Customer Reviews

The Man in the Maze

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

 

 

Dick Muller was a hero... that is, until an encounter with an alien race left him unable to be tolerated in a human's prescence. When the human race rejected him, he left...to a planet with a giant maze on it. No one has ever reached the center of the maze. Now the human race needs Dick Muller to save the planet but first they must find him and convince him to come back and save the race that sent him into exile.
This book is great. My favorite book of all time. I highly recommend it to everyone!

Mankind is threatened by an alien that strips us of our free will. We can't communicate with these aliens, so we can't fight or appease them. Our only hope is Dick Muller, who, in mankind's first contact with an alien race, was permanently maimed and cannot live with humans anymore. However, it is precisely this injury that gives him the opportunity to let the aliens know we are a thinking race. The only question is-will he reject the human race that previously rejected him?

This modern retelling of the myth of Philoctetes is short, sweet, and to the point. It doesn't pause for discursive considerations of the maning of life or the nature of the human beast; that would belabor a subtle point and lose the larger meaning. The whole piece is a careful consideration of the limits of the human animal, and what makes it possible to live with one another.

This silver-age SF gem presaged such Silverberg classics as Dying Inside, a more careful meditation on the same themes. It also dovetails neatly into the New Wave of science fiction, in which the great source of speculation isn't scientific advancement, but the limits of the human being. All in all, it becomes a forward-thinking insight using a framework as old as time. Though imperfect, it belongs to a class of book that just doesn't get written anymore.

After an encounter with an alien race that leaves him with a strange `disease', Richard Muller exiles himself to Lemnos, a place famous for a vast, deadly maze that was built there long ago. He alone succeeded in getting to its center; now, veteran Charles Boardman, the one who convinced Muller to go on that ill-fated mission, and the young Ned Rawlins, whose late father was Muller's friend, must get Muller out of the maze and back to Earth for one last, heroic task (to do so, they, too, must master the maze). Getting through the maze won't be as difficult as it will be to actually convince Muller to follow them; thus, a psychological battle plays out during most of the book. In my mind, this isn't as fascinating as are all the different paths leading to different sorts of knowledge: in the first third of the work, Boardman's crew uses robots programmed to replicate the information that was saved during earlier, unsuccessful tries to get through the maze - that way, human lives are saved while the crew can afford to lose dozens of robots; some of the maze's sections are easier for the robots to go through, because they can more easily doubt their sense perception, whereas humans must close their eyes so that they won't be confused by appearances; meanwhile, Muller, having lived nine years in the maze and thus knowing it better than anyone, is still speculating about its possible origin, hidden secrets and traps. The only limitation to the various speculations is, plainly... death.

A man is hopelessly exiled from Earth after he is transformed by aliens during Earth's first contact with aliens. He is altered in a manner that prevents people from being near him without suffering great stress. He finds refuge on another world containing a mysterious deserted alien city. The city resembles a huge maze, and contains hidden deadly traps and technology which hamper efforts to reach the center of the city from outside. The exiled man takes up residence in that virtually inaccessible area. Many years later Earth sends a party to find and contact him, believing he is capable of solving a problem with a new race of aliens that threaten Earth. Most of the story is taken up with the adventure through the maze toward the center. The adventure's ending is disappointingly dull, though high expectations are previously built. This book continually strives to take off but never succeeds. It lacks the mental depth present in many of Silverberg's other works. It is fair enough as far as the field goes, but other books by Silverberg had me looking forward to thought provoking material that was absent or veiled here.

I enjoyed the premise and plot of this novel but was unable to connect with any of the main characters or the society they live in. I can accept that there are few females in the story but the characterisation of those that there are is extremely poor. The most significant woman is summarized as being a "swivel hipped tart with spiked heels and blue hair", or something similar. The two or three women in the novel are described only in terms of the pleasure they give to men. The males are adventurous space explorers, but the females cannot comprehend space travel and are afraid of it and in awe of the men who do it. Taking women on dangerous missions is not done, and the men have "woman cubes" to keep them entertained while they are without the real thing. In this "mankind" of tomorrow, women are only good for nurturing and satisfying the brave men who travel the universe. This bothered me, as did the idea that physical imperfection is an offence to others and those who can afford it should have it rectified (though I've come across this in other sci-fi stories as well, and can see that it's quite probable that this will become a reality). Muller is frequently said to be a fine and noble man, but he and the other males are so shallow in regards to women (even the youngest character, who should be the most likeable) that I was kept at a distance from them. There is much talk about "mankind" and how wonderful it is but I felt too excluded from it to care what happened to Muller and the rest of the human race.

Like "Thorns," written at roughly the same time, "The Man in the Maze" centers on a space voyager who has been changed and mutilated by contact with an alien species, only here the alterations are psychological rather than purely physical. And, as in "Thorns," salvation comes through the baring of the hero's inner torment to a seemingly invincible antagonist. This doesn't rate as highly as "Thorns," however, because Silverberg's exploration of his theme is so spare as to be skeletal. There are no evocative descriptions of this bizarre environment. At times I realized I was picturing the action on a bare stage, and long stretches of "The Man in the Maze" consist of nothing more than dialogue. The ending is far too abrupt -- a chronic problem in Silverberg's work -- and the twist that wraps it all up is far too pat. A lesser Silverberg novel, recommended only to those who haven't read "Thorns," "Dying Inside," or "The Book of Skulls."

A quick good read of a classic story revisited. Any fans of silverberg will enjoy this book.

Author Silverberg presents the reader with a puzzling conundrum for our rumination: an alien race build a 100 square mile maze around their only "city"; loads it with lethal hazards and deadly illusions and leave no explanation as to the reason for it's existence or how it continues to maintain itself eons after the creators have perished.

The author provides no answer, and I suppose none are necessary. The ambiguity hangs over the story and perhaps provides a mysterious ambiance.

I was disappointed with this book. I was fascinated by the concept of the ancient maze and expected the story would resolve the mysteries of its origin. Instead we are presented with a fairly routine SF novel with unremarkable characters and a dollop of "super-science nonsense". The plot tells of a man isolated in the maze and how he is induced, by trickery, to leave and serve a greater good.