A Million Open Doors [Hardcover]

John Barnes (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1992

The author of Orbital Resonance returns with the story of what happens when the barriers are shattered between the carefully engineered societies of humanity, throwing them into economic and cultural shock.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Giraut Leones lives in Nou Occitan, a place where young people spend most of their time gossiping, writing poetry, and fighting duels over various insults. Eventually we find that Nou Occitan is just one of humanity's "Thousand Cultures," an artificial colony set up on a terraformed world to bring art, chivalry, and other old-fashioned values to life. Some years ago the springer, a device enabling teleportation travel, was opened, resulting in friction between the traditional dilettantes and Interstellars, youngsters who adopt new ways of life.

Giraut's old friend Aimeric is called back to his home colony of Caledony to aid in the economic recession and cultural explosion that will surely follow the opening of the springer there. When Giraut is betrayed by his entendedora (part mistress, part girlfriend), he seizes the opportunity to go along as an ambassador. A Million Open Doors becomes a coming-of-age tale as Giraut adapts to a culture radically different from his own. Caledony society is colorless, repressed, money-driven; it emphasizes religion and hard work. Bewildered by the discouragement of art or pleasure, Giraut opens a college to teach Occitanian culture to interested Caledonians. The threatened religious and political leaders, of course, look on this as an oddity, if not an outright seed of revolution. During the cultural and political upheavals on Caledony, Giraut and friends learn about life, love, diplomacy, and cross-cultural friendship.

The premise--human colonies flung across the universe evolving on hundreds of different planets now being transformed by instantaneous space travel--has been explored before. But John Barnes's sense of humor and world-building skills make it great fun. --Bonnie Bouman --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

In Barnes's ( Orbital Resonance ) futuristic universe, the Thousand Cultures are planets that have developed in virtual isolation. The world of Nou Occitan is based on a romanticized medieval Europe: duels are fought, artistic endeavors are encouraged, and sexism (the true face of chivalry) is fiercely institutionalized. Caledony is a society that has combined capitalism and Christianity into an oppressive milieu where artistic creativity is considered irrational. The advent of "springers," which provide instantaneous travel from place to place, is bringing these cultures together, and a delegation from Nou Occitan goes to Caledony to help them assimilate. Narrator Giraut Leones starts an arts school where Nou Occitan ways are taught, the repressions of the Caledon community are questioned and the students become liberated through music, poetry, art and fencing. The analogy to '50s repression and '60s rebellion is fairly obvious: we see youth questioning authority through music and poetry performed at the Occasional Mobile Cabaret, reminiscent of period coffeehouses; there's the Joseph McCarthyish Rev. Saltini; the characters even go on a road trip in multicolor vans. Most engrossing, however, are Giraut's evolution from petulant, bratty jovent of Nou Occitan to Caledonic hero, and the creative mishmash of European languages from which Barnes produces the language of Nou Occitan.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 315 pages
• Publisher: Tor Books; 1st edition (October 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 031285210X
• ISBN-13: 978-0312852108
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.8 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,608,050 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

My thirtieth commercially published novel will be coming out in spring 2012. I've published about 4 million words that I got paid for. So I'm an abundantly published very obscure writer.

I used to teach in the Communication and Theatre program at Western State College. I got my PhD at Pitt in the early 90s, masters degrees at U of Montana in the mid 80s, bachelors at Washington University in the 70s; worked for Middle South Services in New Orleans in the early 80s. I do paid blogging mostly about the math of marketing analysis at TheCMOSite and All Analytics. If any of that is familiar to you, then yes, I am THAT John Barnes.

There are also many Johns Barneses I am not. I am not the British footballer, the Australian rules footballer, the former Red Sox pitcher, the Tory MP, the expert on ADA programming, the biographer of Eva Peron, the authority on Dante, the mycologist, the travel writer, the guy who does some form of massage healing that I don't really understand at all, the oil executive, the film historian, or that guy that Mom said was my father. I do wish I'd written that book on titmice, though.

I used to think I was the only paid consulting statistical semiotician for business and industry in the world, but I now know four of them. So now I have a large market share of a growing field.

Semiotics is pretty much what Louis Armstrong said about jazz, except jazz paid a lot better for him than semiotics does for me. If you're trying to place me in the semiosphere, I am a Peircean (the sign is three parts, ), a Lotmanian (art, culture, and mind are all populations of those tripartite signs) and a statistician (the mathematical structures and forms that can be found within those populations of signs are the source of meaning). The branch in which I do consulting work is the mathematics and statistics of large populations of signs, which has applications in marketing, poll analysis, and annoying the literary theorists who want to keep semiotics all to themselves.

I have been married three times, and divorced twice, and I believe that's quite enough in both categories. I'm a hobby cook, sometime theatre artist, and still going through the motions after many years in martial arts.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Million Open Doors, June 9, 2000

By 

"hmc3rd" - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Million Open Doors (Paperback)

I'd recommend to anyone who feels like reading older-feeling hard sci-fi novel that is still modern enough for one to not be embarassed by the author referring to events of the late 20th century that obviously never happened. One review on the actual book cover calls Barnes "one of Heinlein's spiritual descendents" and that review is very accurate. I also saw another review here on Amazon.com that called this a "cultural sci-fi novel." All true. Barnes does something very rare among modern sci-fi writers (that I have seen, I must admit I haven't had time to read a lot recently)...he makes a story based on cultures interesting and truly engrossing.

When I was reading the book I couldn't decide when it was written. It feels like a 50's era sci-fi novel because so much importance is placed on the culture. But then there would be a reference to a technological idea that was obvious very current (such as "growing" buildings using nanomachines). I guess the true beauty of this novel is the refreshing way that technology--while believable and realistic enough--is not the centerpiece, instead it supports and compliments the plot. Very refreshing to read a novel about the integration of technology and culture that doesn't spend time belaboring the internet and information technology.

Finally, a quick plug for Amazon.com. Although I did buy this book at my local Barnes & Nobles store, their Internet site was clueless on John Barnes. Glad to see that Amazon.com has a better selection so I can explore other works by this author. I can't wait to do so (apparently there is now a sequel to "A Million Open Doors").

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Heinlein who?, April 13, 1998

By 

Michael Battaglia - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A Million Open Doors (Paperback)

Much has been made of the similarities between Heinlein and Barnes, at least it seems to me. Most copies of the paperback I've seen have some reviewer or other touting Barnes as the "new Heinlein" which I think can be misleading. Much of what Heinlein did was similar, granted, but Heinlein tended to take more of a . . . shall we say radical bent toward his topics, which put off more than one reader. The difference between Barnes and Heinlein is that while a typical Heinlein book had revolution plastered all over it (and at his best the man was good enough to keep it from being distracting), the work of John Barnes, and especially of A Million Open Doors is more of a quiet, understated revolution. Instead of hitting the reader over the head with it, Barnes takes us through the tale of a boy finally learning to be a man on a world totally unlike his own. In the process he shows us both worlds and shows us what is wrong with those worlds and why. In this way, I think Barnes can make readers think without forcing them to think, which seems more like Ursula K. Le Guin than Heinlein. Either way, from this book it's clear that Barnes, while maintaining some vestiges of both Heinlein and Le Guin, is quickly on his way to becoming neither of them, instead he is becoming the next John Barnes. That's revolution enough.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A "cultural SF" novel, June 2, 2000

By 

joe_n_bloe (Ester AK USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: A Million Open Doors (Paperback)

A Million Open Doors is a well-crafted "cultural science fiction" novel in the vein of Jack Vance. The protagonist Giraut is a young epee-wielding "jovent" from Nou Occitan. Jovent culture apparently lies somewhere between that of 18th century aristocracy and that of Alex and his droog buddies in A Clockwork Orange.

Dissatisfied and dishonored, Giraut leaves his world through a "springer" (an instant teleportation device) to become an Ambassador for the Thousand Cultures. The world on which he lands contains two polar cultures: Caledon, where money becomes a holy arbiter of value, and austere St. Michael. Both cultures are deeply religious and theocratic although opposite in just about every other respect.

When the springers come for the first time to each of the Thousand Worlds, a "Connect depression" ensues. Giraut and the other ambassadors are there to help Caledon and St. Michael re-enter interstellar human culture ... but it turns out to be a challenge.

A Million Open Doors doesn't have a well-defined linear plot, per se. At the least, it is a coming-of-age story for Giraut, who grows out of his jovent ways as the story progresses. If you like atmospheric science fiction with interesting scenery and well-developed characters, you should find this book to your liking.