Before I’d ever read any of his books, I admired Walter Tevis for his range. Tevis is mostly known for four novels which have now all been adapted quite successfully. The Hustler, and it’s sequel The Color of Money, are about a great pool player. The Queen’s Gambit, as anyone with a Netflix account can tell you, is about a female chess champion. And then there’s The Man Who Fell to Earth. Adapted into a movie starring David Bowie, it tells the story of an extraterrestrial arriving on Earth with a detailed plan.
Thomas Jerome Newton, as he calls himself, lands in Kentucky with fifty gold rings to pawn off and the blueprints for dozens of technological innovations that will revolutionize life on Earth. His goal? To earn enough money to build a spaceship that can make it back to his home planet and ferry more of his kind off their dying planet and back to Earth.
Tevis sets his story in the then-future 1980s where shortages and recessions have had a terrible impact on life on Earth, even as scientific advances have continued. Much of the food is synthetic, and “real” items can be expensive. Parts of the globe have gone dark, completely cutting off communication with the West. Nuclear destruction is an imminent threat.
It’s a bleak time, and though he tries to stay above it all, that bleakness takes its toll on Thomas Jerome Newton too. As the world learns about Newton and his plan, Tevis takes the story in some pretty dark directions, as Newton and the humans he encounters wonder if the world is even worth saving, after all.
