Comedy sci-fi at... nearly its best
Written: Apr 09 '05
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Funny, ingenious, well-developed characters
Cons: Not many, just a little short of perfection
The Bottom Line: If you like Pratchett's books or comedy sci-fi, you'll like this. If you like both the above, you'll love it.
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| captaind's Full Review: The Dark Side of the Sun Books |
Best known for his Discworld novels and an acknowledged master of the fantasy humour genre, Terry Pratchett has in fact had a couple of brief forays into the world of science fiction humour, too. The first one was Strata, an entertaining exploration of the Discworld concept before the first novel in the Discworld series, The Colour of Magic, was written. Though it was imaginative and I enjoyed reading it, Strata did lack the sparkle of his best fantasy novels. His second sci-fi novel was The Dark Side of the Sun, and though it isn’t actually a sequel to Strata and features none of the same characters, the style is quite similar.
But in writing The Dark Side of the Sun, Pratchett has taken the plot, the sci-fi element, and the writing to a new level in an infinitely superior book. The story is complex and involving, and winds a course through time and space – as did Strata – but features something that Strata didn’t really have – a variety of complex, interesting, and funny characters. It doesn’t quite come up to the standard of The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, but that remains – and will continue to do so, perhaps forever – the absolute pinnacle of all comedic science fiction writing.
The story revolves around Dom Salabos, a character soon to take on a very important role on his home planet. When an assassination attempt prevents him from taking on that role, Dom finds himself unwittingly taking on an even greater role – but one that is so enormous that he can’t actually see it. Along the way he, along with his companion Hrsh-Hgn uncovers a mysterious pattern in Probablity Math (which to me seems to have been borrowed to some extent from the theory of psycho-history in the Foundation series by Isaac Asimov), and somehow he seems to be right in the middle of that, too. Mythology moves in mysterious ways, and as far as Dom can make out, it seems to be moving in quite the wrong way at the moment… Along the way he meets several incredible creatures including the Galactic Bank (who turns out to be a whole planet) and a creature made entirely of water. Several races are encountered, each different, yet somehow linked… The obligatory love interest is in there too, though it takes a back seat to the rest of the story.
The key to The Dark Side of the Sun is in its social commentary. The way Pratchett describes the interaction between differing alien species is a reflection of our own society. It shows how we are often less xenophobic than we would like to think, but that given the right situation and a little effort, we can become a lot more xenophilic than we could imagine possible. Considerable detail in the social system of the fictional universe along with some fairly complex theories combine to give this book, though a comedy, a respectable scientific air. It’s all nonsense of course, but it’s all believable nonsense, which is the most important thing here. It’s well enough developed and certainly well enough written for it to merit a 5 star rating.
The two big questions that arise (you don’t really need to have these answered to know that you’d enjoy the book, by the way) are:
1/ Is it as good as the best of the Discworld series?
2/ Is it up there with the best comedy science fiction novels ever written?
The answer to both questions is yes… sort of. The Dark Side of the Sun is probably good enough to rank in the top 30% of the Discworld novels (and that’s not an easy feat), but I would shy away from classing it in the top 20%. It doesn’t quite have the same humour and appeal as the very best Discworld books, though this is partly because it is a stand-alone book, whereas the Discworld novels are of course part of a series and therefore a larger universe. I guess it’s not really a fair comparison, but I would say that Pratchett fans will love this one - as long as they like science fiction as well as fantasy.
For any comedy science fiction book to be considered among the best means to me that it can hold its head up in the company of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. While that’s still unchallenged in my opinion as the best comedy sci-fi ever written, Dark Side of the Sun needn’t be too ashamed in comparison. The books do in fact have some similarities, particularly in that both have larger than life characters permeating the storyline.
Overall, fans of Pratchett or comedy skiffy will enjoy this book immensely. It does have some connections to the earlier Strata, but could not really be considered a sequel to that book. However that is the only other sci-fi novel that Pratchett has produced (so far… we can but hope), and if you enjoyed that book, you should enjoy this even more.
Related Links
Strata
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
The Truth - one of the best of the Discworld series, and almost certainly the best satire.
Recommended:
Yes
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