Customer Reviews

Shakespeare's Planet

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4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(3)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is very run-of-the-mill as far as a Simak book goes. A human and his robot are marooned on a planet with an alien called Carnivore. There's a kind of tunnel that allows people to be transported from planet to planet, and Carnivore has arrived on this planet by way of that tunnel. Unfortunately, this particular stop of the tunnel is only one way - the way off the planet is closed because the tunnel seems to be broken on this end.

Nothing much happens in this book besides the characters doing a little exploring, and trying to figure out how to get the tunnel working again. They also try to figure out the mystery of a pond that's not quite a pond, a creature frozen in time, a mysterious hill near the pond, and the reason why some sort of intelligence is 'freezing' all of their minds once a day in something they call the 'God-hour'. All of this becomes sort of a mish-mash of concepts that hints at coming together at the end of the book, to explain what's going on with this planet. However, the ending is wrapped up very quickly, and isn't that satisfying.

This book is probably worth the read if you're a die-hard Simak fan like me, but for anyone else, it's not all that interesting.

Shakespeare's Planet introduces the reader to a number of characters and species that could be the central part of future books by Clifford Simak. But as far as I know, they are not.

Ship: three human minds slowly evolving into a consciousness greater than the sum of the three.

Horton: a geologist by training, he knows he is 1000 years removed from the rest of humanity because of the cold-sleep while traveling.

Elayne: an explorer by nature, she is mapping the tunnels throughout the galaxy.

Carnivore: a species dedicated to being the supreme predator.

Nicodemus: a robotic AI with an apparent consciousness.

Pond: I'm still not sure what Pond is, but a single entity scattered throughout the galaxy.

Evil Thing: Not too powerful that Carnivore can't handle. With apologies to Ripley in Aliens, who laid the egg?

Dragon Thing: another strange species, encased in a cocoon of ... time?

Slugs: builders or maintainers of the galactic tunnels.

Shakespeare: with the influence of Pond, is Shakespeare really dead?

As a story, Shakespeare's Planet is uneven and feels unfinished. However, the focus of the story is on its strangeness. I can envision Iain M. Banks being inspired to write his Culture books after reading Shakespeare's Planet.

The issue of humans meeting again after a gap of 1000+ years is also explored in 3001 The Final Odyssey and Spin, among other books.

I found interesting begin and midpart of the story but... suddenly ended trying to explain everything in a quick and easy way. Why? Better to read after you have finished all other simak's books.

There are a lot of good ideas in this book with different types of space travel and different alien encounters combined.

The internal dialogue of Ship is interesting to hear as it discusses immortality and as we are given a view of the personalities that went into making it.

The robot is the most likeable character in the book, showing some flashes of humour as well as intelligence.

The pace is good as there is a gradual revealing of different situations and motivations with everything coming to a head right at the end.
And the ending stays consistent and intelligent, not falling into soap opera.

There are two weaknesses in the book; one is Horton, the protagonist, he is a dull character and his comments about technology and his responses to some of the events he is informed of are stupid, this makes him hard to like or care about; the other problem is that the ending has and extra alien element thrown in that makes the action at the end harder to believe, it in fact makes the whole set up seem completely unnecessary.
These two weaknesses stop it from being a great book but it is still good, not one of Simak's best but worth a read..

After a thousand years in space Carter finds himself to be the sole surving member of his crew. When his ship lands millions of light years away from earth, he meets a creature that knew Shakespeare. This was a very well written book.

Imagine landing on a strange deserted planet then encountering a series of other beings whom are as marooned as you. The title refers to one of the characters not the Bard himself. On the psychedelic edge of sci fi.