| Getting Back | 
 enlarge | Author: William Dietrich
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Category: Book
List Price: $30.00
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Avg. Customer Rating:  14 reviews
Sales Rank: 458170
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 384
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 9.2 x 6 x 1.2
ISBN: 0446524573
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780446524575
ASIN: 0446524573
Publication Date: February 2, 2000
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: No Dust Jacket Giving great service since 2004: Buy from the Best! 4,000,000 items shipped to delighted customers. We have 1,000,000 unique items ready to ship! Find your Great Buy today!
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Product Description
Daniel Dyson works for United Corporations, a 21st-century mega- company that discourages individuality in its relentless pursuit of profits. Stifled and frustrated by company policy, Daniel jumps at the chance to go on a wilderness challenge in the Australian Outback,seeing it as an ideal way to escape his cubicle and find his place in life. However, when he arrives in the unforgiving Australian back country, he realizes that the corporation does not intend for him to survive the trip, and his struggle for individuality has escalated into a fight for his life.
Download Description
In his first novel, Ice Reich, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter William Dietrich wrote the ultimate Antarctica adventure. His new novel is a classic of man against nature--and man against himself--plunging us into the unforgiving Australian outback. Here a refugee of corporate America finds himself in a life-and-death struggle for survival in the company of a mysterious woman. For Daniel Dyson the outback is the answer to his deepest longing for adventure and the most frightening question of all: What is a person willing to sacrifice in order to survive?
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| Customer Reviews: Read 9 more reviews...
 Large ideas, a fast paced read, an interesting vision of the future December 22, 2006
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
William Dietrich's novel Getting Back is one of those rare novels that is both interesting and well-paced; I sped through it over the span of three evenings. It meshes several large ideas together with a well thought out vision of the future and some characters that most readers will identify and sympathize with. Its minor drawback is a rather predictable and sappy ending.
In the future, the society is one of uniformity, controlled by a company that has merged with the government (or vice versa). Billions of people work for this company, and while some are content, others long for adventure and a way to be individualistic. One of these is Daniel Dyson, the main character of the story, an intelligent young programmer, history major, who is so bored at work he makes catapults to launch love notes to fellow workers and tried to hack into the expense reporting system.
He is "led" by underground internet contacts and a subversive young lady whom he is smitten with named Raven to Outback Adventures, a hidden, shady group that offers to drop people in Australia (which is now completely abandoned and quarantined because of a plague) with the goal of crossing the continent to get to an Exodus point on the far east coast.
To review the rest of the story would be to spoil it. Suffice to say that the trek and adventure lead Daniel, Raven and the others they encounter through a lot of self and cultural examination (has our society evolved the right way? could there have been another way? am I really a non-conformist or just an individualist?)
Some books who take on so many large ideas (world dominated by corporation, plague, conformity vs. individuality, etc.) get lost in the discussion of them, and, while I did find myself scanning through on a couple of pages of arguments about whether the current society was good or bad, for the most part Mr. Dietrich weaves these into an action packed adventure story. It is science fiction in the sense of the events that have happened and that it is placed in the future, but the trek across Australia makes it more of an adventure novel.
Highly reccommended. I go now in search of Mr. Dietrich's other novels.
Pretty Good September 4, 2006
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
I too could not put this book down. I have a major obsession with primitive living, especially in Australia. This was the only reason that i enjoyed this book so much, but only parts. The story line is pretty cheesy and predictable at some points. But something just made me want to keep on reading. Overall it was a pretty good book. I might read it again in the future.
I adored it and will read it over and over March 15, 2004
11 out of 19 found this review helpful
You know I used to have a really high rating as an Amazon reviewer.
I don't know exactly what it was but it was in the top 1000. I used to do fairly boring reviews devoid of controversy and in my opinion - interest and my rating was high - lots of "helpful" votes. Lately I have started to write about more emotional works such as "Runaway Jury" and global warming, aids, evolotion and ID, that sort of stuff. My reviewer rating plummeted.
I think Amazon rates on the ratio of favorable to unfavorable reviews. I think they ought to rate on the number of revews that get commented on whether they are rated as helpful or not.
I am sure that my reveiw of this novel will cost me at least 500 points or so on my reviewer rating.
I loved this book.
I hate to categorize but his is like a mix of "The Prisoner"; "This Perfect Day" with a taste of "Mad Max" thrown in for fun.
Dietrich has written an wonderfully inventive version of both the aforementioned works with the Mad Max thing spicing the work rather well.
Imagine a world of the future where it has all been done. A trek to Mount Everst is no more challenging or interesting than a run up Disney's Matterhorn. While this may thrill 99 44/100th of the human population, the remainder thinks something is sorely missing.
The main entity: "United Corporations' the universal employer and de-facto government does however have a problem (issue - there are no problems) in that the remaining 76/100th of folks are not happy.
Daniel Dyson is one of the not happy. As is Tucker, Amaya and Ico and a few others even one who does not know she is unhappy (Raven).
UC gives the the chance to change all that. Pay a years salary and get the adventure of a lifetime where the ultimate chalenge is to survive. After which you will of course be one of the "elite".
Trek to Australia and try to live long enough to get back out again. Just make to to the Exodis Point, we will be ther waiting for you.
Not to worry - the bioengineered plague that wiped out the population of "down under" is gone, all you need now are your wits and whatver you can carry on your back.
I will not tell any more about this book. It is too good to spoil.
You will have to read it and either get it or not. If not then welcome, United Corporations needs you. Take your place on the anthill.
If you get it - then be preapred for a wonderfully clever novel of human survival and a quest for purpose. One that will cause you to self-evaluate.
My advice - read my other reviews. If you agree with two or more, then read and enjoy this terrific novel of adventure and self-discovery.
If you hate my reviews, the go buy "It Takes a Village" by Hilary Clinton and join the swarm.
Hows that for a litmus test.
I Could Not Put The Book Down January 3, 2002
5 out of 8 found this review helpful
Its 2048 A. D. and Daniel Dyson is a bored malcontent stuck in a cubical which is buried in a company (called Microcore... what a great name) with little future and less opportunity. In this future United Corporations controls everyone's lives and if you don't rock the boat they let you work in one of their win-win companies. This is OK for most people except Daniel who feels suffocated, stifled and underemployed.Daniel is convinced by Raven, a beautiful mysterious woman, that he can escape this phony world and test his hidden talents in an Outback Adventure. Australia has been quarantined off-limits for human habitation for many years due to Virus 03.1. Nevertheless, Daniel is ready for a challenge and signs up for the vacation of his life. Although, this is no ordinary vacation. This is a vacation from hell. Daniel and his group suffer snakebite, starvation, extreme thirst depravation and exhaustion. Unbeknownst to Daniel, Australia has been the repository for the Morally Impaired (a.k.a. convicts). I guess even in the future we still don't know what to do with our social misfits. These convicts (visualize rejects from a Mad Max movie) are interested solely in escaping the island. The head convict aptly named "Warden" wants to get off the island and he believes that Daniel's group can supply him the means for his freedom. Warden captures Daniel's group and make it part of his weird collective. But Daniel and his group escape and make a mad dash to the east coast of Australia where they hope to signal an air rescue. However....That is as much as I wish to give away at this point. There is very little about this book that I didn't like. It had science fiction, good dialog and a George Orwell
1984-like feel. Perhaps Dietrich could have added a map to help us visualize the trek better but that is a minor complaint to a book that I enjoyed. Dietrich's world of the future is a bleak one but that makes the adventure all that much more fun to read. Overall a good story and well worth the price.
 Drives its point home with a sledgehammer December 6, 2001
3 out of 9 found this review helpful
I, too, found "Getting Back" incredibly tiresome. Only my fascination with Australia kept me from throwing the book away.I found the story line laughable, obtuse and quite overdone and the ending is sappy, saccharin and not worth the effort to get there. I felt no sympathy for the main character as I saw him not as a rebel struggling against and evil empire of authority, but simply as a simpering whiner who just can't be satisfied no matter what life hands him. And this wishy-washy weakling who can't make a single decision is suddenly and inexplicably transformed into this Alexander the Great-like leader of an army by the Outback desert. Likewise, the antagonists in this tale are incredibly predictable yet horribly ineffective when they do encounter the main character's party. This leaves the "conflict" scenes weak and they fail to move the story along. In short, the title of this book accurately reflects my feelings about this novel -- as I would like nothing more than to "Get Back" not only my money, but the hours of my life I wasted reading this trash.
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