Deserts of vast eternity: a review of Robert Silverberg's Sailing to Byzantium
From Friday, 24 February through Saturday, 3 March, I read Robert Silverberg's Sailing to Byzantium (NY: iBooks [distributed by Simon & Schuster, Inc.], 2000; ISBN: 0-7434-0718-0; 421 pps.).
A collection of five of Robert Silverberg's novellas for Simon & Schuster's short-lived iBooks line (launched by noted publisher of graphic and illustrated novels, Byron Preiss; Apple would later appropriate the name "iBooks," although they were sued by the current owner of the name in June 2011), Sailing to Byzantium is an excellent sampler of the strengths -- and weaknesses -- of the prose of a man perhaps more noted, unfairly, as an editor than a writer.
The titular novella, which takes its name from (and explicitly references) the W.B. Yeats poem, won the Nebula Award from the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) for Best Novella in 1986, and took second place at the Hugos (given by the World Science Fiction Society) the same year, is an elegant, melancholic look at human development, the place of history within human consciousness, and the impermanence of life; indeed, it's a neat tweaking of the Japanese aesthetic of mono no aware, which gives a special poignancy to the viewing of cherry blossoms (hanami).
"Homefaring," a finalist for the 1983 Nebulas that takes its title from a T.S. Eliot poem (from one of the Quartets; see p. 125), takes what could've easily have been an über-schlocky premise -- a race of intelligent, man-sized lobsters exemplifying the ideals of Edo Period Japan! -- and makes it a compelling look at humanity, without the treacle that crept into Barry B. Longyear's Hugo and Nebula-winning novella "Enemy Mine" at the end.
The only real clunker here is the third novella, "Thomas the Proclaimer," which was Silverberg's less-than-successful speculative extrapolation of the social upheavals of the 1960s; I'd give this one two out of five stars, and it's the only reason that I didn't give this collection more than four stars. There is no main character: the narrative shifts from first person point of view to third person omniscient to a third person account mediated through a journalistic lens. While I understand why Silverberg wrote "Thomas the Proclaimer" the way he did -- to impart a sense of the fractured, fragmented, and polarized nature of contemporary Western societies in general and U.S. society in particular -- the result, for me at least, was a fractured and fragmented narrative that was never involving or, worse, convincing, despite Silverberg's assertion, in his introduction to the novella, that, "though 'Thomas the Proclaimer' is in no way literally prophetic, I think you will find that it quite accurately prefigured much of what would occur in the world in the generation just ended" (p. 169). Still, "Thomas" is worth reading as an intellectual exercise, to get a fair understanding of Silverberg's shortcomings as a writer.
"We Are For the Dark" -- the title comes from Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra -- is a novel look at how the human colonization of space might proceed without benefit of starships, if it was prompted and shaped by a new religious order. What could have been a smug, cynical, and wise-cracking romp in the hands of Robert A. Heinlein or Mack Reynolds is instead a melancholic, yet oddly uplifting, meditation on the place of humanity in a supernal universe.
"The Secret Sharer," nominated for both the Hugo and the Nebula in 1988, takes its title from the 1909 Joseph Conrad novella; while it takes the basic premise from the Conrad story, it is a wonderful meditation on the human condition, set against yet another interesting conception of the colonization of space; it also contains perhaps Silverberg's finest phrasing here, ably abetted by borrowings from more poets, such as William Cullen Bryant's "the abyss of heaven," from his 1815 poem "To a Waterfowl" (see p. 382). It also stands the role of a ship's captain on its head, which may be somewhat of a shock to fans of the Star Trek franchise or of Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin series: "The Secret Sharer's" narrator, Adam (the name is significant, as is the self-chosen nickname of the novella's other major character, Vox), notes: "In truth the captain's duties are the least significant of anyone's aboard the ship" (p. 346). Also beguiling is Silverberg's description of how the interstellar ships work; it's summed up by "a ship eats space, and light is its offthrow" (p. 342).
This collection could have just as easily been titled "Worlds Enough, and Time" (to borrow from another poem, Andrew Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress"; the poem, however, has it as "world," singular); most of Silverberg's pieces here have too much of a sense of wonder and even, dare I say, hope, for Virgil's "Lacrimae Rerum" to be an appropriate title. After finishing Sailing to Byzantium, the reader may feel himself gently chided into reading more poetry, or at least more Conrad.
*Cross-posted to LibraryThing.
A collection of five of Robert Silverberg's novellas for Simon & Schuster's short-lived iBooks line (launched by noted publisher of graphic and illustrated novels, Byron Preiss; Apple would later appropriate the name "iBooks," although they were sued by the current owner of the name in June 2011), Sailing to Byzantium is an excellent sampler of the strengths -- and weaknesses -- of the prose of a man perhaps more noted, unfairly, as an editor than a writer.
The titular novella, which takes its name from (and explicitly references) the W.B. Yeats poem, won the Nebula Award from the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) for Best Novella in 1986, and took second place at the Hugos (given by the World Science Fiction Society) the same year, is an elegant, melancholic look at human development, the place of history within human consciousness, and the impermanence of life; indeed, it's a neat tweaking of the Japanese aesthetic of mono no aware, which gives a special poignancy to the viewing of cherry blossoms (hanami).
"Homefaring," a finalist for the 1983 Nebulas that takes its title from a T.S. Eliot poem (from one of the Quartets; see p. 125), takes what could've easily have been an über-schlocky premise -- a race of intelligent, man-sized lobsters exemplifying the ideals of Edo Period Japan! -- and makes it a compelling look at humanity, without the treacle that crept into Barry B. Longyear's Hugo and Nebula-winning novella "Enemy Mine" at the end.
The only real clunker here is the third novella, "Thomas the Proclaimer," which was Silverberg's less-than-successful speculative extrapolation of the social upheavals of the 1960s; I'd give this one two out of five stars, and it's the only reason that I didn't give this collection more than four stars. There is no main character: the narrative shifts from first person point of view to third person omniscient to a third person account mediated through a journalistic lens. While I understand why Silverberg wrote "Thomas the Proclaimer" the way he did -- to impart a sense of the fractured, fragmented, and polarized nature of contemporary Western societies in general and U.S. society in particular -- the result, for me at least, was a fractured and fragmented narrative that was never involving or, worse, convincing, despite Silverberg's assertion, in his introduction to the novella, that, "though 'Thomas the Proclaimer' is in no way literally prophetic, I think you will find that it quite accurately prefigured much of what would occur in the world in the generation just ended" (p. 169). Still, "Thomas" is worth reading as an intellectual exercise, to get a fair understanding of Silverberg's shortcomings as a writer.
"We Are For the Dark" -- the title comes from Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra -- is a novel look at how the human colonization of space might proceed without benefit of starships, if it was prompted and shaped by a new religious order. What could have been a smug, cynical, and wise-cracking romp in the hands of Robert A. Heinlein or Mack Reynolds is instead a melancholic, yet oddly uplifting, meditation on the place of humanity in a supernal universe.
"The Secret Sharer," nominated for both the Hugo and the Nebula in 1988, takes its title from the 1909 Joseph Conrad novella; while it takes the basic premise from the Conrad story, it is a wonderful meditation on the human condition, set against yet another interesting conception of the colonization of space; it also contains perhaps Silverberg's finest phrasing here, ably abetted by borrowings from more poets, such as William Cullen Bryant's "the abyss of heaven," from his 1815 poem "To a Waterfowl" (see p. 382). It also stands the role of a ship's captain on its head, which may be somewhat of a shock to fans of the Star Trek franchise or of Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin series: "The Secret Sharer's" narrator, Adam (the name is significant, as is the self-chosen nickname of the novella's other major character, Vox), notes: "In truth the captain's duties are the least significant of anyone's aboard the ship" (p. 346). Also beguiling is Silverberg's description of how the interstellar ships work; it's summed up by "a ship eats space, and light is its offthrow" (p. 342).
This collection could have just as easily been titled "Worlds Enough, and Time" (to borrow from another poem, Andrew Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress"; the poem, however, has it as "world," singular); most of Silverberg's pieces here have too much of a sense of wonder and even, dare I say, hope, for Virgil's "Lacrimae Rerum" to be an appropriate title. After finishing Sailing to Byzantium, the reader may feel himself gently chided into reading more poetry, or at least more Conrad.
*Cross-posted to LibraryThing.