Robert Silverberg

There are three novellas in this book. I enjoyed all of them.

"Debt of Bones" by Terry Goodkind is set in his Sword of Truth world. I never read any of those books, but upon starting the story, I realized that is the world that the TV show "Legend of the Seeker" was set in. I enjoyed the world-building and the characters. I'd be interested in reading the books. I had enjoyed the TV show too. There are twists at the end that are a bit contrived. So they all live happily ever after. It felt like there was more the author wanted to write bt ran out of time/space and had to condense the ending.

"The Hedge Knight" by GRRM is obviously set in the world of ice and fire and takes place about 100 years before the books. The fight scenes were incredible. The characters were well fleshed out. I'd like to read more about Dunk and Egg.

The third story "Runner of Pern" by Anne McCaffery is part of the Dragonriders of Pern stories. There are no dragons in this one, although a few are sighted briefly flying high above. This story is about a runner. They are long-distance messengers that use special trails that crisscross the continent. The runners are an interesting group and a world with them minus dragons would be interesting on its own. This one has a meet-cute, or a meet-angry to tie the information about the world and the runners together. A runner is nearly run off the road by someone on a beast who shouldn't be using the runner trails. They meet later at a gathering and there's chemistry after he apologizes profusely. The author went on and on about how pretty Tenna is, which bothered me. Because everyone kept saying how people (read: Men) pay more attention to pretty women. So when she speaks to the local lord about being run off the trail, he'll listen to her when he didn't pay attention to others. Or that the wild boy Halogan would be more inclined to stop using the runner trails on his beast if pretty Tenna gave him "what-for." Her falling into a sticklebush and needing three days to heal when she should have been courioring more mail should have been enough. That she was prettyshouldn't have been such a big deal except for Halogan to want to spend more time with with her. Although the fact that she was an excellent dancer, could have made him more interested.… (mer)

This book is rather different from the author's general science fictional output as it is a psychological study of four young men which was in a contemporary setting when originally published in 1972. The story is told from the four men's viewpoint and switches around between them so that we see their assumptions about the others and then how those assumptions are usually wrong.

Four young men are on holiday from their university where they are friends and/or room mates. The four are on a long road trip across America to find a retreat or monastery supposedly inhabited by men who are immortal. One of the four, a scholar called Eli, has come across a manuscript in the university library while there to look for something else and, intrigued by the illustrations of skulls in it, translated it. It turned out to be a guide for how to win immortality by turning up at the abode of the "monks" as a group of four to undergo initiation/trial. The snag is only two can win through: one must commit suicide - sacrifice himself for the group - and the other must be killed by the remaining three.

Eli believes totally in the message of the manuscript and has convinced the other three in the preceding months to accompany him to the place where he believes the monastery currently resides - it is presumed to have moved from one place to the other over the centuries, but before finding the manuscript, he had come across a newspaper article about a place which he believes houses the same order. Ned, who is a cynic, fluctuates in his belief and toys with the idea of committing suicide - as long as he can 'have' one of the others first, the physically attractive Oliver, while Timothy, from a long line of rich men, is going along for the ride and treating the whole thing as a game. As the trip proceeds we learn that Oliver is obsessed with living forever because his whole family died prematurely, leaving him the family farm - the sale of which paid for his attendance at the university. All four have dark secrets which later come to light.

The problem I had with the story, apart from the voices of the four being very similar, is that all are basically repellent characters - not only because of some terrible things they have done, but because of their attitude to women. Women are mentioned in the various flashbacks, and even where they are stated to be intelligent and strong characters in practice they are little more than chattels. The men constantly refer to women in abusive terms. One character "lends out" his girlfriend to another so that the latter can experience sex with an attractive woman whom he regards as out of his league - and she goes along with it. The attitudes to women are truly appalling and although some of this is a product of the book's time, it is hard to believe that all young men of the 1970s were as bad as this. There are women at the monastery, but they too are treated as possessions/vessels to teach the 'lads' how to control their orgasms. The bisexual character is also depicted along the lines of a stereotyped gay man of a kind that would not be tolerated in anything written today.

Although there is some clever switching around of whom we are led to believe will be the sacrifice and whom the murder victim, ultimately none of the four deserves immortality and all of them lost my sympathies, hence only a 2-star rating.… (mer)

A re-read after many years. It is not so much a novel as three connected novellas, the first of which, called 'Nightwings', won the 1969 Hugo novella award. I've just re-read it in The Hugo Winners 1963-1968 so will first reprise what I said in my review of that volume:

I still enjoyed 'Nightwings' and found in it a prefiguring of Gene Wolfe's The Book of the New Sun series, published over ten years later. Set in the far future on an Earth which is old, having seen many cycles of civilisation, it is told in the first person viewpoint of an old man who is one of the Watcher guild, his duty being to 'watch the skies' with an instrumentation cart, to look for a long forecast alien invasion. After centuries without an invasion, his guild is looked on as a joke, and even he is starting to wonder if he has wasted his whole life. He travels with a Flyer, a modified human female with gossamer wings which can only support her weight after sundown, and an apparent Changeling, an odd-looking character who is guideless, to Roum, which is clearly Rome. Similarly, other famous cities have changed name after aeons, and we eventually learn that he originates from what is left of the Americas, which have been mainly covered by the sea and are now a series of islands. An atmospheric and interesting story.

In a way, that first novella/third of the book is the best, with a good open ending. The second segment is probably the weakest. In it, the ex-Watcher leaves Roum, in the company of its Prince who is now blind and is travelling incognito in the guise of a Pilgrim to Perris (Paris). Their relationship is prickly, yet the ex-Watcher feels a certain responsiblity for the ex-Prince's fate, and his sense of obligation comes into conflict with his own desire to pursue the vocation of the Remembers guild in Perris. The job of this guild is to carry out archaelogical digs and analysis in order to piece together past history. The conquering alien race are very interested in the past also, although it becomes obvious that their interest is biased towards one particular aspect of Earth history.

In the Second Cycle (which began when contact was first made with offworlders and ended when the people of Earth became so arrogant that they tampered with the planet's magnetic fields and climate), Earth had risen to become a fabulously cultured and technologically advanced planet, and a tourist destination for many alien races. But as centuries passed, this civilisation fell into decadence, the Earth people developing a self importance amounting to hubris. As part of this, they had set up a zoo where non-humanoid aliens could be viewed as specimens, and as time passed, abducted more human-looking aliens with developed societies. Other alien races visited Earth to take advantage of the ability to see so many species in one place, while deploring the way it was done. One particular race, not yet achieving spaceflight but represented by others, had objected strongly and when Earth's civilisation collapsed, they bought up the planet's assets with the intent of coming to take their revenge when they finally developed spaceflight. Thus the ex-Watcher's guild had been established, although most ordinary people including himself no longer remembered who the Watchers were meant to provide early warning against.

After the disasters which occur in the second segment of the book, the ex-Watcher is now an ex-Rememberer apprentice also and is forced to leave Perris in the company of another character who played a main role in the disastrous sequence of events. Together they travel to Jorslem (Jerusalem) where the sole survivor of Second Cycle technology is preserved: the establishment where people can be regenerated and made young again. It is possible to do this two or three times in a lifetime and it is seemingly free, but the criteria for acceptance are mysterious and it is impossible to predict whether or not the ex-Watcher and his companion will be accepted. While in Jorslem, his fondest hope is realised when he again meets the Flyer from whom he was separated at the end of the first segment. There are some interesting parallels in this section between the newly formed guild of Redeemers and the early Christians, although that might just be coincidental.

I made allowances for the 1970s 'dodgy' cover on the second hand hand copy I was reading, but will comment on its inaccuracy: Flyers do remove their clothes to keep their weight down for flying, but are lean to the point of gauntness because of the difficulty of getting themselves off the ground otherwise, and the character being portrayed does not have a 38D chest!

On the whole, I found this book an enjoyable read. Not quite five stars because of the weaker middle section, but worthy of four.… (mer)

Published half a century ago (or nearly - 1974), the stories in Mutants present some tales that heavily influenced what was to come. It also puts out some early stories from giants like Poul Anderson, Lafferty and Frederick Pohl - but Lafferty's story in this case isn't indicative of his talent. It also had Jerome Bixby's story "It's a Good Life" which was adapted into one of the best original Twilight Zone episodes (the one with the boy that could think things to happening) and I never knew that was originally a published short story. This collection is well-worth the read for any science fiction lover or even liker.… (mer)