The Cranky Old Reader

I'd never read any Michener before. For some reason I thought he was supposed to be a brilliant writer, one of the giants of American literature.My mistake! Space was surprisingly dull, and not at all well-written. Simply put, it plodded. It's a fictionalized story of the space program, with some references to some actual astronauts thrown in - plus a fictionalized US state, which was one of two things which stuck in my memory from the book.The other thing was a rather nasty assessment of golden age science fiction writers, all of whom (I'm sorry to say) were more talented writers than Mr. Michener.Space had the feel of one of those potboilers that sits on the New York Times best-seller list for many weeks...something written for the lowest common denominator. It wasn't awful, mind you, just dull and awkward. Shogun, which I'd put in the same general class of "giant best-sellers" is far better written than Space.