Customer Reviews

Greenhouse Summer

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

 

 

Norman has finally returned with an utterly fantastic novel eagerly awaited by Spinrad enthusiasts worldwide! This one has everything Norman's readers have come to love,including a plot concerning the looming crisis of global warming,fully realized characters,funky technology,and lots of sex! Spinrad's singular style of rhythmic rhyming prose has never been better.His artistry with the English language, among others,continues to grow. Readers should pay close attention to the deft handling of the sensitive environmental issues that are the central focus of the plot,as well as the hopeful syndicalist system offered as a replacement for conventional outmoded capitalism. Truly,Norman Spinrad is at the height of his considerable powers! A must read for the serious lover of speculative fiction!

I've been an SF fan for more than 40 years, but find it all too difficult to find stuff worth reading these days. Spinrad's novel wasn't the most literary I've ever read -- the characters were a bit two-dimensional -- but his construction of the post-global warming future was well rounded and convincing. (At least to me. I don't know enough about climatary physics to comment on how technically plausible it might be.) Details: alligators in the canals of Paris, dikes protecting New York City from the elevated sea water, the Sahara Desert so hot as to be (really) lifeless. And the non-climatary details, like making "disney" a non-proper noun representing any technologically produced fake. I also liked the denouement, and the way it revolved around "meatware" computers and the strangely psychotic scientist from California. The politics was interesting, too, although maybe, like the characters, a little overblown to be believable. In all, though, well worth reading.

I truly thought the world was gonna' end in this one ... Alas ...

HOT DAYS: Dealing with our current situation of global warming, what I thought to have been an "End of the World" type saga, I found to be a fanciful cat and mousebrain type thriller. "Mousebrain," refers to the *polymerized* rat brains known as "meat-ware" used as processors for Spinrad's computers of the future. While not necessarily SF, Greenhouse Summer weaves a tale surrounding our future Earth so very disturbing, yet mystically enchanting the reader gets a true sense of what might yet happen on our homeworld. We get a glimpse of the "Lands of the Lost:" areas already overtaken by flood waters due to the shifting of our polar ice caps, and 21st century Paris, in the summer. In Spinrad's telling, it's always summer in Paris. The dark side is the world hangs terribly close to the brink of "Condition Venus," the point at which we can no longer reverse the global warming effects we, ourselves, have created. Spinrad's humor dampens the final blow as Earth teeters precariously close to the proverbial "end is near." The United Nations had been trying to warn the Earth for years and now it may be too late.

EVEN HOTTER NIGHTS: Spinrad's comical style proves there are no real heroes in a work like this, only a form of disney--a term Spinrad uses throughout the work--meat puppet could react openly to the goings on throughout his endless descriptions of room decor, sexual liaisons and alligators in the Seine. Cardboard mockups of stereotypical displays of only the brackish type inhabit Spinrad's universe. In a world no longer "governed," Syndics seem to go on about their business with alarming effrontery, mostly, as every character in Greenhouse Summer works for one Syndic or another. So, what's the point? I thought, maybe, the world might come to an end. It may yet end due to global warming, however, I had fun getting myself right back to where I started. Greenhouse Summer was an enjoyable read. The originality of the humor kept a smile on my face throughout. Almost every overdescriptive point in the book, including a long arduous sexcapade aboard the "Queen of the River," has a punch line. I recommend this work to SF/Pulp aficionados and most anyone with a sense of humor.

-ras ;)

While I liked the climatech, and the relaxed attitude toward apparantly non-harmful designer drugs, everything thing else was a 'tad' boring. Its pretty bad when you don't care for any of the characters. And the fried-brain scientist- he had the *answers* from his 5 minute venture as the human computer, so *why* did he need to go back in...surely someone would have been able to examine/debrief him afterward. And then to let him walk around freely while barely functioning? Didn't make sense.

Spinrad is clearly a master wordsmith, but what bogged this book down for me was the long time it took to figure out what the novel was actually about. Basically, the book involves two people who are after a piece of information that may or may not be hardwired into a mysterious computer supposedly able to predict Condition Venus. The novel takes place entirely on a disney riverboat on the Seine with LOTS of descriptions of rooms, furniture, food, clothing, textures, flowers and plants, ENDLESS descriptions that merely show Spinrad's affection of all things French. Then there are the obligatory sex scenes, the kind that used to shock in the 1970s, Spinrad's heyday, but now only seem infantile. (Authors should know by now that sex is not the be-all and end-all of a person's life and that some readers prefer other aspects of characterization from their authors.) The one thing the sex scenes certainly do is take up space. There isn't much of a plot and not much of a conclusion. And while much of the writing is gorgeous, many aspects of the novel were just smug--as if the world within which the novel was taking place was, in the end, a joke and that the characters were fools. Spinrad (like Harlan Ellison) seems only interested in showing the reader how clever he is. I never understood the Big Blue Machine or the Bad Boys. I liked the disneys and the white tornados, real or imagined. But it just wasn't enough, in the end, to do much for me. It was like walking through a Louis XIV drawing room with lots of flowers and paintings and ornate furniture and not much else of interest.

A previous review here warned that this book is poor, but heedlessly I read it anyway, to my chagrin. Character developement is fair, but plot and background science are just plain hideous. This novel is full of fancy French words, point is, who cares, and it is so excessive it detracts from the story line. The writing style makes reading a chore through much of the book, very vague at times and jumps back and forth a lot with the reader struggling to figure things out.

Explicit sex is graphically portrayed two or three times, and to no point whatsoever. Some writers, notably William Barton, use sex as an integral part of character developement and plot, but Spinrad seems to just stick it in (no pun intended) for just shock appeal, or whatever. No more Spinrad novels for me, for awhile.

Out of all the S.F. I have read that I found innocently standing on my local library shelf, this has got to be the most erotic novel I have ever found.Explicit language coupled with the change that time will effect on language made this book an interesting thirty hours.The only drawback for me was confusion early on. I will pick up another of Norman Spinrad's novels,this being my first.

__________________________________________
Not quite a review, since I didn't finish it -- stalled at p.168 (of 317).
Prince Esterhazy hasn't gotten into Monique's pants yet [note 1]. Ivan
& Stella, the rich, boorish (but shrewd) Siberians, are, um, being
colorful. Oh, and the white tornado's a fake.

Gary Wolfe did say, in a generally favorable review (Locus 12-99),
that GS had a slow start, but here I am in the *middle*...

Spinrad's fictional hothouse is, well, *hot*, and 100% man-made. The
latter isn't likely in RL, but it's now well-known that Earth's climate
has changed drastically -- and quickly -- in the past, for no obvious
reasons. Anyway, it's *fiction*, and Spinrad points out the dismal
record of climate models. As always, his writing is impeccable, and he
has a gift for coining Neat Phrases, such as the 'Lands of the Lost', for the
climatic losers -- the poor, low, hot places.

The real problem comes with his McGuffin, 'Condition Venus' -- a

predicted runaway greenhouse, which would make the earth
uninhabitable. This simply isn't believable-- not even the wildest-eyed
eco-alarmists have proposed such a scenario. So the book clunks every
time Condition Venus is trotted out -- which seems like every other
page, around where I gave up.

Another problem is the economics, which is capitalism losing out to
anarcho-syndicalism -- like the Bad Boys syndicate, who are really
good at heart, barring the odd assassination. Anyway, I wouldn't know
an anarcho-syndicalist if one bit me on the ass, even after half a
book's-worth of 'em. The politics are kinda impenetrable too, Blues
and Greens and the Big Blue Machine -- the latter seems to be a trade-
association of climatic engineers and big construction outfits. Eh?

I love the Parisian setting, which is much (too much?) like that in
"La Vie Continue" (1988, in Other Americas) in which a fictional
Spinrad sells movie rights to his "Riding the Torch". Female lead is to
be the "Red Metal Rose" of Russian Spring fame. Very entertaining tale. Unlike Greenhouse Summer.

Anyway, I've mostly liked my previous Spinrad reads [note 2], even
the much-maligned fat-fan unsold-novel excerpt.... But I gave up on
this one. For 220 pages, nothing much *happened*. Life is short, and
the to-read pile is large....
___________
Note 1) Well, I tried again, stalling this time at p. 220. Eric & Monique
finally got it on [yawn]. Not much else happened. Hell with it.

Note 2) -- which include most of his lifetime oeuvre. I suppose my
all-time Spinrad fave might be Child Of Fortune (1985). And I like his
book-review columns in Asimov's.

review copyright 2000 by Peter D. Tillman