Customer Reviews

The Garments of Caean

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

THE KEY TO POWER

Back on Old Earth there was a saying that clothes make the man. But on the world called Caean this became literally true. On that colonized planet there was a material called Prossim. If your body was in contact with Prossim your personality changed. You became handsome, you had vast charisma, you had total self-confidence - you were always the power center of every enterprise.

So throughout the inhabited galaxy clothing from Caen was the sure key to success and men would kill to get such a suit. Peder Forbath was such a man, prepared to turn space pirate to get his hands on some. But instead he found that - at the risk of worlds - the very secret of Prossim cloth itself was about to open before his eyes...

Barrington Bayley's unusual novel is a taut, suspense-filled science fiction adventure entirely different from any you may have ever read!

Although the premise of this book could be compared to one of Yakov Smirnoff's Soviet Russia jokes -- "in Caeanic sector, clothes wear you" -- and the blurb [see below] calls it "a whimsical tale", I would say that "The Garments of Caean" is rather darker than that. Most of the characters can be described as, at best, indifferent to the suffering of their fellow human beings, though even the worst of them is more callous than sadistic. It's as though no one in the book ever really has any feelings at all for anyone else, and so thinks nothing of cheating them, or causing horrible psychological trauma, or killing them, if it seems an easy path to a goal.

Some say Science Fiction is a literature of Ideas, and there are some interesting ones in this book, enough so that I re-purchased a copy based on what I remembered from having read it twenty+ years ago, but there certainly aren't any characters in it I'd want to get to know in person.


From the Back Cover:

At one time they had been called tailors. Peder's father had been a tailor. And on Peder's home world -- as indeed on many worlds of the Ziode Cluster -- they were still referred to as tailors. But that was because in Ziode vestments did not have the esteem that, in Peder's view, they deserved. He, like others of his ilk, called himself a sartorial, and his was not a trade but a profession.

Twice before he had been privileged to handle garments from that strange, clothes-conscious civilization, Caean -- a damasked gipon and a simple flowered cravat -- but even then he had been captivated, entranced, and had realized that all the legends concerning Caean were true...

In Caean clothes were not merely an adornment but a philosophy, a way of life -- the way of life. Even Peder Forbarth knew that he failed to grasp the fullness of this philosophy. In the Ziode cluster, the covering of the body was of no importance and it was even sanctioned to go naked. But despite any amount of official disapproval, the love of clothing -- one of man's oldest arts -- flourished, and Caeanic articles were recognized for the consummate, sublime treasures that they were ... and very few of them had ever crossed the black gulf of light years...

... At first he doubted his judgment; but then, feeling the forbidden material, its texture that seemed to bring the nerves and blood more alive than before, the dazzling twills, damasks, displays, and culverts into which it could be woven, he decided there could be no other explanation. This was the fabled fabric which no one in Ziode was absolutely sure existed. And Peder Forbarth now owned an entire suit of it.


From the front flap:

Peder is not just a tailor, but a "sartorial" -- a lowly trade that has now been elevated to an incredibly high standard. Sartorials compete fiercely in creating new apparel, and Peder has heard that the greatest of them all are in the Caeanic worlds, where clothing is a way of life and a philosophy of living.

In Peder's sector, though, Caeanic clothing is prohibited, and he has fallen in with a band of pirates attempting to salvage a Caeanic freighter. In splitting the loot -- clothes -- Peder cleverly spot a legendary suit, one of five in the entire galaxy, and walks off with it. And no sooner does he put it on than his personality changes; he becomes self-assured, clever, successful -- it almost seems as though the suit of clothes is wearing him!

A whimsical tale of a suit of clothes that really makes the man...