| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Not Bayley's best....,
By
This review is from: Empire of two worlds (Paperback)
Killibol is a bleak, dark, gray rock planet in another galaxy populated with isolated termite-mound-like cities of its human colonists. Because of the inability to grow food in Killibol's soil, society is structured around protein producing tanks. As a result of the rigid system of food production (i.e. power), life on Killibol is insular and unchanging. Stagnation.
Earth, on the other hand is populated by the people of Rheatt. An artistic, relatively peaceable drug taking bunch. In contrast, the Moon -- which over millions of years has spiraled closer and closer to earth -- is the home of the sadistic and brutal empire-coveting Rotrox who descend in space craft to frequently pillage and indiscriminately kill the Rheattites. Despite the science fiction backdrop, Bayley's work is really an extended gangster movie/dime novel homage. This kind of makes sense since Killibol's cities are ruled by strongmen who no longer have access to food tanks resort to petty crime in the Basement. This amalgamation is actually quite original... Enter, Klein our gangster main character and his brilliantly manipulative friend and master, Becmath. In an attempt to procure a food tank run they run afoul of the police and other more powerful food tank strongmen and in a motorized tank gunship (queue scenes from the horrendous 1977 sci-fi film Damnation Alley) flee the city. Scientific research has been replaced by alchemy (a theme Bayley uses heavily in Star Winds). Klein and Becmath take prisoner an alchemist whose books tell of a portal to Earth (the origin of Killibol's inhabitants). The gun ship plunges through the portal and arrives on Earth. Soon, the evil Rotrox invade from the Moon and Klein and Becmath become their allies and teach them how to effectively enslave people. *spoilers* Eventually, our completely unlikeable, occasionally brutal, and unintelligent "hero" sees the light. Bayley's work builds upon a fascinating backdrop -- that is, Killibol and it's termite cities and their protein tanks. Likewise, having a main character who is on the whole a worthless flunky content to let his boss kill and sleep with the various women he falls is a daring move. However, on the whole the novel comes of as trite and succumbs to endlessly banal set-piece battle scenes to fill up space. Low and behold, I discovered that Bayley expanded an unpublished short story for the first half of the novel -- i.e., the worthwhile part. Bayley still has not figured out how to pace a novel. While good ideas abound (alchemy as the science of a stagnate future, protein tank based society, etc), the characters are unlikable and almost as brutal as the Rotrox. Only pick up the work for it's cover and the first half.... ...As a reader, I wanted to personally toss the main character in a protein tank. NOT because he was a bad person but because he was COMPLETELY boring bad person....
5.0 out of 5 stars
Bayley's worst beats most writers' best.,
By Jasperodus (New York, NY) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Empire of Two Worlds (Hardcover)
As with everything this man wrote, the number of ideas per page is enough reason to buy this book, even if the plot was rubbish. But the plot is not rubbish. It's engaging, fast-paced, and (as always with Bayley) profound.
A handful of gangsters fleeing one of many self-contained cities on the otherwise lifeless planet of Killibol (colonized by humans in the mist-shrouded past through a 'gateway' based on an all-but-forgetten alchemical technology) would have considered themselves doomed to starvation and probably killed themselves were it not for the overpowering personality, drive and brilliance of their ruthlessly ambitious leader, Becmath, who, having kidnapped and questioned the city's one remaining alchemist, knows the location of the gate and the fact that, despite common-knowledge of its destruction, it may have reconstituted itself over the intervening millennia. His gamble pays off and Becmath's rise to power begins. Klein, Becmath's right-hand man and the protagonist of the novel (if it could be said to have a protagonist) is, as my fellow reviewer points out, not especially likable. None of Bayley's characters are especially likable. They're merely products of their environments like everyone else. There's no room for heros is Bayley's universe. The writer with the hardest of all 'hard science-fiction' outlooks I have ever read, is not a feel-good writer. He looks at the world as through a precision instrument, writing with the closest I have ever seen to a purely objective point of view. While not to everyone's tastes, anyone who respects the true essence of science fiction--fiction based on SCIENCE, should not miss a word he wrote.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
Tag this product(What's this?)Think of a tag as a keyword or label you consider is strongly related to this product.
Tags will help all customers organize and find favorite items. |
