2010 Book 41 To Open The Sky

Book 41: To Open The Sky by Robert Silverberg, isbn 425038106 , 209 pages, Berkeley, long out of print, $3.00 or so, in used bookshops. It's also on the Kindle apparently, but Amazon didn't list pricing.

To Open The Sky is a set of five novellas (originally published seperately in magazine form) that cover roughly a hundred years of "future history" (from the late 2000s to the early 2100s), charting the rise of two new religions which power Humanity's dual quest for immortality and the stars. I first read this book in 5th or 6th grade, back in the mid-1970s. I still own the same yellowed-pages, bent-spine, taped-cover edition I read back then. Every 5 years or so I pull it out and reread it. The last time I did so was before I'd started my livejournal (which means long before I'd started any of my other blogging / social networking). I was fairly traumatized recently when I realized the book was not in its usual bookshelf location, and I spent a few good months trying to figure out who I'd lent it to before finally discovering it, on top of a later edition and two other Silverberg books, on a completely different shelf. The book means that much to me at this point, that I'll have panic attacks over not being able to locate it. There aren't too many books for which "but you can always buy another used copy on Amazon" is not an acceptable answer to me, but this is one of them.

Robert Silverberg may be well known for his Majipoor Chronicles series of novels, but I've always enjoyed his short fiction more. To Open the Sky, like his more recent Roma Eterna, works precisely because of the time (and location) jumps between sections. If you read Silverberg's foreword, you are aware of the publishing history and you expect those time jumps. In TOtS, each of the five novellas centers on a man (mostly young men, except for the last novella) at an emotional / spiritual crossroads. In the first vignette, we are introduced to the nascent Vorster religion through the eyes of Reynolds Kirby, a UN diplomat farther at the end of his mental tether than even he realizes. The Vorst religion wraps a thin veneer of spirituality around essentially worshiping the energy spectrum. They're considered nutjobs by the hedonistic Earth society of 2070 and upstarts by the longer-established religions, but they make no secret that what they're offering is not Religion but rather a place for the development of science leading to individual immortality and colonizing of the stars. Kirby gets a first-hand look at Noel Vorst's new religion thanks to the actions of an upstart Mars colony dignitary. In the second vignette, decades have passed and young Vorster acolyte Christopher Mondschein finds himself face to face with a hard decision: stay loyal to Noel Vorst and his religion, or spy for the developing splinter religion, The Harmonists. His decision, and I won't tell you exactly what it is, influences the course of another young man's life several decades after that, as Vorster missionary Nicholas Martell tries to establish a chapel on Venus in the third vignette. In the fourth and fifth vignettes, the stories of Kirby, Mondschein and Martell come together with the Harmonist's found David Lazarus and Noel Vorst himself.

Wow, I don't usually let book synopses take over my reviews. But when I talk about this book, I feel like it's important to discuss how the novel develops. I don't think anything I said above really qualifies as a Spoiler; most of it can be read in the back-cover synopsis on the editions I have.

The book is of course replete with classic mid-1960s SF tropes. Colonists terraform Mars to make it habitable, and colonists are surgically altered to survive the rigors of Venus. The colonies have a contentious relationship with Earth, where society has largely forgotten what hard work is all about. (In fact, a trait Kirby and Mondschein initially share is their avoidance of actual work, although their avoidance tactics are nothing alike.) Knowing what we now know about the surfaces of those planets, the worlds Silverberg presents don't seem to be as possible as they once might have seemed. Human life is extended through the use of mechanical implants to replace failed organs. Organ replacement is happening now, not in some "far future." The genes for various ESP abilities are developed and play a core role in the narrative. And so on. All of these possibilities were captivating to me back in 6th grade. I reread the book now and those same aspects give me a warm sense of nostalgia, and also a sense of wonder -- in some cases, it seems Silverberg (and others) was not as far off in regards to society's destiny as he might have hoped.

Every time I reread the book, I take something new from it. When I was in 6th grade, it was pure wonder and excitement. In later rereads, it was how seamlessly Silverberg worked spy-thriller tropes into the Mondschein chapter and commentary on social stratification and being an outsider into the Martell chapter. On this reread, what struck me was how all of the main characters are at a crossroads whether they see it or not, and how small personal actions can take on societal importance when viewed through the lens of passing decades.

And of course, that ending. More full of hope for humanity than much of modern SF, without falling completely into cliche.

I wonder, a few years down the road when I reread this book again, what I'll take out of it at that stage of my life.

Teaser and WWW

Between the very poor wireless in the hotel in Oregon, IL, and then the travel misadventures of yesterday, neither Teaser Tuesday nor WWW Wednesday got written. So here they are:

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

* Grab your current read.
* Open to a random page.
* Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page.

* BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)

* Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!


Here's my teaser from Lev Grossman's The Magicians:

... the test gave him a passage from The Tempest, then asked him to make up a fake language, and then translate the Shakespeare into the made-up language. He was then asked questions about the grammar and orthography of his made-up language, and then -- honestly, what was the point? -- questions about the made-up geography and culture and society of the made-up country where his made-up language was so fluently spoken.


It's not the greatest teaser in terms of plot, but it gives you a sense of the writing style. I'm enjoying this book, and it even sparked a conversation with the waitress at Ruby Tuesday's tonight.


**********

WWW Wednesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along!

To play along, just answer the following three (3) questions…

* What are you currently reading?
* What did you recently finish reading?
* What do you think you’ll read next?

My answers for this week:

I Am Currently Reading: THE MAGICIANS by Lev Grossman. The book has been highly recommended by a few people, including new Twitter / blogger friend RoofBeamReader. I put it in my backpack to read on the flight from Chicago to Nashville; actually ended up reading it on the DC to Nashville leg of the revised trip, and then more over dinner tonight. And had one of those wonderful experiences at dinner, where the waitress asked what the book was, and we talked about it and about voracious reading habits and the like.

I Recently Finished Reading: Robert Silverberg's TO OPEN THE SKY. TOtS is long out-of-print, but you can find used copies on Amazon. A few years back I found four copies on the shelves at Powell's Books in Portland and gave them out to friends. This was the first actual science fiction novel not aimed at kids that I ever read, back in 5th or 6th grade, and I still own the same dog-eared, yellowing copy. I reread it every few years, and still love it. I have delayed putting up a review post simply because the book means so much to me I want to give it a lot of thought.

I Think I'll Read Next: The new Gabriel Hunt adventure, HUNT AMONG THE KILLERS OF MEN, is up next. Because even though I'm starting to feel a bit of genre-burn-out, I still need me some Hunt hijinx. Especially knowing this is the next-to-last book as of right now. He's a Jones for our times, Gabriel Hunt is.

WWW Wednesdays

WWW Wednesdays is another weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along!

To play along, just answer the following three (3) questions…

* What are you currently reading?
* What did you recently finish reading?
* What do you think you’ll read next?

My answers for this week:

I Am Currently Reading: TO OPEN THE SKY by Robert Silverberg. TOtS is long out-of-print, but you can find used copies on Amazon. A few years back I found four copies on the shelves at Powell's Books in Portland and gave them out to friends. This was the first actual science fiction novel not aimed at kids that I ever read, back in 5th or 6th grade, and I still own the same dog-eared, yellowing copy. I reread it every few years, and still love it.

I Recently Finished Reading: Scott Sigler's ANCESTOR. Sigler is the new master of gory, high adrenaline, thriller/sf/horror fiction. Ancestor posits a world where a private company is close to genetically engineering an animal from which organs can be harvested and transplanted into humans ... and of course things go horribly wrong.

I Think I'll Read Next: Either the new Gabriel Hunt adventure, HUNT AMONG THE KILLERS OF MEN, or Lev Grossman's THE MAGICIANS. I usually read the Hunt books as soon as they come out, and I'm a few weeks behind on doing that. But Grossman's book has been highly recommended by a few people, including new Twitter / blogger friend RoofBeamReader. So we'll see which jumps at me when I'm done with the Silverberg.

Teaser Tuesdays

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

* Grab your current read.
* Open to a random page.
* Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page.

* BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)

* Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

Here's my teaser from Robert Silverberg's To Open The Sky, a book long (and sadly) out of print:

Recollection flooded back, dizzying him, staggering him. There had been three heretics in the room that other time, not just one, and they had given him wine and promised him a place in the Harmonist hierarchy, and he had agreed to let himself be smuggled into Santa Fe, a soldier in the great crusade, a Harmonist spy.

To Open The Sky was, to my own recollection, the first actual science fiction novel I ever read, and I still to this day own that copy of the book. I reread it every few years, and still love it.