{"id":2748,"date":"2018-04-28T11:36:40","date_gmt":"2018-04-28T15:36:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/orionscoldfire.com\/?p=2748"},"modified":"2018-07-07T20:26:56","modified_gmt":"2018-07-08T00:26:56","slug":"majipoor-chronicles-by-robert-silverberg-a-science-fiction-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/orionscoldfire.com\/index.php\/2018\/04\/28\/majipoor-chronicles-by-robert-silverberg-a-science-fiction-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Majipoor Chronicles by Robert Silverberg \u2013 A Science Fiction Review"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Previously I reviewed the first book of this series <a href=\"https:\/\/orionscoldfire.com\/index.php\/2018\/04\/04\/lord-valentines-castle-by-robert-silverberg-a-science-fiction-fantasy-book-review\/\">Lord Valentine\u2019s Castle<\/a>.\u00a0 And since I liked that volume I went ahead and bought the other two volumes.\u00a0 Majipoor Chronicles is constructed as a bridge between the first and third volumes and also serves to fill in as much of the backstory of Majipoor as it can.\u00a0 One of the minor characters from the first book uses a machine that can record and replay the experiences of a person\u2019s life so that another can virtually relive them as if it were his own life unfolding. \u00a0Using this plot device, we are served up a series of short stories varying between twenty and fifty pages in length.\u00a0 Themes and characters vary.\u00a0 Some are personal accounts of ordinary people living through the history of this planet.\u00a0 All the primary characters are humans but the stories sometimes are primarily concerning human\/non-human interaction.\u00a0 Some of the stories involve characters who are major historical figures in the Majipoor world.\u00a0 And some of the stories shed a light on the unusual place that dreams play in Majipoor life.\u00a0 And finally, the last story is directly about the hero of the first book, Lord Valentine.<\/p>\n<p>My first comment on the book is that it absolutely cannot be read with first reading Lord Valentine\u2019s Castle.\u00a0 Without first walking through Majipoor with Valentine on his journey of discovery I think the details and logic of Majipoor life would seem random and confusing.\u00a0 Without some grounding in the structure of their ruling system and the relations between the sentient species some of the stories would be especially confusing.<\/p>\n<p>The second thing that I want to discuss is the vintage of these books.\u00a0 They were written at the end of the nineteen seventies and into the nineteen eighties.\u00a0 During that period science fiction authors were heavily invested in introducing sex as a major component of their stories.\u00a0 Silverberg was no exception.\u00a0 So, in addition to normal sexual matters he highlights the oddity of the male protagonist who experiences these mind recordings experiencing sex from the point of view of one of his female subjects.\u00a0 And in one story at an all woman\u2019s school the fact that two of the women were in an intimate setting has one character wondering if it was an attempted sexual advance.\u00a0 I think the character more or less says the \u201cSeinfeldian\u201d line, \u201cnot that there\u2019s anything wrong with that.\u201d\u00a0 And later on, there is a sex scene involving a woman and two brothers.\u00a0 Of course, by today\u2019s standards these are extremely tame but at the time these were boundary testing.\u00a0 The more bizarre sexual situation involves two human characters in separate stories that engage in sex with non-humans.\u00a0 In fact, the really odd one has a young woman actually initiating sex with an unemotional, fairly uninterested but polite lizard man who the female character is nursing back to health from a leg injury.\u00a0 This one was a bit much for me.\u00a0 I have to admit that my tolerance human woman \/ lizard man sex is extremely limited.\u00a0 So that facet of the stories is not entirely to my satisfaction.\u00a0 As far as his description of normal male female sexuality I thought that was fairly done.\u00a0 And of course, the adult nature of the books would exclude recommending them to very young people.<\/p>\n<p>Putting aside this second point, which is restricted to a small part of the overall book, I enjoyed the writing and I found several of the stories very original.\u00a0 Silverberg has a fertile imagination and writes his characters in an interesting and sympathetic manner.\u00a0 I especially liked the stories that advanced the historical knowledge of Majipoor.\u00a0 My favorite was the war story, \u201cThe Time of the Burning.\u201d\u00a0 It directly addresses the human colonization of Majipoor and the impact this had on the aboriginal population.\u00a0 But overall I see Majipoor Chronicles as an interlude between Lord Valentine\u2019s Castle and Valentine Pontifex, the third book of the series.\u00a0 It\u2019s merely a snack between the main courses.\u00a0 If you\u2019re reading the series then you must read it because there are a few plot points that would be missed with out it but overall it is more of a background enhancer for the Majipoor world building effort.\u00a0 Now on to Valentine Pontifex!<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/orionscoldfire.com\/index.php\/2018\/07\/07\/valentine-pontifex-volume-three-of-the-majipoor-cycle-by-robert-silverberg-a-science-fiction-fantasy-book-review\/\">Valentine Pontifex \u2013 Volume Three of the Majipoor Cycle by Robert Silverberg \u2013 A Science Fiction-Fantasy Book Review<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Previously I reviewed the first book of this series Lord Valentine\u2019s Castle.\u00a0 And since I liked that volume I went ahead and bought the other<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[241,237,4,242],"tags":[68,200,1000,918,1002,1003,917,44,265,375,1001],"class_list":["post-2748","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews","category-reviews","category-sff","category-sff-book-reviews","tag-book-review","tag-fantasy","tag-lord-valentines-castle","tag-majipoor","tag-majipoor-chronicles","tag-majipoor-series","tag-robert-silverberg","tag-sci-fi","tag-science-fiction","tag-sff","tag-valentine-pontifex"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v20.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Majipoor Chronicles by Robert Silverberg \u2013 A Science Fiction Review 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