1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Bit of Ludlum, bit of Delany = bit of a trip, May 30, 2010
In a future where population has expanded (to 27 billion), so has the need for the use of land for agriculture. Those who slave away in the fields are the criminals convicted of petty crimes. Roads and villages have been amputated by the Centralization into the giant cities while the petty criminals have been banished due to `rustification.' To drive this agricultural boom in a time where soil diminishment and erosion are rampant, the delivery of sand to create artificially fertile soil is a growing business. So sets the scene for a pardoned convict, Knowle Noland, to become a sea captain of a largely autonomous behemoth vessel with a crew of three delivering sand.
While the book's synopsis focused on the ecological destruction of earth's water and soil, the actual book focused on the unfolding of a man's hallucinogenic disease and his Ludlum-like African happenings. As said, this Aldiss novel, my third, is much like a Ludlum novel in its politics, espionage and flashbacks. It also has the feel of a Delany novel as its flashbacks and hallucinations tend to be disjointed yet poetic. Much of the novel is also well formed in prose, but when taken all together it's a 126 page piecemeal hallucination, flashback and espionage rush.
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3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fascinating Novella Set In A Grim Future, December 19, 2001
The 1960's were a time of utopian hopes, celebrating peace, free love and the brotherhood of all; but also of a deep unease, even a nihilistic fear in the Western World. Surely the Vietnam War, the amoral Nixon Administration and the constant threat of nuclear annihilation fed those fears; conservatives feared the destruction of values and society they had worked hard to attain while their opposite numbers feared their continuation. The developed world's squandering of resources began to be understood by all; no longer did a belching smokestack indicate progress as much as environmental disaster.
At this time, science fiction gave us some of the grimmest writing yet. John Brunner's Stand on Zanzibar, Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five, and Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange are all outstanding examples of the fear and hopelessness authors of the time understood coursed close under the skin of the optimistic face of society. Brian Aldiss's Earthworks is equally representative of this tone. Although nowhere nearly as well known as my other examples, Aldiss's vision may actually be bleaker. It is set in a future which follows all too recognizably from our own--pollution has taken its toll and disease and hunger are so rampant that they have become the identifying characteristic of the time. Although Earthworks is quite short, at only 126 pages, it is a richly detailed and fully convincing portrait; disease and illness make the storytelling hallucinatory at times, leaving the narrator and reader questioning the very nature of reality. Fans of Philip K. Dick will be enthralled by this quality. Aldiss is a superb writer at his very best here. It is a real pity that Earthworks is out of print, but I would definitely recommend it for any science fiction fan search out a used copy.
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3.0 out of 5 stars
Aldiss' work has great ideas but poor delivery, May 2, 2011
Brian Aldiss' Earthworks (1965) takes place in a future Earth wrecked by the effects of overpopulation and the resulting environmental repercussions of intensive, expansive, and destructive over-farming. In this disturbed world of increasing automation and devaluation of human life, robots are worth more than people and the hungry diseased hordes of mankind have reverted to animism.
The Farmer rules from his barrack-like cities the Landsmen who till his toxin stricken fields as punishment for minor infractions. The land itself is poisonous -- so is the air, the water, and most food... Virtually all land is intensively farmed (sand is brought from Africa and infused with nutrients to construct new plots), most animal species are exterminated, and food itself must undergo chemical treatment to remove toxins and carcinogens...
Aldiss' dark vision of collapsing society and withering earth is poignant and brutal. Scenes often verge on visceral -- a disease which causes its victims to lurch about and shed skin like dying leaves, farmers wandering the land in protection suits, the Gas Room...
Sadly, Earthworks suffers from a virulent strain of inane plot and ultimately, a very unsavory message -- the endorsement of world war.
Plot Summary (Some spoilers -- although the back cover spoils as well!)
The "plot" unfolds (lurches?) in a rather muddled fashion -- obviously Aldiss is attempting to be literary. Or perhaps, it's an attempt to distract us from the banality of the plot. One gets the frustrating feeling that Aldiss fell in love with a world but couldn't figure out how to populate his world with viable characters, events, people!
Our protagonist, Knowle Nolan, is the captain of a largely automated transport ship carting African sands to Englad. Africa is technologically more advanced than Europe which is plagued with abject poverty and the absence of intellectual thought (most people can't read or write). Nolan narrates his tale (resurrecting the art of writing) in a series of flashbacks. Nolan himself is plagued with hallucinations due to a childhood disease -- and these lengthy visions take of a substantial chunk of the work.
Nolan, an orphan from England, was sent to the farms as punishment for a minor infraction. There he encounters the Travelers (a group of people who wander around with little purpose but to exercise freedom in the face of repression/automation/organization). In the heat of the moment (when they're captured by government forced), he betrays the leader of the group. As a reward he received his captain commission from the Farmer himself.
A dead man floats to Nolan's transport vessel with an assortment of love letters... Soon the vessel runs aground Africa's skeleton coast and they become embroiled in the politics of the region (with world ramifications).
Final Thoughts
I really wanted to like this work. However the world war for the sake of humanity advocating conclusion was genuinely bothersome, the lurching delivery distracting and poorly executed, and the frustratingly banal plot barely propped up the well-realized world .
That said Aldiss' social extrapolations from the effects of overpopulation are intriguing. For example, when the majority of the world is preoccupied by the constant pangs of hunger the finer points of human existence are snuffed out -- art, culture, writing, religion, etc -- the age of animism in the cities... Likewise, the work is early attempt at the genre of ecological disaster -- the effects of fertilizer runoff, chemical attempts to combat plant disease, polluted water sources, etc.
I tentatively suggest Earthworks for its ideas and richly detailed world (and the stunning covers!). An intriguing but highly flawed work with a dubious final message...
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