Spider World [Paperback]

Colin Wilson (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 520 pages
• Publisher: Grafton; First Edition edition (February 26, 1987)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0246131462
• ISBN-13: 978-0246131461
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 0.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A beautiful bus book, hard to put down when your stop comes, December 9, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The Spider World: The Tower (Hardcover)

Dig

this is a great yarn, with a huge world to let your mind wander through. The first half is an interactive Discovery special on the insect kingdom, except you're trapped in the TV with them. Life is rough for the characters and you look up expecting your own skin to be sunburned and your belly empty. But it's all foreward moving, foreward thinking. Our hero grows on each page and ends the book thinking entirely for himself. The Spider Kingdom is at once frighteningly sterile, and exceedingly organic at the same time. The perversion of the insects seems abrupt until you meet the humans. Our yarnspinner Wilson is definitely trying to say something about the nature of the human race, and once I dream about it for a few more weeks, I'll be able to tell you what that message is.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Captivating story telling at its finest., August 7, 2001

By 

"idhhb" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Spider World: The Tower (Spider World: Epic Visionary Fiction) (Bk. 1) (Hardcover)

The Tower is the first of four volumes in the Spider World series.

This visionary work chronicals events after a radioactive comet turns the world of man upside down. Spiders, and insects of all variety are now the masters in size -- leaving humans in the ackward position of not being somewhere closer to the bottom of the food chain.

Colin Wilson is thoughtful, erudite, and a damn good story teller. This first installment follows the life of Niall from his birth through capture by spiders, escape, interrupted revolt, and eventually... let's say we leave that to your reading, and in case you are wondering the butler did not do it.

The book has an excellent blend of story-telling, character development, action, budding love, and even a balloon chase. I especially enjoyed the vivid descriptions of Niall's life in the desert. Good science fiction starts with an outrageous premise followed by self-consistant, even logical, progression of events. In this case, Colin Wilson begins with the presumption of monstrous spiders ruling the earth after the passage of a radioactive comet. From this all follows. In fact, if not for this science fiction premise the book could easily be a combination of adventure, biographical history and nature writing.

But it is science fiction and the unnatural situation servers nicely to highlight the development of Niall through the events which follow.

A fine example of good story telling by a thoughtful and educated writer. There's enough to feed many aspects of the reader -- and perhaps leave him or her with more than a few thoughtful questions as well.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Eh...Classic? I doubt it, but fun..., December 15, 2007

By 

Dr. Christopher Coleman (HONG KONG) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Spider World: The Tower (Spider World: Epic Visionary Fiction) (Bk. 1) (Hardcover)

A Classic? Hyperbole of course...but it's an okay story, aimed primarily at a demographic of teenage boys. What keeps it from being a classic? The story was simply loaded with McGuffins-- the hero constantly stumbles upon the right solution/equipment/etc. for no apparent reason. Oh, there's a mysterious, impregnable tower in the middle of Spiderville? Let's have our hero stumble upon the key that's been buried in the sand for years and years. Can't locate the hidden armoury? Let's dowse for it! Can't defeat the spiders because they can control your will? Let's be able to defeat them because they can't control your will...oh, er...let's find energy weapons that have been stored for long enough for spiders to evolve into supersize sentient beings, but haven't lost their charge! We're surrounded? Good thing we stumbled into this building with spider balloons we can make our escape on--and please, pay no attention to the earlier chapter in the book in which we were specifically told the the balloons couldn't take the weight of adult humans, and let's get three people on each one! And so on...

Now, I have to say that I did enjoy the book, although I kept coming up against annoying stuff. On the plus side, it's a fun story. Most of us think spiders are creepy, and giant evil telepathic spiders make great villians. The rationale for their mind control is quite clever. The story took a 'real-life' toll on it's characters; Wilson killed off a lot of people--well before JK Rowling--and main characters, too; and he's made his hero have to make some decisions that didn't turn out well at all for those he loves.

But there was a lot of sloppiness, too--far too much. I was constantly wondering about the relative sizes of things, particularly in the scene where a 6 inch wasp kills a giant spider and drags it back into it's den...I couldn't make sense of that. And like the entymologist below, I was annoyed at the dragonfly larvae reference--no it wasn't, couldn't have been. Wilson should know his bugs if he's going to write about them. He should also know his ecosystems, if this is going to be a series in which man and his place in nature features--if all the insects are giant sized, how are there insectivores that are normal sized? What do the birds eat? Are the plants giant sized? If the aphids are giant sized, and the bees are giant sized, they're gonna have to go through HUGE amounts of plant matter--in a desert? Giant bees wouldn't even be able to land on a flower, much less survive off of the tiny amounts of pollen they would get.

There was also a peculiarity where the hero kept feeling an 'electric tingling' from the key...but he wouldn't have known what electricity was. Personally I was put off by the constant and obvious new-agey references, the world-energy, dowsing, and more, but I understand I'm not necessarily in the majority on this--what would Star Wars be without the force?