Customer Reviews

The Stonehenge Gate

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Seventy-seven years after his first sale, Williamson is still producing sf worth reading. Will Stone, an English professor at Eastern New Mexico University, and three of his friends (Derek Ironcraft, a physicist; Lupe, an archeologist; and Ram, a professor of linguistics and African history) become interested in a recent discovery of a Stonehenge-like structure buried deep in the Sahara, and wind up planning an expedition to investigate it. In a bit of a good news/bad news development, they find it, and it turns out to be an interstellar gate-and the first stop is really unpleasant, and guarded by very hostile critters. Lupe gets snatched, and the others have to go after her. As they keep following the trail, they travel through several more worlds where there's clear evidence of a stellar empire that fell. Eventually Will and Ram, now separated from Derek also, land in the midst of a war that's still going on, albeit at a far more primitive level than the first stages of the war must have been. And since this war is humans against humans, and white against black, white Will and black Ram land themselves in trouble almost immediately, and never really get out of it.

This is good, solid adventure sf, not Williamson's best, but "not Williamson's best" is still pretty good. A fun read.

If they make a movie out of this it will probably be one of those so-bad-it's-good hits. It is too hard to take this story seriously. I tried, but I lost it at the above quote. I was listening to a book on CD I checked out of the library so imagine Harlan Ellison's voice delivering the line....

The not so intrepid heroes of this story start belly-aching about wanting to go home barely seconds after passing through the mysterious ancient gate. (Think Stargate rip-off.) This would not be so bad except they invested a lot of time and money preparing for the trip. The story is therefore kinda ruined from the get-go.

When I first read the synopsis of this book, I thought that it would be an interesting read. After the first 20 or so pages I was not sure what I had gotten myself into. The writing style seemed awkward and the phrase "I'd like to know" came up so often it became extremely annoying and at times out of place.
Writing style aside, the premise of this book was very similar to the movie and series "Stargate" but less interesting and more confusing. The book itself seemed to be a mishmash of different stories and ideas. The book never seemed to flow. Sometimes the story went quickly and the reader was left trying to figure out what was going on. The author created situations without any explanation and many times I was left to wonder "how did that happen?"
In other sections of the book, the author seemed to drag on forever. The longest subplot in the book seemed to be an odd take on Slavery in American and Colonial History. It seemed out of place and more of a rant on black and white culture and relations.
This book was so odd that I never could figure out what the author was trying to accomplish in writing this book. Of course, Williamson did leave an open ended ending which leads me to believe he was thinking of writing other books about the different subplots he created. In the end, who knows? All I know is that after reading this story I am not inclined to purchase another book from this author.

What do you plan to do when you're 97 years old? Me? If I'm fortunate enough to attain to that ripe old age, I suppose I will be eating pureed Gerber peaches and watching Emma Peel reruns on my TV set in the nursing home...IF I'm lucky. For sci-fi Grand Master Jack Williamson, the age of 97 meant another novel, his 50th or so, in a writing career that stretched back 77 years (!), to his first published story, "The Metal Man," in 1928. Sadly, the novel in question, 2005's "The Stonehenge Gate," would be the author's last, before his passing in November 2006. Impressively, the novel is as exciting, lucid, readable and awe inspiring as anything in Williamson's tremendous oeuvre. Few authors had as long and productive a career as Jack Williamson, and I suppose it really is true what they say regarding practice, practice, practice....

"The Stonehenge Gate" is narrated by Will Stone, an English professor at Eastern New Mexico University, in Portales (not coincidentally, the school and town where the author taught and lived for many years). Stone and three fellow teachers--Derek Ironcraft, a physicist and astronomer; Lupe Vargas, an archaeologist; and Ram Chenji, a linguistics and African history instructor, from Kenya--discover a mysterious, Stonehenge-like trilithon buried under the sands of the Sahara, and, after walking through the ancient archway, are transported to a series of planets many light-years distant. The four become separated, but ultimately explore a planet devastated by war, an empty world populated only by morphing robots, a frozen planet that was the home of the trilithon builders, and a world comprised of two continents: one inhabited by whites, the other an equatorial jungle land peopled by blacks. It is on this last planet that the bulk of Williamson's novel transpires, as Ram's arrival begins a series of race riots and the onset of a civil rights movement. That all-important "sense of wonder," which was of paramount importance when the author began his writing career before sci-fi's Golden Age, is evident to a great degree here, and the fact that many marvels go unexplained only adds to that sense of cosmic awe. Those readers who have followed Williamson's career over the decades may be a bit taken aback by the author's use of such words as "Internet" and "e-book" in this, his last work; as great an indicator as any of the longevity of the writer's career. Readers who have likewise absorbed other of the author's works may be pleasantly reminded of them as "The Stonehenge Gate" proceeds. The use of native drugs to elicit visions is highly reminiscent of scenes in 1980's "The Humanoid Touch," while the entire notion of excavating in the Sahara to find the remains of alien artifacts will remind many of similar sequences in 1962's "The Trial of Terra." Even Derek Ironcraft's name is reminiscent of a main character (Frank Ironsmith) in the author's most famous novel, 1949's "The Humanoids." But despite this, Williamson's final book is wholly original, and his four main characters are an extremely appealing bunch. Our narrator is especially convincing. Far from an action hero, this 57-year-old keeps telling us how much he wishes that he were back in his quiet library at home in Portales, and the trials that he is forced to undergo have a very credible impact on him.

Anyway, perhaps I am making too big a deal of the author's advanced age here, but honestly, how many people nudging toward the century mark could be expected to create a 316-page novel that is as fresh and fascinating as any sci-fi in the stores today? The novel in question here could most surely have served as Book #1 in a new blockbuster sci-fi series, but sadly, that was not to be. The world surely lost a man of limitless imagination with Jack Williamson's passing. Though his great body of works remains, the man will certainly be missed....

_The Stonehenge Gate_ by Jack Williamson reminds me of some of the older, "Golden Age" science fiction stories I read in anthologies growing up, in books I found in my Dad's collection or in used bookstores, where educated, adventurous but otherwise seemingly normal people come across alien artifacts, hints of lost civilizations, technology so advanced it looks like magic, the stories not jaded at all but filled with a sense of wonder, of "gee-wiz," of amazement at the bigger-than-life mysteries of the universe.

The novel's four main protagonists, at least at first, are four poker buddies, college professors at Eastern New Mexico University. Derek Ironcraft is a physicist and astronomer, Lupe Vargas is an archaeologist (the sole woman of the group), Ram Chenji is an African linguist that Vargas met on a dig in Africa and got him to the United States on a scholarship, and Will Stone (the narrator) is a English literature professor specializing in Shakespeare; together they call their little group the Four Horsemen. One night Derek shows the group interesting NASA images of a buried structure deep in the sand seas of the Sahara Desert, images that appear to show a megalithic, Stonehenge-like structure. Though Lupe is tremendously skeptical of the image, or at least of Derek's interpretation of it, saying that the region is not known for such artifacts and is located in an area that the last time it was decently habitable by humans was hundreds of thousands of years ago, well before they were building such structures, she eventually embraces the group's enthusiasm and the four of them manage to make their way to the very remote site, initially hoping during a break between classes to find enough there to justify a grant and a return trip.

Dropped off by chartered helicopter among the remote dunes, many days travel from the nearest thing approaching civilization, they do indeed find that the satellite image was correct, that there are buried megalithic structures. They also find prior to their arrival that Ram had a very unusual background, that he grew up in Kenya, partially raised by his elderly grandmother that he called Little Mama, a woman who spoke a strange language and had taught some to Ram against his father's wishes and given him a strange pendant that had defied the few attempts he had tried to analyze it, covered with enigmatic writings and made of some unfamiliar material. Little Mama before she died had told Ram of having come from some other world, of having to go through Hell before she found the road to Heaven. Perhaps a little convenient, at least in my mind, but it becomes apparent to the group that Little Mama had somehow come through these megalithic structures from some other world.

In very short order they find that they are gates to another world. Indeed, gates to worlds, plural, as the Four Horsemen hop from world to world, for a time separating, seemingly permanently though there are hints that the missing members are alive and well. The first world they encounter was deadly, apparently a trap for unwary gate travelers, but after overcoming those difficulties the remaining team members come to an apparently very Earth-like world, complete with familiar plants and animals. Perfectly maintained (and to my mind a tad too familiar) buildings, roads, parks, and farms are present on the planet, lovingly tended by bizarre robots, but not a sign of people or what had happened to them. Though most things look pristine and untouched, they do come across evidence that what ever had happened to the people had happened a very long time ago.

The tone of the book changed abruptly though when they journeyed to another world, one that is very much inhabited, having a series of adventures on it that encompass a great portion of the book. Though touching on the possible destiny and strange origins of Ram and his people, the interlude on this world, one they later called Delta, had an entirely different, almost jarring tone from what came before and after in the story. Delta has two continents - Norlan and Hotlan - that are inhabited each by a native race of humans. Norlan is home to a race of mostly blonde imperialist European types, technologically close to that of late 19th century Earth as far as I could tell, while Hotlan was home to black African-like tribes and villages in the dense rain forest of a wilderness continent, largely beyond the reach of most Norlanders. The main characters become embroiled in the lives of individuals from both Hotlan and Norlan and in the growing conflict between the two groups (as the Hotlanders are for the most fantastic racists, not regarding the Hotlanders as human and at least officially condemning all mixed race individuals and their parents to death). Though the story was a decent tale of adventure and fairly atmospheric, it didn't flow well with the odd, otherworldly place they found before Delta and their discoveries about the builders and their origins in the incredibly distant past later on. It was as if I was reading an entirely different novel.

The best drawn out characters are Will, who comes across as timid and passive at times, at other times willing to risk everything to save a friend, including friends he makes in Hotlan, and Ram, who is a fairly complex character, constantly at war with himself, struggling with what may be some sort of preordained destiny that was thrust upon him in Hotlan and the life he really wants to lead. Derek and Lupe were a bit less well drawn and not as major characters as either Will or Ram, their time and energy almost single-mindedly spent on trying to solve the riddle of the gates, the builders, and their various worlds and what that means for all of human history.

Certainly not a bad novel, it was a fast read.

Williamson seemed to be coasting--just slapping this story together without really putting any serious effort into it. The hackneyed plot was a rehash of the elements of many plots in books I have read over the last 50 years--nothing new or exciting. The characters were never really developed to the point that I cared about what happened to them. Definitely not a page turner.

The Four Horsemen (though one is a female) of Eastern New Mexico University English literature Will Stone, astrophysicist Derek Ironcraft, archeologist Lupe Vargas and linguist Ram enjoy their weekly poker game. However, instead of cards this time, Derek shows his colleagues ground penetration radar photos of under the Sahara that contains objects that look like huge gates. When Ram explains that his enigmatic loving grandma came from the area, the foursome agrees to go explore the gates though Will is reluctant and Lupe thinks they are loco.

However at the entrance, a gigantic insect grabs Lupe and takes her inside the portal. The trio gives chase, but soon Derek is taken too. Will and Ram search for their friends, but soon are in a strange world divided by racial discord. To their shock, the natives believe Ram, with a special birthmark on him, is their god Anak, returned from the dead. Civil war over Ram breaks out and a deadly plague is released devastating all except those who released it as they are immune. Will and Ram escape through another gate to another planet, but remain in pursuit of Derek and Lupe and to learn more about the ancient geniuses who built the elevator like portals.

The grandmaster of science fiction adventure provides an exciting action-packed thriller that never slows down from the moment the four professors give up poker for the expedition. The story line moves forward at a rapid rate hopping from one escapade to another, but by doing so at the speed of light the key cast is never fully developed except for one general trait each. Still fans of creative hyperspeed science fiction will want to be the fifth wheel on this invigorating trek.

Harriet Klausner

Williamson starts off the novel in today's world. And its theme of gates that let beings traverse worlds instantly is a well known one. But as the story proceeds, something interesting occurs. The style is very akin to that of a pulp story from the 30s or 40s. Think maybe of Edgar Rice Burroughs and both his Tarzan and Lynn Carter series.

If you consider the notion of exotic slaves in a jungle fighting for freedom, aided by travellers of European descent, then the novel has even older parallels. To the nineteenth century stories set in darkest Africa, when much of that was still unmapped to Europeans.

Given that most readers will be science fiction fans, the evocation of the 30s and 40s pulps should be familiar. You have a chance here to read fresh a story that could well have been written then. Unsurprising, as Williamson has been writing since the 20s.

I received this book for Christmas and was annoyed by the writing style within the first 50 pages.

The story itself isn't bad, but I found the writing styles simplistic and like I said before, annoying. The four main characters have no chemistry. They are supposed to be the best of friends but you never feel any emotion out of any of them.

The same phrases are also uttered over and over and over again. Here these people are, on the brink of something magical and amzing that they have found that will turn the world on the edge and all you hear constantly uttered out of one of the character's mouth is, "I sure wish I knew."

Hey look, I can't believe it, how did those people build gateways to other worlds? Boy, I sure wish I knew. Hey! Look at that amazing and terrifying flying insect, how does it fly with such small wings? I sure wish I knew.

Maybe I expected too much of this book since I don't read sci-fi only. But as I said, I could hardly finish this book much less read anything else written in this style. What a shame =(

With his latest novel, "The Stonehenge Gate," Jack Williamson has written a grand old tale of science fiction adventure that recalls the works of Murray Leinster and Edmond Hamilton.
While the world gates of the Omegans in Williamson's tale bear no physical resemblence to the gates used in the highly popular Star Gate movie and its spin off television shows, the story and the Four Horsemen do bear some resemblence to the SG1 televsion characters - right down to the heroic African leading a slave revolt on a distant alien planet.
Williamson breaks no new ground with this tale, but it does make for an enjoyable read.