As the Curtain Falls

by Robert Chilson (Pseudonym)

Cover Artists: Ulrich & Osterwalder

A BILLION YEARS HENCE

In the old age of the once great planet Earth, the oceans have long dried up, and in their empty sea bottoms stand the last cities of mankind, for the once mighty continental heights are barren and frigid.

The world is strewn with the ruins of the star-faring civilizations of the Dawn ages, and somewhere in those ruins lies the legendary Kingsworld Legacy-which may yet save humanity.

Trebor of Amballa possesses the key to the Legacy. But can he use it-and will the remnants of a myriad lost nations let him?

Robert Chilson paints a colorful and vivid picture of the farthest future, tinted with wit and a tinge of bitter iron.

Genres: Science Fiction, Dying Earth, Fantasy

174 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published April 1, 1974

About the author

Pen name for Rob Chilson

Reviews

[Karl · Rating 3 out of 5]

(DAW Collectors #98

Cover Artist: Hans Ulrich Osterwalder , Ute Osterwalder.

Name: Chilson, Robert Dean, Birthplace: Ringwood, Oklahoma, USA, 19 May 1945

A Billion Years Hence,

In the old age of the once great planet Earth, the oceans have long dried up, and in their empty sea bottoms stand the last cities of mankind, for the once mighty continental heights are barren and frigid.

The world is strewn with the ruins of the star-faring civilizations of the Dawn ages, and somewhere in those ruins lies the legendary Kingsworld Legacy—which may yet save humanity.

Trebor of Amballa possesses the key to the Legacy. But can he use it and will the remnants of a myriad lost nations let him?

[Derek · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like David J Lake's Xuma and Leigh Brackett's Skaith, this is a rework of the sword-and-planet genre under slightly different lines. Chilson swaps out the last-hurrah adventure of Barsoom and the devil-may-care extravagance of Vance's Dying Earth for something more stark and metallic tasting.

Earth is so very, very old, and its civilizations have risen to the stars and been knocked down endless times. Each rise is fueled by some fraction of the planetary ocean, for fusion power sources, leaving the continental plateaus dry and uninhabitable. The remaining humanity and its (engineered?) offshoots dwell in the temperate ocean beds. Humanity has given up on the stars, and of recovering its greatness, and now contents itself with the technology that remains to it, salvaging the miraculous materials and artifacts of long-gone ages, and fighting petty wars for petty territories and petty power, despite the ample evidence of its impermanence.

It's a gorgeous vision. Chilson litters the text with layers of details, and is always on the verge of launching a historical or geographic tangent about a feature of the landscape or some long-lost civilization or war or whatnot. Everything has been done before, and done better. It clogs the story--probably as intended--ramming home the essential futility, and makes the work feel much longer than it really is.

[Sol · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm not about to claim this is better than Book of the New Sun, but it did one thing much better than Wolfe did. The idea of deep lost history on a dying world comes up a decent amount in BotNS, but it's more of a background element, referred to here and there. Other than Typhon's reign and a brief mention of the interstellar empire he was trying to recreate, there's little concrete impact to it. In fact, the whole "Dying Earth" thing started to seem more than a little hypothetical toward the end. The landscapes seem pretty much exactly as they would be on modern Earth, and the alien invaders a much bigger concern.

As the Curtain Falls, on the other hand, does these things well (to the exclusion of almost any other elements). The story is nothing more than an excuse to travel across the sights of Iréné, which is the last inhabited region of the "Downlands", the dried out seabeds of far, far future Earth, the continental plates long since rendered uninhabitable. Every location encountered calls to the mind of the protagonist the ups and downs of their ancient history across geological ages, even though the earliest recorded history only extends as far back as when there was a single salt sea in Iréné. Every people he encounters has some real or imagined connection to the movement of ancient empires and the physical changes in the landscape. The biosphere itself has been altered by interminable ages that have passed, with plastic now being easily biodegradable and deposited into shells and bones, fibreglass spun by insects instead of silk. Humans are double-hearted and easily able to drink salty water, and all have the ability to send and receive mental emanations. Most of the animals encountered seem to be crustaceans and mollusks adapted to the disappearance of the sea.

The writing was descriptive enough for me and showed occasional flair where it was needed. The story and characters are just vehicles to explore the world. They were unobtrusive and did their jobs. The protagonist is ambitious and ruthless, but entirely practical. Though he is aware of the vast history of the world, he is unmoved by it, which paid off in the ending as, rather than saving the world as one might expect, he uses what he finds to establish another empire for himself. His empire will rise, perhaps last thousands of years, then fall. Others will do the same after him, until long after he has been forgotten, like so many of the inscrutable memorials he passed by. Wonderfully cynical.

If you enjoyed this book, I recommend the roguelike game Caves of Qud. A lot of that game's setting and lore seem ripped right out of this book (with some changes in particulars, of course). The game itself is great as well.

[Paulo "paper books only" · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book was bad in my humble opinion. It tries to be sword and sorcery, it tries to be a dying earth like Jack Vance and a almost epic fantasy but I couldn't connected to it.

Don't get me wrong, it's beautiful written but right from the bat it starts with a history lesson that takes like 5 pages and since I don't know anything about this world it's just beautiful words in a sheet of paper.

Then the conversations are interesting but stuff happen and we aren't really part of it and don't understand why and how it happen. A girl was kidnapped... how? Does it matter? well you won't know it.

If you love beautiful written books with slow pace set in a world unknown to you and you love history then go. I couldn't connected it.

[William Cardini · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this short novel, Chilson explores a doomed civilization that haunts ruins of technological wonder in the far future, long after humanity has explored the stars, given up on that dream, and now struggles to survive on a dying, resource-depleted Earth.

As the Curtain Falls was published in 1974, a couple years after two of the greatest books in the dying earth sub-genre: An Alien Heat by Michael Moorcock (the first part of The Dancers at the End of Time trilogy which I reviewed on my blog) and The Pastel City by M John Harrison. I see the influence of both Moorcock and Harrison on Chilson's book, Moorcock in the sardonic attitude of the anti-hero Trebor, and Harrison in the imagery and language. On the whole, As the Curtain Falls might not reach the heights of those two books, but Chilson does outdo them both in his evocative setting: the oceans have dried out and the continents are uninhabitable; the remnants of humanity live in the ocean bottoms, the amount of arable land shrinking each generation as the salted deserts encroach.

Chilson has done extensive world-building for this future that he only uses in this one 174-page book. The forests are phosphorescent trees and colorful coral. Starfish and lobsters are the predators. People move across the salt flats in giant sleds with sails. Insects and bacteria have evolved to eat plastic. Gems are polished chunks of a mysterious substance manufactured by the lost civilizations of the Dawn. We get glimpses of a long history of empires and conflicts without dwelling too much on specifics. This long history has thematic resonance – We feel the weight of this history, the hundreds of millions of years of humanity that has lead to this moment near the end, the vast impersonal hate of time. This theme is common to the best books of the dying Earth sub-genre.

Another aspect of this book that I really enjoyed is the focus on art. Many SF books are so focused on technology that they devalue or ignore the non-functional products of civilization. But the title of As the Curtain Falls is probably a reference to the curtain falling over the play of humanity on the Earth. And there's a complete play within the novel that is cut from an inexplicable theatrical tradition with no explanation of its meaning by the narrator. Finally there's the eccentric immortal that our protagonists meet while they're running through the giant midden heaps of the Dawn age, an immortal who proclaims to them that "art is longer than any life." The endurance of art is the only weak hope that Chilson offers us.

I hadn’t heard of Chilson before I bought As the Curtain Falls on a whim. He hasn’t written much but I’m going to look for his other original novels.

[Mark Lattman · Rating 3 out of 5]

This obscure arch (and stereo) typical piece of second generation Pulp Sci-Fi, written under an assumed name, takes place almost a Billion years from now, in the final dying eon of Earth. So, there is a lot of history to know, and unfortunately the first half of this short novel has as many names, people and places as the entire Lord of the Rings jammed into it at the expense of plot. There is way too much World Building referencing with way too little real explanation, or time to integrate it and no index, as if we’re already well into a lengthy Sci-Fi/Fantast series. The second half gets more directly into the plot and brings much needed narrative clarity and interest to things, but a bit too late. Because the main character is a harsh anti-hero type, it also takes a bit long to sympathize with him and enjoy the ride. However, it was a quick read and still had many of the positive elements of the genre, eventually. But you would have to have read a ton of these types of books before you need to read this one. 81/100

[Matthew J. · Rating 3 out of 5]

If ever there were a case of too much world-building. Seriously, this book is only 174 pages long, but feels like it's got as much info on the setting as a Tolkien book. There's very little to the story, to be honest, and less to the characters involved. It's all about the setting and its history. I'll give author Robert Chilson credit, he's created a very cool setting. Had this come out a few years later, I imagine there would have been a tabletop RPG tie-in. I'd love to see someone like Goodman Games do something for it today. However, that doesn't make for a great book. It was actually kind of a slog to get through, sifting through so much background and history to pick out little bits of plot.

[Mike · Rating 1 out of 5]

Oof, bad news bears. This was a tough one to finish out, there's not really characters, the whole book feels like a sketch. There is such a richness to the far-far-future thing, (Moorcock, Wolfe, others, of course Vance) and there is a small sparkle of that here, but woof you have to sit through a whole bunch of exposition to get it. Fully half or more of the text is what we would now consider author's notes to themselves about their own worldbuilding, but are wholly unnecessary to the book you're reading, and the feeling you're left with is all tell, no show. Throw in a healthy dose of "it's the future but women are only present for sex" and this is a hard pass. Read for historical research into the dying earth sub-genre only.

[2Due]

Not giving any star since I read only the first chapter, but that was enough for me.
It didn't grip me at all from the very beginning, the writing style sure is *rich*, keeps reminding you of the beauty of the past and, fair enough, it's well done and imaginative, but it quickly turned pompous.
The main character is too arrogant for me and there's the usual thing where women are inferior.
Aged like milk.
One thing that bothered me has been finding the same word "emanations" five-six times in the same damn page. I know it's old, but never heard of synonyns?
Pass. Too bad, I had high hopes.

[Nathan Shumate · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm of two minds here. On the one hand, Chilson does a wonderful job with the setting of an earth literally millions of years in the future, after the human race has gone to space and fallen back into barbarism countless times, with a known (if fragmented) history of a hundred thousand years.

On the other hand, the history takes such a front seat that I kept forgetting what the plot was supposed to be, and was underwhelmed by the ending.

(I probably would have given the book one additional star if it had CONTAINED A MAP.)

[Aaron Hollingsworth · Rating 4 out of 5]

The world is dry. The humor is dry. The descriptions of landscapes and architecture are rich and elegantly verbose. Altruism is non-existent. The hero is an arrogant, snobbish, yet capable, man-of-action. Imagine if John Carter of Mars had been motivated by power and politics instead of love when he rescued the princess.

This book was not to my taste. I appreciate its intelligent craft and beautiful prose, but the story and characters weren't my cup of tea. All the same, it is worth checking out if you like smartly-written speculative fiction.