The Man Who Fell to Earth

Walter Tevis‘s cult classic novel The Man Who Fell to Earth, published in 1963, enjoyed thirteen years of recognition in and of itself before becoming forever linked with (and, let’s face it, submerged beneath) Nicolas Roeg’s 1976 film. You know the one: fellow by the name of David Bowie starred in it.

At the risk of being seen to add to that submergence (it’s a word!), we feel we should note that a restored 40th anniversary print of The Man Who Fell to Earth is opening today at the BFI Southbank and cinemas nationwide, to be followed by a DVD and Blu-ray release (in the UK) on 10th October by STUDIOCANAL.

And for those who like their films to play on the inside of their eyeballs rather than the outside, there’s always the book!

The Man Who Fell to Earth

Released as an SF Masterwork in May this year, it is a masterpiece of modern SF:

Beautiful science fiction…(Newton) acquires a moving, tragic force as the stranger, caught and destroyed in a strange land… The story of an extraterrestrial visitor from another planet is designed mainly to say something about life on this one.

The New York Times


An utterly realistic novel about an alien human on Earth … realistic enough to become a metaphor for something inside us all, some existential aloneness.

Norman Spinrad


The Man Who Fell to Earth is available as an SF Masterworks paperback and an SF Gateway eBook. You can find more of Walter Tevis’s work via his Author page on the Gateway website and read about him in his entry in The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction.