Helliconia / Brian Aldiss

Helliconia

(Helliconia Spring + Summer + Winter)

category: science fiction, author:

Brian Aldiss

book 1, 2 & 3 of Helliconia
original copyright 1982, 83, 85,
read in December 2010

Agamedes' opinion: 5 out of 10

Every good science fiction reader has heard of Helliconia. It's a classic: An entire civilisation -- from beginning to end -- on a planet with one major distinguishing feature. Aldiss at his amazing and most creative best.

Yes, it's a classic. And boring.

There's this character, Yuli. He lives out in the wilds, slips in amongst the more organised cave-dwellers, then escapes to a village on the edge of the wilds. In the caves he learns about a religion which opposes the god of his childhood. This makes him disbelieve all religion. Then he dies.

Do not buy this book.

Well, Yuli doesn't actually die... Having learnt something about religious differences, having escaped from the caves, he becomes chief of a village. The book then skips a few generations and starts with the death of Yuli2, who happens to be Yuli's grandson. It appears that Yuli's grandson's grandson is about to become the central character...

So what was the point of Yuli's religious discoveries? What was the point of his village leadership? Who knows? Who cares!

After failing to get particularly interested in Yuli -- having struggled through a hundred pages or so -- I failed to have any interest whatsoever in his descendants. With perhaps a thousand or more pages still to go -- I stopped reading.

If you enjoy long narratives with no interesting characters, long histories of a civilisation which (judging from the author's preface) will teach us all sorts of things about our own civilisation (of the 1980s), read these books. If the first hundred pages is intended as a message then it is a ham-fisted, slap-in-the-face sort of message: "Hey! You! Look! There is no god!" No subtlety, no argument, convincing or otherwise.

If you enjoy good stories with interesting characters, absorbing plots and significant messages presented as part of the story -- read something else.

My recommendation is: read something else.

..o0o..

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