Rings

by Charles L. Harness

Book by Harness, Charles L.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Space Opera

597 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1968

About the author

Also credited as Charles Harness.
Charles Leonard Harness was born December 29, 1915 in Colorado City TX. After an abortive stint at Texas Christian University, studying to be a preacher, he moved on to George Washington University in Washington DC, where he received a B.S. degree in 1942, and a law degree in 1946. He married in 1938, and he and wife Nell have a daughter and a son. He worked as a mineral economist for the US Bureau of Mines, 1941-47, then became a patent attorney, first with American Cyanamid (1947-1953), then with W.R. Grace & Co. (1953-1981). His first story, ‘‘Time Trap’’, appeared in Astounding (8/48), and he went on to write a number of well-regarded SF stories, many involving future trials and patent attorneys. A series of patent office spoofs/stories (some co-written with Theodore L. Thomas) appeared under the pseudonym Leonard Lockhard, beginning with ‘‘Improbable Profession’’ (Astounding 9/52). His first published novel, Flight Into Yesterday (aka The Paradox Men), first appeared as a 1949 novella, and was expanded in 1953. The Rose, his most famous novella, appeared as a book in 1966. It was followed by Wagnerian space opera The Ring of Ritornel (1968), Wolfhead (1978), The Catalyst (1980), Firebird (1981), The Venetian Court (1982), Redworld (1986), Krono (1988), Lurid Dreams (1990), and Lunar Justice (1991). His short fiction has been collected in An Ornament to His Profession (1998), which includes not only ‘‘The Rose’’ but a new novella as well.

Reviews

[Manny · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a very silly, badly-written SF novel, but, as they often do, it contains some great ideas and images. The bit where the hero is trapped in the timeless netherworld is rather good. He decides he will carefully replay his whole life, from start to finish, in every detail. So he does that, and he's still stuck there. Then he does it again. Still stuck. Then he decides he'll just carry on doing it, counting the times. He's up to a few hundred thousand when he suddenly remembers. He's tried this many times before, and once he got up to several million recollections of his lifetime before he lost count.

Quite a powerful way to evoke the concept of eternity...

[Bron · Rating 5 out of 5]

My copy of this book is old, it says 35p on the cover and I've read it several times, it is in English, but not for years. I wanted to revisit it before I'm too old to focus on the small print. It hasn't lost it's fascination over the years, in fact it's worn very well. Set in an unimaginably far future, it's a tale of injury and revenge, of how much of a mind makes a person and explores the question of whether events are predestined or subject to chance. And James Andrek is a very likeable protagonist. Definitely one of my favourite sci fi novels.

[Roddy Williams · Rating 4 out of 5]

‘A THRILLING SPACE SAGA BY A MASTER FANTASIST

“The Deep is the Beginning and the End, at once the womb and the coffin of time and space, the well-spring of life and death, the mother of nodes”

James Andrek, brilliant young lawyer in the Great House of Oberon, mighty tyrant of the twelve Galaxies, has two obsessions: finding his Poet Laureate brother, Omere, and unravelling the mystery of his father’s death many years ago at the Node, perilous birthplace of the Universe.

Did Andrek’s quest end at the Node? or in the Great House, peopled by the beautiful and the sinister? or did the answers lie in the subtle mind of the arcane Master Surgeon?

A weird, mind-expanding thriller containing every element to delight the SF fan and newcomer alike.’

Blurb from the 1974 Panther paperback edition

James Andrek has spent years searching for his brother Omere, unaware that all the time Omere has been in the palace of his employer, Oberon, ruler of the twelve galaxies. Years before, Oberon had his Master Surgeon remove Omere’s brain and implant it into Oberon’s music and poetry machine so that (ostensibly) Omere’s genius for composition may never die.
James is also searching for information surrounding his father’s death in The Node, the area at the centre of the Universe where space is constantly being created, a perilous place at best.
Also at the palace are Kedrys, a highly intelligent centaur-like creature who may or may not be the future of the human race and Amatar, Oberon’s daughter. Amatar has had conversations with the Omere/music-machine since she was a child although she does not know his real nature, and Omere has often attempted to persuade her to turn him off and destroy him.
Like most of Harness’ work this is an exquisitely structured piece. The chapters are numbered and titled up to 12 and then back down from 11 to ‘x’ (which replaces 1) and the titles are reflections, distortions or reversals of the original 11 chapters.
James is sent out to the Node by Oberon to present the defence in a historic case. The planet Earth has been towed to The Node and stands accused of crimes against the galaxy. It will be destroyed. James’ part in this should be merely a formality, but he feels he can make a case to save the planet, to stop it from being hurled into The Deep. Attempts have been made on James’ life and each time, a grey-robed man called Iouve, glowing with a faint blue aura, has saved him.
In Chapter 12, James reaches the Node and discovers from Huntyr (one of Oberon’s soldiers and the man who tried to kill him) the details of his father’s death. From this point on, the present has some relationship with the past – as in the chapter headings. 12 is also the number of Oberon’s galaxies and is significant to the religion of Alea, whose die has twelve faces.
Brilliant and complex.

[Thomas R · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting SF story. This could have been a big space opera but it is a short big stage SF story. Harness weaves an enjoyable story no matter how one says it. To write too much about the story is to give away too many details. Harness, unfortunately, has written too few works, and one wishes for more. There is a NESFA omnibus that contains almost all of Harness's written novels. I would get that one. If I had to say one thing negative about the book is that it has a sudden ending like he reached the limit of words his publisher would allow.

[Harald · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read it twice over the years. I like how he created a futuristic religion that spans the universe.
Read the Dutch version

[John JJJJJJJJ · Rating 5 out of 5]

A good read with a few minor flaws. I really like the suspense, the questions Andrek asks himself and the revelations throughout the story. The last chapters (the last 30 pages) were just beautiful, emotional: brotherly love (between Andrek and his little brother Omere) and family love (between Oberon and his daughter Amatar). At first, I wanted to give it 4 stars, but the last few pages convinced me to give it 5.

It's good to read a short novel from the golden age of science fiction, compared to modern trilogies with 500/600 pages per volume.

[Pete · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had high hopes that this would be an under-appreciated gem given the reputation of The Paradox Men and The Rose. While this book is not bad, it reads like a Golden Era holdover rather than a work from the late sixties. The book is a lot like something that A.E. van Vogt wrote, so the story is complex melding elements of science and religion. While fun to read in parts, the story is not sufficiently developed to make it memorable.

[Peter · Rating 3 out of 5]

Chaos vs Predestination

My video review below
https://youtu.be/SyrvPa8AVRQ

[Nicolas · Rating 2 out of 5]

s'agit d'un roman écrit en 1969, qui a beaucoup vieilli, je trouve,
dans ses mises en situation, la manière de voir les personnages, et la façond e dérouler l'action.
Il nous décrit les aventures d'un homme qui, après avoir perdu son frère, va le rechercher et se retrouver, de fait, embrigadé dans des aventures complètement délirantes. Ce roman prend par ailleurs comme hypothèse cosmologique que la matière qui apparaît dans l'espace provient d'une source unique, autour de laquelle les galaxies sont organisées. En ce lieu, les propriétés de l'espace sont modifiées et certains phénomènes extraordinaires peuvent s'y passer.
Ce roman est en fin de compte très étrange. Si le début est assez intéressant, et si l'organisation des chapîtres mérite un détour, ce n'est pas là l'aspect le plus fascinant de l'oeuvre. En fait, c'est une histoire qui fascine par son étrangeté et par le rôle joué par certains symboles : l'araignée, les nombres, le dé à douze faces, ...
La quatrième de couverture nous vante un ouvrage très poétique. Et si
toute la première moitié nous laisse présager un space-opera franchement classique et ennuyeux, toute la deuxième partie révèle les joyaux volontairement cachés dans cette première partie. On a droit à des considérations sur la vengeance, l'univers, la manipulation et le reste. En fait, il est franchement difficile d'en dire plus sans violement déflorer l'intrigue, ce qu'elle ne mérite pas, vu son épaisseur. Il est d'ailleurs dommage que certains auteurs soient capables de pondre des récits aussi minces, même quand il s'agit, à l'évidence, pour eux de fournir une trame sur laquelle poser leurs images poétiques.
Au final, c'est un roman intéressant, mais que je n'ai pas vraiment apprécié, peut-être aprce que son rythme, ou la manière dont l'intrigue progressait, ne me plaisaient pas.

[Andrewcharles420 · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was, for the most part, a fun book to read. I enjoyed the 'sciencing' it did (pretty accurate explanations of stellar nuclear processes, some human metabolism) though I didn't really think it at all necessary--the book effectively used magic whenever it needed to (super-surgery to reengineer human processes, bugs that 'eat' energy from nuclear reactions). And apart from the book being in space, and concerning itself with extra dimensions, I think it could just as well have been set in a medieval style fantasy story (though I bet that could be said for many, many sci-fi novels). There were many times when I was frustrated at the way the main character was thinking or reacting to his situation--as though he wasn't connecting the dots, or was choosing to ignore pertinent information. It wasn't just that there were many points in the book where several years lapsed within a few lines though, and it was necessarily just fresher in my memory--but there were lines of thought that he was pressed into thinking, with one obvious way out, and he's hemming and hawing over what to do, before he does the obvious thing he first thought of. Brevity; act.

I'm not sure what to make of the religious aspects of the book--not that it was proselytizing, or even related to a 'real' religion--just that the religious elements of the storyline did not convey a point or idea clearly, or seem internally consistent--or seem consistent in a religiously-interpretable way (i.e. allowing for a modicum of dogmatically inconsistent components). It was as though one of the principle religions was based on a chaos deity... who kept things ordered... because this is the end result of chaos in the loopy never-ending multiverse.

[Marianne]

It's been too long since I read the book and am putting down my thoughts, but generally:

I think I was on the fence on this one, but I set it aside in indecision as to keep or not. It had some silly thoughts, and some interesting thoughts, with odd politics and not very mysterious mystery and the playing with stellar science. Saving to read another day to see if it continues to entertain.