1982
Awards:
Campbell
Nominations:
Nebula, Locus
Rating:
★ ★ – – –
SPOILER
ALERT
Sometimes
it seems to me that every lengthy science fiction novel published in the ‘50s
and ‘60s was promoted as “the greatest epic since The Lord of the Rings,” and that every lengthy science fiction
novel published in the ‘70s and ‘80s was promoted as “the greatest epic since Dune.”
Very
few of the books thus described actually measure up to either of these
standards. Helliconia Spring is a case in point, advertised on its back cover as “the most magnificent epic
since Dune.” It certainly is epic in
its ambition, but as for its magnificence, I beg to differ.
Helliconia
Spring is
set on Helliconia, an Earth-like planet orbiting a binary star system.
Helliconia circles its primary star once every 2,000 Earth years. During each of
these Helliconian years the planet suffers through a devastating, icy-cold
winter that is 600 Earth years long.
This means that the inhabitants are stuck
in a stultifying cycle: civilizations flourish and advance technologically
during the summers, but then any progress they make is wiped out when winter
comes; the cold drives them back to a hunter-gatherer existence, leaving them to scrape out
whatever kind of living they can.
The novel sweeps
across hundreds of Earth years, starting in the middle of one of these prolonged
winters and ending with the onset of spring. It mainly tells the life stories
of three principal patriarchs of the same family, several generations apart (but
there are plenty of digressions into other characters’ narratives along the way).
The
first of these patriarchs is Yuli, a nomadic hunter living deep in the heart of
winter. Yuli and his father are out on a hunting trip when they are attacked by
a band of the other intelligent beings living on Helliconia: the horned, furry,
goat-like, human-hating phagors. The phagors kill Yuli’s father but Yuli
himself escapes. Eventually Yuli finds his way to Pannoval, a huge and relatively
advanced but repressive underground city where he is adopted into a foster
family. He gets the best education Pannoval can give him and even becomes a
priest, but he never forgets his former life above ground. Eventually he runs
away from Pannoval with a few friends and makes his way back up to the surface
where he founds a new village, Oldorando.
The
story is then taken up many generations later with Yuli’s direct descendant “Little”
Yuli, who is the leader of the now much larger town of Oldorando. Little Yuli
gets pretty short shrift; he dies soon after he is introduced, and we learn more
about his life from the stories told by the citizens gathered at his funeral
rather than seeing events happen for ourselves. The main contribution Little
Yuli makes to the novel is that his death opens up a succession controversy;
his only child is a daughter (and everyone knows that women cannot rule), and his
only grandson, Laintal Ay, is too little to govern.
The
rest of the book is a frustratingly aimless recitation of Laintal Ay’s twisting,
turning early life story. He grows up under a series of interim town leaders,
none of whom are model citizens. He becomes a trusted lieutenant of one of
them, then falls out of favor; he falls in love and is rewarded, and then rebuffed; he goes on a
heart-stricken pilgrimage far away during which he contracts a horrible disease,
then he comes back.
I
started out optimistically at the beginning of this book, moderately bored but
hopeful that it would pick up steam, and ended up actively resentful at sitting
through meandering story lines with little resolution to them. Time really whips
along: people grow, marry, have children, and die, and you can barely keep
track of them (and barely want to). At one point, in just six pages, Oldorando changed from a
backwards agricultural settlement to a village that launched mounted raids on
other villages to a trade economy using metal currency.
There
are occasional tantalizing hints of more interesting things we could explore further—in
particular, an approaching phagor invasion, a woman who revolts against
traditional women’s work and founds an academy of learning, and an Earth observation
satellite hovering unseen above all the action—but we get no real long-term satisfaction from of
any of them.
I
think Lord of the Rings and Dune worked as epics because, even
though they are incredibly long and detailed, they also center on
distinctive, charismatic characters that I really grew to know and understand and often care about. Helliconia Spring, on the other hand, is
more of a dispassionate biblical litany, a string of names and places and
incidents happening to people to whom I felt no particular attachment.
The
tone isn’t helped by Aldiss’ somewhat formal prose and his frequent use of the passive
voice, as in “the Vakka had been bridged” and “his figure could be seen.” The
characters’ names also tend to be a little bit ridiculous, and are easy to
confuse with each other if you aren’t paying close enough attention. To wit:
Raynil Layan
Laintal Ay
Loil Bry
Loilanun
Eline Tal
Rol Sakil
Dol Sakil
Hrr-Brahl Yprt
Yhamm-Whrrmar
I
think I am probably more disappointed in this book than I might otherwise be
because I had higher expectations for Aldiss. His novella The Saliva Tree, which won the Nebula in 1965, was really very
good. It just may be that the epic is not his best format.
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