Helliconia Spring

Metaphorosis Reviews
2 stars

A world in a binary stellar system has a complex orbit with long periods of heat and cold. Inhabited by humans, near-humans, and other species, its population re-discovers science as it emerges from each long ice age - all watched by a human orbital station that shares its findings with distant Earth.


There's a strong similarity among Jack Vance, Robert Silverberg, and Brian Aldiss. They all use formal, sometimes stiff, language, and all describe odd, extreme characters and behaviour. Yet I'm a huge fan of Vance, lukewarm about Silverberg, and find that I don't much care for Aldiss.

I've always accepted of Aldiss as one of the masters of the field, and for many years didn't realize how little his books had actually affected me. It wasn't until I read and heartily disliked Finches of Mars that it really hit home. So, when the chance came up to read the Helliconia trilogy, I decided to make it a definitive test. Based on book one, Aldiss fails.

The characters have little depth, and no real spark, and not solely because the book covers long time periods. Aldiss seems constantly to forget that we're looking for story here, not just scholarship. It is interesting to see the balance of powers shift as the world emerges from the ice, and to see Aldiss' careful delineation of economic, spiritual, and scientific development - but it's only intellectually interesting. Only rarely did I find my emotions involved, my interest truly engaged by any of the players. While there's a lot to work with here - especially relations between humans (an emerging power) and phagors (who prefer the cold), but to Aldiss they seem to be little more than fodder for his intellectual treatise. He creates some strong characters, but then does little with them.

Altogether, I found the book very slow going. The dense socioeconomic exploration got in the way of story, and the cold characters impeded the flow of the thought experiment. In this first book, at least, Aldiss' great experiment is not a success.

The intricate world building in Helliconia is incredible. There is more plot in Summer than Spring, as in there are characters and things actually happen. Still, the book was painfully slow.

The bits about Earth were interesting. The rest, not so much. I tried. I tried really hard. But I just couldn't enjoy this book.

World-building is a term that gets tossed around a lot. I think Patrick Rothufuss, N.K. Jemisin, and lots of others are magnificent world-builders. That said, I know of relatively few authors who are both excellent world-builders and planet-builders, which is wha makes Helliconia Spring (and I assume the following two books) such an impressive achievement. The amount of research Aldiss put into the science of his world must have been intense. And yet, the book does not end up as dry science fiction, but a vivid, fantastical tone grounded in hard science. Not an easy marriage.


I was also impressed by how un-dated the book feels. The characters are all interesting and could have been written about at any point. The idea of women founding a scientific academy and working through the scientific method while being repressed by a pre-enlightenment society is an interesting twist on what usually happens to women in traditional SFF. Vry stands out as unique in her independence and thought process, even among her cohorts.

It's an acclaimed series that I'm glad I finally had motivation to read, and I'd highly recommend it to people who like sweeping but still sciency sagas.

UGH. I did not enjoy this book very much at all.

It's one of those sprawling epics that traces the development of civilization from basic hunter-gatherer tribes up to rudimentary trader society. It's very boring.

My original complaint was that the author doesn't describe anything, but that's not true. He does describe a lot of things, but not many things that I am interested in or care about. So, it reads as very flat and dull. The characters are interesting, but the dialogue is stilted and lame. Their inner lives are rather simplistic.

It's clearly setting up for some bigger, galaxy-spanning story, but because this book was so boring, I am not interested in finding out what happens in the next two books.

Feels alot like [b:To Your Scattered Bodies Go 189147 To Your Scattered Bodies Go (Riverworld, #1) Philip José Farmer https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1327657439l/189147.SY75.jpg 3171254] and [b:The Long Earth 13147230 The Long Earth (The Long Earth, #1) Terry Pratchett https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1335532694l/13147230.SY75.jpg 18164154]; interesting concepts but way too slow! Spends alot of time with 1 person, no back ground or intro to the terms, as well as describing the surroundings. No action at all.