To help defray the expense of the Lafferty and Van Vogt
books I recently purchased, and to make space on my book shelves, I have
decided to sell eight SF paperbacks which I have read and am not in love
with. I had decent notes on the last
four I blogged about, but the notes about today’s four were lost in a computer
hard drive related disaster. (Always
back up your files, kids.) Still, I
think I can dredge up something from the old gray matter to say about each of
them.
Lord Valentine’s Castle by Robert Silverberg
Like everybody, I like Robert Silverberg; he is one of the
heroes of SF, from his fiction to his valuable work as an editor to his
interesting descriptions of life as a professional writer to be found in the
recent collections of his SF short stories and elsewhere. But in his prolific career he has written
many types of books and tried various different styles, and they aren’t all to
my taste.
Lord Valentine’s Castle was a big seller for Silverberg and
has been followed by many profitable sequels, but it didn’t move me. It seems like an homage to Jack Vance; as in
various Vance novels, a guy loses and must recover his memory, a guy has a
picaresque adventure on a huge planet with many different cultures on it, a guy
sparks a revolution. Unfortunately, Silverberg (in this book at
least) fails toi provide much of what makes those Vance books enjoyable: a charming writing
style, an interesting point of view, some laughs, and/or a wacky or otherwise
interesting character. Also, Vance’s
books are pretty economical; Lord Valentine’s Castle seems to go on forever,
and there is never any kind of twist or surprise. Silverberg also does his thing in which a
character achieves an altered state of consciousness and so Silverberg can write
a surreal dream-like scene; this is the characteristic of Silverberg’s writing
I like least. In The World Inside he did
it at a rock concert, in Shadrach in the Furnace he did it in a drug den, and
in Lord Valentine’s Castle the guy goes into an altered state of consciousness while
juggling. These scenes always make my
eyes glaze over.
I know a lot of SF fans really enjoyed Lord Valentine’s
Castle, and I really wanted to enjoy it myself, but I just couldn’t do it. Borderline thumbs down.
Conquerors From the Darkness by Robert Silverberg
This one I remember very little about. It was not offensively bad, but mediocre; I
guess I would give it a weak recommendation. As I recall, the Earth is ruled by aliens who
have raised the seas so almost all of the planet is covered with water. The main character brings together an army of
humans and dolphin people to overthrow the aliens.
The Secrets of Synchronicity by Jonathan Fast
I bought this one because the back cover blurb claims this
book is strongly reminiscent of Heinlein’s work.
I am a sucker for advertising.
This book is a satire on our Western materialist society (I think), and
strongly influenced by Vedic mythology (so it says). The protagonist starts out enslaved in a mine. Is it just me, or do lots of people in SF get
enslaved in mines? Thank God they always
seem to escape. I enjoyed this book, and
thought Fast’s writing style pretty good, but once was enough, so it’s back to
Half Price Books for this one.
I have actually found a few lines of notes I penned on Secrets of
Synchronicity:
This is a decent adventure story, about a guy living in a
corrupt, decadent and perverse society in an interstellar empire, who escapes
slavery, participates in a safari, becomes spiritually enlightened, and becomes
the leader of a prophesied rebel movement.
As it goes on Fast layers on the satire thicker and thicker, and the book
becomes more and more outlandish and silly.
Fast’s author bio on the last page is also interesting: he was
a child prodigy, spends several hours a day practicing yoga, and longs for a
cogent universe. Sounds good.
People interested in SF work that is influenced by non-Western
religions in particular will want to check out Secrets of Synchronicity, but it’s
a worthwhile read for the rest of us as well.
Chaining the Lady by Piers Anthony
I read a ton of Piers Anthony in my youth, but this is one I
never got to until recently, when, in my 40s, I got curious about Anthony
again. Chaining the Lady, a space opera
full of stuff about the Tarot (which I admit is ridiculous) isn’t bad, but it
is way too long. Each of several
different alien races gets an adventure, but these adventures parallel each
other, and so get a little repetitious.
There’s a lot of shape-shifting psychic jazz going on as the main
character infiltrates the various alien races’ ships and then uses aspects of
their biology and culture to get them to side with the good guys in the
intergalactic war, or something. Two
hundred pages of this would have been good, 340 pages is too much. One or two fewer alien races would have been
a good idea, but the number of races is probably related somehow to the Tarot,
so maybe Anthony was stuck.
The back cover blurb suggests that the book is going to be
full of kinky sex, but I don’t remember any erotic sex scenes, though there is
a lot about alien reproduction. Stick with
Anais Nin for the kinky sex, people.
I can't decide if I should give this one a borderline thumbs up or a thumbs down. It's teetering on that edge.
No comments:
Post a Comment