The Remaking of Sigmund Freud

by Barry N. Malzberg

When a terrestrial spaceship encounters intelligent aliens, the explorers from Earth activate their Freud simulacrum for its advice in handling the situation

Genres: Science Fiction

275 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published June 12, 1985

About the author

Barry Nathaniel Malzberg was an American writer and editor, most often of science fiction and fantasy.

He had also published as:
Mike Barry (thriller/suspense)
K.M. O'Donnell (science fiction/fantasy)
Mel Johnson (adult)
Howard Lee (martial arts/TV tie-ins)
Lee W. Mason (adult)
Claudine Dumas (adult)
Francine di Natale (adult)
Gerrold Watkins (adult)
Eliot B. Reston

Reviews

[Stephen Rowland · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love Barry Malzberg more than... probably anyone else. In the entire world. But this novel needed a better editor. How he CAN go on. Stylistically, his repetition works not unlike than of Thomas Bernhard -- hypnotic, gripping, almost never tedious. Of course Malzberg is no Bernhard, but he is a much, much better writer than people seem to notice. Of course people would have to buy his books to notice. But not this one.

[James Broussard · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book could be a prime example that our surrounding and mindset has almost as much to do with our enjoyment of a novel as the content. 'The Remaking of Sigmund Freud' has everything that an SF reader should want in a novel, originality, humor, complexity, interesting writing style, but somehow the book comes off as flat. I'm forced to ask myself if this was just my experience in reading, as I was on vacation and this book followed several other superior novels, or is this the general experience in reading the book?


I never assumed that Sigmund Freud would make for a good protagonist in a novel, and I don't think Malzburg believed that either. The character of Freud in the book comes off about as well as one would think he would in real life. His internal monologue and actions are frustrating throughout the novel, kind of what you would expect if Sigmund Freud actually were to go on the sort of space adventure we see here.


You have to applaud Malzburg for originality, no matter what else you think. The concept of famous people from the twentieth century somehow ending up on spaceships, no matter the faulty logic involved or the convoluted reasoning behind it, is pretty awesome. Deserving even more applause is Malzburg's choice of which twentieth century personalities to showcase in his novel. If I were picking famous people to place on a spaceship I would probably go with Ghengis Khan, or George Patton, making it a military SF novel seems like a logical move. Even Sir Richard Burton or some other explorer in space would make sense. Malzburg's idea to resurrect Freud, Mark Twain, and Emily Dickenson deserves some degree of respect. This is probably the only novel ever published that will feature these three characters on a spaceship.


The actual commentary that Malzburg is trying to make with these characters borders on the profound but is ultimately derailed by the distraction of using real life characters. Some of the comments the author attempts to make about mental illness and the future of humanity in space are interesting, but when Sigmund Freud shows up complaining about Carl Jung the entire thing goes off the rails and any gravitas the author was attempting to bring turn into a spate of giggles.


Towards the end there is a bit of introspection regarding fame and success, and how close each of these major historical characters perhaps was to being largely forgotten by history. Freud then trades in his entire fictional life from the book for the real life that we are aware of. It's an interesting bit of metafiction and kind of a cool question to think about, the random choices in a life that can lead to success or failure. But, by and large doesn't save the novel from earlier distractions.


This isn't the first book I've reviewed that attempted to take a preposterous premise and treat it seriously. I think 'The Void Captain's Tale' wins the prize in that regard. Whereas in Void Captain Norman Spinrad's talent as a writer was able to keep the reader grounded and suspend disbelief (stave off the giggles) for the duration of the novel, in Remaking Malzburg is not quite up to the task of making us take this story seriously the entire time.


Malzburg would have done better to emulate a writing style more like Philip Dick who even in his earlier, less ridiculous work, never seemed to take his writing too seriously and and was never scared to let the originality of his idea overshadow everything else. Jonathan Lethem's 'Gun, with Occasional Music,' would be a modern idea of this, where the author never demands that we take the novel too seriously, and is therefore able to command our attention through a good story.


Remaking is an interesting novel that gets points for originality. It's just what the reader should be looking for in a Nebula nominee from the early eighties. Flawed but original, I'm sure every review for the novel was bound to say 'something new' somewhere in it, which this book definitely is. Though 'The Remaking of Sigmund Freud' never really had a chance to win any awards, it was published in the same year as 'Ender's Game' and 'Blood Music' after all, but it's more than deserving of a nomination, and I'm glad it was. Otherwise it might be totally forgotten by now.


I'm trying to read and review all the novels ever nominated for the Hugo or Nebula Awards, this review is imported from allthenominees.blogspot.com

[Clark · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a very good story, but in the end, it felt a little like a first draft. Great ideas, but too many dangling subplots. The introspection was interesting, but what was happening and why seemed to be slighted a bit by those inner struggles of the main characters. I get that that was sort of the point of the novel, but sometimes I found myself saying, "Wait... what? What's going on right now?"

I wanted to know a lot more about the relationship between Mark Twain and Emily Dickinson, and although Walt Whitman was a great motivator as an unseen character (revealed only through his scathing letters to Dickinson), I wanted to have him involved in the story as well. The interaction between Mahler and Freud was terrific, and the introduction of Dickinson's poetry by Freud to Mahler helped not only to develop the plot, but also to tie together the 19th Century West on either side of the Atlantic Ocean.

A good book that was really only disappointing for me owing to my conviction that it was very close to being a great book, but needed a little more development.

[Jheurf · Rating 3 out of 5]

First of all, despite what the cover might suggest, this book has no humour or whimsy. It is a serious thoughtful...and oh-so boring book.

There are about 10 minor events (or things that happen) in the entire book. The rest of the text is introspection, doubts on what a character should do and regrets on having done it.

It's hard to feel the angst or any suspense during 50 pages of "should we revive Freud or not?", when you damn well know they will. I get it, there was trepidation, move on.

I had to give it 3 stars because it is still exceptionally well written and researched. The Freud character is very believable. It's just the story that bored me.

******

5 years later and I remember nothing about this book. Even re-reading my rants, I remember nothing.

[Alex · Rating 2 out of 5]

VOTO:2,6
È stato davvero faticoso portare a termine la lettura di questo romanzo: le idee di fondo sono interessanti e piuttosto originali, anche se le situazioni paradossali non si contano; tuttavia dargli la sufficienza è troppo, personalmente.
È molto facile perdere il filo della narrazione e perdersi nei meandri dei castelli di pippe mentali che i protagonisti elaborano nelle loro menti.
Insomma, va bene anche applicare la psicanalisi freudiana agli astronauti, ma entro certi limiti.

[Dylan Virum · Rating 2 out of 5]

Tl;dr This book is an authors misguided attempt to jam together historical figures he finds interesting into a single (in)coherent story. Wouldn't bother with it.

I'm 112 pages in and I think I'm going to be tapping out. This story is too diffuse for me to actually feel like there is a story present at all. After 112 pages, I don't see the reason this book is pushing itself forward. One might say it is a book attempting to explore thought processes rather than debuting a riveting, adventure-esque sci-fi, but my response to this is that the thought-processes explored are banal, repetitive, and unduly full-of-themselves.

Additionally, an irritating thing I noticed: the chapters are numbered incorrectly, which confused me very much. I though I had a severe misprint, but after flipping around between chapters, it seems like this is purposeful.

[Kevin Wilson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Join a reconstructed Sigmund Freud for a "zany romp" through time and space. Not a bad read, but not a great read either. In some ways this text takes itself all too seriously (a good 30-40% of the dialogue is existential boilerplate), while in other ways it doesn't take itself seriously enough. Maybe in the 80s it was hard to imagine readers who would treat the idea of psychoanalyzing alien beings as anything other than a joke? Mahler, Emily Dickinson, and Mark Twain are also awkwardly jammed into the storyline, to questionable effect.

I'm going to try reading something else by Malzberg before the end of the year. Maybe Beyond Apollo (1972).

[MilkywayCrossing · Rating 3 out of 5]

The writing style of this book was odd. There were also several subplots that were left unresolved. There also isn’t a meaningful explanation for why Freud is revived twice. Did people in the future really not have anyone else? I would have believed even a simple explanation of ‘you’re fascinating and we admire you.’