Relatives

by George Alec Effinger

Three slightly different versions of the same man inhabit three radically different versions of our world in this novel by a Nebula Award winner. Ernest Weinraub, Ernst Weinraub, Ernst Weintraub—three slightly different versions of the same name, the same man. Each incarnation of Weintraub/Weinraub inhabits a different version of our Ernest Weinraub lives in a maddeningly overcrowded New York, a hellish near-future world where sanity and life are imperiled by a nightmare of pollution, overpopulation and manic power games played by the six despotic men who rule Earth; Ernst Weinraub is a poet and an intellectual who lives in a decadent world in which America has never been colonized, Europe and Asia are crumbling, and Africa has only one populated city, a world where drink, drugs and sex reduce human being to little more than animals and a man feels himself being sucked under with all the others; Ernst Weintraub, an idealistic revolutionary, lives in a world in which the Allies lost the First World War to “Jermany” and people are forced into a terror-ridden underground existence as tyranny rides roughshod over man and civilization. The single factor uniting these startlingly different worlds is Weinraub/Weintraub. But even he is molded and distorted, it would appear, by the various environments and societies, and his problems seem entirely different in each of the three worlds. Yet, as the book progresses, both he and the reader learn that neither time nor place matters—every person must sooner or later make certain basic decisions.Relatives is a novel about personality and about duty, chiefly one’s duty to the state. The Weinraub/Weintraub variations are carefully orchestrated so that each tells the same story while presenting vastly varying reasons for a single outcome. Once having experienced these three powerful visions of an individual’s interaction with society, one is compelled to consider, and reconsider, the foundations of moral and social responsibility. 

Genres: Science Fiction

179 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1973

Reviews

[Sheri Sebastian-gabriel · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's a shame that more people aren't familiar with the works of the late, great George Alec Effinger. I had the distinct pleasure of meeting him briefly before his untimely death in the 90s. He was a writer's writer, without a doubt, and a kind man at that.

If you like your fiction bleak, it doesn't get much bleaker than Relatives. Effinger has crafted three protagonists who may be the same individual (or linked to the same individual). Three different characters live in three different places during different periods. Each character faces some crisis beyond his control. The central theme here is helplessness, I would say. These men are a product of a complacent society that allows the government or their political parties to control their lives. There is no hope. I highly recommend this book, but be prepared to be depressed.

[Craig · Rating 3 out of 5]

Relatives is one of Effinger's darkest (as in hopeless and despairing) novels. It features three men named Ernest Weintraub, who may or may not be the same character or aspects of him, having to face questions of social and moral responsibility and his relations to society. It's alternate-worlds science fiction, but the main focus is on the character studies. It's very heavy and humorless stuff, as the Weintraubs feel more helpless because their lives are spiraling further out of their control or understanding. I didn't think that the various parts ever meshed too well, but it's a thought-provoking and challenging read.

[Graham P · Rating 2 out of 5]

I guess reading too much 1960s/1970s' dystopian fiction can wear down the treads. While Effinger is lauded for his novels, I believe I chose the wrong one to start with. What appears interesting in synopsis fails to land a proper punch. Three men in various degrees of timeslips, all named Ernest Weintraub, suffer away in their droll existences....one a communist in 1920's Germany and Springfield, USA; another, an ex-pat poet in North Africa drinking away the days like some low-rent Paul Bowles; and lastly, and perhaps most interestingly, a hack-man loser living in Brooklyn within the throes of a bureaucratic doomsday. The problem is nothing really happens. Yeah, I get it, we're all doomed in the fates of capitalism and corruption, you hate your job and your wife, and what better way to flame the fires than to shrug it off with a predictable hangman cynicism........but here the novel reads simply as a first-draft diatribe and does little for speculative fiction as it does for novel-length narrative in general. While we all realize the world ends with a whimper, it may as well at least be interesting last breath, right? This is not.

I will try Effinger's 'What Entropy Means to Me' and/or 'The Wolves of Memory.'

[Stephen Rowland · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. What begins as a (slightly tedious) black comedy becomes a surreal horror of shocking bleakness. This is exactly the sort of thing on which I thrive. Effinger was one of those writers stuck, or marketed, in the science fiction genre who transcended its trappings and created nebulous works difficult to categorize. "Relatives" is hardly science fiction, and it is his best work after the brilliant "The Wolves Of Memory."

[Kevin Phyland · Rating 3 out of 5]

First off - this is a pretty bleak book. Weaving three threads with three related individuals (although separated both in time and in parallel universes) it follows Ernst Weintraub in 1920, a Communist recruiter sent to Amerika after Jermany won the great war; a different Ernst in the 1920s, an embittered drunken poet in north Africa and Ernest Weinraub, a machine parts assembler in a vaguely 1984ish near-future of modular conapts and global prefectures. When Ernest (as distinct from Ernst) and his line crew are told to go home and await big news he is distraught to find that some global catastrophe is imminent and only 1 in 250 will be saved, apparently at random, by obtaining a token. As time goes on the thought that there may not actually be any tokens crosses people’s minds, but in the end the Representatives always win and the plebs are left to mutter unconvincingly that “they know best” to stave off their existential despair. No Happy endings in George Alec Effinger’s tale.

[Facundo Ozino C. · Rating 3 out of 5]

La novela de Effinger traducida al español que me faltaba leer. Solo hay 4 de sus trabajos traducidos (y 3 de ellos forman parte de una trilogía). Relatives, erróneamente titulado Hermanos, cuenta la historia de tres personajes que son la misma persona. Mismo nombre, misma fisionomía, pero distintos momentos y distintas situaciones de vida. Es corta y enormemente pesimista y desesperanzadora (especialmente en una de las historias). Está excelentemente escrita pero no alcanza a ser brillante o algo para recordar o querer leer nuevamente.

De Effinger recomiendo, y mucho, la trilogía de Budayeen (las otras 3 novelas traducidas del autor), una historia noir/proto-cyberpunk en un futuro medio oriente.

[Gavin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good, but so very, very bleak. I usually think of Effinger as an author who throws in a bit of humor here and there, but there's none to be found here.