u/Wetness__Pensive

...story about an (aquatic?) alien entity/race, who is aligned with evil "revolutionaries", and is corrupting earth (why?), but is thwarted by a good monarch-type figure, who is guided by offworld Angelic Aliens (a stand-in for God), and purges the world (is this right?), seemingly killing all humans (is this right? What happens after the messianic second coming? Does everyone die and is reborn?), and resurrects them in a New Heaven on Urth.

That's what happens, right? I just want to know that I understand that basic story (it's very confusing) before I think about what seems to be the strong theological/political implications of the narrative.

(Sorry for the typo in the title of my post. Thanks for all assistance. I'm going to have to re-read "New Sun", but I'll save that for next year. I'm going to read "Long Sun" first)

https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2026/09/rethinking-space-opera.html

I thought this was an interesting essay by SF writer Charlie Stross. Banks is mentioned heavily in the middle section, which I thought others might find interesting.

I've been slowly making my way through Silverberg's large bibliography.

My impression is that he has three phrases. His first phase is from roughly 1955 to 1967. The four novels I've read from this period are IMO dated and not very interesting. They feel like Heinlein's juvenile novels.

Then from 1967 to the mid 1970s he had an incredible spurt of interesting novels, almost 20 of them, and several of them great. These books are typically short and/or fast-paced, and all feel very New Wave (very experimental, lots of sex and drugs).

Then in the 1980s and early 1990s he seems to adopt a new style. Most of the stories here are very languid, unfolding slowly and following characters on long, rambling adventures. This works in some of the books, but mostly the style now reads as very bloated. "At Winter's End", "The New Springtime", "The Alien Years" and "The Face of the Waters" in particular are very long-winded. I imagine this new style is due to commercial trends in the 1980s, or perhaps Silverberg fell in love with a type of picaresque storytelling, which is fine, though I don't think he is deep or insightful enough to warrant such a style.

Anyway, if you're new to Silverberg, and like me (also a recent newbie) are interested in checking him out, I'd recommend: "Downward to the Earth" (if you have to read one of his books, read this one IMO; it's fun and should appeal to most SF fans), "Dying Inside" (very New Wavey), "The Man in the Maze", "The World Inside" and "The Face of the Waters" (I bashed this one above, but like "Downward to the Earth", this is a type of story everyone loves: exotic alien planet, interesting aliens and strange ecosystems; trim it severly down and it would probably be a classic.)

I also liked these, but I'd put them on a tier below: "Son of Man", "Tower of Glass", "Up the Line", "Thorns", "Nightwings" and "Hawksbill Station".

His Majipoor series is popular, but I bailed on the series. I liked how sunny and optimistic the tone was, but it felt shallow, and the prose is rather basic when you compare it to what Gene Wolfe was doing in the same period (both he and Silverberg seem to be building upon Jack Vance).

I'm not sure if I'll read any more of Silverberg's books. His late 90s output seems poorly regarded and not worth pursuing. His late 67-72 period seems to contain his best work, which seems to be the consensus. That this work is so of-its-time is probably why he's fallen out of fashion.

Some thoughts...

1. We know at least one nuTrek writer has said they were instructed to make their script simpler.

2. Over the past five years, we've had several people in the industry talking about streaming studios instructing writers/directors to treat their art as Second Screen Content, which is content for audiences distracted by phones or other screens.

3. We also know that studios now have access to mountains of viewer data, and that this data is telling them that a significant chunk of the audience cannot follow things, or does not notice things (particularly metaphors, themes, symbolism etc), and so certain types of "writing depth" is either wasted on the audience, or confuses the audience.

4. We also know that the 65+ age bracket is the fastest growing demographic when it comes to paying for streaming subscriptions (due perhaps to their disposable incomes), and that 57% of adults aged 65 to 75 now pay for one or more streamers.

5. We also know that people tend to start experiencing cognitive decline in their 60s, and that there is a decline in reading for pleasure (never mind reading science fiction), which is linked to a decline in cognitive flexibility/speed.

6. We know streaming networks capture vast behavioural/demographic metrics. They know your income, education levels, viewing duration, preferred genres, lifestyle values, what you binge, skip, abandon, your geographical location etc etc. All of this goes into the creation of a psychographic profile (but is it accurate?), and all this gets sent to TV producers.

7. It seems likely, therefore, that networks and studios would instruct writers to simplify their scripts, and heavy-handedly spell things out for the audience (or hire writers/producers who epitomize such low quality in the first place). We can see this with many other shows: every point, motivation and emotional shift is explained in the most heavy-handed way possible. Nothing is left unsaid or is handled with nuance.

8. So I wouldn't be surprised if Paramount has marketing data on nuTrek that advises them to paradoxically target old people and post-literate or hipster young people, with the data telling them that the only big overlap between both groups is literal pakleds.

Asimov on Trek:

>"To boldly go where no man has gone before. [the show means this] territorially; they're visiting stars that no man has, 'til now, ever visited. They're going vast distances no man has ever penetrated. [but in addition] they're meeting problems that man has not faced."

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>"What Star Trek really presented was the brotherhood of intelligence. It mattered not what form the intelligence took. Or what kind of universe the intelligence built for itself. If it was intelligent — if it was intelligent enough to build a culture — then it had the right to live in that culture. It had the right to exist and be. And no other culture had a right to interfere with it, as long as it was not endangering cultures beyond itself."

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> "Star Trek was, in a sense, the sanest, the most meaningful [of scifi TV shows]... it tackled real social problems. It was not devoted entirely to adventure. And most of all, it had fully realized characters. Naturally, Spock springs to mind. The rational, sane man. And there's something very comforting about sanity. Especially in a world like ours."

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>"No matter how successful 'Star Trek' was with its viewers, no matter how intensely it pleased its viewers, unfortunately the medium of television these days, depends entirely upon a mass audience. They sell advertising time. That is their business. The program is merely a way of enticing you to watch the advertising. And if there isn't enough of an audience, the advertisers won't come, regardless of how intensely it pleased the audience is does get."

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>"And then came this blinding revelation. Here I had been watching Star Trek since its inception because I like it, because it is well-done, because it is exciting, because it says things (subtly and neatly) that are difficult to say in straight drama, and because science fiction, properly presented, is the type of literature most appropriate to our generation. [...] But it hadn't occurred to me that Mr. Spock was sexy. I had never realized that such a thing was possible; that girls palpitate over the way one eyebrow goes up a fraction; that they squeal with passion when a little smile quirks his lip. And all because he's smart!"

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>[TOS is popular with fans because] "...young people of intelligence who are concerned with our world and with their own lives are naturally interested in science fiction since this is the only form of fiction that deals with the future and with change, and it is in a changed future that the youngsters will mature."

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>"There is enough respect for science in the program to give it the support of the more sophisticated portion of the science fiction audience, who are the opinion-makers."

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>"Many Star Trek episodes dealt with ethical problems that were resolved humanely. Even a 'monster' was viewed sympathetically when she turned out to be a mother protecting her child. There were interesting, idiosyncratic, and sympathetic characters about whom one's feelings could crystallize."

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>"Dear Gene (a letter to Gene Roddenberry), I am sorry to say that [the Star Trek V screenplay sent to Asimov] breaks with the rationalist tradition of Star Trek. To bring in a charismatic preacher who seems to be all-powerful and ends up being ludicrously wrong is going to move the more educated and sophisticated end of the audience to embarrassed laughter. If there are any sincerely religious people in the audience they will [also be] offended by so primitive a conception of god, and be puzzled over the fact that the supremely intelligent and rationalist Spock can fall for it for even a moment. And, of course, those who are religious in a primitive sense are going to object to the portrayal of the preacher, either as a fanatic, or a dupe, or both. Then, too, remember that Star Trek appeals to the world-wide audience and there are several billion people in the world that do not share the Judeo-Christian view of God. A great many will be horrified and a great many others will be totally puzzled. [...] Then, too, there appears to be a lack of scientific intelligence that is wholly foreign to Star Trek. There seems to be no clear distinction between the Galaxy and the Universe. [...] To place God on a planet of any kind is ridiculous to most intelligent theists, who understand that god is immanent to the Universe, existing equally everywhere. [...] To have the planet 'at the centre of the universe' is sheer nonsense, for there is no centre of the universe any more than there is a centre of the earth's surface. Even if there was a centre, what are the chances of it existing in our galaxy, when our galaxy is only one of hundreds of billions, all told? This is really childish. Other points will puzzle any Star Trek devotees. What are these unicorns? Where do they come from? Why bring them in? Why would Spock's mother be revolted by his partially Vulcan characteristics when she is in love with his father who is all Vulcan? Why should McCoy have to wear a cast, considering the futuristic medicine of the day? In short, I consider the treatment an out and out disaster."

On my digital copy of the books, the chapters are all in the 30ish page range (my font is fairly large). Wolfe seemed to have made a conscious choice not to deviate too much from this.

IMO this lends a very rhythmic, pacy quality to the books. The chapters aren't too short, aren't too long, and regularly come at you at a familiar clip.

Everywhere I go, I now refer to friends and strangers as "goodman" (eg, "thank you, goodman", "hello, goodman", "Are you a vegetable then, or a speaking plant, goodman?").

I have been met with no resistance, so shall continue.

That is all.

>NEWBIE: Hi guys. Loved "Shadow and Claw". Just wondering what I may have missed, though?

>WOLFEEXPERT55: Depends on how much you caught. Did you catch basic stuff like (SPOILERS) the fact that Severian was raised in a defunct rocket ship, that Vodalus gives Severian a fake coin, that Severian brought Triskele back to life, that there are multiple iterations of Severian, that Severian hangs out in his own tomb as a kid, that the narrator of the book is a composite being of torturer Severian/Thecla/all the previous Autarchs, that Jonas is a Korean robot from close to our time, that whenever Severian gets confused about direction he’s time traveling, that the water entities routinely reappear, that Severian is the Concilliator, that Severian actually dies in his duel versus Agilus, that the narrator deliberately glosses over the sexual relationship between Severian and Thecla, that Severian might have killed his own mother in his ascension ceremony, that you meet Severian's grandfather in the second chapter of Shadow but you don't even notice him, that the face of the man engraved in the tomb of mausoleum which young Severian frequented is quite possibly himself, that Severian abolishes the guild, that the alien hierodules are bringing him back from death throughout the story [edited for length]...

>NEWBIE: What?! No, I didn't get any of that. Also, quick question: is Urth supposed to be Earth?

>WOLFEEXPERT55: Author statements and textual clues suggest Urth may instead be a separate, previous universal cycle; an analogous predecessor to our own Earth rather than the exact same physical globe.

>NEWBIE: Ummm. I think I read the books wrong.

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That's a lightly edited/altered convo from the subreddit. No offence intended to anyone (I'm grateful to the ultra-fans over there for explaining things), I just I find it funny how much of a mindf**k the books are. You can read them multiple times and still completely miss what's going on. I, for one, did not notice Korean robots.