Look into the Sun [Mass Market Paperback]

James Patrick Kelly (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1990

Kelly, the author of "Planet of Whispers" and the co-author with John Kessel of "Freedom Beach" has been nominated for both the Nebula and Hugo awards for his short fiction. This is a fable about a dissatisfied architect who travels "up-time" and changes shape to design a temple for a goddess.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In Kelly's 1987 novella The Glass Cloud , architect Phillip Wing saw his grand vision of an immense floating cloud achieved in such a way that the project, and, he felt, much of his world, was co-opted by the aliens called messengers. This novel extends that story as Wing is convinced by the messengers to take a 50-year journey to the planet Aseneshesh to design the tomb for a dying goddess. Already suspicious of the messengers' New Age religion on Earth, Wing finds himself in a theocracy whose power struggles could easily come to focus on his own work. The characters and background remain vague but Kelly is sensitive to the dislocations Wing feels, from Earth--where his wife becomes a convert to the messenger's religion, to the spaceflight on which a genetically sculptured cancer physically restructures him into an alien.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

A disillusioned architect reluctantly accepts an offer from the alien Chani to travel to their world and undertake his most important commission--the construction of a monument to their "immortal" priestess. Kelly ( Planet of Whispers ) explores the literal and figurative boundaries of alienation in this evocative novel of a man's search for his own humanity. For large libraries.--
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 280 pages
• Publisher: Tor Books (January 1990)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0812542932
• ISBN-13: 978-0812542936
• Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 4.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,779,579 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

James Patrick Kelly has had an eclectic writing career. He has written novels, short stories, essays, reviews, poetry, plays and planetarium shows. His most recent writing project is James Patrick Kelly's Strangeways, a series of ebooks for Kindle featuring some of his best stories. His short novel Burn won the Science Fiction Writers of America's Nebula Award in 2007. He has won the World Science Fiction Society's Hugo Award twice: in 1996, for his novelette "Think Like A Dinosaur" and in 2000, for his novelette, "Ten to the Sixteenth to One." His fiction has been translated into eighteen languages. With John Kessel he is co-editor of Kafkaesque: Stories Inspired by Franz Kafka, The Secret History Of Science Fiction, Feeling Very Strange: The Slipstream Anthology and Rewired: The Post Cyberpunk Anthology. He writes a column on the internet for Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine and is on the faculty of the Stonecoast Creative Writing MFA Program at the University of Southern Maine and the Board of Directors of the Clarion Foundation. He produces two podcasts: James Patrick Kelly's StoryPod on Audible and the Free Reads Podcast. His website is www.jimkelly.net.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the most underrated recent sf novels, July 21, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Look into the Sun (Hardcover)

The conventional wisdom about Jim Kelly is that he's first and foremost a master of short fiction, but this terrific novel argues otherwise. One of the rare novels about a creative artist in which we are actually shown, not just told about, the work of art being created -- not just Kelly's character but Kelly himself has solved the problem of devising a suitable tomb for a goddess! I read the first half of this a bit at a time, finding it engaging and thought-provoking but not compelling. Little did I know that Kelly was just putting his many plot pieces on the chessboard; I read the second half in one sitting.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars An earnest muddle, September 14, 2003

By 

Mark Silcox (The American Southwest.) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Look into the Sun (Hardcover)

I really like Kelly's short stories, and I badly wanted to like this novel, but it just doesn't work. Two main problems: first, the protagonist is far too passive and mealy-mouthed, and an utterly unconvincing portrayal of a supposedly brilliant artist. And second, the alien civilization that he visits is very confusing, and facts about it are revelaed piecemeal and without enough context for the reader to be able to tell what really makes these creatures tick. Overall it reads like the first effort of a guy who might one day produce something really good - read Kelly's other stuff and ask for yourself if that promise has been fulfilled.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful Descriptiveness, Flat Characters, January 20, 2007

By 

Judah (New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Look into the Sun (Paperback)

Overall, I found I disliked and could not identify with the majority of the characters. I could not relate to their emotional states, nor did I find the picture painted of civilization(s) at all coherent.

Two things rescued the novel for me: the inspiring descriptions of the Phillip Wing's two master works -- the Tomb of the Goddess and the Glass Cloud, and one passage.

This is the distilled and brilliant passage from p238:

"Immortality was simple... Essence consisted of viewpoint and structural memory. Viewpoint was each individual's unique style of processing experience; structural memories were those that composed viewpoint. All other memories were trivial, extraneous to existence.... Only structural memory, overwhelmingly the result of genetics and environment, was essential."

Never before I had I thought of self redux in such a fashion, though I found the author's embrace of behavioralism over free will annoying. It made the characters less real.