Kim Miller
On a distant planet the men sit making intricate carpets from the hair of their wives and daughters. Each carpet takes a lifetime to make and each man makes only one. His son follows in the same traditional art, designing and making his single carpet. The empire's space ships pick up the carpets and they are sent to decorate the palace of the Emperor.
Rumours start to circulate that the Emperor is dead and the empire is no more. But still the carpet makers continue their work. When a space ship lands on the planet the ship's crew knows nothing of the carpet makers or the carpets. People who have been to the palace say they have never seen such a carpet there.
Eschbach has given us a series of what seems like interlinked short stories, each one centering on a single character, but each one also adding to the narrative. He steadily builds his story through a sense of mystery towards the final revelation. There are so many possibilities for metaphor here, of weaving a story, of pulling together the loose threads, of only seeing a hint of the story (carpet) because we are looking at the back of it, and I will not fall into the metaphor trap.
The prose is easy to read and without the clumsiness that can sometimes happen with a translated work. Eschbach's imagination carries us through the occasional weirdness of the story, and through our times of wondering what happened to a character or two who seems to have disappeared from the story. His final revelation is one of total insanity and I was left wondering how this situation could even have been reasonable or possible. However, Eschbach made it sound very believable.
On a distant planet the men sit making intricate carpets from the hair of their wives and daughters. Each carpet takes a lifetime to make and each man makes only one. His son follows in the same traditional art, designing and making his single carpet. The empire's space ships pick up the carpets and they are sent to decorate the palace of the Emperor.
Rumours start to circulate that the Emperor is dead and the empire is no more. But still the carpet makers continue their work. When a space ship lands on the planet the ship's crew knows nothing of the carpet makers or the carpets. People who have been to the palace say they have never seen such a carpet there.
Eschbach has given us a series of what seems like interlinked short stories, each one centering on a single character, but each one also adding to the narrative. He steadily builds his story through a sense of mystery towards the final revelation. There are so many possibilities for metaphor here, of weaving a story, of pulling together the loose threads, of only seeing a hint of the story (carpet) because we are looking at the back of it, and I will not fall into the metaphor trap.
The prose is easy to read and without the clumsiness that can sometimes happen with a translated work. Eschbach's imagination carries us through the occasional weirdness of the story, and through our times of wondering what happened to a character or two who seems to have disappeared from the story. His final revelation is one of total insanity and I was left wondering how this situation could even have been reasonable or possible. However, Eschbach made it sound very believable.
Andrew Harlan is a 'Eternal', effectively a time traveling policeman. When history takes a bad turn the Eternals work out when the best intervention would be to prevent it. Harlan was one of those who go back in time and effect a minor change to avert disaster.
He's a totally unlikable character, but the book is filled with Asimov's cardboard cutout characters who are all totally without charisma. The plot and plot development are the thing here. Couple that with some cool tech, considering the book was written in the 1950s, and an increasing element of philosophizing about time travel, and it gets its stars.
The alternate time zone of the Eternals is filled with men only. Harlan meets a woman, the only one in the whole book, they make love, he is infatuated, he moves to get her out of her time zone and into his world. Things don't go as planned. The middle of the book is taken up with 'everything that can go wrong does go wrong' and their whole existence is threatened. With his supervisor they cobble together a plan to save everything. There is a longish episodic crisis that issues in a final showdown as Harlan is forced into a drastic decision
The book has all the 1950s expectations that men run the world, women get in the way if they venture into the man's world, and their only purpose is for men to get laid. Male interactions are purely functional and the characters here spend more time being suspicious of each other than working together. The only person with character is the sole female, Noÿs.
Andrew Harlan is a 'Eternal', effectively a time traveling policeman. When history takes a bad turn the Eternals work out when the best intervention would be to prevent it. Harlan was one of those who go back in time and effect a minor change to avert disaster.
He's a totally unlikable character, but the book is filled with Asimov's cardboard cutout characters who are all totally without charisma. The plot and plot development are the thing here. Couple that with some cool tech, considering the book was written in the 1950s, and an increasing element of philosophizing about time travel, and it gets its stars.
The alternate time zone of the Eternals is filled with men only. Harlan meets a woman, the only one in the whole book, they make love, he is infatuated, he moves to get her out of her time zone and into his world. Things don't go as planned. The middle of the book is taken up with 'everything that can go wrong does go wrong' and their whole existence is threatened. With his supervisor they cobble together a plan to save everything. There is a longish episodic crisis that issues in a final showdown as Harlan is forced into a drastic decision
The book has all the 1950s expectations that men run the world, women get in the way if they venture into the man's world, and their only purpose is for men to get laid. Male interactions are purely functional and the characters here spend more time being suspicious of each other than working together. The only person with character is the sole female, Noÿs.
David Queston is an anthropologist who has spent some years studying tribal communities in South America. One of those communities has gone through some catastrophe that he is trying to identify. When he has completed his studies he returns to England to write up his thoughts.
He finds England changed. A mad psychopath has taken control and is isolating the country from the world and sending everybody back to where they came from. This means local people are sent back to their family roots. i.e. families named Stewart are sent back to Scotland regardless of them never having lived there.
The Minister of Planning and then Prime Minister is named Mandrake. Two obvious parallels come to mind. First, the author would have known of the syndicated cartoon, Mandrake the Magician. He could 'gesture hypnotically' and people would be open to suggestion. Second, the mythological plant, the mandrake, screams when it is uprooted. Both these metaphors run through the book. Everybody seems under the thrall of Mandrake.
Queston spends two years in a quiet country cottage writing up his notes, unaware that the social structures around him are failing so badly. Then men from the Ministry of Planning call on him. They want his notes and they want his mind. His research is too close to revealing what is happening in England. He goes on the run.
As England dissolves into a dystopian hellscape it seems that there is a malevolent intelligence driving everything. From isolationist paranoia to earthquakes and wild snowstorms, everything is bent on the destruction of the country and dead bodies line the streets. Queston and some companions he finds along the way are torn between escaping it and facing it to destroy it.
The darkness increases as Cooper sets the scene of humans against the unknown. Is it supernatural evil? Is it aliens? Is it some new weapon system? The tension builds and the end of the book approaches. The reader asks, "Are all these threads going to get tied up by the end?"
No spoilers, folks.
David Queston is an anthropologist who has spent some years studying tribal communities in South America. One of those communities has gone through some catastrophe that he is trying to identify. When he has completed his studies he returns to England to write up his thoughts.
He finds England changed. A mad psychopath has taken control and is isolating the country from the world and sending everybody back to where they came from. This means local people are sent back to their family roots. i.e. families named Stewart are sent back to Scotland regardless of them never having lived there.
The Minister of Planning and then Prime Minister is named Mandrake. Two obvious parallels come to mind. First, the author would have known of the syndicated cartoon, Mandrake the Magician. He could 'gesture hypnotically' and people would be open to suggestion. Second, the mythological plant, the mandrake, screams when it is uprooted. Both these metaphors run through the book. Everybody seems under the thrall of Mandrake.
Queston spends two years in a quiet country cottage writing up his notes, unaware that the social structures around him are failing so badly. Then men from the Ministry of Planning call on him. They want his notes and they want his mind. His research is too close to revealing what is happening in England. He goes on the run.
As England dissolves into a dystopian hellscape it seems that there is a malevolent intelligence driving everything. From isolationist paranoia to earthquakes and wild snowstorms, everything is bent on the destruction of the country and dead bodies line the streets. Queston and some companions he finds along the way are torn between escaping it and facing it to destroy it.
The darkness increases as Cooper sets the scene of humans against the unknown. Is it supernatural evil? Is it aliens? Is it some new weapon system? The tension builds and the end of the book approaches. The reader asks, "Are all these threads going to get tied up by the end?"
No spoilers, folks.
Rudy Waltz grows up in Vonnegut's Midland City in Ohio. His 'memoir' tells of his father's failed life as an artist, during which he become friends with another failed artist, Hitler. His parents are wealthy and Rudy grows up a rich kid until he shoots a gun out of the top of his house and the bullet hits somebody. From there everything becomes a train wreck for him and his family.
Rudy sleepwalks through life until ending up as co-owner of a hotel in Haiti, from which he tells the story.
The book is a rich stew of Vonnegut's acidic satire and written in a way that immediately fills out the characters and draws in the reader. From his father's delusions and non-ironic contact with Hitler, the dissociated family, police brutality, government incompetence, until the final escape as refugees into the country of refugees.
I was left feeling I'd been in a Wes Anderson movie with a darker than normal colour pallette. It was a very enjoyable fantasy world.
Rudy Waltz grows up in Vonnegut's Midland City in Ohio. His 'memoir' tells of his father's failed life as an artist, during which he become friends with another failed artist, Hitler. His parents are wealthy and Rudy grows up a rich kid until he shoots a gun out of the top of his house and the bullet hits somebody. From there everything becomes a train wreck for him and his family.
Rudy sleepwalks through life until ending up as co-owner of a hotel in Haiti, from which he tells the story.
The book is a rich stew of Vonnegut's acidic satire and written in a way that immediately fills out the characters and draws in the reader. From his father's delusions and non-ironic contact with Hitler, the dissociated family, police brutality, government incompetence, until the final escape as refugees into the country of refugees.
I was left feeling I'd been in a Wes Anderson movie with a darker than normal colour pallette. It was a very enjoyable fantasy world.
Alvin lives in the city of Diaspar. He's a young man who has a problem. He can't remember any of his past lives as expected, and as is the experience of everyone around him. The city births its citizens according to the inner thoughts of a central computer. And at the end of their lives it takes them back into itself, to be birthed again in some distant future.
But Alvin is a disruptor. He is curious. He wants to know what is outside the city. He goes exploring. All of these are not the life of his companions.
With the help of the mysterious city jester, another disruptor, he finds his way into the depths of the city and out to the wider world. And in that moment he seals the fate of the city to a future they have feared for a billion years.
The book is let down by long passages of descriptions of what Alvin sees on his travels, material that does not move the story along. The characters are also a bit thin until Alvin meets Hilvar who becomes his traveling companion and his first ever real friend. Hilvar brings a certain kind of humanity to Alvin and to the story.
Alvin and Hilvar travel to distant stars to try to understand the origins of Earth's current situation, a place trying to recover from inter-planetary warfare. They return to find the city in crisis, and Alvin at last learns the reason for his existence. The book closes on a world that knows it has change, and it is only in the closing pages that Alvin starts to draw some emotion from the reader as he realises who he is, what he has done, and what will be his future.
Alvin lives in the city of Diaspar. He's a young man who has a problem. He can't remember any of his past lives as expected, and as is the experience of everyone around him. The city births its citizens according to the inner thoughts of a central computer. And at the end of their lives it takes them back into itself, to be birthed again in some distant future.
But Alvin is a disruptor. He is curious. He wants to know what is outside the city. He goes exploring. All of these are not the life of his companions.
With the help of the mysterious city jester, another disruptor, he finds his way into the depths of the city and out to the wider world. And in that moment he seals the fate of the city to a future they have feared for a billion years.
The book is let down by long passages of descriptions of what Alvin sees on his travels, material that does not move the story along. The characters are also a bit thin until Alvin meets Hilvar who becomes his traveling companion and his first ever real friend. Hilvar brings a certain kind of humanity to Alvin and to the story.
Alvin and Hilvar travel to distant stars to try to understand the origins of Earth's current situation, a place trying to recover from inter-planetary warfare. They return to find the city in crisis, and Alvin at last learns the reason for his existence. The book closes on a world that knows it has change, and it is only in the closing pages that Alvin starts to draw some emotion from the reader as he realises who he is, what he has done, and what will be his future.