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 Starborne by Robert Silverberg
reviewed by Underview
Original appearance: Albedo one issue 12, 1996
Robert Silverberg is a writer for whom I have always had immense respect. It was with great relief that I saw, following a return to his best SF form with Hot Sky at Midnight, him continue in the science fiction mode with his latest offering, Starborne. According to the Los Angeles Times, quoted on the cover, Robert Silverberg is 'A master of his craft and imagination'. I have no argument with this sentiment, nor do I believe that the statement is open to argument. It is plain truth. Unfortunately it is on the cover of the wrong book.
Starborne shows him to be a master craftsman, as he has proved over and over again down the years. But imagination is not something of which this novel could be accused. All the way through the book I had the nagging feeling that I had read parts of this somewhere before. I checked the front of the book, where the credits and legalities are taken care of, to see if maybe it hadn't been expanded from a short story, or possibly even a reissue of an old novel - one that I had read in the seventies. But there was no statement to that effect. So I completed my reading, ignoring that nagging doubt.
It is a couple of weeks since I finished the book and before starting the review I had to try just one more time to see if I had missed a reference to a previous incarnation of the plot and characters. But no, there is nothing. But still the feeling persists. So I check out a couple of his short story collections and, Bingo! The story is called Ship-Sister, Star-Sister and it is collected in Beyond the Safe Zone. He even says in his introduction to the story, written in 1986/1987 that he may return to the subject and handle it at book length. He shouldn't have bothered.
The starship Wotan has set off from Earth on a mission to find other habitable planets onto which humanity can expand. In this version of the future mankind has become unfocused, decadent, dissolute even. The population is falling. No-one has any interest in propagating the species. We are dying out. Perhaps new frontiers will spark renewed interest in life.
In the vast emptiness of nospace, through which the starship must travel to cover significant distances in short time spans, the only communication between the ship and Earth is through a telepath, Noelle, who is one a pair of twins psychically linked since birth. This is not a commonplace in the universe Silverberg has created, in fact Noelle and her sister are the only such telepaths ever discovered. But in nospace their link begins to sever. Without the link will their mission still have meaning? Will they even be able to continue?
In the end I found it difficult to care whether the mission succeeded or failed. Robert Silverberg has written this novel as though he was of this future, decadent and uncaring. Things happen at their own pace and for their own reasons. The characters seem casual about their relationships and largely disinterested in one another. The captain, one of the central characters, is portrayed as an enigma to his companions and remains such to the readers. All in all this had the feel of a book for which the writer had difficulty in rousing enthusiasm. The reader will find it no easier than he did.
The Mountains of Majipoor by Robert Silverberg
reviewed by Underview
Original appearance: Albedo one issue 9, 1995
How seldom it happens these days, that a successful trilogy is allowed to remain at a mere three books. THE MOUNTAINS OF MAJIPOOR by ROBERT SILVERBERG is the fourth Majipoor book. Unlike most series, the linking element in this series is the planet Majipoor itself as much as a particular character or set of characters. But it is on the characters that stories like these stand or fall.
Silverberg's latest addition to the chronicles of Majipoor is the tale of Prince Harpirias who has been exiled from castle Mount, the home of the Coronal, and centre of Majipoorian life and culture, for a minor indiscretion. His chances of returning to Castle Mount are nil until the opportunity arises to lead an exhibition into the icy wastes to the north of the far continent of Zimroel. Eventually he is persuaded it is his only chance of redemption and, unsuited to the task as only a pampered court official could be, he sets out into the wilderness accompanied by a team of alien bodyguards and an unreliable Metamorph (shapechanger) interpreter.
His mission is to negotiate the release of a group of anthropologists who have been captured by a backward tribe. Harpirias soon discovers that the chieftain of the tribe is expecting the Coronal himself to perform the negotiations and that his interpreter is in no hurry to put the chief straight on the identity of his guest.
THE MOUNTAINS OF MAJIPOOR is a slight piece which tells the reader little about Majipoor, Harpirias, the back country in which it is set or the human (or alien) condition. Silverberg seems to have taken this book at a canter, never slowing sufficiently to take in the smaller details which can often transform a short novel into a masterpiece, nor increasing the pace sufficiently to cause him to break sweat. There is a curious distance between the characters, the story and the readers and one comes away with a sense that this distance was also experienced by the author. This is a book that has the scent of contractual obligation about it; that or an offer Silverberg simply could not refuse. Whatever the reason, it does not have the feel of a beloved child which marks the best fiction. Silverberg and Majipoor are capable of producing far better than this shoddy throwaway filler.
Thebes of the Hundred Gates by Robert Silverberg
reviewed by XXXXX
Original appearance: Albedo one issue ??, date?
THEBES OF THE HUNDRED GATES by ROBERT SILVERBERG feels like it's missing something. The problem is that what's missing is about an extra hundred pages to make it worth the price and an ending. It's sort of like being on a mystery tour and then, without ever getting anywhere in particular, the bus does an about-turn and heads home. There is a terrible sensation of having travelled without ever arriving.
Robert Silverberg's name over the title has always guaranteed an intelligent and well written work but since he abandoned SF almost entirely in favour of Fantasy, I feel his work has lost its edge. Thebes has the trappings of SF: it is about a time traveller who is sent into the distant past in order to track down fellow time travellers who disappeared whilst on a mission. He is sent to ancient Thebes where he stumbles onto one of them in the first few pages.
So what's the point, I ask myself. Maybe it's the first part in a series. I can see no other justification for it. Either way it's lousy value. Save your money. Wait for it to turn up as part of a short story collection.
Hot Sky at Midnight by Robert Silverberg
reviewed by XXXXX
Original appearance: Albedo one issue ??, date?
I don't know if there are many who would agree with me that he's (metaphorically speaking) been away, but it's great to see Robert Silverberg back. Back doing what he is best at, writing science fiction.
Thank goodness there are no historical figures or settings in his latest novel, particularly no Gilgamesh whose legend seemed to have entranced Silverberg for a good chunk of the last decade. There will undoubtedly be those who will bemoan the fact that HOT SKY AT MIDNIGHT fails to push back the boundaries of SF. There will also be those who will claim (rightly) that the novel fails to break any new ground at all. And there will be those who will say that for a writer of Silverberg's stature HOT SKY is merely marking time.
In essence none of the above criticisms are unfounded, but to look at the book merely upon those levels would be to ignore the author's criteria. For this book must surely have been written to entertain, first and foremost. On that level it succeeds without question.
HOT SKY AT MIDNIGHT is the story of a future in which today's unbridled abuses of the planet have delivered a world which is rapidly becoming uninhabitable. In such a situation there would be several options and in Silverberg's future the race has chosen to investigate two in particular: mass emigration to near space artificial habitats and the bioengineering of the species to fit the conditions that will shortly prevail. A third option is integral to the story - interstellar colonisation - but it is merely a device to move the plot forward and never attains centre stage.
As always with Silverberg, it is the characters who dominate and HOT SKY features one of the most interesting I have encountered in many a year. Victor Farkas has no eyes. He was genetically altered in the womb. Not only does he not have eyes, his skull has no eye sockets - just an elongated forehead above his cheeks. Nor is he blind. Farkas has blindsight, a kind of ESP which in some ways is better than normal vision as he has three hundred and sixty degree awareness for a start.
The story revolves around a plot to overthrow the government of one of the satellite worlds, a breakthrough in the search for an alternate human who can survive the catastrophic changes to the Earth's atmosphere and the tribulations of middle management in one of the two great companies which dominate the world's economy.
In HOT SKY AT MIDNIGHT Robert Silverberg has returned to the form of his early career, to the style and approach which established him as one the foremost writers of his, or any, generation. The likes of Greg Bear and Allen Steele may have arisen while he wasn't looking (fantasy has a lot to answer for) but he's back and ready to put them in their place. So it's back to the second rank of SF for them as Silverberg has begun to redefine the front rank for the nineties. And not a minute too soon.
The Alien Years by Robert Silverberg
reviewed by XXXXX
Original appearance: Albedo one issue 16, Spring 1998
Robert Silverberg is once again producing consistent, top quality science fiction. The Alien Years shows him at the peak of his form, though perhaps there are those who will carp at a certain lack of originality in concept and execution in this novel. In effect it is a more intelligent rendition of the Independence Day plot scenario, with a dash of the TV series V and a taste of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (Irwin Allen's old sixties pseudo-SF warhorse).
But for all that, The Alien Years is still a winner. The story revolves not around a character or group of characters but around a family who evolve through their close involvement with the resistence movement following an invasion of Earth. The alien antagonists are brilliantly portrayed, as much because of what he does not tell us about them as what we are shown. The aliens simply land and begin to take over. They are so far advanced as to be irresistable. They capture people (specimens?), take over cities and completely ignore the indigenous population, except when they need work done. But even then they do not deign to communicate as we would understand it. People merely guess what the aliens want - perhaps it is planted deep in their minds - and then they do it, thought they can never be fully sure that it is what was required.
Anything the aliens want, the population of Earth do for them, even so far as building huge walls around the major cities - for reasons known only to the aliens. Eventually some members of the Earth population begin to work willingly for the conquerors while others form an underground resistance. At the centre of the resistance, is the Carmichael family, whose partiarch, a retired army colonel and expert in non-western thought processes, is called in by the Pentagon to advise on the aliens. All the efforts of the governments of the world prove ineffective against the invaders and order and government rapidly breaks down. The aliens do what they wish and leave the defeated inhabitants to themselves much of the time, as long as they don't get in the way.
The Carmichael family maintain their resistance over several generations, even though they never seem to be able to make even the smallest effectual move against the invaders: in forty years only one alien is sucessfully assassinated and the family, who were not involved, spend decades attempting to replicate the conditions leading to the success.
As always, Silverberg has asked several interesting questions in his fiction. This time they concern the nature of alien intelligence and the response of humanity to invasion by implacable foes whose culture and designs are completely unintelligible. If we ever do get invaded expect it to be more like this than the imaginative ramblings of L Ron Hubbard or Hollywood (Tim Burton honourably excepted).
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