simple. Patent Anthean technology (while disguised as a human) and acquire enough money to build a spaceship to bring the Antheans to Earth. However, all does not go exactly as Tommy plans and he ends up acquiring something much larger than any spaceship. Humanity.“He was human; but not, properly, a man. Also, manlike, he was susceptible to love, to fear, to intense physical pain and to self-pity.”The Man Who Fell To Earth is a quiet, elegant and lonely look at the deepest of “human” characteristics through the eyes of an alien. Through Tommy’s time with man we observe life and the emotions and traits that encompass our very existence. We are given a new perspective and challenged to observe ourselves outwardly.Tommy’s time away from Anthea is filled with pain and isolation. He lives alone among man in fear of discovery and even worse, failing. But his time on Earth results in more than he anticipates as he begins to assess his own feelings and the life surrounding him. He quickly sees the suffering and self-destructive behavior of mankind.This is a slow, saddening excursion into the depths of humanity and existence that remains very relative to this day. The Man Who Fell To Earth, while short in length delivers a surprisingly impactful story full of underlying depth and significance.My hope is to follow-up with a small review/comparison of the film starring David Bowie in the near future. Imagining Bowie as Tommy was an effortless process as the descriptions fit so fell. I immediately found myself ordering a collector’s edition that has been released just this year. Here is a look at the trailer for the remastered film from last year for those who might be curious.As this review is about a week late, I now find I can’t help but recommend The Man Who Fell To Earth to all. It still lingers with me as I continue to attempt to fully interpret and dissect all that has been beautifully packed into this classic and deceptively simplistic story. This would be a wonderful selection for a discussion or group reading.

Reviewer: F. Moyer
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title: The sci-fi is a bit dated, but it’s still an interesting (and somewhat sad) story
Review: “The Man Who Fell to Earth” is character-driven sci-fi. No ray guns. No alien invasions. Just one man (but not HUMAN) trying to use his intelligence and Earth’s seemingly inexhaustible resources to try and save the rest of his kind – and perhaps mankind as well. His is a lonely endeavor, as he is surrounded only by people who he really doesn’t understand (and who do not really understand him). Ultimately, this is a sad, almost pitiful, tale – yet, for me, both interesting and intriguing as well. Definitely worth reading.Two caveats:[1] This book was written before we had the ability to detect planets orbiting around other stars in our galaxy. So the protagonist says he is from our solar system (because, the book “explains”, planets are so rare within the galaxy). We now know differently. (And we also know so much more about the planets in our solar system, too.)[2] Like the movie “E.T.” and similar storylines from older sci-fi stories, this books had government authorities acting in a callous, thoughtless and invasive manner.But those are just a couple discordant notes within a thoughtful and thought-provoking story.

Reviewer: Robert P Gelms
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Look Out Aliens
Review: Watch Out, That First Step Is Slippery By Bob Gelms Walter Tevis might not be a name that jumps to the front of your mind when thinking of prodigiously talented novelists. He is. Mr. Tevis wrote six novels, three of which were made into movies: The Hustler and The Color of Money both starring Paul Newman, and The Man Who Fell to Earth, starring David Bowie. In The Man Who Fell To Earth, Mr. Tevis breaks all the rules for a science fiction novel and comes up with a story that is seared in my memory. There really is nothing else like it in the genre. As I read, I kept flashing back to that classic sci-fi novel, Stranger In A Strange Land. That protagonist, Valentine Michael Smith, and the main character in The Man Who Fell to Earth, Thomas Jerome Newton, have certain similarities in their personality traits. The big difference is that Smith is already a human and, in a very strange and riveting manner, the extraterrestrial, Newton, becomes human. Newton’s home planet has been ravaged and almost denuded of all life. Anthea had seven different species living and disagreeing on it. The only species left is Newton’s and there are only 300 of them. His mission is to travel to Earth in a one-person space ship. He lands, some would say crashed, in of all places, a remote, rural, regressive and racist area in Kentucky. Boy, oh boy, is he lucky or what? But soon he has accumulated a massive fortune by getting patents on hundreds of almost magical Athenian technology inventions. He is going to use this fortune to build a spacecraft that will go to Anthea and bring the survivors to Earth. This, my dear readers, is a stunningly brilliant plan. There were and are science fiction writers all over the world hitting their foreheads with the palm of their hands, “Why didn’t I think of that?!” This is still happening even though the novel was published in 1963. I did it just last week. Newton looks human enough but he also looks a little odd. He is tall and pale with angular features, anorexicly thin with bones so hollow he is as light as dandelion seeds floating on the air. This causes him to be especially fragile and he does break his leg when he stumbles in an elevator. The government is intensely interested in Newton but they can’t find any reason to bring him in for questioning. Until they find the remnants of his spacecraft and, wait for it, they arrest him for entering the country illegally, presumably because he is an undocumented alien. I’m still belly laughing at that one. Along the way, Newton develops a taste for demon gin. Nothing good comes from this. The longer Mr. Newman is on Earth the more he starts to put on earthly things as if they were comfortable coats. The work on the spaceship slows down and finally stops altogether. I kept wondering about the 300 people on Anthea. Will they ever get here? As much as some of the mechanical engineers and other workman on the project laugh or even get angry at Newton’s flaws, they silently recognize some of their own. I believe this is the central idea in the novel. Newton is a mirror Mr. Tevis is holding up as a way for us humans to contemplate who we are both individually and as a species. The story takes a turn for the poignant and we feel bad for Newton but at the same time we root for him. We empathize because he is taking on our human uniqueness as we are taking on his. In a bit of incredibly twisted opinion, there are a number of people on Earth, mostly in the government, who actually don’t believe he is from another planet in another solar system. Their brains are overloaded. Danger, danger, Will Robinson, this does not compute. You know what else doesn’t compute? He lands in Kentucky, home of the greatest whiskey on Earth, bourbon. Newton winds up drinking gin. Mr. Tevis is British which might account for the gin. Most of the UK is virtually drowning in the stuff. There are a number of actions taken by Newton, the idiots in the government and a few people Newton has befriended, or maybe it’s the other way around. They all, in their own way, try to fix Mr. Newton The Man Who Fell to Earth is a novel of the first rank. It is simply a superb read.Walter Tevis has Thomas Jerome Newton almost literally fall out of the sky and come to rest in America. I have a hope that the man who fell to Earth finds a way to fall off the planet and become what he was.

Reviewer: carlos rezende
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Quando ouvimos falar de uma criatura extraterrena,pensamos quase sempre num ser bizarro.Newton,o extraterrestre deste livro,não é assim,embora possuidor de brilhantes dotes mentais.Entretanto,sua maior extravagância seja assemelhar-se demasiadamente ao homem,inclusive na sua adicção ao álcool.Constrói um império empresarial nos Estados Unidos,acumula uma fortuna e talvez a empregue para salvar os últimos 3 mil habitantes que restaram de seu planeta e possibilitar também que os terráqueos se salvem.Contudo,seu plano é obstado pelos agentes do FBI,que o prendem e,na sua ânsia por conhece-lo, acabam por cegá-lo.Solto,perde seu objetivo e morre de desgosto.Livrinho pungente,que se lê com um misto de prazer e um traço de misericórdia pela condição humana

Reviewer: Leslie Liston
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: An interesting take on society in USASad and thought provoking, well written and plausible. Worth reading for sureLeslie Liston

Reviewer: Amazon Customer
Rating: 2.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Love it. Shows you what it means ti be human and it’s so easy to read. I love WT so much

Reviewer: Krishna
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Smooth prose and a wonderful take on the undercover alien.I read this as a part of a book club read. Within minutes of starting, I realized this is a writer that I need to read more of. I think I’m going to stick to that promise I made myself.This book is similar to “Stranger in a Strange Land” by Robert Heinlein, but the style and content are different enough. I enjoyed reading this more, but I think I’ll remember the Heinlein one longer.Recommend it for sci-fi and non-sci-fi readers.PS: You might accidentally become more of an alcoholic if you idolize the characters in the book.

Reviewer: jackey
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: The book is written extremely well and in my opinion it has literary value. When you overcome the initial disappointment at meeting an alien who looks, acts and feels far too much like a human being, you realise that the novel is absolutely realistic and plausibile. If another species should be found in the universe I think it would be very similar to ours, actually. A great read and a very fine author.