SOURCE: Martin, Jay. “Praise for the Blighted and Blasted.” New Republic 168, no. 25 (23 June 1973): 28-29.

In the following review, Martin finds Milton's Paradise Lost predictable and unsatisfying.

Although John Collier has titled his new book Milton's Paradise Lost and announces that he intends to reproduce “Milton's concept” in a screenplay, in almost every respect this work is unlike Milton's; and only in appearance is it a screenplay. It is all John Collier and entirely romance.

For a starter Collier replaces Milton's Ptolemaic System with a physically correct galactic universe through which Satan plummets like a stricken astronaut. Then he substitutes for the sword of God “an electronic barrier” which sweeps the gateway of Eden. But these are incidental to his real intention, which is not to revise but to reverse Milton's poem. Collier rejects the two beliefs central to Milton's work: that the divine design was perfect, and that...