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Thorns

Robert Silverberg

19671 pagesabout 5–10 minutes
1967
first published
  • 1967Ballantine Books · 222 pages · ENGISBN 9780345234476
  • 1969Rapp + Whiting · 222 pages · ENGISBN 9780853911326
  • 1983Bantam Books · 222 pages · ENGISBN 9780553235739
  • 2011Gateway · 320 pages · ENGISBN 9780575106062
  • 1979Del Rey · ENGISBN 9780345279682
  • 2015Skyboat Media · 1 pagesISBN 9781504633802
  • 2000Gollancz · 224 pagesISBN 9780575071469
  • 1977New English Library · 160 pagesISBN 9780450031939

Duncan Chalk's six-hundred-pound frame is nearly as large as his media empire. Beneath the depths of his immense rolls of flab, the fabulously wealthy mogul wields the editorial power to deliver his programming across the solar system to billions of viewers. His newest real-life romance drama is between a starman who survived painful surgical experimentation while in alien captivity, and an emotionally scarred 17-year-old virgin. When the arranged relationship takes off on a whirlwind tour of the antarctic and out to the moons of Saturn, the viewers are swept up in the romance, but Chalk's true motives are revealed when the doomed relationship begins to unravel... and Chalk can feed on the emotional anguish of the two lost souls.

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