''Out on Blue Six'' is a 1989

science fiction Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel unive ...

novel by the British writer Ian McDonald, his third novel. The plot describes the adventures of groups of outcasts and "pain criminals" in the Compassionate Society, a civilization in which all forms of pain and unhappiness have been made illegal.

Critical reception

The book has a small cult following. Author

Cory Doctorow Cory Efram Doctorow (; born July 17, 1971) is a Canadian-British blogger, journalist, and science fiction author who served as co-editor of the blog ''Boing Boing''. He is an activist in favour of liberalising copyright laws and a proponent of ...

(who wrote the foreword to the 2014 reprint) described the book as "a 16-car pileup in Dr Seuss country, where the colliding zithermobiles are piloted by William Gibson's console cowboys and Mad Magazine caricatures". Kat Hooper, described the book as "Really bizarre". Ian McDonald dislikes the book and has stated "I wish I hadn't written the damn thing" and that "

he book is He or HE may refer to: Language * He (pronoun), an English pronoun * He (kana), the romanization of the Japanese kana へ * He (letter), the fifth letter of many Semitic alphabets * He (Cyrillic), a letter of the Cyrillic script called ''He'' ...

too forced, it tries too hard, everything is too artificial". British radio DJ Mark Radcliffe named his 1991 radio show after this book, although the name of the book was in turn taken from an early 1980s post punk band featuring Kate Sekules.

References

External links

* {{Ian McDonald 1989 British novels 1989 science fiction novels British science fiction novels Dystopian novels Novels by Ian McDonald Bantam Spectra books