Nightwings
by Robert Silverberg
Reviewed by Ted Gioia
The circumstances that led to the writing of Robert Silverberg’s
Nightwings were hardly conducive to creating a masterpiece. A fire
had destroyed most of the author’s house, and he was living out of
crates and cartons in improvised quarters. He desperately needed
money to pay bills and cover the cost of rebuilding. He was exhausted
and stressed out from dealing with insurance
company bureaucrats, putting his life back
together, and the general craziness of that
turbulent year 1968.
In this unpropitious environment, Silverberg
wrote a 19,000 word novella called
“Nightwings” in “something like five days,”
as he later recalled. Frederik Pohl, editor of
Galaxy magazine, paid him $500—which was
a considerable sum for the time, the
equivalent of several thousand dollars of
purchasing power today. Silverberg
immediately began hatching plans for
two more related stories of approximately
the same length, with the plan to combine all
three of them in a single novel.
The complexity of this structure was sharpened by the dictates of pulp
fiction sci-fi. Each of the three parts needed to stand as a self-sufficient
story in a magazine, with a strong ending that would provide resolution
to the tale—yet not so much closure that the three novellas wouldn’t
flow together smoothly into a single over-arching narrative. Working
under these constraints, Silverberg created an exceptional work of
fiction, by almost any measure. The original “Nightwings” won the
Hugo for best novella the following year, and was nominated for a
Nebula. The resulting book holds up well today, both for its
imaginative conception but also—and even rarer for 1960s-era sci-fi—
the quality of its writing.
From the opening paragraph, Silverberg delights us with his
provocative combination of the familiar and the mysterious. “Roum is
a city built on seven hills,” he writes. “They say it was a capital of man
in one of the earlier cycles. I knew nothing of that, for my guild was
Watching not Remembering.”
The writing is crisp and intelligent throughout Nightwings, and often
quite poetic. Silverberg allows his story to unfold without any of the
pulp fiction clumsiness that so often mars Asimov and Dick. Above all,
he has a sure instinct for the quasi-mythic—indeed, almost medieval,
at times—tone that also characterizes some of the most stylized works
of conceptual fiction from this era, such as Dune and A Canticle for
Leibowitz.
Silverberg’s story takes place on a debased planet Earth, struggling in
the aftermath of disastrous scientist-induced climate change. North
and South America have mostly vanished under the expanding “Earth
Ocean.” The remnant of civilization lives in the surviving continents:
Eyrop, Ais, Afreek and Stralya. Technology has collapsed, and people
have banded together in guilds, both to find productive vocations and
for a sense of higher purpose.
Our protagonist is a Watcher, whose guild is responsible for studying
the cosmos. For centuries, Earth has been under threat of invasion
from the stars, and the Watchers need to give the alert to the
Defenders (another guild) if and when it arrives. Silverberg sketches
out a whole alternative economic structure here, with various other
guilds each playing their assigned role: Rememberers, Clowns,
Musicians, Somnambulists, Scribes, Servitors, Merchants,
Dominators, and the like. In addition, there are new biological forms
mixed in with these groups: Changelings and Fliers and assorted
visitors from outer space—a whole society creatively re-imagined by
our author.
Another writer would fill this story with battles, swordfights and
cliffhangers. But Silverberg rarely indulges in such theatrics. One gets
a sense of his restraint early on, when he presents the most significant
military engagement in the novel as taking place unobserved
overnight, while our hero sleeps. This is not Starship Troopers or even
The Forever War. Silverberg instead weaves a psychologically rich
narrative that deals with deep issues of redemption, both personal and
social, loyalty and betrayal, inclusion and ostracization. Even the
romance subplot here is handled with surprising subtlety, with as much
Platonic love as carnal desire appearing in Silverberg’s pages.
The tripartite structure and original publication of Nightwings as
three separate tales forced Silverberg to introduce more plot elements
and entanglements than one might find in a stand-alone novel of the
same length. Yet the narrative never feels rushed, and Silverberg not
only resolves all the open issues in his final pages, but does so in a way
that reconnects satisfyingly with the book’s opening gambit. Against all
odds, this author created something very special here, rising above the
calamities of his personal life and the constraints of the genre in
forging one of the finest works of conceptual fiction of its era. I
wouldn't advise anyone to emulate the methodology Silverberg’s
employed in writing Nightwings, but it is hard to quibble with results
he achieved.
This article originally appeared on Blogcritics.
by Robert Silverberg
Reviewed by Ted Gioia
The circumstances that led to the writing of Robert Silverberg’s
Nightwings were hardly conducive to creating a masterpiece. A fire
had destroyed most of the author’s house, and he was living out of
crates and cartons in improvised quarters. He desperately needed
money to pay bills and cover the cost of rebuilding. He was exhausted
and stressed out from dealing with insurance
company bureaucrats, putting his life back
together, and the general craziness of that
turbulent year 1968.
In this unpropitious environment, Silverberg
wrote a 19,000 word novella called
“Nightwings” in “something like five days,”
as he later recalled. Frederik Pohl, editor of
Galaxy magazine, paid him $500—which was
a considerable sum for the time, the
equivalent of several thousand dollars of
purchasing power today. Silverberg
immediately began hatching plans for
two more related stories of approximately
the same length, with the plan to combine all
three of them in a single novel.
The complexity of this structure was sharpened by the dictates of pulp
fiction sci-fi. Each of the three parts needed to stand as a self-sufficient
story in a magazine, with a strong ending that would provide resolution
to the tale—yet not so much closure that the three novellas wouldn’t
flow together smoothly into a single over-arching narrative. Working
under these constraints, Silverberg created an exceptional work of
fiction, by almost any measure. The original “Nightwings” won the
Hugo for best novella the following year, and was nominated for a
Nebula. The resulting book holds up well today, both for its
imaginative conception but also—and even rarer for 1960s-era sci-fi—
the quality of its writing.
From the opening paragraph, Silverberg delights us with his
provocative combination of the familiar and the mysterious. “Roum is
a city built on seven hills,” he writes. “They say it was a capital of man
in one of the earlier cycles. I knew nothing of that, for my guild was
Watching not Remembering.”
The writing is crisp and intelligent throughout Nightwings, and often
quite poetic. Silverberg allows his story to unfold without any of the
pulp fiction clumsiness that so often mars Asimov and Dick. Above all,
he has a sure instinct for the quasi-mythic—indeed, almost medieval,
at times—tone that also characterizes some of the most stylized works
of conceptual fiction from this era, such as Dune and A Canticle for
Leibowitz.
Silverberg’s story takes place on a debased planet Earth, struggling in
the aftermath of disastrous scientist-induced climate change. North
and South America have mostly vanished under the expanding “Earth
Ocean.” The remnant of civilization lives in the surviving continents:
Eyrop, Ais, Afreek and Stralya. Technology has collapsed, and people
have banded together in guilds, both to find productive vocations and
for a sense of higher purpose.
Our protagonist is a Watcher, whose guild is responsible for studying
the cosmos. For centuries, Earth has been under threat of invasion
from the stars, and the Watchers need to give the alert to the
Defenders (another guild) if and when it arrives. Silverberg sketches
out a whole alternative economic structure here, with various other
guilds each playing their assigned role: Rememberers, Clowns,
Musicians, Somnambulists, Scribes, Servitors, Merchants,
Dominators, and the like. In addition, there are new biological forms
mixed in with these groups: Changelings and Fliers and assorted
visitors from outer space—a whole society creatively re-imagined by
our author.
Another writer would fill this story with battles, swordfights and
cliffhangers. But Silverberg rarely indulges in such theatrics. One gets
a sense of his restraint early on, when he presents the most significant
military engagement in the novel as taking place unobserved
overnight, while our hero sleeps. This is not Starship Troopers or even
The Forever War. Silverberg instead weaves a psychologically rich
narrative that deals with deep issues of redemption, both personal and
social, loyalty and betrayal, inclusion and ostracization. Even the
romance subplot here is handled with surprising subtlety, with as much
Platonic love as carnal desire appearing in Silverberg’s pages.
The tripartite structure and original publication of Nightwings as
three separate tales forced Silverberg to introduce more plot elements
and entanglements than one might find in a stand-alone novel of the
same length. Yet the narrative never feels rushed, and Silverberg not
only resolves all the open issues in his final pages, but does so in a way
that reconnects satisfyingly with the book’s opening gambit. Against all
odds, this author created something very special here, rising above the
calamities of his personal life and the constraints of the genre in
forging one of the finest works of conceptual fiction of its era. I
wouldn't advise anyone to emulate the methodology Silverberg’s
employed in writing Nightwings, but it is hard to quibble with results
he achieved.
This article originally appeared on Blogcritics.
conceptual
fiction
fiction
