Customer Reviews

Venus of Dreams

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

 

 

I first read this book 5 years ago and in that time have probably re-read it about 9 times.

This and the other books in the trilogy are very very well-written and I highly recommend them all to anyone who likes their fiction to be well-planned and well-rounded. Although people may not like me for it, I'm going to have to compare this trilogy to Star Trek in that the technology is very outlandish and barely even theoretically possible, but it does fit together rather well and makes a good story. And that's really all that matters. I will say for the politics and religion in the books, though, they're very realistic and it's very easy to find parallels in modern day society.

All in all, this book and the other two are very very good and I would highly recommend them to anyone who can appreciate a book filled with science, politics, religion and personal drama all rolled into one unforgettable series.

A wonderful story that will take you far away on a trip you'll never forget. The story spans the life of Iris Angharads, a Venus pioneer. We meet Iris when she's a girl and see her grow into an adult quartered into her career, her woman's love, her mother's love, and her family duties. PS is able to make us not only feel for Iris but also even understand her hardest decisions. The contrast between where Iris comes from and where she goes hinging on the Cytherian Institute is remarkably thought, conceived, and described. That story of a free woman guided by her creed and fighting for her desire will never leave you.

I've settled Mars many times in my sci fi reading; it was a new adventure to settle Venus. "Venus of Dreams" is the Venusian analogue of Kim Stanley Robinson's "Red Mars" (which I also recommend): a realistic and entertaining story of what it might be like to make a new planet habitable for humans, including the science, the politics, and the individual human drama.

Iris Angharads is from the Plains Nomarchy in what used to be the United States. As a child, she dreams of working on the Venus Project instead of taking over the communal farm run by her mother. She and her significant others struggle with issues of ambition, family commitments, and what is worth sacrificing in order to attain your dream.

Venus of Dreams is the fascinating story of a young girl named Iris who dreams of transforming the planet Venus into a habitable paradise. Eventually Iris marries and leaves her family on Earth to live on one of the Habitats orbiting Venus. Iris is now working on the project to transform Venus. There are too many plots and substory lines to go into them all, but any reader will have a hard time putting the book down.

This book is set in a totalitarian society where the entire world is ruled by one government that holds all the weapons. Anyone who refuses to conform is given a death sentance or sent to a horrible punishment for years until they learn their lesson. Unfortunately, far too much time (almost all of it) is spent focused on how horrible and depressing it is to live in such a world. In many ways, this novel is a political statement, not a science fiction book. While I agree with the principal, the reading of it is boring and dull.

The charactures are excrutiatingly cardboard and irritating. Iris is a rude, self absorbed little girl who never grows up and never learns to work with others. I never find myself caring whether she succeeds or not since I don't want to read about her any longer.

The occasional tidbit of science is interesting, but it is not the focus of this book. You'll go 50 pages before they manage to mention something about the actual terraforming and it will be a whole paragraph! When this does happen, it's pretty clear that Sargent lacks even a cursory scientific background. My personal favorite was when Iris sent her grandmother a letter and it sounded like it was being copied from a textbook with no relevence or understanding to the story line.

So if you like boring, depressing social commentary, apparently you'll give it many stars. If you like science fiction (or good fiction at all) look elsewhere.

I've just finished my third reading of VENUS OF DREAMS. I suppose that the fact I've found a third reading exciting says something about the quality of Pamerla Sargent's writing (or maybe about the quality of my memory?). As a member of that tribe which looks for realistic science underlying SF storytelling, I was very satisfied with that aspect of Sargent's story. Her exploration of ideas of social organization are very well-fleshed and believeable, and her characters are richly detailed. I eagerly await the opportunity to read the other two volumes of the VENUS series, VENUS OF SHADOWS - now out-of-print, and the forthcoming CHILD OF VENUS.

It's sad that the first two volumes of her Venus series are out-of-print. One of the terrible legacies of the Reagan era is the tax law revisions that make it more worthwhile for publishers to let most titles go out of print after only one year. I despair of finding a copy of VENUS OF SHADOWS. I am, however, delighted to see that the final volume, CHILD OF VENUS, is scheduled for publication early next year. Hopefully, if sales of CHILD are as good as they should be, the publisher will reprint the entire series.

I too read this book -- several years ago, now. Its description
of the Islamic Imams was perhaps the only introduction to Islam
I had ever really had. Its treatment of the historical
uneasiness between the Islamic and Western worlds, even if done
in fiction, is especially poignant in a post September 11 world.

I too hope the sequal gets published.

I read this book as a young adult male expecting typical light airy science fiction. I stood no chance against Dr. Pamela Sargent - a PHD and renowned feminist -- she changed my young man's s*xually centered world upside down and transformed the way I see women....and it wouldn't be until decades later when I had a better grasp of sociology that I would begin to understand what she was trying to tell me.

I must say that the work is one that has stayed with me throughout my life - I've never ever reread the book but just from this one reading as a young man - I can say that it openned my eyes to the complex world of gender, society, decisions between love, family, duty - etc decisions that are sometimes especially more challenging for women. Me being a man, and at the time a young man, made reading this book especially interesting, perplexing, and entirely unexpected (I was expecting light love story + sci fi setting) -- not this!

Conceptually, its the story of humanity first colonizing Venus but that's not what this story is about...the story is about sacrifices and decisions that people (and sometimes especially women) make in life and how different genders make and react to those decisions and how in many ways those decisions are harder for women and how they've developed different mechanisms to cope with those decisions in this future society.

This is not light science fiction, this is a rigorous social studies work set in a science fiction setting. The author should be credited tremendously for writing something as detailed and as complicated as this but be forewarned, if you're looking for light airy science fiction, this is not the ticket. This is a social studies/gender studies masterpiece.

I have to add that this work changed my perceptions of women to a much more balanced and grown up perspective (although the society that Pamela Sargent writes about doesn't exist). In the one sense, it made me come to appreciate genders and that women should get respect as equals but at the same time it taught me that just because a face happens to be pretty, that doesn't mean she won't drive a blade of steel through your heart with impunity...it made me much more cautious and since then when I see a woman, I say - you get nothing for free because of how pretty you are but you get every bit as much as I'd give anyone else regardless of gender/race/creed/ethnicity etc and most certainly it taught me to protect my heart. The book taught me balance between all "humans."

Do read it, especially if you're a man - this book is a must.

As to whether this story is as broad as Star Trek, Star Wars etc - certainly the concept is but Venus of Dreams delves squarely into gender and s*x issues and society ... where Star Trek and Star Wars deal mostly with human rights issues on much lighter settings....Venus of Dreams is an entirely different ball of wax. Very detailed, almost like the Author lived through it all. Overall Wonderful.

In many ways Pamela Sargent writes a similar story to Robinson's Mars only this one is set in Venus....Sargent's story is more complex from a gender standpoint where Robinson's is more about the politics and deceitfulness of humans in general. This is also interesting because where Robinson's work on Mars is much better known than Sargent's ...Robinson is a Man, Sargent a Woman --- are we talking deeply ingrained social biases here? Unfair to Sargent who wrote a wonderful work.

She's one of those ladies that I'd love to sit down with and pick her brain over a cup of coffee.

What can I say? This is one of the best books I've ever read. I can't wait to find copies of its sequels. Get this one, you wont be sorry.