Riding the Torch

by Norman Spinrad

Zweitausend Raumschiffe rasen durch die Leere des Raums...An Bord die letzten Überlebenden der Erde - auf der Suche nach einer neuen Heimat für die Menschheit... Besatzung und Passagiere scheinen gefangen in einemzur Wirklichkeit gewordenen Traum...Und die endlosen Tiefen des Alls bergen ein letztes, düsteres Geheimnis...Für diesen außergewöhnlichen Roman erhielt Norman Spinrad, eines der herausragenden Talente der Science Retion, 1975 den Jupiter Award.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Space, Novella

166 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1974

About the author

Born in New York in 1940, Norman Spinrad is an acclaimed SF writer.

Norman Spinrad, born in New York City, is a graduate of the Bronx High School of Science. In 1957 he entered City College of New York and graduated in 1961 with a Bachelor of Science degree as a pre-law major. In 1966 he moved to San Francisco, then to Los Angeles, and now lives in Paris. He married fellow novelist N. Lee Wood in 1990; they divorced in 2005. They had no children. Spinrad served as President of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) from 1980 to 1982 and again from 2001 to 2002.

Reviews

[Stephen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love mining SF obscurity and uncovering those precious gems of spectacular buried under the surface of anonymity, poor marketing, and short memories.

THIS is one of those lost doses of greatness.

A powerful, deeply moving story dealing with the foundational issue of humanity’s place in the universe. It is a “spiritual journey," but in the humanistic rather than religious sense.

Unique…evocative…intelligent...memorable.

PLOT SUMMARY:

Set in the distant future where a convoy of several hundred “torch ships,” containing what is left of mankind, have been traveling through space for more than a 1000 years looking for a new home after Earth went FUBAR. While the convoy meanders through space, the mysterious Council of Pilots coordinate long range survey ships to seeking out habitable planets. The survey pilots, known as “voidsuckers,” are aloof and detached, and spend their time secluded from the rest of the convoy.

For the rest of society, life is has become a never-ending spring break/orgy/dinner party/arts festival as a result of advanced technology creating a post-scarcity living condition. Complete matter-energy conversion/manipulation allows a person to modify their environment at will. In addition, an implant known as the “tap” allows a person instant access to all known information and, more importantly, the ability to “tap” into another’s body to share their physical sensations.

Hedonism is the name of the game and the population spends all their time seeking out newer and more extreme forms of sensory experience. In this environment, artists are the A-list celebrities given their ability to imagine and conjure new forms of physical experience that their audiences can share, whether in the form of food, paintings, music, etc…

The most famous of these artists is Jofe D’Mahl, who we are introduced to at the premiere of his latest “senso” called, The Wandering Dutchmen. Sensos are basically movies/concerts in which the audience, through the “tap,” fully experiences the vision of the artist. The Wandering Dutchmen provides the reader a history of the destruction of Earth and the beginning of the torch ship convoy through the characters of the Flying Dutchman and Jesus.

I always like it when writers find clever ways to “info dump” and provide backstory, and I thought this was brilliant.

When the Council of Pilots announces that one of their scouts has discovered a potentially habitable planet, Jofe is given the rare opportunity of joining the scouting team. What Jofe learns and his experience with the pilots transforms both him and the story and sets the stage of the exploration of the fundamental theme of the story.

THOUGHTS:

This is one of those SF stories that really churned me up emotionally, and has stayed with me ever since I first read it several years ago. The second reading has done nothing to muffle or ameliorate this effect, and I still count this as one of my more profound experiences with science fiction, along with gut punchers like Flowers for Algernon and The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.

The writing is good, and Spinrad makes the story entertaining with regard to the normal SF tropes of advanced technology and peering into imaginary futures. Fundamentally, however, this story is about innerness and carves its mark by exploring the psychological and the spiritual.

This is a hypothesis of humanity’s rank in the pecking order of the universe, and it is, to say the least, humbling. Spinrad’s vision is strong, it is enormous in its implications, and it unsettled me to my very core.

I’ve now read this twice, and I would imagine that I will be reading it again before too many years have passed.

A gem worthy of being found, polished and placed somewhere where others can admire it for its brilliance.

4.5 to 5.0 stars. HIGHEST POSSIBLE RECOMMENDATION!!!

Hugo Nominee for Best Novella
Locus Award for Best Novella

[Terry · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars

“The void neither knew nor cared. The void did not exist. It was the eternal and infinite nonexistence that dwarfed and encompassed that which did.”

I was a little surprised by this book. It’s the kind of sci-fi I generally love, and the ideas seemed very current to me, but the vintage of the book is 1974! In the first twenty pages alone we’ve got classic stuff like generational starships, a fleet of torchships streaking through the void, and a dead earth in a distant past, add to that such “new” ideas as artificially created elements (shades of nanotech), shared realities and sensations (virtual reality), substances doctored to alter perceptions and induce tailored results in the imbiber, and at least one set of humans apparently modified to suit their environment/purpose in deep space and you’ve got a heck of a lot going on!

The basic premise is that the earth has been destroyed by the selfish mismanagement of humanity and the remnants of the species are now housed in a fleet of torchships, known as the Trek, that are streaking through the cosmos searching for a viable new home. We are immediately introduced to Jofe D’mahl, a crafter of ‘sensos’ (fully interactive and immersive movies) as he hosts a party in his grand salon for the cream of the Trek’s society. He is premiering his newest creation, The Wandering Dutchman, a commentary on the society and plight of humanity since embarking on the Trek, mankind’s last, best hope for survival. Unfortunately he is upstaged by the presence of Haris Bandoora, a ‘voidsucker’, one of the group of humans who undertake the task of piloting scout-ships into the void in the hopes of finding a new planetary home for humanity and the terse announcement from the Council of Pilots that this voidsucker’s crew may have found the Eden that humanity has been waiting for. Tempers flare and a challenge is issued: does D’mahl dare to leave the comfortable confines of the Trek where every pleasure can be gratified, every sense stimulated to excess, and every thought and feeling shared in the communal altered reality of each human’s cranial ‘tap’ in order to undergo the hardships and isolation of travel into the void with Bandoora and his crew? We get our answer soon enough, and it is no surprise given our early discovery that D’mahl is a creature of almost pure ego, though it appears that this is both his greatest flaw and ultimately his saving grace. On his journey D’mahl is fated to learn the secret of the voidsuckers and bear the burden of making a decision that will change the fate of humanity forever.

There are definitely some shared themes between this book and Spinrad's perhaps more well-known The Void Captain's Tale, primarily the strange, quasi-mystical communion that seems to occur between the human mind and the endless void and which appears to be an integral aspect of space travel. While the normal pilots of the torchships being used by the Trek do not seem to take part in this, the voidsuckers are obsessed by it, indeed they consider the ‘truth’ of spaceflight to be a burden that they bear for the rest of humanity…not altogether unlike the situation posited by Cordwainer Smith in his famous short story “Scanners Die in Vain”. There is also the hedonistic, baroque, and highly stylized society that Spinrad has created, again much like the ‘Second Starfaring Age’ he later created in The Void Captain's Tale and Child of Fortune. The questions the novel raises about the nature of life and sentience and its true place in the cosmos also reminded me of Peter Watts’ Blindsight, though Spinrad manages to spin things in a much more optimistic way than does Watts. I also found it intriguing how Spinrad handled the concepts of virtual realities and the internal world which are given precedence in this novel. In many other sci-fi works this is often viewed as a crutch, an escape from the ‘real’ world that is detrimental to human evolution and growth. Spinrad seems to posit in this story that it is in fact the opposite: the human ability to cultivate and then realize an unending series of inner worlds that can only be explored virtually is our race’s saving grace. Without it we are nothing more than a blip. Unless we make our own truths and embrace them we are simply sentient flotsam in the vast immensity of an empty reality.

[Sebastian · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have an endless fascination with how willing people are to just straight up spoil the plot twist in their reviews. Anyway, I read this as part of my ongoing “generation ship completist” quest and it did not disappoint – on the one hand, it feels surprisingly fresh for a novella written in 1974, as if it could have been written and published today without any major changes, and while incorporating many familiar SF tropes, it cross-pollinates them into the generation ship sub-genre where they are not so common – rather unusually, these generation ships are not forgotten, they know what they are and where they are going. On the other, the plot twist is slightly weird, in a “well what did you people expect” kind of way, but it does not detract from the overall flow of the story and the point Spinrad was driving towards. The only complaint I have is that the already short novella is still too long, due to a bit of redundant floweriness of expression, but this may just be a result of my jaded-reader eyes.

[Andres · Rating 5 out of 5]

Una bellísima novela corta. La soledad de la búsqueda enfrentada a la infinita creatividad humana. Un tópico recurrente en la ciencia ficción (la migración generacional por el espacio) acá llevada a un nivel donde más que el hacia donde ir, lo importante es quienes van.
Spinrad juega con lo humano y sus creaciones tanto físicas como virtuales, con lo que el mismo ser humano cree ser. La tecnología fluye cómo telón de fondo, pero solo sirve para resaltar el espíritu real de la misma humanidad.
De lo mejor que he leído últimamente.

[Stephan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've read this novella years ago, probably in translation. Now I got the original on my Kindle. Wow. The novella tells the story of "the Trek", a group of torch ships powered by a Bussard ramjet. The Trek had fled Earth centuries ago, after the planet was rendered dead and uninhabitable by "the slow war". The group of ships has evolved over centuries from an original few retrofitted asteroid miners to the current generation of magnificent torch ships with an incredible rich and interconnected culture - but still looking for a new home planet. And failing to find one. The main protagonist is an artist, who has to find a way to communicate a dire secret in a way that will not destroy his culture.
This is a great story about the emancipation of a culture from its own dark past, and its own superstitions. It is executed with perfect style. Rarely does one find an author that can combine the unwavering optimism about the human project with the deep cultural and emotional challenges of the New Wave. Spinrad does it with aplomb.
Highly recommended - some of the best SF has to offer. And a quick and entertaining read, too.

[David Agranoff · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I interviewed Norman Spinrad for the Dickheads Podcast he told me my first question was stupid. In fairness, I was trying to break the ice and I asked how he discovered Science Fiction. I get it, he was on a Philip K. Dick podcast and I am sure he assumed I was nothing but a super fan of his late friend who died in 1982. Spinrad eased up on me when it was clear I was a nerd for his books and knew his canon pretty well. Riding the Torch is my 10th Spinrad experience and 11th if you could the brand new novella The Canopy in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.
Published 8 years into his Science Fiction career, Spinrad had already made a name for himself, still a part of the Southern California scene. At the time he had already written two episodes of Star Trek one that was made (The Doomsday Machine), and had a controversy with the British banning of his novel Bug Jack Barron.

Riding the Torch is one I had heard was great but didn’t have it until I picked it up recently on a trip to Los Angeles. I think I got it at the Illiad, shout out to Lisa Morton. This novella comes with great illustrations by Tom Kidd and two afterwords that break down some of the themes and ideas at play. I wish more books would include essays like that.

The story is an entry in a classic subgenre of the generation ship. From Heinlein’s Universe to Kim Stanley Robinson’s Aurora and River Solomon’s Unkindness of Ghosts the diversity of these tales that approached this theme are vast. Decades apart and done with very different tones and styles Spinrad seems to be making a similar point.to Aurora the KSR novel that I consider to be one of the best Hard SF novels in this century.

Spinrad doesn’t write hard or so-called realistic science fiction. My favorite of his space-faring SF novels The Void Captain’s Tale is so strange that it borders on fantasy. Riding the Torch is similar in this vein. For a thousand years or more “The Trek” (the intentionally ironic) name for the wagon train to the stars that humanity has been on since the human race destroyed their home. When our story opens the council of pilots is sending a probe to a world that may be a new home for our species.

“We’re all refugees too. We’ve killed the living world that gave us birth. Even you and I may never see another.”

The harsh message of this novel is nothing new, ecologically minded science fiction was common but Spinrad is doing more than saying killing the earth is bad. He is making a point that might seem sacrilegious to the genre – The earth is the planet we evolved on, and Spinrad is challenging the idea that any other planet could ever sustain us. That was the bummer message of Robinson’s Aurora as well. It is a bummer in part because we morons are destroying the sustainability of the only planet we have. Science Fiction often presents false hope that Mars or some other world could be our new home.

Riding the Torch is an interesting read in part because the way it makes the point is so oddly new wave while having a slight fantasy feel. The Trek feels odd and that is right because it is supposed to depict a human civilization that has spent generations in space. So the way society functions is strange and Spinrad has thought out many aspects – but keep in mind that is mostly just world-building. One way it is deeper than world-building is in the form of the Voidsuckers.

“The voidsuckers have been out there in the flesh for over half a millennium, spending most of their with no tap connection to the Trek, to everything that makes the only human civilization there is what it is.”

While most of the people who live on the Trek are in denial, the Voidsuckers are the ones who embrace the void.. They have these religious experiences when they go out alone into space. I was fine with how these scenes were written but honestly, I would have enjoyed even more of this stuff.

“We man the scoutships to reach the void, we don’t brave the void to man scout ships.” She said. “We sacrifice nothing but illusion. We live with the truth. We live for the truth.”

The truth is something hard to come by in the Trek. Because it would kill morale, it is interesting because I kept thinking for our species to survive we need to do the opposite. Stop protecting people’s feelings. But protecting their feelings is what they do.

“We already know that 977-Beta_II is dead,” Sidi said. “We knew it before we reported it to the council of pilots. This whole mission like hundreds before it, is an empty gesture.”
“But why have they been lying to us like this? D’Mahl shouted. “What right did you have? What-“
“What were we supposed to say? Bandoora shouted back. “that it’s all dead? That life on Earth was a unique accident? That nothing exists but emptiness and dead matter and the murderers of the only life there ever was? What are we supposed say D’Mahl? What are we supposed to say.”

We are not on the Trek. Spinrad seemed to write this novel to remind us. You don’t want to be on the Trek. This planet is special, and there may not be another habitable planet in our reach, it seems unlikely but we may be alone, or at least in this region of space. Spinrad writes political science fiction. He likes to challenge doctrine, he likes to write genre that is outspoken and with a clear point of view. Riding the Torch is that, it is short but a masterpiece in my opinion but I have always been partial to Spinrad.

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty trippy man. Loved it.

[Pablo · Rating 3 out of 5]

En su famosa guía de lectura de la ciencia ficción, Miquel Barceló incluye este libro en su lista de favoritos. Puedo entender la razón. El punto de partida es el clásico, casi un subgénero, de que la Tierra ha sido destruída y los últimos humanos vagan por el espacio buscando un nuevo hogar. Pero el desarrollo es original por su reflexión sobre la insignificancia del ser humano en el vasto universo y la posible inexistencia de otras formas de vida. Huye de lo evidente en este tipo de libros, entronca con temas importantes desde antiguo, y el desarrollo es ingenioso. La brevedad del relato, sin embargo, hace que sea una obra muy compacta, pero al mismo tiempo deja la sensación de que el tema hubiera dado más de sí.

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

More X-men from the heart of Claremont's classic run, and the writer does a great job juggling the cast, the subplots and the drama. So much happens here: Rogue joins the team, we meet the Morlocks, Wolverine almost gets married in Japan, Storm adopts a Mohawk, Peter and Kitty make out (creepy) and Madelyne Prior makes her appearance on the scene. Whew!

Claremont's greatest strength lies in making us care about his characters, and that's especially evident here with Storm, who finds herself struggling with the new feelings--perhaps callousness--that leading the team has inspired in her. Perhaps Claremont was motivated by a desire to write her away from an "Earth mother" persona that may have been feeling stereotypical. Regardless of intent, the new, tougher guise for Storm (and that awesome hairdo) is a great twist. Beyond the visual appeal, the new direction for the character brings with it the ability to surprise the rest of the cast--and the reader--notably in the scene where Storm turns "X-men don't kill" on its head and stabs Morlock leader Callisto right in the heart.

The stories in these pages are brimming with ideas--and personalities. It may not be "Dark Phoenix Saga," but these X-men issues continue to represent Marvel storytelling at its height.

Read digital issues

[Alien · Rating 4 out of 5]

Earth is ruined. A fleet of spaceshipt left it in search of a new home. But in vain, for centuries already.

Interesting ideas, especially the main one. Sometimes presented too rushed, sometimes too repetitive. It had kind of an open ending, which I personally don't like very much. I would rather have learned the reaction of the people to the great revelation.

[Jimmy J. Crantz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Found the language a bit difficult to get into, but overall the book surprised me and got me thinking for a few days.

[Antonio López Sousa · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Jinetes de la antorcha" (1974) de Norman Spinrad, o cómo desincentivar su lectura con una portada horrenda 🤐.

Y es una pena, porque esta edición está bastante bien y es muy completa (trae tres comentarios sobre la obra y otro pequeño relato titulado Black-out). En cuanto al relato en sí, considerado una obra maestra de la ciencia ficción, varias cosas que decir.

Es una novela cortita que se puede leer en una tarde. Pero que eso no os lleve a engaño, pues su lectura exige concentración absoluta y un cierto esfuerzo, además de estar dotada de una profundidad mucho mayor de lo que a primera vista pueda parecer.

El comienzo no es fácil, sobre todo porque usa un variado vocabulario inventado del que no sabemos nada previamente, de ahí que tengamos la impresión de no estar entendiendo nada, ya que nos obliga a ir atando cabos hasta comprender qué sucede y cómo sucede (en un mundo eminentemente virtual). Esta característica, unida a las largas descripciones que exigen un elevado nivel de abstracción, estuvo a punto de echarme para atrás y poco me faltó para dejar la novela a un lado, lo reconozco. Y ese aire un poco psicodélico no lo pierde en ningún momento, pues a veces se alarga en descripciones de "sensos" (recreaciones virtuales) que poco parecen aportar a la historia... Y que sin embargo lo hacen.

Ahora bien, lo mejor de la novela es la idea de fondo, que utiliza la paradoja de Fermi como núcleo del relato. Es decir: ¿somos los seres humanos la única civilización avanzada del Universo? Y a esa pregunta dedica Spinrad el, en apariencia, sencillo argumento de la obra, aportando su propia respuesta de una forma muy peculiar en un final, como mínimo, poco convencional.

Pero si queréis saber cómo lo hace, tendréis que leerla.

[Joseph Sobanski · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was quite pleasantly surprised by this book, which I picked up at a small bookstore in Berlin. Not only does it include a chilling tale from Norman Spinrad, but it also includes several full page drawings by Thomas Kidd, which I very much enjoyed.

The story is about how humanity has been reduced to a fleet of generation ships, which are in search of a new planet for mankind to inhabit. Scouts, called "voidsuckers," have yet to locate a planet that can accommodate life, and our protagonist ventures out with the "voidsuckers" on a mission to learn their secrets. And the secret he uncovers is a profoundly existential one, and one I can't remember having come across yet in all the other speculative fiction books I've read.

While traveling with the "voidsuckers" our hero partakes in a ritual in which he is abandoned in space alone for around 24 hours ("sucking void" they call it). This is one of the most claustrophobic and memorable scenes I've read all year, and I was thoroughly impressed by Norman Spinrad's Riding the Torch. I would recommend it for anyone who is interested in psychological science fiction that nearly crosses the border into horror.

[Israel Laureano · Rating 4 out of 5]

Originalmente, esta novela corta fue publicada en 1974, cuando estaba muy de moda el hippismo, la expansión de la mente, las filosofías orientales, la imaginación y creatividad y el misticismo, y se nota en el estilo narrativo: diálogos tan sutiles y originales que es un poco difícil saber a qué se están refiriendo, un montón de términos y conceptos originales y bastante cienciaficcioñeros, habla mucho de modas bastante extrañas y difíciles de imaginar y puntos de vista y percepciones bastante sacadas de onda si uno no permanece con una mente abierta
Pero tiene como recompensa la presentación de conceptos muy avanzados como estatorreactores y energía de vacío, redes personales y complejas que hacen que todos puedan intercambiar opiniones y puntos de vista casi al instante; claro, todo descrito de forma genérica y jipiosa.

Una narrativa barroca e imaginativa, corta, lo que se agradece porque de otra manera sería muy pesada.

[Todd Charlton · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are two afterwords to this novel written by important men I'm sure. I refuse to read them because I don't want my conception of the story contradicted. To me and my way of thinking this is one of the greatest novellas I've ever encountered. But of course no one ever talks about it and the goodreads rating is ludicrous.
I have never heard of this book even though I have many of Norman Spinrad's works. I stumbled upon it in a second hand bookshop. Again to my way of thinking, this work represents stark reality even though god; never called that by the devil; and the devil are major characters.
Our protagonist Jofe, a self confessed ego maniac, loses all ego in the void, the eternal nothingness of outer space. He is part of a generational fleet of ships to find somewhere for human kind to live. But there is nowhere, even Goldie Locks planets are devoid of life, they are made of dead rock and gas. The voidsuckers won't tell. Jofe enters the void and creates wonderful worlds in his head. It's just another play he has written called Riding the Torch. He sees god and Satan fight over what is the be created but there is nothing. Besides that, god and Satan are both stereo types; god is an old man with a grey beard on a cloud and Satan has horns, wears a tuxedo and looks like Billy Crystal. That's my take and why I love Norman Spinrad's Riding the Torch.

[Derek · Rating 3 out of 5]

Spinrad glimpses into the Lovecraftian indifference of the universe, though it is an indifference in a "life is a cosmic accident" sense. It is up to humanity to synthesize a purpose instead of receiving one from a cosmic source. What better way to do so than rely on an individual whose sense of self rules all things? If there is nothing more to existence than the bubble-society of the Trek, why not embrace that as purpose?

As theses go it is circular and unsatisfying.

[Marissa · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was going to dismiss this as 70s boobs and bits dreck, but the afterwords made some good points. For the time, a generation ship that comes to terms with itself IS a big step out of the ordinary, and Spinrad's use of tech IS interesting. But still, the emboobening. It's pretty bad. The illustrations don't help.

[Cheryl]

see Threads Of Time: Three Original Novellas Of Science Fiction

[Temucano · Rating 5 out of 5]

Qué gusto leer en menos de 200 paginas una historia de ciencia ficción ambiciosa, profunda, humanista como pocas, además de contar con una de las mejores sensaciones de vacío interestelar jamás leídas.

Un pequeño deleite, creo lo que más me ha gustado de Spinrad.

[Andrés · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fua ❤️

[Mario · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesante, pero esperaba más.

[Diego · Rating 5 out of 5]

Publicado originalmente en mi blog


Sinopsis

El artista Jofe D’mahl se prepara para su gran obra, la experiencia que cambiará la vida de todos los que viajan con él por el espacio en La Migración. Pero ¿qué les puede mostrar que ya no sepan (o integren) por ellos mismos? La respuesta está en algo que solo los sorbevacíos, aquellos que se adentran en las profundidades del vacío del espacio buscando planetas habitables, conocen. D’mahl solo lo sabrá si responde a la llamada del vacío.


Comentarios

En mi todavía corta experiencia conociendo los clásicos de la literatura de ciencia ficción, he encontrado muchos libros que destacan por las ideas que se plantean más que por la calidad con la que están escritos. Y aunque tampoco sea un experto literario, uno acaba diferenciando al escritor que te trasmite algo más que una historia del que se limita a contarte lo que pasa. ‘Jinetes de la antorcha’ es de esos textos que pueden desesperar si uno quiere saber desde el principio ‘lo que pasa’ y no se para a pensar en ‘lo que se siente’. El surrealismo del principio puede despistar un poco, y hacernos parecer que estamos ante un viaje extraño y sin sentido. Pero con la paciencia suficiente (en realidad no demasiada, ya que es una novela corta), creo que se entiende bien lo que sucede, y esa recompensa merece la pena.

Lo que ahora explicaré es lo que he entendido del contexto y de la premisa, pero sin intenciones de desvelar el argumento. Ya puede adivinarse un poco por la sinopsis que he escrito. Se supone que estamos en el futuro, y que la humanidad lleva siglos viviendo en naves (antorchas), formando un grupo conocido como La Migración. Estos humanos viajeros viven más en su imaginación, y en la de sus compañeros de viaje, que en el “mundo” real. Todos se encuentran conectados (integrados), y todo el conocimiento heredado de la historia de la Tierra está disponible para ellos al instante. Sus vidas están dedicadas a los placeres y al arte, y fabrican una especie de películas de realidad virtual llamadas ‘sensos’. El protagonista es Jofe D’mahl, uno de los creadores de senso más populares, y de los más influyentes en la moda de las antorchas. Pero no todos los humanos viven en la Migración. Existen otros humanos, los sorbevacíos, que no viven integrados. Estos sorbevacíos se dedican a explorar nuevos planetas para encontrar alguno habitable, y que así la Migración poder asentarse y formar una colonia. O al menos, eso dicen que hacen. Los sorbevacíos piden a Jofe crear un senso sobre ellos, pero descubrirá el secreto que esconden, y cuyo senso lo desvelará al resto de sus compañeros de la Migración.

La historia es el viaje de una persona que se ha visto intelectualmente mermada por el entorno en el que vive, donde la aburrida y monótona realidad se sustituye por el senso. La humanidad no está preparada para una visión más “real” del mundo, y no solo porque les parezca insustancial. La revelación que les mostrarán los sorbevacíos, o para ser más precisos, la revelación que descubrirá por él mismo al encontrarse flotando en la inmensidad del vacío del espacio, tiene más que ver con el futuro de La Migración y con su importancia respecto al resto del Universo.

Casi ya lo he dicho todo, pero aún no he desvelado la revelación que experimenta D’mahl, así que invito a que el lector lo descubra por si mismo, porque realmente esta es una pequeña joya de la ciencia ficción. Y como decía, con una calidad literaria no muy común en el género.

[Mark Lattman · Rating 3 out of 5]

(Contains spoiler-ish info) The first half of this novella has its plot and dialogue pointlessly obfuscated by dense and nebulous writing, with too much un/under-explained Future-Speak. That can work fine when there is time and space for gradual World Building, but not in a work this short. And that was too bad because there was a good, and very prescient, idea here – the virtual and electronically connected world versus raw unadulterated visceral experience – which was unfortunately explored within the framework of an otherwise unoriginal “Generation Ship” storyline (i.e., what’s left of the Human Race traveling in a fleet of ships and exploring space for a new home after Earth is FUBARed somehow). It eventually had some solid passages, a lot of Biblical references and psychedelic imagery, was somewhat sex-positive - though the actual sex was very poorly written, as always - but unsurprisingly not as socially progressive/predictive as it is scientifically, and ended with an interesting twist that, as it’s presented, is actually factually disputable; the conclusion drawn from the big news we get is highly illogical, as “never” is a very long time, and it’s a very very very big universe. The descriptions of The Void of Space were the best written parts, and I love Sci-Fi from this time, pulpy and/or “serious”, but I initially only kept reading it because it was so short, and though I was glad it got much better, I would not recommend it as priority reading in the genre. 82/100

[Stuart · Rating 3 out of 5]

Five stars for idea, but only three stars overall due to presentation
Positives:
1. Voidsuckers - eerie, isolated humans who live separate from the rest of humanity and who hold a secret,
2. The society within the fleet of two thousand generational ships. Flighty, style changing, vapid. Senso movies allow one to experience the events on screen with your mind and body. Tapping - networked minds that allow one to inhabit for brief periods of time other people's minds.
3. The voidsucker mystery, the reason they call D'Mahl to go with them into deep space, is the meat of the story. It is a profound realization, but one that could have been presented better as a short story.
Negatives:
1. Too long. The vivid descriptions in the beginning present the vastness of space and the life on the ships effectively, but as the book drags on the descriptions become repetitive.
2. The climactic reveal of the story is presented 2/3rd of the way in, leaving us only with D'Mahl's (the protagonist) reaction for the remainder of the novel. I suppose that his reaction is the author's main point, but to me I didn't care after the 2/3rd point.
3. Topless women and sex. Why does sci-fi from this time period always use casual sex and nakedness in order to be "edgy"? Actually, don't bother, I know why, it helps sell books. I guess my point is that reading this book decades later, this feature of it seems a cliché from the time period in which it was written.

[Erik Graff · Rating 3 out of 5]

The most interesting thing about this science fiction novella is its unusual presumption that there are no inhabitable planets anywhere in the universe. The story is set in a period hundreds of years after we humans have fouled our own nest, Earth, so as to necessitate its abandonment and a search for a substitute. The crisis of the story is the acknowledgment that we are alone in the cosmos, something which author Spinrad attempts to convey in mystical, almost Buddhistic terms.

The concluding essays about the "science" behind the story are interesting.

[Pedro Enguita · Rating 5 out of 5]

Un libro breve, buenísimo y desgraciadamente olvidado por todos.
Escritura barroca, vibrante, jugosa y llena de pasión.
El libro está estructurado de forma brillante, cada página cuenta para el desenlace.

[Thom Dunn · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the collection, Threads of Time. Novella length. pb only and in short supply at Amazon, 6-21-2011.

[Clyde · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book. Classic science fiction.

[David]

http://kcls.bibliocommons.com/item/sh...

[Brian Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

More of a short story than anything, this plays out like a fable on how humans can (or should) face the endless entropy of the galaxy. Won't soon forget this one!