[JoeLigotti]

by Ira Levin

Highly recommended if you like science fiction, this is the story of the awakening of a buried mind in a totalitarian society of the future. A stunning concretization of Plato’s collectivist Republic, with “UniComp” (a world-controlling supercomputer) in the roll of enforcer of the masterminds’ agenda.  

Riveting story telling by an excellent writer.

[TonyWhite]

I haven’t read the book, but I do recall Dr. Peikoff saying that he liked it, that Ira Levin had read Ayn Rand, liked her, and had been influenced by her, and that you could see that in the novel.

In the letters of Ayn Rand book, there is an exchange of very brief letters between Ira Levin and Ayn Rand in 1950, in which he thanks her for The Fountainhead, and she appreciates his acknowledgement.

In the Romantic Manifesto (in the chapter What is Romaticism?), Ayn Rand briefly praised Levin’s A Kiss Before Dying as “an excellent first novel”, and by implication, as an example of Romantic literature, at least on some level.

She gave a negative mention of Levin’s Rosmary’s Baby novel (about the Virgin Birth of Satan’s child), saying, in effect, that he apologized to mainstream nihilism by taking witchcraft and the supernatural seriously, and focusing so much on evil.

[TomBowden]

I second the recommendation. I read this decades ago and retain a memory that it was a good theme well executed (though I don’t gravitate to science fiction).

[Author]

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