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bibliomaniac2021's review
informative
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.25
flying_monkey's review
3.0
Bob Shaw's short stories about 'slow glass', were carefully crafted, moving and elegant. Unfortunately, this brilliance was somewhat subverted by the conversion of those stories into novel form.
Whereas the themes of the stories are centred around memory and loss, the novel turns this on its head with a recycled plot about the inventor who accidentally destroys the world. In the novel's case, the basic idea is almost entirely ripped off Asimov's 'The Dead Past', in which a technology is unleashed on the world which allows everyone to spy on everyone else. In Shaw's novel, Alban Garrod's invention of a new form of glass which slows light, results eventually in the government deploying ubiquitous slow glass dust, turning everything into a potential surveillance device.
The emotional development of the novel is also poor, not to say thunderingly misogynistic (a trait to be found in many of Shaw's novels of this period). Alban Garrod is held back by his nagging wife, Esther, whose father initially provided him with seed capital. He finds freedom with a beautiful, compliant, and vaguely oriental-looking secretary, while Esther is left blinded by an accident at his home laboratory. This blindness means she is able to hold on to Garrod and force him to act as her eyes, by making him wear a pair of slow glass 'lenses' which she can then wear the next day, so he is almost literally forced to live in the past. It is all very heavy-handed and unpleasant, and there are similar strains of misogyny in other Shaw novels, especially 'Orbitsville'. It is odd, because I had never noticed this in his short pieces, and it unfortunately tends to lessen my appreciation of Shaw as a writer.
Despite all this, there is an intriguingly poetic technology at the centre of this novel, and some insightful commentary on the politics of surveillance and privacy, and you still get the excellent original short stories included as 'sidelights' to the main plot. However this remains a 'fix-up' too far...
Whereas the themes of the stories are centred around memory and loss, the novel turns this on its head with a recycled plot about the inventor who accidentally destroys the world. In the novel's case, the basic idea is almost entirely ripped off Asimov's 'The Dead Past', in which a technology is unleashed on the world which allows everyone to spy on everyone else. In Shaw's novel, Alban Garrod's invention of a new form of glass which slows light, results eventually in the government deploying ubiquitous slow glass dust, turning everything into a potential surveillance device.
The emotional development of the novel is also poor, not to say thunderingly misogynistic (a trait to be found in many of Shaw's novels of this period). Alban Garrod is held back by his nagging wife, Esther, whose father initially provided him with seed capital. He finds freedom with a beautiful, compliant, and vaguely oriental-looking secretary, while Esther is left blinded by an accident at his home laboratory. This blindness means she is able to hold on to Garrod and force him to act as her eyes, by making him wear a pair of slow glass 'lenses' which she can then wear the next day, so he is almost literally forced to live in the past. It is all very heavy-handed and unpleasant, and there are similar strains of misogyny in other Shaw novels, especially 'Orbitsville'. It is odd, because I had never noticed this in his short pieces, and it unfortunately tends to lessen my appreciation of Shaw as a writer.
Despite all this, there is an intriguingly poetic technology at the centre of this novel, and some insightful commentary on the politics of surveillance and privacy, and you still get the excellent original short stories included as 'sidelights' to the main plot. However this remains a 'fix-up' too far...
apar's review
4.0
4 stars for creeping me out with it’s prescience. We don’t have slow glass, but we have cameras everywhere and social media pressuring us to relieve us of our own privacy for the edification of people who shouldn’t matter to us anyway.
Some bits of excellent writing, flashes of beautifully crafted sentences and images that will stay with me a while.
Sexist in the way that SFF in the 70s all seemed to be, but not jarring enough that it removed me from the story.
Sigh.
I really do need to get back to longer, better reviews.
Some bits of excellent writing, flashes of beautifully crafted sentences and images that will stay with me a while.
Sexist in the way that SFF in the 70s all seemed to be, but not jarring enough that it removed me from the story.
Sigh.
I really do need to get back to longer, better reviews.
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