11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Impressive., June 29, 2002
This review is from: Floating Worlds (Sf Collector's) (Paperback)
After reading Floating Worlds, I had a hard time believing that I had never heard of the book before. It is an intelligent and complex novel of the future which combines elements of technology, politics, and space to create a compelling story. It should rightly have a place next to the more famous works from the period, and I am pleased to see that it has been reprinted.
Paula Mendoza is a slightly-more-than-typical inhabitant of the anarchist planet Earth. She becomes even more distinctive when she becomes Earth's representative to the Styths and along the way bears a son to the Styth Prima. She becomes the pin that links the two cultures together as much as two such separate cultures can be linked.
Holland's writing is vividly detailed, and the world that she creates for the future is so well imagined that it is disappointing when the book ends. I found the plotting a little but weak in places, but any deficiencies are made up for by the strong characters. I particularly liked the realistic way that she sets up the variations on human stock represented by the Styth.
Definitely worth reading.
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13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Give Holland a Retro Hugo-- she deserves it, November 28, 2005
Cecelia Holland became one of the youngest people ever to write a best-selling novel in 1966 with the publication of her first novel, The Firedrake, about the Norman Conquest. She was, if I remember correctly, just 18. Her career, interrupted for a time by life in a Northern California commune, has been one fantastically well crafted historical novel after another.
With one exception. In the mid-1970s, she wrote one of the most under-appreciated science fiction novels ever written. Floating Worlds is an epic yet it is as personal as the seraglio. It covers the sociology and politics, both governmental and romantic, of a complex society based in the asteroid belt, and in the moons of Jupiter.
I am doing this from memory, since the last time I re-read Floating Worlds was maybe ten years ago, and the book is currently in storage, awaiting its reception by the Heinlein Papers Collection at UC Santa Cruz (when I die, of course).
Holland ranks for me as one of the most important historical novelists of the 20th century, along with the late and very much lamented Dame Dorothy Dunnett.
If you haven't read Floating Worlds you have missed something very important.
If you read other than sf, read the rest of Holland's opus.
Walt Boyes
The Bananaslug. at Baen's Bar
and member of the Editorial Committee of Baen's Universe magazine
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent book, September 24, 2000
I first read this book more than 20 years ago. It goes beyond the sci-fi genre - it's a well thought-out and written book. Each character has so many subtle shadings to them that I find that over the years different aspects of their personalities appeal to me. I don't understand why this book isn't widely considered one of the best sci-fi books ever written. In the 80's after my first copy fell to pieces, this book was so hard to find in the US that I finally tracked it down after a great deal of effort to a UK bookstore. FINALLY it's available in the US again. I bought one from Amazon and may buy another just in case ...
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