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A Time of Changes
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With a new introduction by author Robert Silverberg, and the first-ever map of Borthan, this classic sci-fi novel A Time of Changes, out of print since 1992, will delight fans of dystopian fiction
In the far future, Earth is a worn-out backwater and humanity is spread across the galaxy on worlds that began as colonies, but now feel like home, each with its own long history of a thousand years or more, and each with its own unique culture. One of the strangest is on Borthan, where the founding settlers established the Covenant, which teaches that the self is to be despised, and forbids anyone to reveal his innermost thoughts or feelings to another. On Borthan, the filthiest obscenities imaginable are the words "I" and "me."
For the heinous crime of "self-baring," apostates have always paid with exile or death, but after his eyes are opened by a visitor from Earth, Kinnall Darival, prince of Salla, risks everything to teach his people the real meaning of being human.
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
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Commencer à lireInformations sur le livre
A Time of Changes
Description
With a new introduction by author Robert Silverberg, and the first-ever map of Borthan, this classic sci-fi novel A Time of Changes, out of print since 1992, will delight fans of dystopian fiction
In the far future, Earth is a worn-out backwater and humanity is spread across the galaxy on worlds that began as colonies, but now feel like home, each with its own long history of a thousand years or more, and each with its own unique culture. One of the strangest is on Borthan, where the founding settlers established the Covenant, which teaches that the self is to be despised, and forbids anyone to reveal his innermost thoughts or feelings to another. On Borthan, the filthiest obscenities imaginable are the words "I" and "me."
For the heinous crime of "self-baring," apostates have always paid with exile or death, but after his eyes are opened by a visitor from Earth, Kinnall Darival, prince of Salla, risks everything to teach his people the real meaning of being human.
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
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In the far future, Earth is a worn-out backwater and humanity is spread across the galaxy on worlds that began as colonies, but now feel like home, each with its own long history of a thousand years or more, and each with its own unique culture. One of the strangest is on Borthan, where the founding settlers established the Covenant, which teaches that the self is to be despised, and forbids anyone to reveal his innermost thoughts or feelings to another. On Borthan, the filthiest obscenities imaginable are the words "I" and "me." For the heinous crime of "self-baring," apostates have always paid with exile or death, but after his eyes are opened by a visitor from Earth, Kinnall Darival, prince of Salla, risks everything to teach his people the real meaning of being human.
Borthan is a planet populated by people who refer themselves as "one" instead of "I". The self is despised as a weakness and one never reveals his innermost feelings and thoughts. "Self-baring" is a crime.The book is about the story of Darival, written in first person, it tells how he encounters a way out of the imposed confines of the mind.It is an absorbing read, but is the story of only one single person, it would've been an interesting mental project to develop it on a grander scale and work out how that puritanical society might evolve. Regardless, as a thought experiment this is an example of excellent science-fiction writing.
good science fiction. better social critique? how far we seem to have come since Silverberg wrote this book. Today it seems all one hears is I I I and me and my and mine.
ggfffdss
now 84% done with the Nebulas...
A young prince in exile takes a drug that allows one to join one’s mind with another in a land where even saying “I” or “me” is offensive. Harkening back to the saying that “to walk in another man’s shoes” would open one’s mind to their humanity and preclude passing judgment on them, our narrator takes a giant leap of faith. Suffering as an outcast he tells us his tale in the hope that we too can find enlightenment some day in the future. Silverberg has written a story of redemption – a call that would remind us that love is all.
My first Silverberg. This isn’t science fiction proper, Silverberg only uses an alien planet to illustrate an extreme societal concept – that of denial of self. Given how we’ve gone through the ‘me decade’ and morphed into a ‘me society’, it’s challenging to grasp why a society would choose to mandate a dissolution of the individual. This has both benefits and detriments and Silverberg illustrates that pretty well.The main character tries to become a force of change in his society. Cast out of his role as 2nd son, he's never quite fit in anywhere, even in the heavily proscribed friendships assigned to him from birth. His whole life is uncomfortable to him and he's on the run a lot. Finally he ends up in a position of some power, but it is an illusion. Mentally and emotionally he is unstable, but has no outlet for his anguish. No wonder he turns to the drug that can psychically link him to another human. The disconected nature of his society has made him a beaten, desperate man. He longs for change, but has not the vision or the fortitude to be the catalyst and it is pretty sad to watch him spiral into failure and ignominy.One thing that is sort of off-putting to me is the fact that supposedly we’ve got this future society with access to technology not using it at all (there are archaic references to ground machines, air machines and telephones still). It’s funny that a lot of future societies are set up as monarchies with agrarian civilizations and old-world politics and rules. I think it’s a two-fold symptom; the information age hadn’t yet occurred when this was written and Silverberg did not have the vision to see how society would change on a dime. Also, I think the agrarian, monarchical society is innately romantic and lends itself to extreme behavior much better than a republican or democratic society, so that’s why it works better as a vehicle for philosophy and symbology driven stories. It does ruin things for me in a sense though.