I cringed...... Frequently.
Written: Jul 31 '01 (Updated Nov 24 '04)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Great premise, nice idea...this could have been something special
Cons: Facile in the extreme. Author badly over-reaches his ability to enrich mythos.
The Bottom Line: Sadly, I found this book to be purile and adolescent. In my opinion it made no statement other than that the author had delusions of grandeur.
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| snpmurray's Full Review: The Einstein Intersection [Softcover] Books |
Why doesn't it surprise me that it was 1967 when this book won the Nebula award? Psychedelic...certainly. Brilliant?...not in this reviewers opinion.
The Einstein Intersection by Samuel Delany was, for me, a challenge to finish.
Praise where praise is due of course, and the premise for the story is an interesting one....set in Earths far future, humankind has vanished completely. In our place the planet is now inhabited by shape-shifting creatures who are attempting not just to occupy and understand the human world, but even to become it, right down to adopting our genetic means of reproduction, otherwise alien to them. Unfortunately, many of the resultant beings are physically or mentally malformed. Few fit the human range of norms, but in order to have society function, more and more mutants, physical and mental, have to be present in mainstream society.
This leads to a wide variety of beings, each with its own strengths and weaknesses, working together to keep things going. I liked this idea, original and with wide possibilities.
The storyline developed within this premise also holds promise .... the author is concerned to remake an Orphean myth, one set in this future earth, and uses the endless possibilities of the mutants forms to recreate various archetypes and notables from history. The narrator and hero, Lobey, is on a quest to find his love, who having died at the beginning of the book, he believes he can retrieve from the darker regions of endless night. Okay, all pretty epic, mythic stuff. We could be in for a fantastic ride here.
But alas......
The job was poorly executed...
Delanys' archetypal characterisations are poorly drawn.
By example, Kid Death, the main antagonist... his personality suffers from the archetypal equivalence of mixed metaphors. One moment he is the Grim Reaper, and the next (and I do mean the next) moment he is Satan, delivering the temptations in the desert. The transitions are neither smooth nor pleasing, nor particularly useful.
The lines delivered by characters unfortunately can contain no more insight than their creator. And in this case, Delanys tender years (he was 21 when he wrote this book) undermine the attempt to present us with a powerful mythos. He simply lacks the wisdom required. It came across to me as extremely adolescent. Characters make utterances of intended mystic significance...and I found only images in my mind of Mickey Mouse pretending to be a great wizard.......
It just wasnt for me. There were even at the beginning of every chapter, various quotations from fine poets, great writers, and great lyricists. This only seemed to accentuate the contrast, I'm not sure Delany should, at least in this book, put himself on the same page as James Joyce, or even Bob Dylan.
Littered around between some of the chapters are pages from the authors own journals, evidently from the period when he was writing this work. Again, I'm not sure the inclusion of this material helps his book. It is riddled with prepubescent angst. Delaney writes of himself "....You are too old to get by as a child prodigy..."
Yes, Im afraid I must agree.
Some of my other science fiction book reviews:
Rama Revealed
Prelude to Space
Stand on Zanzibar
The Demolished Man
The Stars my Destination
Cat's Cradle
The Gods Themselves
Watchmen
A Canticle for Leibowitz
The Hammer of God
The Left Hand of Darkness
Flowers for Algernon
Lord of Light
Rendevous with Rama
The Tombs of Atuan
The Dispossessed
I am Legend
The Einstein Intersection
Earth Abides
Peace on Earth
The Farthest Shore
Methuselah's Children
A Call to Arms
To your Scattered Bodies Go
The Lion of Comarre / Against the Fall of Night
To Say Nothing of the Dog
The Doomsday Book
Frankenstein Unbound
Batman - The Dark Knight Returns
Imperial Earth
A Case of Conscience
Solaris
The Sands of Mars
The Land of Laughs
Eden
His Masters Voice
Citizen of the Galaxy
King David's Spaceship
The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch
Double Star
The Fabulous Riverboat
Songs of Distant Earth
Way Station
The Fountains of Paradise
The Long Tomorrow
Lincolns Dreams
Alas Babylon
More Than Human
1984
The Forever War
All the Myriad Ways
I Sing the Body Electric
Gateway
Flow my Tears, the Policeman Said
This Immortal
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
Recommended:
No
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Epinions.com ID:
snpmurray
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Location: Sedona, Arizona
Reviews written: 286
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