Not yet out of his teens, Samuel Delany had
his first short stories published in science fiction magazines around
1962. Moving on to works of greater
length, he shortly thereafter published two novellas, the second of which was
called Captives of the Flame. Seeing the story’s greater potential, he
expanded the novella (to Out of the Dead
City) and tacked on two additional novels, The Towers of Toron and City
of a Thousand Suns to create a series.
Strongly hinting at the unique books he would later write, these three
novels are collected in an omnibus called The
Fall of the Towers and are the subject of this review.
The
Fall of the Towers
is centered around Jon Koshar, the rebellious son of a fish hatchery
magnate. Having killed a man on
political principle in his youth, he served five years in a penal colony mining
tetron, the planet’s main source of fuel and technology, before escaping into
the wild. While still a prisoner, Koshar
made contact with the underground resistance, a group which seeks to free the
peoples of Toron from its politically corrupt, manipulative leaders. Toron an island where what remains of humanity
survives, on the mainland little that is inhabitable exists in an interminable
cloud of radiation. Hanging above all is
the threat of war from an unseen enemy said to live beyond the radiation
barrier. The clash of social, political,
and environmental proportions that breaks out as a result, and the adventures
had by the characters, is the stuff science fiction is made of.
