Down the Bright Way

by Robert Reed

In the deepness of space there are millions of worlds like our own - and each with its own humanity. They are linked by the Bright, an ancient pathway between the stars created by an ancient, godlike race known only as the Makers. Now humanity travels the Bright, uniting its worlds to a common desiny. But the Bright can also be travelled by those bent on destruction - those who have chosen a different path, whose sole purpose is conquest.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Alternate History

Paperback

First published January 1, 1991

About the author

He has also been published as Robert Touzalin.

Reviews

[Darnoc Leadburger · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I picked up this book, I figured there was about the same chance of this book being a science fictional masterpiece as there was of it reminding me of a dumpster fire; I bought it nonetheless because I've never read a Robert Reed novel, only short fiction, and I've figured that his blend of "out-there" space-opera-influenced adventures might appeal to my literary sensibilities. Luckily, this time, my gamble paid off; this book was really cool. It's not for everyone - it's oozing with exposition and elicits rather divisive opinions on the character front - but I dug it, and it's helped to cement my 2023 birthday haul as one of my best book hauls to this day. Now, without further ado, here's a summary of the book for my future reference (which you can probably skip if you haven't read the book) before my critical thoughts on this adventure through space.

The book starts out with a character named Kyle, a Wanderer, one of the humans from another world who travels to all the different earths through the Bright (an inexplicable inter-dimensional/spacey-wacey tunnel connecting a possibly infinite number of identical planets) under the leadership of Jy. He has a new little relationship with a young woman named Billy, who's of the then-present day and age, and he promises her that she'll get to meet Jy after one of the Wanderers' famous rallies. Kyle is rather nervous about this because, well... he's not a real Wanderer. He's an ordinary guy who's decided to fake it when they visited *our* Earth for some attention, and even though he can move and act just like one of them, he doesn't know how he'll get Billy an audience. But before we can watch him cross that bridge, we're introduced to Cotton - a "Termite" from a humanoid species from a different earth with a really interesting backstory - and Quence, one of Jy's right-hand Wanderers. When we finally get in Jy's head we hear some of the backstory behind her people and how they discovered the Bright and how she was one of the first of her kind to explore other worlds before she used up her life campaigning for more exploration of other worlds. She got her wish, and now, a million years later, she gets to hold a rally where she talks about all her goals for uniting all the different human races and finding the original makers of the Bright to our little Earth. The rally is a smashing success, and afterwards, Kyle and Billy find their way into the line to meet Jy, but things quickly go south when the two men in front of them - Cotton and his "handler" masquerading as a father and son - cause havoc and kidnap Jy, Quence, Kyle, Billy, and two other Wanderers. They're quickly taken down the Bright at breakneck speeds, getting closer and closer to Jy's homeworld and closer and closer to their terrible objective...

That objective and the inspiration behind it are thoroughly explored through dense but engaging exposition throughout their trip down the Bright. Moliak, Cotton's master, is revealed to have been one of Jy's best students back before the Wanderers were commissioned. He was held in such high esteem that he was one of the highest ranking members of the force that went down the Bright in the opposite way of Jy's company; it was during this journey that they met the Termites, Cotton's brethren, a humanoid race packed into a rather insectoid population caste system nearly, but never, overflowing with warm bodies. This reproductive fervor made them a prime species to enlist when Moliak's people met a race called the unFound (monikered as a direct contrast to Jy's race, the Founders), a bloodthirsty people whose bloodlust defined them. Their refusal to communicate on any sane, rational level tested Moliak's troops for all they were worth and forced them to disobey Jy's commandments of peace and well-meaningless; they blew up their solar system in order to continue down the Bright. And then, in the next system, they met more unFound; the battle waged on and on until they had armies of Termites fighting, to no avail. Jy is disgusted, and is even more disgusted when she realizes that Moliak wants to blow up their homeworld, which powers their Bright-transportation system, in order to shut down the Bright (or snap it in two; it's not really clear) and halt the potential expansion of the UnFound. Once they reach their homeworld Moliak tries possessing Kyle to use his Wanderer genes to do certain nefarious things, but his non-Wanderer (and therefore non-hard-memoried) nature confuses Moliak long enough for everyone else to escape. Quence ends up almost dying due to Cotton eating him when he swallows Jy's hard-memory in an attempt to stop the Bright's destruction, and Moliak is only stopped by Jy shooting him at the end of this tense climatic action sequence. It's the epilogues that really got me, though, with Kyle showing off how much of a mentally ill stalker he is and Billy joining the Wanderers and Jy having this heart-breaking, powerful speech to the Wanderers who were fighting the unFound before she reeled the situation back in, admitting that she only killed Moliak because he insulted her, and that she's just as guilty as the mass-murderers, and that this time, they have to go through the Bright the right way. It was a lot more thematic and even powerful than I'm probably making it seem, but other than that tonal flatness - there's the short of it.

Whenever I have a daunting review in front of me, like this one, I like to start by taking a look at the most fundamental element of a book: the prose. Basically, how good is the author at stringing words together? Is it smooth or blocky, routine or inventive with its vocabulary? In a slightly surprising turn of fate, Robert Reed's prose was pretty good. It was descriptive, but not overly so; it used nice turns-of-phrase; the perspectives were always quite well done and never felt cheap and YA-adjacent as writing from the perspectives who are supposed to be wise and powerful often does. Reed's prose is impressive and very competent, making the whole thing more readable than it would've been in most hands.

But before we talk too much about that 90's YA cheapness that Reed deftly avoided, I want to shine a light on something I couldn't during the summary: all of the good technological concepts at play here. The central concept of this book is that there are hundreds of thousands, millions, possibly billions or more, of planets orbiting similar if not identical suns (I don't remember if all the solar systems were the same) connected by this ancient piece of technology called the Bright. Life has evolved differently on each of these planets, leading to parallel cultures like ours, the Founders', the Termites, the unFoudnd, and more. When Jy and her people started upon the Bright they mostly only ran across primitive cultures, but as time went on they started meeting more and more advanced peoples, leading to a few *Quantum Leap*-esque sequences. This is cool enough on its own, but Reed is able to throw some cool science fictional concepts like the Wanderers' division between their cybernetic hard memories and their "soft neurons" into the story without ever hitting you over the head with it or anything like that. There's cultural comparison and cool bits of technological that I'd rather not spoil, but if you like big ideas - even though this book won't have as many for the SF veteran as some other positive reviews would have you claim - this book definitely has a few in store for you.

Some of these cultural and technological ideas are brought to you in the form of infodumps from the book's six different perspectives, but some of them are much more subtly woven into things in a way that ends up smacking you in the face (in a good way) when they become more important further into the story. This happened several times with the epigraphs between sub-chapters which take lines from Jy's speeches or various characters' journals, which sometimes only make sense in rapturous hindsight. I imagine I'd get more out of this book upon a re-read, which is always a delightful thing to be able to say. The subtle foreshadowing and reveals may help this book not feel schlocky like it easily could've; when it comes to grand scales, you almost never want to take the perspective of one of the mythological figures in that grand scale's mythology, but Reed is able to do it well. It never feels small (like it did in John E. Stith's 1994 novel *Reunion on Neverend*, which features a similar novum as the Bright but with a much duller flavor and cast of characters) and even ends up emotionally resonating with you, and that's thanks in part to Reed's good character work.

"Big-idea SF" and strong, literary character writing haven't been on the same page for much of the genre's history, but Reed manages it here with the complexities of characters like Jy, Quence, and even Kyle showing throughout this book. Character backstories are kind of infodumped like some of the worldbuilding is, but it's always in a pleasant, well-pointed way, and all the main characters end up having pleasant (or, rather, satisfying) conclusions to their arcs by the end of the book. I found Jy's particularly strong since it strongly relates to the book's themes about how organizations can lose their way. It kind of harkens back to Star Trek's Section 31, or rather, forward too; I don't think Section 31 was a glimmer in anyone's eye when Reed was writing *Down the Bright Way*. Nevertheless, a notable sense of self-responsibility and moral leadership runs throughout the core of this book and ends up being resolved by Jy's speech to the murdering Wanders at the end of it. It just struck a cord on me and hits on a theme that I don't see a lot of written SF do, even if took the in-universe characters a million years to get to the point where they needed serious moral help. You can add "themes" on the list of "pleasant surprises" right next to "strong characterization."

I do have some nitpicks with the book, but... they're pretty minor. For one, I don't understand why Moliak's plan to blow up the Founders' homeworld would mean the end of the Bright. The characters talk about how his planned explosion would tear a hole in this ancient technology, but Moliak's explorers would still be able to move between their worlds and Jy's could still move down their end. I think the more likely reasoning is that because the Founders' now-barren-and-swollen planet powers their travel through the Bright destroying it would simply stop them from travelling it, which is cool, but the unFoudn would still probably be able to exploit it, so... maybe I just wasn't paying close enough attention because I read this during a pretty hectic and otherwise musical week. That being said, the fact that I got such a kick out of it during a distracting week is a testament to the book. I think I did have some disagreements with the characterizations and whatnot while reading, but now that I've finished it, all my complaints seem to have been retconned... I guess that's a credit in Robert Reed's favor.

At the end of the day, I'd be remiss if I didn't give *Down the Bright Way* a pretty good rating after all that praising. I think it's officially fermented from a good 8.5/10 to a 9; maybe it could've even achieved that rating out of the gate if I'd read it at a different time. I'll probably re-read this some day, and it'll be interesting to see if it holds up over time; it'll also be interesting to see if most of Reed's other novels are better than this, as the discourse suggests. Hopefully I can get to finding out soon because I'm definitely eager to read more of this guy and follow his imagination down more stops along the Bright Way that we call his imagination...

[Kevin Phyland · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Bright is a linking interdimensional pathway between millions of alternate Earths, and the Wanderers are humans from various of these tasked with uniting humanity in all its forms and ways. When Wanderers come to the Earth of Billie and Kyle, Kyle decides to impersonate a Wanderer, as they are feted and given high status. Kyle and Billie form a faux couple as Billie is unaware that she is living with a fake. Trapped into a promise to take Billie to meet the most highly-ranked and million year-old Wanderer Jy, Kyle and Billie travel to the Bright for a meeting. There a coup starts with two rogue Wanderers determined to find The Makers, ancient beings who built The Bright, and break The Bright in two - for presumed crimes that Wanderers have committed on UnFound Earths. The plan was to kidnap some Wanderers to use as a key to arming an ancient destruct mechanism and Billie was collateral damage. However when the Wanderers choose Kyle as their vessel they make their only mistake as he is a fake. And this mistake could destroy all the Earths. Fascinating stuff from Robert Reed with chapters from multiple viewpoints to give you a sense of each character’s motivations and personalities.

[Ken Ramsay · Rating 1 out of 5]

I couldn't get excited about this book. The first half is a slow introduction to the characters and setting the scene. Then the pace picks up for a while but I found it difficult to maintain interest and eventually gave up. There is not enough development of the central idea to compensate for the lack of action or character development for me.

[Rod Hyatt · Rating 1 out of 5]

Drones on and on, building the story way to slow. Can't finish. Must have something a little faster out the gate. Got about half way, no further.

[Frank · Rating 1 out of 5]

I just couldn't get into it.

[Len · Rating 4 out of 5]

Overall an interesting premise and pretty well written. I found the overall premise of the bright quite interesting and the fact the earth's religions were being replaced by a different one.

[John JJJJJJJJ · Rating 1 out of 5]

This novel had a lot of good ideas, but they were poorly exploited. For example, the different humans of the Parallel Lands: Creators, Founders, ... plus, Book I (the novel is cut into 3 parts) is slow and boring. The other two books are not slow, just boring. I couldn't get into the story, and the only times I did, it didn't even last 5 pages. I was more into the quotes at the beginning of the chapters (because each chapter starts with a quote, taken from one of the characters' diaries). That's saying a lot!

In the end, the novel is just dull, with some good ideas badly exploited. There are an infinite number of parallel Earths, all different, and this isn't really developed in the plot. It's mostly the characters and their relationships that are developed.

[Murph · Rating 3 out of 5]

The blurb text for this book leads to different expectations for the story.

What the book is really about is interesting (abstract spoilers): a perfect, advanced pacifist society meets an advanced society of perfect viciousness. The pacifist society is corrupted in the process. One of the main pacifist characters attempts penance for the corruption in the end.

No conclusions are drawn in the novel, which I think is a good thing. It makes for a meatier "what if" to chew over.

[David H.]

Why I didn't finish this: I love Robert Reed's Greatship stories, but this one is very Earth-based, and I think I thought it was a different book that I've been trying to find, so instead I got this weird parallel Earth visiting story which features a weird dude who wants to pretend to be one of the parallel-Earth humans instead of a normal Earth human.

[Guillaume · Rating 4 out of 5]

De la sf oscillant entre les problèmes multidimensionnels et humains. Une bonne lecture, les InTrouvés resteront en mémoire, alors qu'ils ne présent qu'en toile de fond, la marque d'une bonne écriture de l'antagonisme

[Shawn · Rating 3 out of 5]

As many others have said, this is too slow to get to the point of the story. This would have been better as a novella; it feels like it's been stretched a little too thin in places, and while the ending is okay, I feel like it needed something much more impressive after such a slow burn.

[Nick Ray · Rating 2 out of 5]

boring

[Roddy Williams · Rating 3 out of 5]

‘In the deepness of space there are millions of worlds like our own. All are linked by The Bright, a pathway between the stars, created by an ancient godlike race known only as The Makers.

Now Humanity travels the Bright, uniting its worlds to a common destiny and a better future. But they do not travel alone. For others have discovered this gateway to the stars and they are planning to use it for a far more deadly purpose.’

Blurb from the 2003 Orbit paperback edition.

Reed takes the premise that, some time in the Earth’s distant past, an elder race seeded the Earth’s crust with a lattice of degenerate matter, the consequence of which was that somehow this lattice is able to admit passage – via a portal – to an infinite string of alternate Earths.
It’s a large-scale production contrasted – as in ‘An Exaltation of Larks’ with a neatly detailed portrait of small town America.
For a million years, the Founders, ands alternate species of human with large crania and furry faces, have been travelling the Bright – as the chain of portals is called – in both directions from their homeworld, uniting and civilising each Earth.
Jy, the million year old leader of one of the two Founder missions, has now reached our earth. There she is kidnapped by Moliak, her counterpart from the opposite end of the Bright. He has discovered an unstoppable civilisation of cyborg humans. Rendered almost invincible by augments and nanotechnology they have reverted to a savage tribal existence. Moliak wishes to destroy the Bright in order to contain them and stop them over-running the thousands of Earths already discovered.
Two American teenagers, Kyle and his date, Billie, are dragged into the kidnap and are taken along with Jy and her retinue on a journey through the various Earths, back to the Founders’ homeworld.
It’s not one of Reed’s best, but even here the characterisation is excellent. the people are real; they have flaws. Kyle is a fantasist and is pretending he is on of the aliens’ envoys, a Wanderer, in order to impress and seduce women. Confused adolescent males turn up a lot in Reed’s work and are generally portrayed with a blunt honesty. With some writers this may have made them seem heartless and cold. However, as with characters in other Reed books, Kyle emerges as a sad victim of himself. Reed makes us see his flaws – perhaps Reed’s own early flaws – through more understanding eyes.
Reed is also fascinated by the concept of near-immortal beings who bear comparison with similar characters in the work of van Vogt who also painted his highly colourful tales against absurdly vast backdrops.
The immortality issue is addressed, but does not satisfactorily convince that the central characters are over a million years old. All wanderers carry a hard memory unit which, if the body is destroyed or wears out, means that the mind of the individual can live on. Rather than explore the ramifications of this technology Reed uses it only as a plot device. However he deals much more effectively with the subject of immortality in later works such as ‘Marrow’ and ‘Sister Alice’
The structure does not help this novel since it is a multi third-person narrative in which we change characters with each section. With three or four characters this device may have worked but six or more gives the narrative a disjointed feel and it lacks coherence.
It is far more complex than it first appears since most of the main characters have secrets, some of which are not revealed until the end, but then again, this is another Reed device which he employs widely elsewhere.
Kyle’s secret we know from very early on, and we subsequently learn surprising things about other characters as the novel progresses.

[M · Rating 2 out of 5]

not a bad book
but just didnt do it for me
you know those stories where you read a entire book or sit through an entire movie and at the end you think you were just told a 5 minute story? I don't mean the case where time passes quickly but where you feel you haven't been told anything at all, or not enough...

That's how I felt after reading Down The Bright Way.

It has a number of great ideas and concepts, but somehow the overall premise which was built up massively didn't delivery at all, and what turned out to be the actual plot didn't justify all that built up.
A bit of an anticlimax.

Also, and here I must admit, maybe I am reading Reed's book not chronologically, but Reed starts to feel a bit like a one trick pony: although not all books / stories play in the same universe, there are certain themes (god-like humans, longevity, nano technology, augmented brains, hard memory) which come up over and over again, and it can start to feel a bit like deja vue....


Anyway, for me this was a forgettable piece...

[Kersplebedeb · Rating 3 out of 5]

i must say, Mr Reed does like the "deep time" backdrop to his stories; in fact, come to think of it, it is what first appealed to me about his writing

briefly and without spoilers, this is a story of two possible results of asymetrical cross-cultural contact - i want to say "colonialism" but that's not true in the story's terms, although one guesses that the story retold by another author might have developed that frame. the political themes, if they are even intentional, are very muted, this is primarily a tale of other-worldly imagination, and unforeseen consequences.

an enjoyable light read.

[Jonathan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Big ideas can be dull.

[Dusty The2ofHarts-com · Rating 3 out of 5]

Science Fiction. Original idea, but not a favorite.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

A surprisingly good book - I ran across it almost by accident but it has an intriguing premise and satisfying ending.

[Lilla Smee · Rating 2 out of 5]

Looking forward to indulging in another novel by Reed - loved Marrow and Sister Alice.

[Lord Humungus · Rating 3 out of 5]

One of the few Robert Reed books that I was engaged in throughout and where I wasn't wholly dissatisfied with the ending. A good yarn.

[Maria Frank · Rating 3 out of 5]

It took me months to read the first half it was do slow. There is a lot if plodding.before you get to the interesting bits just over half way through.

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

Medicore really; quite enjoyable whilst reading but completely forgettable.

[Isabel (kittiwake)]

The plot could have been interesting, but the characters were dull and two-dimensional and I really couldn't be bothered to finish it.