Downward to the Earth

Rating:
Summary: A moving story about man's shallow views of intelligent life
Review: A foreign planet once considered for colonization by humans is the setting for this story. Native elephant-like creatures of the planet were used as labor by a company that first worked on developing land there. After the project is abandoned, the planet becomes a tourist attraction. A man who oversaw the original development returns years later, due to a vague guilt that haunts him regarding the alien creatures. He soon learns that those creatures are much more coomplex than he realized. He then begins a journey towards understanding and redemption. The journey is fascinating, and ends with a very moving revelation about one of the creaturess that assists the man. This is my favorite book by Silverberg. As usual, it addresses many human issues. The strength here is how gradually yet fully we come to see the harm and tragedy of man's tendency to compare others with himself. We also learn about acceptance and forgiveness, for ourselves. Superb book for those who enjoy thought provoking material.

Rating:
Summary: Alien anthropology 101
Review: Definately a fascinating book from a anthropological perspective. Silverberg does a fine job of creating an alien culture, going into great detail about its language, customs, politics and religion. Doesn't seem dated like so much SF though the whole psychedelic drug thing does play a role in this book as it does in several of his other novels that were written in the late 60's/early 70's. Out of the many Silverberg books I've read this one ranks highly.

Rating:
Summary: Alien anthropology 101
Review: Definately a fascinating book from a anthropological perspective. Silverberg does a fine job of creating an alien culture, going into great detail about its language, customs, politics and religion. Doesn't seem dated like so much SF though the whole psychedelic drug thing does play a role in this book as it does in several of his other novels that were written in the late 60's/early 70's. Out of the many Silverberg books I've read this one ranks highly.

Rating:
Summary: A moving story, tinged with the serene.
Review: Excellent. Initially appears slightly two-dimensional, but soon takes off. The central character is vividly realised, and is motivated by deep moral and ethical concerns. As a reader I was drawn into his journey totally, and the sections dealing with his immersion into the inhabitants culture and ritual are visualised with a pure anamalistic energy and flavour which jumps off of the page. Recommended as one of Silverberg's finest.

Rating:
Summary: Yet another classic, of course
Review: One day some publisher will wise up and make a nice slipcase set of all of Silverberg's thirteen or so classic seventies novels, if only to startle people into Silverberg's sheer level of variety in that decade, something that I've seen very few authors do since (Iain Banks comes the closest and even he has a bunch of "Culture" novels). Most of the books are short, they make their points concisely, poignantly and finish off in a way that keeps the themes resonating in the readers' minds. Of course, most of them are out of print, although the situation is much better than it was only a couple of years ago. "Dying Inside" is back, as is "Tower of Glass" and "The Masks of Time" and even "A Time of Changes" I've seen recently. So it looks like the long drought is over, but there are still some outliers roaming around, waiting to be republished. "Downward to the Earth" is one of them, alas, sadly enough. The story concerns itself on one level with the theme of transcendence, along with trying to understand an alien culture and adapt its lessons to ourselves. The main character of the story was an administrator of a planet inhabited by two sets of sentinent cultures, a planet that Earth subsequently relinquished all claims on and let the cultures retake the planet. He comes to visit to see the changes that the years have wrought and to visit the old spots that he used to know. But he also uses the visit as a time to reflect over potential wrong acts that he allowed under his watch, some which he personally enacted. So what follows is a journey into the planet, as he comes into contact with the races and goes to discover the meaning of their "rebirth", along the way finding that the planet changes people far more than people ever hoped to change the planet. What is always amazing about these books is the absolute effortlessness of Silverberg's writing and plotting, how it all fits together seamlessly, how it swaggers with quiet confidence, not needing loud action scenes or screaming, for the most part it's people walking around and talking. And it's absolutely fascinating. Silverberg does an excellent job of detailing the cultures and making them suitably alien, not so different that we can't relate but it's clear that there are some things that we'll never completely understand. The revelations come as planned, and are absolutely shocking and his control over the plot is masterful. These days a story like this would probably warrant an over-the-top trilogy of sorts, bringing the characters through wrenching changes. Silverberg doesn't need to do that, everyone and everything feels real and if not for the setting and the outlandishness of some scenes, it could be a normal story about one man's acceptance of the past and his search for forgiveness. That it still works, even in the strange setting, with unfamiliar creatures, is a testament to Silverberg's skill as a writer. In the seventies he accomplished that rare thing, a compact, complete novel that brings something new to the genre, says what it needs to say and gets out, without leaving dangling threads that cry out for a needless sequel. And he didn't do it once, but many, many times. If there were more bodies of work like his, maybe SF wouldn't be seen as the home purely of spaceships and rayguns. Unfortunately, that didn't happen, but at least we do have his body of work. Of course, we don't have a nice complete slipcased set of them, but there's always hope. You never know.

Rating:
Summary: Classic Silverberg
Review: Synopsis: The world in this book has two seemingly distinct intelligent beings living on it. One is elephant-like, the other large hairy ape-like beings. They have no technology but they have language. At one time the Earth controlled the planet and used these beings to work for them. A few years after relenquishing control, a man who was once a manager there (Gunderson) returns to atone for his sins against the native beings. This story is about his quest for that atonement through a native ritual called rebirth.

This book is classic Silverberg. It reminds me a lot of "Son of Man", my favorite book, also written by Silverberg. This book was written a year or two before SOM and contains a lot of the same abstractness and originality that I like, just not as much. You can definitely see the idea of SOM forming throughout this book. It is well written and the world that he creates in this book is as diverse as our own. It is full of fantastic and deadly creatures. He does a great job developing the cultures of the two native intelligent beings living on the planet. He does a fantastic job of portraying Gunderson's inner journey. If you like SOM, you'll like this book; and vise versa. Even though it's not as good as SOM I still give it 5 stars. If you like great science fiction, READ BOTH OF THESE BOOKS!

Rating:
Summary: Repentance, atonement, rebirth
Review: This is actually a religious novel, in that it deals with
guilt, repentance, atonement, and redemption. A man who had
once been a colonial overseer on a planet, and who had
exploited the intelligent native life there, returns years
later to expiate his guilt. He repents over what he has
done, but of course this is not enough. He has to atone for
it, and this involves his rebirth, a process faciliated by
the beings he had exploited. It turns out they are a lot
more intelligent and advanced than he had ever dreamed. For
one thing, they forgive him for what he has done. A surprisingly good novel for one of Silverberg's early efforts,
one that deals with classic themes.

Rating:
Summary: Beatiful and primal imagery and emotion. A true "10"
Review: This is the book that changed my pleasant love for reading into a deep desire to experience the best of science fiction literature. Vivid, lush and exotic. Rich with compassion and ideas. A complete sensory and soulful immersion into a truly alien world.