Review of "Nightwings" by Robert Silverberg

In the late 1960s, Robert Silverberg’s home caught fire, forcing him to start afresh in a variety of ways.  Wallowing through insurance bureaucracy and trying to dig himself out of the ensuing financial hole, he wrote a novella called “Nightwings” out of desperation for cash.  Despite the circumstances, the story was well received, winning awards, and prompted Silverberg to continue the story by writing two additional novellas, “Among the Rememberers” (also called “Perris Way”) and “The Road to Jorslem” (also, “To Jorslem”).  In 1972, the three were collected into a single edition called simply Nightwings, the subject of this review.

While each novella’s storyline closes on itself, Silverberg achieves the superlative by simultaneously advancing the umbrella story of the three to an expanse of literary magnificence.  One novella suffusing into the next, readers are left with a strong sense of spiritual empathy for the struggles and atonement of the protagonist.  Evolving through a variety of names, this man begins as the Watcher, a guilded worker whose job it is to wander the earth and scan the heavens for invaders.  Recently humbled, humanity is entering its Third Cycle and is on its toes, wary of species seeking revenge for the hubris and downfall of its Second Cycle.  In his travels the Watcher’s companion is a Flier, a biologically altered teenage girl whose gossamer wings are only capable of bearing her weight at night.  As times fall suddenly into uncertainty, the two seek to redeem the past to have a life for the future.

Silverberg’s prose is velvety smooth.  Words, sentences, and paragraphs move effortlessly, a tone of soft beauty gently buoying the story onward.  In a poetic tongue rare among sci-fi writers, inner monologue on loyalty, shame, pride, subjugation, faith, and hope are the foremost ideas expressed.  The Watcher’s choices and consequences thereof -  paralleled by humanity’s history - are exposed and dealt with at an introspective level.  Though these themes will seem familiar to readers of Downward to the Earth, the mode by which the characters of Nightwings overcome the problems they face are more religious in nature than the cultural terms of Gunderson and the Nildor/Sulidor.  That Silverberg uses future Earth as the setting and a variety of familiar place names and concepts – geography, Western religion, Jerusalem, etc. - also grounds the novel in sentiment more strictly human and less alien.

Due to the fact the book began as a novella and only later were its three parts collected into a single edition, “Nightwings” is not as well known as Silverberg’s other works, Dying Inside, A Time of Changes, and the Majipoor series.  Thus, fans of those books, along with Miller’s A Canticle for Leibowitz will undoubtedly want to check out Nightwings as well.  From a theoretical standpoint, Ken Wilber’s theory of Integral Psychology has perhaps never been represented so well in fiction.  Beautifully crafted, containing wonderful symbolism, and a having a strong moral and spiritual core, this work easily exists in the upper echelon of science fantasy.  As writing the book was an act of transcendent catharsis for Silverberg, so too will its reading be for the reader.

Review of "A Time of Changes" by Robert Silverberg

One of the best aspects of speculative fiction is, when in the right hands, an author creates a wholly plausible society not unlike our own, yet bends and twists the tradition, custom, and social habit to suit thematic needs.  The narrative which results can subsequently offer brilliant commentary on our real world.  Robert Silverberg’s A Time of Changes is a book that works at this level - like Orwell on LSD.

At heart, the novel is a character exploration of Kinnel Darival, a prince living in the kingdom of Borthan.  Ruled by a Covenant, Borthans follow a strict code that renders personal pronouns taboo.  While simultaneously setting a stylistic challenge for himself, Silverberg describes a society wherein overt references to the self are forbidden.  (The belief is that the repression of such expression makes a person stronger inside, and therefore more suited to the rigors of life.)  Due to a family tragedy, Darival soon finds himself on the run from a brother who seeks to eliminate competition for heirs to the throne.  In his travels, Darival is slowly introduced to the “other side,” a world wherein a person can comfortably refer to one’s self as ‘I’ and ‘me.’  Helping this transition along is his experimentation with a wonder drug that telepathically links people, bolstering empathy.  Not wanting to describe the whole plot, suffice to say the manner in which Silverberg chooses to uses the drug as a literary device is paramount to the novel’s conclusion.  John Lennon would have been proud.

By contrasting a society with strong limitations on expressions of the self with one featuring seemingly no socially unacceptable forms of expression, Silverberg creates a juxtaposition not unlike 1984.  The lies one must tell themselves and the isolated manner in which people move through society echo in A Time of Changes.  While the telepathic miracles performed by Silverberg’s drug are perhaps an idea that only someone from the flower-power generation could sculpt into speculative fiction, the fundamental idea that the freedom to express emotion is something lacking in our present day society still rings true.  Though not quite on par with Orwell or Huxley, A Time of Changes is still worth a read, prose and structure nearly perfect.  And if not for these reasons, why not for the controversial nature of the story?

Review of "Downward to the Earth" by Robert Silverberg

Take the seed of Heart of Darkness, the soil of the Hainish Cycle, and water with the ideals of the 60’s peace movement.  Tend for three days and you will have read Robert Silverberg’s Downward to the Earth.  Beyond left wing, in the very least you will not be disappointed by the novel’s transcendence of secular interests. It is the love child of Joseph Conrad and Ursula Le Guin.

Downward to the Earth tells the story of Edward Gundersen, a former planet administrator who returns after eight years, seeking retribution for the crimes he committed against the native population.  The elephant-like nildor and ape-like sulidor – both sentient - peacefully coexisted until the arrival of humans, who subjugated them, put them to work for commercial interests, and separated them from cultural traditions practiced for time on end.  Seeking to relieve the guilt he bears for preventing a group of seven nildor from participating in their rebirth ritual, Gundersen leaves the human tourists he traveled to the planet with and sets off into the jungle.  Along with flashbacks, much of the story is told through the encounters he has with former friends who remained on the planet.  But is in his dealings with the native population that Gundersen begins to come to terms with the consequences of his actions, agreeing to go on a pilgrimage with one of the nildor and participate in the rebirth ritual.  While the ending will certainly divide readers (Silverberg takes the psychedelic drugs and free love attributes of the hippy generation on a literary journey), the fundamental link connecting the ideas of the novel remains meaningful, no matter the plot devices.   There’s something to be said for good intention.

Fully realized, character and setting mesh together to form a planet that comes vividly to the imagination like the creations of Le Guin.  And while the sentience of the elephant-esque nildor is an acquired taste, it’s at the point the reader accepts them that Silverberg makes one of his main points; the value of an animal or person is not to be based on situation, appearance, or environment.  (Think Heart of Darkness’s examination of Europe and “the Other.”)   And so while some of the activities the characters participate in may not win over the more prudent, those willing to see the novel as a quest for  retribution will appreciate the transcendent ending with which Silverberg reconciles the interests of the involved.  The sub-theme of colonialism, though now called “globalization,” remains relevant.