Robert Silverberg links: The Quasi-Official Robert Silverberg Web Site
Click on a book's image or title to order from Amazon.com

Nightwings

I've read Silverberg - including this book - before, but it's been a while. I hadn't remembered how lovely his writing style is - or how melancholy. For the bulk of its pages, Nightwings has an air of finality about it reminiscent of The Lord of the Rings. For the main character, Tomis, the book is one ending after another - for him and for his Earth of the far future - until both he and the world find the key to their ultimate rebirth.

The society in the book is structured around a rigid occupational system, where people are truly defined by what they do. Tomis begins as a Watcher, searching the skies for the long-promised conquerors of Earth. When those invaders arrive, Tomis is out of a job, and becomes a Rememberer (a high-tech historian), and eventually a Pilgrim on the road to Jorslem. In my experience such a social system usually makes for pretty dull fiction, but Silverberg gives each caste enough depth to keep it interesting.

But I ultimately found the book disappointing, precisely because the catharsis of Tomis and (especially) of the planet runs strongly against my own philosophical grain, and also comes off as far too sugary for my tastes. For me, the book's best moments involved Tomis' soul-searching and interactions with his often-questionable companions. The novel plays successfully on the idea that there's something someone is hiding from him (each time a different something and different someone) multiple times, and keeps the suspense up. It all seems to end rather artificially for me.

A worthy read for its style and plotting (well, most of the way), but not one I'm too enthusiastic about.

The Stochastic Man

This novel features Lew Nichols as a man who observes trends in the world and uses them to deduce where the patterns are heading - in a sense, a lot like Psychohistory from Isaac Asimov's Foundation. As in that latter book, Nichols' "power" (really a highly developed talent) can't predict sudden shocks by one man - an assassination, for instance. The twist comes while Nichols is employed helping a charismatic politician work to become President: He meets Martin Carvajal, who really can see the future - and who apparently can do nothing about it; like the past, the future is immutable. Carvajal, having seen his own death, is little more than a shadow of a man, but Nichols is convinced enough to ask him to help him gain the same ability.

The book is clever and amusing in many ways, not the least of which being that it takes place in the 1997-2000 time frame, which like all such books makes it intriguing to see what the author thought the world would be like when he wrote it. (The book mainly focuses on New York, which is a sharply divided, horrifically poor city. Hmm... maybe not so different after all!)

Carvajal's outlook is neatly contrasted against the religious group Transit, who believe that life is ephemeral and that change is the raison d'etre of existence. Thus they behave in an almost random manner, to keep things in a constant state of flux. Eventually, Silverberg brings this around to show that it's not so different from a view of absolute certainty of the future at all - if you believe that you can't change that future. If your only reason for acting is "because I saw that this is the way it will be", then for all intents and purposes, you may as well be in Transit.

The book doesn't play up the angle of what other people think of the power of total foresight as much as it could, but it does end on a positive note, as Nichols remains resolute that the future is mutable even if you can foresee it. After all, what good is knowing the future if you can't do anything about it? A world without real motivations - essentially, without free will - would be a pretty frightening and shallow place, indeed.