A Time of Changes in Sci-fi and Heroic Fantasy

Apr 10, 2017 Jim rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2fiction, 1audio, scifi

Puritans to the stars? Something like that. As usual, Silverberg delves into a complex issue with realistic characters & manages to keep them distant enough that I never manage to care about them.

This has an interesting premise, a belief system of self-containment that our main character eventually fights. There are elements from many great classics, Heart of Darkness, The Scarlet Letter, & others. I could appreciate the complex theme, the world building, & tragedy, but it never sucked me in. H ...more

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Jun 22, 2018 Valentin Derevlean rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: sf

Deși romanul ăsta are aproape 50 de ani, încă rezistă binișor timpului și cred că subiectul aproape mainstream îl salvează după atâta timp. Acțiunea se petrece pe planeta Borthan, o planetă cu mai multe continente și mai multe națiuni aflate în competiție, uneori în război. Timpul planetei e un timp ciudat: un soi de final de ev mediu, dar care păstrează încă resturi de tehnologie din anii primilor colonizatori: mașini, arme, chiar mașini zburătoare. În rest, cetăți, vapoare, agricultură și o ec ...more

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Aug 02, 2011 Nuno Ribeiro rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: own, scifi

Tempo de Mudança é um romance muito interessante e profundo de Robert Silverberg, distinguido com um prémio Nébula, um galardão concedido anualmente pelo Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) para os melhores trabalhos de ficção científica/fantasia publicados nos Estados Unidos durante os dois anos precedentes. Este livro, escrito nos inícios da década de 70 do séc. XX, no rescaldo de Woodstock e de uma década de 60 em que se assistiu a uma grande liberalização de costumes e à co Tempo de Mudança é um romance muito interessante e profundo de Robert Silverberg, distinguido com um prémio Nébula, um galardão concedido anualmente pelo Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) para os melhores trabalhos de ficção científica/fantasia publicados nos Estados Unidos durante os dois anos precedentes. Este livro, escrito nos inícios da década de 70 do séc. XX, no rescaldo de Woodstock e de uma década de 60 em que se assistiu a uma grande liberalização de costumes e à consequente confusão do sistema de valores individuais, vem abordar de uma forma muito inteligente, provocadora e com uma invulgar sensibilidade emocional o processo da auto-descoberta que todo o ser humano enfrenta desde a adolescência, e a construção de convicções e de um sistema de valores que sustentam a personalidade individual.

Narrado na primeira pessoa de Kinall Darival, habitante do planeta Borthan, província de Salla, que foi inicialmente colonizado por um grupo de pioneiros espaciais oriundos da Terra, sob a forma autobiográfica, esta escolha narrativa permite-nos entrar mais profundamente no dilema da vida deste personagem e sentir com alguma intensidade o desespero e desânimo iniciais, fruto de uma sociedade/cultura altamente repressiva da individualidade aliada a um conjunto de infelizes circunstâncias familiares, e, em oposição, a sensação final de alegria esfuziante, plena de liberdade, resultante da afirmação dos valores que foi construindo ao longo dos eventos relatados no romance, culminando num acto final de assunção da sua responsabilidade pelas opções que tomou e pelas vidas que influenciou.

A abordagem a esta temática, enquadrada num outro planeta e numa outra realidade, sustentada no género da ficção científica, permite em simultâneo desresponsabilizar o leitor ao mesmo tempo que o vai capturando num processo inevitável de auto-análise à medida que a história se vai desenrolando. Por este motivo,entendo que este livro é uma reflexão profunda, forte e muito bem escrita de um dos grandes autores deste género literário, e aconselho a sua leitura. ...more

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Mar 09, 2016 Fungus Gnat rated it it was ok

Kinnall Dareval, brother of a king, sits in a dilapidated cabin in the “burnt lowlands” of his planet Borthan, awaiting the arrival of a posse. He is to be arrested for violating Borthan’s Covenant, which decrees that no one shall bare his soul to others; even use of the first-person pronouns trespasses on social decency. Certainly writing an autobiography, as he is now doing, will further displease the authorities. From these introductory ideas, Silverberg as Kinnall smoothly shifts to the memo Kinnall Dareval, brother of a king, sits in a dilapidated cabin in the “burnt lowlands” of his planet Borthan, awaiting the arrival of a posse. He is to be arrested for violating Borthan’s Covenant, which decrees that no one shall bare his soul to others; even use of the first-person pronouns trespasses on social decency. Certainly writing an autobiography, as he is now doing, will further displease the authorities. From these introductory ideas, Silverberg as Kinnall smoothly shifts to the memoir itself, where he relates his father’s early death and his own flight from home to avoid potential incarceration by his brother—among many other events and deeds that have led him to his current predicament.

As part of the narrative, Silverberg/Kinnall convey a great deal of information about Borthan’s culture and society. I thought most of this was fairly naturally woven in, with relatively few intrusive info dump digressions. The context for Kinnall’s life is unusual in that it mixes the trappings of heroic fantasy – elements of architecture and government, a lot of the clothing, aspects of weaponry – with modern transportation, data management, etc. Of course, as is often the case with SF, it reflects the society out of which it arose – 1971 America, in this case. Thus, A Time of Changes looks like the sixties (the sixties were still going strong in the early seventies) in terms of attitudes towards drugs, love and sex, sexual orientation, and egocentrism.

In the 2009 edition, there is a blurb on the front cover by Ursula K. Le Guin. It’s no surprise that Le Guin likes Silverberg’s book, given that it bears some resemblance to The Left Hand of Darkness. From time to time, Kinnall reminds me of Estraven, and both persons undertake an odyssey central to the story and to their personal growth.

That’s about as far as (and maybe a little farther than) the resemblance goes. For one thing, although Silverberg is a capable stylist, his prose doesn’t have the ring and rhythm of Le Guin’s. For another, while sexual flexibility is much more of an emphasis in Left Hand, repressed sexuality is a reappearing theme in A Time of Changes. Neither does A Time of Changes resonate originally or incisively with other mid-life crisis stories, fiction or non. On the whole, I would rank this book below the more celebrated (and simplistic) SF works of the period like Ringworld and Tau Zero.

The 2009 edition contains a five-page preface by Silverberg in which he recounts the book’s publishing history and its origin in the social context of the day: “. . . it was, I suppose, my response to all that had been happening in American life and in my own in the laset few years of the 1960s—that time of changes for so many of us.” As in his monthly columns for Asimov’s Science Fiction, Silverberg’s voice in this preface is a refreshingly self-effacing one, especially for SF.

This edition also features the “first-ever map of Borthan,” bleats the back-cover copy. Thank you very much, although it could have been more useful had the intent been to create something legible rather than to convey a misplaced sense of antiquity.

Fortunately, the rest of the book, a trade paperback, is pysically easy to read. The page count at 300 makes it sound lengthier than it is. That’s because it’s divided into 74 chapters, so half the pages either begin or end a chapter and tend to be shorter. I estimate it to be around 70K words, about 10K less than Left Hand/ (304 pages in the 1999 version). The cover is a not entirely pleasing white print on gold background, the illustration a curiosity—something about being neither here nor there, perhaps.

Coming soon on my to-read list: The Book of Skulls and Dying Inside (both by Silverberg, from 1972). But first, To Say Nothing of the Dog (Connie Willis, 1998).
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Jan 03, 2025 Tani rated it it was ok

Shelves: scifi, male-author, 2025-novels

Interesting idea, killed by the protagonist that I hated.

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Dec 26, 2024 Joe rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: sci-fi, hugo-nominee, nebula-nominee, nebula-winner, read-in-2024

“In this way I cudgeled the fear from my damp soul”
“I felt eggs throbbing and impatient in my ovaries”

Really fascinating little book, despite some evidence of the times showing through here and there.

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Oct 02, 2011 Alexander widrow marked it as to-read

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