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SAR
Nothing remains of the human race but a few tribes struggling to survive. Ruled by strongmen and warlords, the people toil, produce babies, and submit sullenly to brutality and sexual exploitation. But one man does not submit. His name is Sar, and, though only a slave, he carries within him the rebellious flame of human dignity… This magnificent novel is Sar’s story—a globe-spinning adventure filled with the drama of war, love, and the unquenchable spirit of mankind
- GenresScience FictionFiction
157 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1974
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
April 22, 2025
Another case of falling in love with a book cover, only to wither within the jaundiced pages like someone buying a ticket into what appears to be a dazzling funhouse, only to step inside and realize they are now locked inside a broom closet.
SAR!
Charles Moll did some wonderful post-hipped art for many novels in the SF counterculture boom (see: Malzberg's Beyond Apollo). Here, his cover evokes some space-age sleaze-fest, some Paul Morrissey/Warhol cultureclash of gender fluid hooliganism and everything shown through the haze of a drug-addled utopia. Besides the promise of a "A Fantastic novel of space-age barbarianism and raw adventure," this novel achieves very little. Merely a mere blip, a wet fart, mostly hogwash and tiresome hogwash at that.
SAR!
Sar is a slave boy, becomes a warrior with a tribe of trappers, then finds himself on an island with a sex-starved queen who sends him on various journeys to nowhere. He cultivates himself into a fine man who looks edible to all, but is a walking void of emptiness. Sar is a void of retaining any emotion, and to top it off, he's really quite useless in almost everything. There are discarded bed pans with more depth and integrity than Sar. However, Sar perseveres like the low-IQ leatherboy he is, over oceans and terrains to what appears to be the whole post-apocalyptic globe. And how will he save the world? Easy.
Books. Books. And more books. Knowledge too, of course.
Hogwash.
Throw in some coupling and copulating (sex scenes are frequent but non-descriptive in this one), a few vagrant cities to find more books, and then we watch Sar encounter more tribes before escaping more stone throwers vs. blow darters, and even escaping a rich little girl who had taken him as a toy and collared him to her bed (!?)...and...and it all ends up like story hour in first grade where everybody dies or disappears, and the message is loud and clear: books are knowledge and knowledge is the only thing to save The World.
Only if John Robert Russell cared more about books, maybe he wouldn't have tried to write this one. Not to be mean (I have his other novel TA in the shelves), but really....SAR....C'mon, Sar!?
SAR!
Charles Moll did some wonderful post-hipped art for many novels in the SF counterculture boom (see: Malzberg's Beyond Apollo). Here, his cover evokes some space-age sleaze-fest, some Paul Morrissey/Warhol cultureclash of gender fluid hooliganism and everything shown through the haze of a drug-addled utopia. Besides the promise of a "A Fantastic novel of space-age barbarianism and raw adventure," this novel achieves very little. Merely a mere blip, a wet fart, mostly hogwash and tiresome hogwash at that.
SAR!
Sar is a slave boy, becomes a warrior with a tribe of trappers, then finds himself on an island with a sex-starved queen who sends him on various journeys to nowhere. He cultivates himself into a fine man who looks edible to all, but is a walking void of emptiness. Sar is a void of retaining any emotion, and to top it off, he's really quite useless in almost everything. There are discarded bed pans with more depth and integrity than Sar. However, Sar perseveres like the low-IQ leatherboy he is, over oceans and terrains to what appears to be the whole post-apocalyptic globe. And how will he save the world? Easy.
Books. Books. And more books. Knowledge too, of course.
Hogwash.
Throw in some coupling and copulating (sex scenes are frequent but non-descriptive in this one), a few vagrant cities to find more books, and then we watch Sar encounter more tribes before escaping more stone throwers vs. blow darters, and even escaping a rich little girl who had taken him as a toy and collared him to her bed (!?)...and...and it all ends up like story hour in first grade where everybody dies or disappears, and the message is loud and clear: books are knowledge and knowledge is the only thing to save The World.
Only if John Robert Russell cared more about books, maybe he wouldn't have tried to write this one. Not to be mean (I have his other novel TA in the shelves), but really....SAR....C'mon, Sar!?
January 4, 2024
I don’t know about this book.
Another reviewer described it as “aimless“. I would say “meandering“ is more accurate.
Long story short:
Sar is a teenage slave in a small, post apocalyptic Neo-feudal society. After the Lord’s son kidnaps his girlfriend to use as a sex toy, Sar tries to rescue her only to discover she kinda likes being a pampered sex pet. And so he goes on wandering through the many “worlds” of this post apocalyptic landscape.
Repeat that pattern about a half a dozen times and that is pretty much the novel. Through his journey across the world, Sar:
1) Falls in with a gang of Robin Hood type bandits, who teach him to fight and kill, before they are all slaughtered by a rival gang.
2) Makes his way to “New Rome”, where he is forced to become the pampered toy slave of a little rich girl.
3) Escapes and joins a band of pirates/Viking style raiders, only to become the sex pet for their pirate Island queen and her female, amazon warrior army
4) The queen is obsessed with rediscovering all the knowledge of the pre-Cataclysm world, and finding out exactly what it was that brought the old civilization down. She sends Sar on the mission to seek out a library in the ruins of an old city in the desert, where he…
5) Gets in the middle of a war between two prehistoric clans. Using his superior skills, he ends the war and joins the two tribes together.
6) He then travels to the ancient land of “California” where he comes across the equivalent of religious zealot Puritan pilgrims, who are at war with…
7) A post apocalyptic version of Native American “savages”, who help him travel through the lands of…
8) An unusually meek and cowardly community of cowboys…
9) To a community of Mountain men who seem to have developed a harmonious and rugged, frontier society…
10) To finally reach the only advanced civilization to have survived the cataclysm, with all of modern technology: an academic society built on the model of the modern (for 1974) university.
This is why I wouldn’t describe the plot as “aimless“. Russell is definitely trying to make a point here, even though the point itself is pretty hackneyed and goofy, and delivered through the medium of a totally flat main character with zero personality… except briefly in the last few pages of the novel.
I think what the author is trying to convey is this:
Society fell apart because people just got sick of it and went nuts tearing everything down. The “stupid” lashed out in blind fury at “the smarties” in an orgy of rage and destructiveness, rampaging across the globe, and bringing civilization to an end.
Why? Just because.
Russell makes it absolutely clear that political science provides no answers. He flatly states that those trying to provide an explanation through political economy are “fanatics” who got (rightly) torn to pieces by the frenzied mob.
The only institution to come through unscathed is the University, ruled with an ideological iron fist by “supreme leader”, that is, the dean of the university.
Pretty clear what’s going on here. The university is the equivalent of the medieval Catholic church, rescuing the knowledge of the ancients in musty monasteries during the dark ages.
But after a couple of centuries, all these academics are good for is to sit back on their knowledge, engaging in the modern-day equivalent of “arguing over how many angels can dance on the head of a pin”. Clearly these eggheads are not equipped to get history going again.
After spending a few years with the academics absorbing all the knowledge he can, Sar manages to escape, along with his new friend Henry (Prince Henry the navigator of Portugal, get it?) and makes it back to the island, with the intention of using his new found knowledge to recreate the society.
He comes back with quite a bit of hostility towards the (now dead) queen… which is kind of strange, because she never gave him in any reason for it. Russell goes out of his way to make it abundantly clear women will no longer wield any power whatsoever in this new society he is constructing. I mean sure, his own daughter with the Queen will inherit the throne, but clearly Sar and Henry will be running things.
Even Sheila, the prehistoric girl that saved his life, was his loyal warrior sidekick throughout his adventures, and became supreme commander of the queen’s army gets shoved out of the way and explicitly excluded from any role in decision making. From here on out, women’s job is to hang out and look pretty. No more of this running things and kicking ass.
The novel concludes with what Russell appears to believe is a fantastic punchline. Sar and Henry intend to turn the island, physically, socially and politically into an exact replica of what they consider to be the pinnacle of human civilization: Elizabethan England… permanently.
Apparently all of history after that has been a terrible mistake.
A pretty goofy ending for a pretty goofy novel. I’m surprised to say it was actually a fun read, even though the main character himself was flat and uninspired without any detectable personality to speak of. The plot moves at a pretty quick pace, and the author’s inventions were fairly entertaining.
John Robert Russell returned to notion that civilization itself has been one big mistake in his next novel, Cabu (at least I think it was his next novel, both were published in 1974), in a much more coherent and elegant way.
I’m pretty sure the only reason I enjoyed Sar is because I had already read his other novel (Cabu) and I have a fascination with post apocalyptic science-fiction of the early to mid 1970s.
Another reviewer described it as “aimless“. I would say “meandering“ is more accurate.
Long story short:
Sar is a teenage slave in a small, post apocalyptic Neo-feudal society. After the Lord’s son kidnaps his girlfriend to use as a sex toy, Sar tries to rescue her only to discover she kinda likes being a pampered sex pet. And so he goes on wandering through the many “worlds” of this post apocalyptic landscape.
Repeat that pattern about a half a dozen times and that is pretty much the novel. Through his journey across the world, Sar:
1) Falls in with a gang of Robin Hood type bandits, who teach him to fight and kill, before they are all slaughtered by a rival gang.
2) Makes his way to “New Rome”, where he is forced to become the pampered toy slave of a little rich girl.
3) Escapes and joins a band of pirates/Viking style raiders, only to become the sex pet for their pirate Island queen and her female, amazon warrior army
4) The queen is obsessed with rediscovering all the knowledge of the pre-Cataclysm world, and finding out exactly what it was that brought the old civilization down. She sends Sar on the mission to seek out a library in the ruins of an old city in the desert, where he…
5) Gets in the middle of a war between two prehistoric clans. Using his superior skills, he ends the war and joins the two tribes together.
6) He then travels to the ancient land of “California” where he comes across the equivalent of religious zealot Puritan pilgrims, who are at war with…
7) A post apocalyptic version of Native American “savages”, who help him travel through the lands of…
8) An unusually meek and cowardly community of cowboys…
9) To a community of Mountain men who seem to have developed a harmonious and rugged, frontier society…
10) To finally reach the only advanced civilization to have survived the cataclysm, with all of modern technology: an academic society built on the model of the modern (for 1974) university.
This is why I wouldn’t describe the plot as “aimless“. Russell is definitely trying to make a point here, even though the point itself is pretty hackneyed and goofy, and delivered through the medium of a totally flat main character with zero personality… except briefly in the last few pages of the novel.
I think what the author is trying to convey is this:
Society fell apart because people just got sick of it and went nuts tearing everything down. The “stupid” lashed out in blind fury at “the smarties” in an orgy of rage and destructiveness, rampaging across the globe, and bringing civilization to an end.
Why? Just because.
Russell makes it absolutely clear that political science provides no answers. He flatly states that those trying to provide an explanation through political economy are “fanatics” who got (rightly) torn to pieces by the frenzied mob.
The only institution to come through unscathed is the University, ruled with an ideological iron fist by “supreme leader”, that is, the dean of the university.
Pretty clear what’s going on here. The university is the equivalent of the medieval Catholic church, rescuing the knowledge of the ancients in musty monasteries during the dark ages.
But after a couple of centuries, all these academics are good for is to sit back on their knowledge, engaging in the modern-day equivalent of “arguing over how many angels can dance on the head of a pin”. Clearly these eggheads are not equipped to get history going again.
After spending a few years with the academics absorbing all the knowledge he can, Sar manages to escape, along with his new friend Henry (Prince Henry the navigator of Portugal, get it?) and makes it back to the island, with the intention of using his new found knowledge to recreate the society.
He comes back with quite a bit of hostility towards the (now dead) queen… which is kind of strange, because she never gave him in any reason for it. Russell goes out of his way to make it abundantly clear women will no longer wield any power whatsoever in this new society he is constructing. I mean sure, his own daughter with the Queen will inherit the throne, but clearly Sar and Henry will be running things.
Even Sheila, the prehistoric girl that saved his life, was his loyal warrior sidekick throughout his adventures, and became supreme commander of the queen’s army gets shoved out of the way and explicitly excluded from any role in decision making. From here on out, women’s job is to hang out and look pretty. No more of this running things and kicking ass.
The novel concludes with what Russell appears to believe is a fantastic punchline. Sar and Henry intend to turn the island, physically, socially and politically into an exact replica of what they consider to be the pinnacle of human civilization: Elizabethan England… permanently.
Apparently all of history after that has been a terrible mistake.
A pretty goofy ending for a pretty goofy novel. I’m surprised to say it was actually a fun read, even though the main character himself was flat and uninspired without any detectable personality to speak of. The plot moves at a pretty quick pace, and the author’s inventions were fairly entertaining.
John Robert Russell returned to notion that civilization itself has been one big mistake in his next novel, Cabu (at least I think it was his next novel, both were published in 1974), in a much more coherent and elegant way.
I’m pretty sure the only reason I enjoyed Sar is because I had already read his other novel (Cabu) and I have a fascination with post apocalyptic science-fiction of the early to mid 1970s.
May 7, 2021
I don’t think I’ve ever read a book that is this aimless. Both this and Cabu suffered from flat characterization, but Cabu had a clear plot to it. Sar follows a slave named Sar as he... walks around. He doesn’t have much agency at all, mostly just getting captured by a group, escaping, and restarting the cycle elsewhere. A sort of plot emerges when he’s tasked with acquiring knowledge for the queen, but the plot just meanders that way as well.
Sar himself is about as charismatic as a dulled crayon and he shows no real personality beyond not wanting to settle down somewhere and objectifying women.
This sounds terrible, and it honestly is objectively speaking, but it’s all just window dressing for the real point of the book: John Robert Russell created a crazy post-apocalyptic world and wants to show it off! Does the setting actually make sense? Nope! Am I going to remember any of the characters? Probably not. Do I love the inanity of New Rome, the Green Gang, and the racist Amish colony? Absolutely.
Sar himself is about as charismatic as a dulled crayon and he shows no real personality beyond not wanting to settle down somewhere and objectifying women.
This sounds terrible, and it honestly is objectively speaking, but it’s all just window dressing for the real point of the book: John Robert Russell created a crazy post-apocalyptic world and wants to show it off! Does the setting actually make sense? Nope! Am I going to remember any of the characters? Probably not. Do I love the inanity of New Rome, the Green Gang, and the racist Amish colony? Absolutely.
May 15, 2018
"Man became not better but just more efficient at barbarism. And worse, the technology destroyed a zest for living although living was made longer. I have decided not to go that way."
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews