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Helliconia #1-3
The Helliconia Trilogy: Helliconia Spring, Helliconia Summer, and Helliconia Winter
From a Science Fiction Grand The sweeping epic of a planet veering from one extreme atmosphere to another—and the humans trying to survive on it.
Helliconia Spring introduces us to a tumultuous world that follows an eccentric orbit around a double-star system—and the satellite from Earth secretly monitoring it. Hugo and Nebula Award–winning author Brian W. Aldiss then explores the social and religious divisions keeping the planet’s population in conflict even as they’re devastated by plague in Helliconia Summer, and concludes the trilogy with Helliconia Winter, which recounts both the threat of a looming, frigid age of decay and the hope of a new future.
The Helliconia Trilogy is both a riveting story and a thought-provoking examination of how our destinies are shaped by the environment around us. Aldiss’s study of fields from astronomy to climatology to geobiology endow all three novels with rich details of the planet Helliconia.
This riveting, century-spanning saga is a timely exploration of what climate change can mean for our own planet. “Brian Aldiss’s towering imagination places his Helliconia Trilogy far above standard science fiction” (Daily Mail).
Helliconia Spring introduces us to a tumultuous world that follows an eccentric orbit around a double-star system—and the satellite from Earth secretly monitoring it. Hugo and Nebula Award–winning author Brian W. Aldiss then explores the social and religious divisions keeping the planet’s population in conflict even as they’re devastated by plague in Helliconia Summer, and concludes the trilogy with Helliconia Winter, which recounts both the threat of a looming, frigid age of decay and the hope of a new future.
The Helliconia Trilogy is both a riveting story and a thought-provoking examination of how our destinies are shaped by the environment around us. Aldiss’s study of fields from astronomy to climatology to geobiology endow all three novels with rich details of the planet Helliconia.
This riveting, century-spanning saga is a timely exploration of what climate change can mean for our own planet. “Brian Aldiss’s towering imagination places his Helliconia Trilogy far above standard science fiction” (Daily Mail).
1271 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1983
339 people are currently reading
2222 people want to read
About the author
Brian W. Aldiss
833 books676 followersPseudonyms: Jael Cracken, Peter Pica, John Runciman, C.C. Shackleton, Arch Mendicant, & "Doc" Peristyle.
Brian Wilson Aldiss was one of the most important voices in science fiction writing today. He wrote his first novel while working as a bookseller in Oxford. Shortly afterwards he wrote his first work of science fiction and soon gained international recognition. Adored for his innovative literary techniques, evocative plots and irresistible characters, he became a Grand Master of Science Fiction in 1999.
Brian Aldiss died on August 19, 2017, just after celebrating his 92nd birthday with his family and closest friends.
Brian W. Aldiss Group on Good Reads
Brian Wilson Aldiss was one of the most important voices in science fiction writing today. He wrote his first novel while working as a bookseller in Oxford. Shortly afterwards he wrote his first work of science fiction and soon gained international recognition. Adored for his innovative literary techniques, evocative plots and irresistible characters, he became a Grand Master of Science Fiction in 1999.
Brian Aldiss died on August 19, 2017, just after celebrating his 92nd birthday with his family and closest friends.
Brian W. Aldiss Group on Good Reads
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July 20, 2020Hiking across the countryside I notice the seeds that have caught onto my clothing as I unwittingly become an agent of the ecosystem, spreading biological diversity as I go, and this from time to time brings back to mind the Ucts, dense corridors of plant life which criss-cross the surface of Brian Aldiss' fictional Helliconia built up over generations by migrating herders and their flocks.
The Helliconia trilogy is ambitious work of science-fiction. In its determination to address ideas about the development of societies and their interrelationship with the environment as well as issues of power, myth and culture it can be mentioned in the same breathe as Foundation or Dune but written in a more stylish manner. All of these books abandon a traditional narrative because the protagonists are time and human consciousness. Plots, cabals, secret missions, visitors from alien worlds, wars, political crises become transient in the readers perception while myth or history reveal old friends from several hundred pages earlier. What is clear to the reader remains mysterious to those stuck within the pages, so the reader becomes an accomplice in the author's adventure in consciousness, not everybody's cup of tea but then what is.
The planet Helliconia is discovered in the distant future. This planet is locked in a binary orbit, around two suns which gives it a 'normal' year and a 'long' year which determines the seasons each many hundreds of years long - this has various curious effects on the ecology and way of the life. Two dominant species have evolved on the plant - a bipedal bovine with basic metal working technologies and an intelligent bipedal ape. As the planet emerges from a centuries long winter the crew of an exploration ship from Earth establish an observational platform that sends a continuous broadcast film of the creatures struggling to survive on the planet's harsh surface. This broadcast is consumed, hundreds of years later, on Earth partly as educational programming, partly as reality TV.
While watching the broadcasts environmental developments bring about massive social changes among the human population on earth changing how they view what they see taking place on the surface of a very distant planet.
All of this would be incidental to what happens on Helliconia but for the parallels between the two - how the cultures develop within and in relation to an environment.
So over the course of the trilogy (continuing with Helliconia Summer and concluding with Helliconia Winter) we see the evolution of life on the observational station, the effect on Earth of what they observe and the effect on Helliconia of being observed.
The story however follows groups of Helliconians and shows the implications that the extreme environmental changes causes by the double orbit has upon the ecology of the planet. Naturally a key focus is the social and cultural implications for the two intelligent species.
By follows groups I mean it is rather more like Azimov's first three Foundation books. We might see the descendants of one group of characters in subsequent stories or come across fleeting mentions of them hundreds of years later.
All that sounds rather arid which the series is not, but you are forced to be very aware of how the individuals are formed and react to their environment (in the broadest possible conceptions of that word).
Throughout the series the simple course of the narrative is chopped up and served to us out of order. However in Helliconia Summer this is taken to an extreme and makes the book what it is. We know the futility of the decisions made (rather as in Nostromo), we know that certain courses of action will end in failure. This pushes us to think about the context of events, the systems and structures.
As with all the Helliconia stories that context, those systems and structures start with the planetary orbit. High Summer approaches. Temperatures at the equator will be intense. Changes in ecology and climate have severe political ramifications.
Woven into this is the story of the King's divorce, science and heresy, a visitor from the orbiting Earth Observation Vessel who has won the right to die on the surface in a lottery.
The most traditional in its structure is the last book in the series Helliconia Winter, the tenure of the work featuring one hero all the way through is almost a quest novel in the vein of the old romances in which the hero's quest is to discover their own identity. The final volume of the Helliconia series is the simplest told and defiance is it's key tone. Defiance against the coming winter, against the conformity of a society structured to withstand massive climatic change and the obligations of family.
The series as a whole is deeply indebted to James Lovelock's Gaia theory and has much which will recommend itself to fans of the longue durée.
The Helliconia trilogy is ambitious work of science-fiction. In its determination to address ideas about the development of societies and their interrelationship with the environment as well as issues of power, myth and culture it can be mentioned in the same breathe as Foundation or Dune but written in a more stylish manner. All of these books abandon a traditional narrative because the protagonists are time and human consciousness. Plots, cabals, secret missions, visitors from alien worlds, wars, political crises become transient in the readers perception while myth or history reveal old friends from several hundred pages earlier. What is clear to the reader remains mysterious to those stuck within the pages, so the reader becomes an accomplice in the author's adventure in consciousness, not everybody's cup of tea but then what is.
The planet Helliconia is discovered in the distant future. This planet is locked in a binary orbit, around two suns which gives it a 'normal' year and a 'long' year which determines the seasons each many hundreds of years long - this has various curious effects on the ecology and way of the life. Two dominant species have evolved on the plant - a bipedal bovine with basic metal working technologies and an intelligent bipedal ape. As the planet emerges from a centuries long winter the crew of an exploration ship from Earth establish an observational platform that sends a continuous broadcast film of the creatures struggling to survive on the planet's harsh surface. This broadcast is consumed, hundreds of years later, on Earth partly as educational programming, partly as reality TV.
While watching the broadcasts environmental developments bring about massive social changes among the human population on earth changing how they view what they see taking place on the surface of a very distant planet.
All of this would be incidental to what happens on Helliconia but for the parallels between the two - how the cultures develop within and in relation to an environment.
So over the course of the trilogy (continuing with Helliconia Summer and concluding with Helliconia Winter) we see the evolution of life on the observational station, the effect on Earth of what they observe and the effect on Helliconia of being observed.
The story however follows groups of Helliconians and shows the implications that the extreme environmental changes causes by the double orbit has upon the ecology of the planet. Naturally a key focus is the social and cultural implications for the two intelligent species.
By follows groups I mean it is rather more like Azimov's first three Foundation books. We might see the descendants of one group of characters in subsequent stories or come across fleeting mentions of them hundreds of years later.
All that sounds rather arid which the series is not, but you are forced to be very aware of how the individuals are formed and react to their environment (in the broadest possible conceptions of that word).
Throughout the series the simple course of the narrative is chopped up and served to us out of order. However in Helliconia Summer this is taken to an extreme and makes the book what it is. We know the futility of the decisions made (rather as in Nostromo), we know that certain courses of action will end in failure. This pushes us to think about the context of events, the systems and structures.
As with all the Helliconia stories that context, those systems and structures start with the planetary orbit. High Summer approaches. Temperatures at the equator will be intense. Changes in ecology and climate have severe political ramifications.
Woven into this is the story of the King's divorce, science and heresy, a visitor from the orbiting Earth Observation Vessel who has won the right to die on the surface in a lottery.
The most traditional in its structure is the last book in the series Helliconia Winter, the tenure of the work featuring one hero all the way through is almost a quest novel in the vein of the old romances in which the hero's quest is to discover their own identity. The final volume of the Helliconia series is the simplest told and defiance is it's key tone. Defiance against the coming winter, against the conformity of a society structured to withstand massive climatic change and the obligations of family.
The series as a whole is deeply indebted to James Lovelock's Gaia theory and has much which will recommend itself to fans of the longue durée.
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May 5, 2022
Helliconia - British author Brian Aldiss' superb creation, science fiction worldbuilding comparable to Frank Herbert's Dune, or, if you like, in the world of fantasy, comparable to J.R.R. Tolkein's Lord of the Rings.
Helliconia Spring is the first volume in the trilogy; the second volume is Helliconia Summer and the third volume is Helliconia Winter.
Take a look at the below diagram. Helliconia is a planet revolving around its sun Batalix as Batalix revolves around larger sun Frayr in an elliptical orbit. The consequence of Helliconia being either closer to or more distant from Frayr results in a particular season - spring, summer, winter - lasting for centuries. This Frayr-Batalix binary sun solar system is within our Milky Way but thousands of light years away.
Survival on Helliconia centers around the Darwinian struggle for supremacy between humans and phagors. A word on each species:
Humans, sort of
Unlike humans on Earth where you are either alive or dead, on Helliconia, once humans leave their bodies, they descend into a pitch-black realm to become first gossies and then with the passage of more time, fessups. All living humans can communicate with the gossies when they, the living humans, enter a trance state called pauk.
Phagors
Built like big, powerful professional wrestlers, phagors walk human-style on their two hind legs and speak their own language. Phagor heads are like mountain goats with two lethal horns; shaggy white fur and antifreeze-like blood make phagors impervious to the bitter cold. Phagoes fight ferociously with swords and spears; phagors take humans as slaves and some phagors ride huge horse-like beasts called kaidaws.
Climate
Alas, in many critical ways, there's a third major player in the cycles of life on Helliconia: the weather itself. Can you imagine what the planet must be like during those hundreds of years of Siberia-like subzero ice and snow? And how about those other hundreds of years when Helliconia moves closer to Fraya and the surface of the planet turns into tropical jungles and scorching deserts? Then there are those hundreds of transitional spring-like years where summer-dominating humans and winter-dominating phagors continually battle it out.
Brian Aldiss builds the world of Helliconia Sping methodically, in carefully elaborated detail over the course of 450 pages. This to say, the novel requires a bit of time and energy but once I began to immerse myself in Aldiss' creation, I gladly returned to the book again and again. As part of his worldbuilding, Aldiss explores myth and religion, anthropology and sociology, landscape and architecture, gender and class.
Helliconia Spring begins with an extensive Prelude where we follow Yuri, a young hunter from a tribe of hunters (think of Jean M. Auel's The Clan of the Cave Bear) as he makes his way to the city of Pannoval, a city having much in common with one of our first prehistoric cities along the banks of the Euphrates in Mesopotamia.
"He breathed deep as he got his first sight of Pannoval. Ahead was a great cliff, so steep that no snow clung to it. In the cliff face was carved an enormous representation of Akha the Great One. Akha squatted in a traditional attitude, knees near his shoulders, arms wrapped round his knees, hands locked palms upward, with the sacred flame of life in his palms. His head was large, topped with a knot of hair. His half-human face struck terror into a beholder. There was awe even in his cheeks. Yet his great almond eyes were bland, and there was serenity as well as ferocity to be read in that upturned mouth and those majestic eyebrows. Beside his left foot, and dwarfed by it, was an opening in the rock. Yuri saw that this mouth was itself gigantic, possibly three times taller than a man."
Yuri remains in Pannoval and even subjects himself to rigorous training in order to become one of the city's priests. But you just can't keep a hunter tribesman down - forever his own man and a lover of freedom, Yuri sickens of the whole domesticated rule-bound society and his role as priest. Along with three companions, Yuri flees the city, ventures forth across mountains and planes to establish the priest-free community of Oldorando.
The bulk of Aldiss' novel picks up 50 years later in Oldorando. Yuri is long dead but the men and women still live mostly in The Clan of the Cave Bear-style until, decades later, new discoveries and innovations transform Oldorando into a medieval-like village complete with guilds and tradespeople, new fabrics and fashions, writing and books, even an academy of science run by women.
Every week Helliconia undergoes a further winter thaw. Ah, springtime! Although one could write a short book on all the happenings, I'll simply bullet the following to serve as a taste test:
Flora and Fauna
Many species of our animals and plants are found in Helliconia, including pigs and sheep, boars and dogs, geese and blackbirds, bats, lice and mosquitoes. Additionally, a number of unique creatures roam the land such as a giant worm with wings.
Social Strata
Oldorando has its leaders and lieutenants, hunters and craftsmen, and there are also slaves, not only humans (usually captured from outlining tribes) but as the phagors take human slaves, so humans have their phagor slaves. In Oldorando, there's old Myk, a phagor that has never known freedom, a phagor taken captive by humans at birth. Among Myk's duties through the years once he reached maturity: giving human children rides on his big, broad furry back.
Space Station Observatory
Halfway through the novel, we discover there are researchers from Earth orbiting Helliconia in an enormous space station called Avernus. As much as the researchers on board would love to go down to the planet's surface, even pay a visit to Oldorando (wouldn't that be fun!), unfortunately, such a trip would be a death-sentence since our immune system could never handle deadly Helliconian microbes.
Meanwhile, Back on Planet Earth
All of the information about Helliconian life is transmitted back to Earth - including actual photos and film footage of human interaction within Oldorando and phagors riding across the planes. Universities compile encyclopedias; theaters show Helliconia feature films; computer programmers create entertaining games (natch) simulating all aspects of Helliconian life - one blockbuster: battles between humans and phagors.
The Big Picture
Of course, the prime question looms: will humans accumulate enough knowledge and recorded history so when the next cycle unfolds and Helliconian Winter turns into the next Helliconian Spring, humans can benefit from the previous spring's accomplishments. In other words, will humans learn from the past or must they begin again at Clan of the Cave Bear cultural ground zero?
Brian Aldiss provides the answer to these questions in his Helliconia Summer and Helliconia Winter. (I posted separate reviews of these two volumes under their respective titles). Helliconia - a magnificent trilogy so worth your time.
British author Brian Aldiss, 1925 - 2017
December 23, 2016
This is one of the most complex SF novels read so far. It’s not a space opera with interstellar battles and flights, don’t expect one. And although it's supposed to be the story of the native civilizations throughout the great year of Helliconia, the main character is the planet itself.
The book is an encyclopedia in which are included all planet’s features: geography, biology, climatic conditions, astronomy, you name it, there are all here. Ecology, religion, mysticism, politics are also present in the life of its inhabitants – but their continuous struggles and dramas are only emphasizing the implacable course of nature.
One surprising part is the role played by the orbiting space station from Earth which records every little detail and broadcasts all these observations as a soap opera back to a bored Earth which eventually... but you’ll see for yourself if you are curious enough to read it :)
Even the vocabulary used contains a lot of Old English words, which gives the story a unique and authentic look.
In conclusion, though is not an easy reading, I cannot deny the fact that, given the unusual story and its astounding scientific data, I found myself eager to read it till the end and I don’t regret a bit!
Note: this is the omnibus edition, which contains all three books in the trilogy: Helliconia Spring, Helliconia Summer & Helliconia Winter.
The book is an encyclopedia in which are included all planet’s features: geography, biology, climatic conditions, astronomy, you name it, there are all here. Ecology, religion, mysticism, politics are also present in the life of its inhabitants – but their continuous struggles and dramas are only emphasizing the implacable course of nature.
One surprising part is the role played by the orbiting space station from Earth which records every little detail and broadcasts all these observations as a soap opera back to a bored Earth which eventually... but you’ll see for yourself if you are curious enough to read it :)
Even the vocabulary used contains a lot of Old English words, which gives the story a unique and authentic look.
In conclusion, though is not an easy reading, I cannot deny the fact that, given the unusual story and its astounding scientific data, I found myself eager to read it till the end and I don’t regret a bit!
Note: this is the omnibus edition, which contains all three books in the trilogy: Helliconia Spring, Helliconia Summer & Helliconia Winter.
October 28, 2010
A reread this one. Gollancz have just republished this huge tome (1328 pages) as part of their SF Masterworks branding, of which this is number 80.
I did read them back in the 1980’s when they were released as three separate books: Helliconia Spring, Helliconia Summer and Helliconia Winter, in 1982, 1983 and 1985 respectively. Hereafter I’m going to see them as one book, which is for all intents and purposes is how they read, as a uniform body of work (albeit in three parts.)
At the time of original writing they were a surprise, if I remember right. Here was a writer known for his SF writing (Hothouse, Greybeard, Report on Probability A, etc) writing what seemed (at first) to be a fantasy.
And if I remember right, a glacially slow series. Which made them a little disappointing.
However, there is an SF element to the books. For those who don’t know, Helliconia is a planet. The tales are told from the perspective of the inhabitants as they go through the world’s seasons. The twist in the tale here is that the seasons are very long: centuries long, long enough for species to live and die within one season, and especially in the long, cruel, bitter winters.
As the tale unfolds the perspective is drawn further back to the point where we realise that all that is being told is actually part of a planetary research report from the Earth ship Avernus. It is here that the reader discovers that, as part of a binary star system, all / most life on Helliconia will be extinguished. Much of the books are spent in the debate over whether Humans should interfere with the rise and fall of civilisations on the planet, which is an interesting counterpoint to what goes on in the research ship and on Earth.
We meet a variety of people/creatures on this journey: In Helliconia Spring, Yuli is a humanoid hunter-gatherer, one of the Freyr, who, as the world reawakens, we find experiences the development of an urban civilisation. Helliconia Spring tells of Yuli and his descendants as Helliconia Winter turns to Spring and the Freyr develop from hunters to urban dwellers. By the second book we have the dominance of the human-like species in a fantasy setting. We also encounter more about the Phagors, a Morlock-like furred white humanoid species, who begin in Helliconia Spring as seemingly simple hunters and carry off Yuri’s father. As the story deepens, however, in Summer and Winter we find that they have a richer background and culture and seem to have been on Helliconia long before the emergence of the human-like dominant species. The fantasy feel is quite strong as we discover about their lifestyles. To confirm this further, there’s even a dragon-like creature, the Wutra’s Worm, with an enormous lifespan.
The book is a case study in worldbuilding: evidently Aldiss spent time with physicists, astronomers, ecologists, climatologists, sociologists and microbiologists in creating a credible environment. Most importantly (according to Aldiss’s introduction) is Lovelock’s idea of Gaia, once fairly new in the 1980’s, and now seems to be increasingly plausible Perhaps, as a result, this book doesn’t seem as way out as it did when I first read it, though just as epic and majestic. Part of the joy of this book is to see how the world changes through the seasons and how the landscape and landforms adapt accordingly.
In the style of Olaf Stapledon’s First and Last Men, or some of HG Wells’ work, this book is perhaps the ultimate planetary romance, and deliberately so. In such a framework the writer writes as an observer rather than as part of the narrative. Consequently, the book seems written in a rather detached style. Though this can give a feeling of weight and gravity to the long tale, it can also create a coolness that distances the reader from the world and creatures within. They are being studied rather than interacted with.
In the 25 years or so since originally reading this, I now see where Aldiss is going. It is his view on civilisations, their ability to grow and decline and the causes and effects of such development. It also raises the question of whether in the grand scheme of things Mankind in the future may be worth preserving.
Though it is still slow to develop, it is surprisingly engaging. Do not expect it to be a fast-paced romp. Instead, it is a book where you expect to be immersed and be slowly awakened to the opportunities within.
It may be my greater age and experience, it may be that in these days of global warming and biomes the world’s just caught up with the concepts herein. However this was a much more satisfying read second time around. And good to see the background details given as Appendices here too.
Consequently, very much recommended.
Mark Yon, August 2010.
I did read them back in the 1980’s when they were released as three separate books: Helliconia Spring, Helliconia Summer and Helliconia Winter, in 1982, 1983 and 1985 respectively. Hereafter I’m going to see them as one book, which is for all intents and purposes is how they read, as a uniform body of work (albeit in three parts.)
At the time of original writing they were a surprise, if I remember right. Here was a writer known for his SF writing (Hothouse, Greybeard, Report on Probability A, etc) writing what seemed (at first) to be a fantasy.
And if I remember right, a glacially slow series. Which made them a little disappointing.
However, there is an SF element to the books. For those who don’t know, Helliconia is a planet. The tales are told from the perspective of the inhabitants as they go through the world’s seasons. The twist in the tale here is that the seasons are very long: centuries long, long enough for species to live and die within one season, and especially in the long, cruel, bitter winters.
As the tale unfolds the perspective is drawn further back to the point where we realise that all that is being told is actually part of a planetary research report from the Earth ship Avernus. It is here that the reader discovers that, as part of a binary star system, all / most life on Helliconia will be extinguished. Much of the books are spent in the debate over whether Humans should interfere with the rise and fall of civilisations on the planet, which is an interesting counterpoint to what goes on in the research ship and on Earth.
We meet a variety of people/creatures on this journey: In Helliconia Spring, Yuli is a humanoid hunter-gatherer, one of the Freyr, who, as the world reawakens, we find experiences the development of an urban civilisation. Helliconia Spring tells of Yuli and his descendants as Helliconia Winter turns to Spring and the Freyr develop from hunters to urban dwellers. By the second book we have the dominance of the human-like species in a fantasy setting. We also encounter more about the Phagors, a Morlock-like furred white humanoid species, who begin in Helliconia Spring as seemingly simple hunters and carry off Yuri’s father. As the story deepens, however, in Summer and Winter we find that they have a richer background and culture and seem to have been on Helliconia long before the emergence of the human-like dominant species. The fantasy feel is quite strong as we discover about their lifestyles. To confirm this further, there’s even a dragon-like creature, the Wutra’s Worm, with an enormous lifespan.
The book is a case study in worldbuilding: evidently Aldiss spent time with physicists, astronomers, ecologists, climatologists, sociologists and microbiologists in creating a credible environment. Most importantly (according to Aldiss’s introduction) is Lovelock’s idea of Gaia, once fairly new in the 1980’s, and now seems to be increasingly plausible Perhaps, as a result, this book doesn’t seem as way out as it did when I first read it, though just as epic and majestic. Part of the joy of this book is to see how the world changes through the seasons and how the landscape and landforms adapt accordingly.
In the style of Olaf Stapledon’s First and Last Men, or some of HG Wells’ work, this book is perhaps the ultimate planetary romance, and deliberately so. In such a framework the writer writes as an observer rather than as part of the narrative. Consequently, the book seems written in a rather detached style. Though this can give a feeling of weight and gravity to the long tale, it can also create a coolness that distances the reader from the world and creatures within. They are being studied rather than interacted with.
In the 25 years or so since originally reading this, I now see where Aldiss is going. It is his view on civilisations, their ability to grow and decline and the causes and effects of such development. It also raises the question of whether in the grand scheme of things Mankind in the future may be worth preserving.
Though it is still slow to develop, it is surprisingly engaging. Do not expect it to be a fast-paced romp. Instead, it is a book where you expect to be immersed and be slowly awakened to the opportunities within.
It may be my greater age and experience, it may be that in these days of global warming and biomes the world’s just caught up with the concepts herein. However this was a much more satisfying read second time around. And good to see the background details given as Appendices here too.
Consequently, very much recommended.
Mark Yon, August 2010.
September 27, 2017
Helliconia is a massive tripartite work about which extensive, rigorous scholarly essays have been written. This is not going to be such an essay.
Eight million years or so ago, the sol-type star Batalix was captured by the much younger and brighter supergiant Freyr. Since then, the inhabitants of Helliconia, Batalix's sole life-bearing planet, have endured a short year of 480 days as their world orbits Batalix and a great year of 1,825 years (about 2,500 terrestrial years) as Batalix, planetary retinue in tow, orbits Freyr. Over the great year the climate varies hugely, from the centuries-long winter, which is almost too cold for the survival of Helliconia's humanoid population but ideal for its population of phagors, the other dominant intelligent lifeform, to the centuries-long summer, which is almost too hot for the survival of humans and phagors alike.
An important additional element of the environment is the helico (sic with one "l") virus, which is spread by the ticks that habitually cover the phagors but affects humans. It's active just twice a year, in the spring and fall, when it manifests as, respectively, bone fever and the fat death. Both diseases infect almost the entirety of the human population, with perhaps a 50% mortality rate. Survivors of bone fever emerge in slimmed-down form, and thus better able to survive the summer; survivors of the fat death emerge, after a period of obsessive eating that may even involve cannibalism, with vastly increased body mass, and thus better able to survive the rigors of winter.
Also of note is that a satellite built by people from earth, Avernus, orbits Helliconia, observing all the surface goings-on and beaming the images back home to earth in a continuous stream.
Volume 1, Helliconia Spring, is really a (very) protracted exercise in world-building, as we're introduced to the workings of Helliconia and a staggering amount of its flora and fauna. There are bits and pieces of coherent story thrown into the mix, especially in the first hundred or more pages, but nothing that one might really regard as an overall story arc; they all seem somehow inconsequential, petering out when their usefulness is done rather than coming to a proper conclusion. Although I'm sure this wasn't Aldiss's intention, the stories and story fragments feel as if they've been tossed in merely to keep us reading through the long expository passages.
Add in that the text is frequently marred by effusions of unwisely pretentious vocabulary ("Alehaw arranged himself with one befurred elbow on the rock, so that he could tuck his thumb deep into the hollow of his left cheek, propping the weight of his skull on his zygomatic bone" -- and precisely which bloody bone is that one, prithee?), and it's not surprising that, at the end of the very long Volume 1, I looked at the oncoming, even longer Volume 2 with something less than a song of glee in my heart.
Helliconia Summer was, however, a far easier and more enjoyable read. There are still eruptions of daftly obscure vocabulary and tracts of exposition, but they're all held together by a multi-stranded plot that sustains the interest -- a plot that, while its events are changing the course of Helliconian-human history, is full of incidents at the smaller, individual scale. One strand of this plot is that the tribes of the Avernus have begun a lottery whose prize is that the winner is sent down to the planet's surface. There s/he will inevitably die fairly soon, if not by hostile action then by infection with the helico virus, which is always fatal to terrestrials, but in the interim will at least have the chance to live. This time the winner is young Billy, and he does indeed do some livin' even as he's caught up in the periphery of the political/religious drama that's molding the fates of millions.
Helliconia Winter, shorter than the other two, sees the world speeding back toward icy conditions once more. The phagors, who've spent much of the summer in uneasy coexistence with the humans, or more often in servitude to them, are beginning to flex their muscles once more, the fat death is spreading, and a completely ruthless oligarchy is planning the survival of human civilization through the winter by destroying all dissidence and exterminating the phagors. We suspect this scheme is going to fail, just like every other previous pre-winter scheme, and that next spring is going to be very much like the one we've already seen . . .
It's easy enough to describe Helliconia as one of science fiction's great triumphs of world-building, because that's what everybody else has done, but I have my doubts. While there are some interestingly alien components of Helliconia's flora and fauna -- the phagors themselves might just about qualify, with their odd articulation, their commensal relationship with the cowbirds and their ichorous blood (although they're bipedal, laterally symmetrical, have facial features in the places where you'd expect them in terrestrial animals, etc.) -- far too many seem to be just slightly different versions of earth species, such as the elk-like creatures called, imaginatively, "yelk" (and once, presumably in typo veritas, "deer"). In some cases there's not even a name-change.
To take a different example: While the lifecycle of the creatures called hoxneys over the great year is fascinatingly worked out -- they spend the cold centuries as a crystal chrysalis before re-emerging as the world warms -- this doesn't alter the fact that, for most of the relevant time, they're horses.
Of course, there are plenty of famous fantasy worlds, some regarded as Towering Achievements, no less, that are largely populated with familiar plants, animals, customs, emotions and so forth, but one expects sciencefictional worlds to be a bit more alien. Aldiss, seemingly as if to distract attention from this concern, in the second and third volumes especially gives people and places extraordinarily long and silly names: Gravabagalinien, Queen MyrdemInggala, Princess TatromanAdala, JandolAnganol . . . Me, I remained less distracted than irritated by the stratagem: it's difficult to relate to a character when you have difficulty sounding their name in your reading mind.
Despite all of these things, and despite some patches of decidedly bad writing and embarrassingly declamatory dialogue, I did come away from Helliconia with a definite feeling of awe at Aldiss's achievement. I do genuinely feel as if I've been immersed in another world for quite some while, even if my favorite "character" is neither any of the humans nor the planet itself but the helico virus. There are ideas all over the place -- some of them just throwaways, others emerging as di ex machina -- which is one mark of good science fiction (although not always of good fiction).
In other words, Helliconia isn't just an enormous book but one with a hell of a lot in it. Hence the long and scholarly essays I mentioned at the outset.
Eight million years or so ago, the sol-type star Batalix was captured by the much younger and brighter supergiant Freyr. Since then, the inhabitants of Helliconia, Batalix's sole life-bearing planet, have endured a short year of 480 days as their world orbits Batalix and a great year of 1,825 years (about 2,500 terrestrial years) as Batalix, planetary retinue in tow, orbits Freyr. Over the great year the climate varies hugely, from the centuries-long winter, which is almost too cold for the survival of Helliconia's humanoid population but ideal for its population of phagors, the other dominant intelligent lifeform, to the centuries-long summer, which is almost too hot for the survival of humans and phagors alike.
An important additional element of the environment is the helico (sic with one "l") virus, which is spread by the ticks that habitually cover the phagors but affects humans. It's active just twice a year, in the spring and fall, when it manifests as, respectively, bone fever and the fat death. Both diseases infect almost the entirety of the human population, with perhaps a 50% mortality rate. Survivors of bone fever emerge in slimmed-down form, and thus better able to survive the summer; survivors of the fat death emerge, after a period of obsessive eating that may even involve cannibalism, with vastly increased body mass, and thus better able to survive the rigors of winter.
Also of note is that a satellite built by people from earth, Avernus, orbits Helliconia, observing all the surface goings-on and beaming the images back home to earth in a continuous stream.
Volume 1, Helliconia Spring, is really a (very) protracted exercise in world-building, as we're introduced to the workings of Helliconia and a staggering amount of its flora and fauna. There are bits and pieces of coherent story thrown into the mix, especially in the first hundred or more pages, but nothing that one might really regard as an overall story arc; they all seem somehow inconsequential, petering out when their usefulness is done rather than coming to a proper conclusion. Although I'm sure this wasn't Aldiss's intention, the stories and story fragments feel as if they've been tossed in merely to keep us reading through the long expository passages.
Add in that the text is frequently marred by effusions of unwisely pretentious vocabulary ("Alehaw arranged himself with one befurred elbow on the rock, so that he could tuck his thumb deep into the hollow of his left cheek, propping the weight of his skull on his zygomatic bone" -- and precisely which bloody bone is that one, prithee?), and it's not surprising that, at the end of the very long Volume 1, I looked at the oncoming, even longer Volume 2 with something less than a song of glee in my heart.
Helliconia Summer was, however, a far easier and more enjoyable read. There are still eruptions of daftly obscure vocabulary and tracts of exposition, but they're all held together by a multi-stranded plot that sustains the interest -- a plot that, while its events are changing the course of Helliconian-human history, is full of incidents at the smaller, individual scale. One strand of this plot is that the tribes of the Avernus have begun a lottery whose prize is that the winner is sent down to the planet's surface. There s/he will inevitably die fairly soon, if not by hostile action then by infection with the helico virus, which is always fatal to terrestrials, but in the interim will at least have the chance to live. This time the winner is young Billy, and he does indeed do some livin' even as he's caught up in the periphery of the political/religious drama that's molding the fates of millions.
Helliconia Winter, shorter than the other two, sees the world speeding back toward icy conditions once more. The phagors, who've spent much of the summer in uneasy coexistence with the humans, or more often in servitude to them, are beginning to flex their muscles once more, the fat death is spreading, and a completely ruthless oligarchy is planning the survival of human civilization through the winter by destroying all dissidence and exterminating the phagors. We suspect this scheme is going to fail, just like every other previous pre-winter scheme, and that next spring is going to be very much like the one we've already seen . . .
It's easy enough to describe Helliconia as one of science fiction's great triumphs of world-building, because that's what everybody else has done, but I have my doubts. While there are some interestingly alien components of Helliconia's flora and fauna -- the phagors themselves might just about qualify, with their odd articulation, their commensal relationship with the cowbirds and their ichorous blood (although they're bipedal, laterally symmetrical, have facial features in the places where you'd expect them in terrestrial animals, etc.) -- far too many seem to be just slightly different versions of earth species, such as the elk-like creatures called, imaginatively, "yelk" (and once, presumably in typo veritas, "deer"). In some cases there's not even a name-change.
To take a different example: While the lifecycle of the creatures called hoxneys over the great year is fascinatingly worked out -- they spend the cold centuries as a crystal chrysalis before re-emerging as the world warms -- this doesn't alter the fact that, for most of the relevant time, they're horses.
Of course, there are plenty of famous fantasy worlds, some regarded as Towering Achievements, no less, that are largely populated with familiar plants, animals, customs, emotions and so forth, but one expects sciencefictional worlds to be a bit more alien. Aldiss, seemingly as if to distract attention from this concern, in the second and third volumes especially gives people and places extraordinarily long and silly names: Gravabagalinien, Queen MyrdemInggala, Princess TatromanAdala, JandolAnganol . . . Me, I remained less distracted than irritated by the stratagem: it's difficult to relate to a character when you have difficulty sounding their name in your reading mind.
Despite all of these things, and despite some patches of decidedly bad writing and embarrassingly declamatory dialogue, I did come away from Helliconia with a definite feeling of awe at Aldiss's achievement. I do genuinely feel as if I've been immersed in another world for quite some while, even if my favorite "character" is neither any of the humans nor the planet itself but the helico virus. There are ideas all over the place -- some of them just throwaways, others emerging as di ex machina -- which is one mark of good science fiction (although not always of good fiction).
In other words, Helliconia isn't just an enormous book but one with a hell of a lot in it. Hence the long and scholarly essays I mentioned at the outset.
May 19, 2016
Helliconia is a massive read. It's pretty clear that this is the case just by looking at the volume I read, which includes all three books, but it deserves mention from the outset. I split my reading into the three books, reading other things in between them, which feels like the right way to do it as the whole thing might become overwhelming if read all at once. I recommend taking a look at the appendices before starting on the first volume. It contains a handful of things which might be considered to be "spoilers", but it also contains much handy information which you can refer to as the book progresses - such as the equivalent ages of Helliconian humans and Earth humans. A number of reviews which I've looked at suggest that "nothing happens" in this book. I disagree quite strongly. Although in various ways very little seems to go on in the three periods of Helliconian history presented in these books, they are all actually significant events in the development of world history in Helliconia. It is, in fact, a little surprising to me that there is no mention in any of the introductions or prefaces of the Annales School of history, into which Helliconia would fit quite well. Or, perhaps, the story would be stronger if this was something Aldiss had explored further. Although, it is not quite Annales history.
Somewhat disappointingly, Spring was my favourite of the three novels. It probably deserves a four star review on its own merits. It is particularly the case in this volume that very much happens in terms of the social, scientific, and technological history of Helliconia - or at least Embruddock. The characters in this book - particularly Shay Tal and Vry, but also Laintal Ay and others - are all interested in exploring the expanding world around them, learning about things and figuring out what has happened to the old civilizations and how the new are developing. It's scale is considerably smaller than the others, as befits a society just emerging from an Ice Age, it's focus mostly internal. It explores what power does to men in a big man society, and one can see the influence of the anthropologists Aldiss spoke to on this society. Furthermore, its women have more freedom than any of those in the later volumes. It is perhaps interesting to wonder how far this is the case of less-developed societies. In Spring, Aldiss gets the women of Helliconia right.
Summer was actually fairly effective in making me understand what the long, drawn-out, uncomfortable summers of Helliconia might feel like. There is a lot of interest going in in this book, too, but primarily on the Earth Observation Sattelite Avernus. The quest of the king JandolAnganol to divorce his popular queen, MyrdemInggala, while clearly historically relevant, grows tiresome fairly quickly. I enjoyed how it ultimately ends, though. The biggest problem is the difficulty I have imagining why the queen is so popular - although perhaps I ought to stress that this extends to the modern world as much as it does Helliconia. She seems to do very little, which is an easy way not to offend, but makes it difficult, as a reader, to grasp her importance. The minor characters of Helliconia, such as SartoriIrvrash and Ice Captain Muntrast, were more interesting again, but seemed to get less development than those in Spring. On its own merits, Summer probably deserves a rating around 2.5 stars, and I don't think I would have been impressed had it been the first volume.
Finally, Winter is again a mixed bag. Luterin is a mediocre protagonist, usually one of those saps one has little affection for but who can carry the plot of the story while the side characters provide the actual entertainment, but for two aspects: the way he treats women, ; and, towards the end of the novel, when . This would be less of an issue if the surrounding characters were better - Eedap Mun Odim is pleasant, if a little dull; Besi Besamitikahl is perhaps the most interesting ; Captain Harbin Fashnalgid might come across as a charming rogue, until he . Toress Lahl really suffers the brunt of Winter's problems, however - she gets little development, for a character so prominent, and is treated so badly, until It's hard to come away from this feeling positive.
Where Winter does score well is the history of Earth and Avernus, always in the background of the volume as a whole, but interesting. True, the people of Earth come across more like characters from Golden Age SF of the 50s and 60s, but it is the events which are most interesting. Indeed, many of the themes which resonate throughout the volume - the wildlife of Helliconia, human/phangor relations, the workings of the Original Beholder - are much more interesting that the activities of the humans, at least in the second two novels. One wishes for a more in-depth discussion of the phangors in particular, and appreciate the world building which goes on for this world building has a point - to present a message about our own world. As an SF story based on a contemporary scientific hypothesis - for Gaia Theory can only be called a hypothesis, despite its misnomer - Helliconia is something of a triumph.
Helliconia will broadly appeal to those who don't mind massive narratives in which not much happens and women are, broadly speaking, treated pretty poorly - basically any fan of epic fantasy. It is perhaps worth noting that an enjoyment of SF tropes and conventions is also helpful - Helliconia was not included in the SF Masterworks (as opposed to the Fantasy Masterworks) for no reason. But it is certainly more Fantasy, albeit a Fantasy without any recourse to magic or mysticism, with the exception of pauk. While I have not read A Song of Ice and Fire, it seems unlikely, from what I have read, that Helliconia did not have some influence on it. I am glad to have read it, but I wish that there could have been more to it.
Somewhat disappointingly, Spring was my favourite of the three novels. It probably deserves a four star review on its own merits. It is particularly the case in this volume that very much happens in terms of the social, scientific, and technological history of Helliconia - or at least Embruddock. The characters in this book - particularly Shay Tal and Vry, but also Laintal Ay and others - are all interested in exploring the expanding world around them, learning about things and figuring out what has happened to the old civilizations and how the new are developing. It's scale is considerably smaller than the others, as befits a society just emerging from an Ice Age, it's focus mostly internal. It explores what power does to men in a big man society, and one can see the influence of the anthropologists Aldiss spoke to on this society. Furthermore, its women have more freedom than any of those in the later volumes. It is perhaps interesting to wonder how far this is the case of less-developed societies. In Spring, Aldiss gets the women of Helliconia right.
Summer was actually fairly effective in making me understand what the long, drawn-out, uncomfortable summers of Helliconia might feel like. There is a lot of interest going in in this book, too, but primarily on the Earth Observation Sattelite Avernus. The quest of the king JandolAnganol to divorce his popular queen, MyrdemInggala, while clearly historically relevant, grows tiresome fairly quickly. I enjoyed how it ultimately ends, though. The biggest problem is the difficulty I have imagining why the queen is so popular - although perhaps I ought to stress that this extends to the modern world as much as it does Helliconia. She seems to do very little, which is an easy way not to offend, but makes it difficult, as a reader, to grasp her importance. The minor characters of Helliconia, such as SartoriIrvrash and Ice Captain Muntrast, were more interesting again, but seemed to get less development than those in Spring. On its own merits, Summer probably deserves a rating around 2.5 stars, and I don't think I would have been impressed had it been the first volume.
Finally, Winter is again a mixed bag. Luterin is a mediocre protagonist, usually one of those saps one has little affection for but who can carry the plot of the story while the side characters provide the actual entertainment, but for two aspects: the way he treats women, ; and, towards the end of the novel, when . This would be less of an issue if the surrounding characters were better - Eedap Mun Odim is pleasant, if a little dull; Besi Besamitikahl is perhaps the most interesting ; Captain Harbin Fashnalgid might come across as a charming rogue, until he . Toress Lahl really suffers the brunt of Winter's problems, however - she gets little development, for a character so prominent, and is treated so badly, until It's hard to come away from this feeling positive.
Where Winter does score well is the history of Earth and Avernus, always in the background of the volume as a whole, but interesting. True, the people of Earth come across more like characters from Golden Age SF of the 50s and 60s, but it is the events which are most interesting. Indeed, many of the themes which resonate throughout the volume - the wildlife of Helliconia, human/phangor relations, the workings of the Original Beholder - are much more interesting that the activities of the humans, at least in the second two novels. One wishes for a more in-depth discussion of the phangors in particular, and appreciate the world building which goes on for this world building has a point - to present a message about our own world. As an SF story based on a contemporary scientific hypothesis - for Gaia Theory can only be called a hypothesis, despite its misnomer - Helliconia is something of a triumph.
Helliconia will broadly appeal to those who don't mind massive narratives in which not much happens and women are, broadly speaking, treated pretty poorly - basically any fan of epic fantasy. It is perhaps worth noting that an enjoyment of SF tropes and conventions is also helpful - Helliconia was not included in the SF Masterworks (as opposed to the Fantasy Masterworks) for no reason. But it is certainly more Fantasy, albeit a Fantasy without any recourse to magic or mysticism, with the exception of pauk. While I have not read A Song of Ice and Fire, it seems unlikely, from what I have read, that Helliconia did not have some influence on it. I am glad to have read it, but I wish that there could have been more to it.
September 4, 2011
The Helliconian trilogy is a multi-layered composition, as long and as rich as The Lord of the Rings, as colourful as a medieval tapestry and as polemical as an eco-warrior's handbook. Aldiss is a prolific author in various genres, not just in science fiction; but SF at its best can itself include a great many genres, and this trilogy therefore has aspects of romance, epic, fantasy, prose poetry and science writing all flourishing in symbiosis with each other. And, like any great narrative, it is not only a great page-turner but has you caring about its characters.
Helliconia is a planet many light-years away being monitored by a manned observation station called the Avernus; perhaps significantly, the station is named after an Italian crater famed for its noxious fumes and reputed in classical times to be an entrance to the Ancient Roman Underworld, and Aldiss has borrowed the word for his own publishing imprint. Contrary to current non-interventionist ethics the Avernus can and does occasionally send down one of its inhabitants on a one-way trip to the surface of the planet; here the individual interacts briefly with the human Helliconians before succumbing to a breakdown in their own immune system. However, the Helliconian humans are largely unaware and unaffected by scientific considerations beyond their limited lives (rather like terrestrial humans in this regard), relying on religious beliefs and institutions to provide the philosophic and practical frameworks to their lives; the trilogy is in fact a thinly-veiled critique of institutionalised religions as well as superstition.
The frameworks are necessary to cope with the environments the Helliconians are part of, environments that bring changes in matters of climate, dominant species and fundamental human conditions. Aldiss explores ethical matters such as the misuse of political power, irrational beliefs, gender issues and the health of eco-systems abused by human rapaciousness, and all this can give pause for thought to those who are sensitive to such issues. But while this is a scientific romance we are also aware that within its narrative threads the trilogy holds up a mirror to our own experiences, cultures and passions: for me, for example, 'Spring', in two phases, is a story combining quest themes with re-births; 'Summer' is a Shakespearian comedy with echoes of A Winter's Tale (though Aldiss claims re-reading A Midsummer Night's Dream was his preparation before writing the second novel); and 'Helliconia Winter; has almost as broad a convas as War and Peace.
Constantly punctuating the text are images of circularity (the Avernus, the Great Wheel of Kharnabhar, the glyph carved on the mysterious standing stones) and of the measurement of time (the hourly geyser of Oldorando, the timepiece of the Avernian traveller Billy Xiao Pin, Odim's beautiful clock), echoing the underlying cyclic nature of Aldiss' vast creation. Re-reading the three volumes a quarter of a century later I remain struck not only by the abiding and powerful images of weather and landscape but also by the captivating stories of the fragile and yet very human aliens of that world. It is a world I may yet re-visit in another quarter-century, or even sooner.
Helliconia is not an unqualified success, however. The broad-brush sweep of Earth's future in the third novel, for example, is a bit simplistic and preachy in its Lovelockian message and sits awkwardly as a counterpoint to the minutiae of individual Helliconian lives. In addition, the flashback device in the second novel and the rapid spring thaw combined with accelerating cultural innovations of the first novel either distort or telescope the chronology of the narratives. But these are minor flaws in the grand sheme of things, and 'Helliconia' remains one of those works one feels the better for having read. This one-volume edition, first published in 1996, includes introductions, appendices and a map by Margaret Aldiss.
Helliconia is a planet many light-years away being monitored by a manned observation station called the Avernus; perhaps significantly, the station is named after an Italian crater famed for its noxious fumes and reputed in classical times to be an entrance to the Ancient Roman Underworld, and Aldiss has borrowed the word for his own publishing imprint. Contrary to current non-interventionist ethics the Avernus can and does occasionally send down one of its inhabitants on a one-way trip to the surface of the planet; here the individual interacts briefly with the human Helliconians before succumbing to a breakdown in their own immune system. However, the Helliconian humans are largely unaware and unaffected by scientific considerations beyond their limited lives (rather like terrestrial humans in this regard), relying on religious beliefs and institutions to provide the philosophic and practical frameworks to their lives; the trilogy is in fact a thinly-veiled critique of institutionalised religions as well as superstition.
The frameworks are necessary to cope with the environments the Helliconians are part of, environments that bring changes in matters of climate, dominant species and fundamental human conditions. Aldiss explores ethical matters such as the misuse of political power, irrational beliefs, gender issues and the health of eco-systems abused by human rapaciousness, and all this can give pause for thought to those who are sensitive to such issues. But while this is a scientific romance we are also aware that within its narrative threads the trilogy holds up a mirror to our own experiences, cultures and passions: for me, for example, 'Spring', in two phases, is a story combining quest themes with re-births; 'Summer' is a Shakespearian comedy with echoes of A Winter's Tale (though Aldiss claims re-reading A Midsummer Night's Dream was his preparation before writing the second novel); and 'Helliconia Winter; has almost as broad a convas as War and Peace.
Constantly punctuating the text are images of circularity (the Avernus, the Great Wheel of Kharnabhar, the glyph carved on the mysterious standing stones) and of the measurement of time (the hourly geyser of Oldorando, the timepiece of the Avernian traveller Billy Xiao Pin, Odim's beautiful clock), echoing the underlying cyclic nature of Aldiss' vast creation. Re-reading the three volumes a quarter of a century later I remain struck not only by the abiding and powerful images of weather and landscape but also by the captivating stories of the fragile and yet very human aliens of that world. It is a world I may yet re-visit in another quarter-century, or even sooner.
Helliconia is not an unqualified success, however. The broad-brush sweep of Earth's future in the third novel, for example, is a bit simplistic and preachy in its Lovelockian message and sits awkwardly as a counterpoint to the minutiae of individual Helliconian lives. In addition, the flashback device in the second novel and the rapid spring thaw combined with accelerating cultural innovations of the first novel either distort or telescope the chronology of the narratives. But these are minor flaws in the grand sheme of things, and 'Helliconia' remains one of those works one feels the better for having read. This one-volume edition, first published in 1996, includes introductions, appendices and a map by Margaret Aldiss.
March 16, 2018
I am late to reading Aldiss, which is my fault. This book is magnificent. It is also a masterpiece of otherworld invention. A planet, unwittingly observed by a Terran satellite, goes through its prolonged life cycle in three parts. during which the complete imaginings of a world totally unlike earth become apparent. The characters, of whom there are many, play second fiddle to the ecology of the planet. Because to the prolonged cycle (equivalent to 2.5 thousand earth years) nobody remembers what went before; the fat death and bone fever that allow you to survive the change in seasons if you survive, the winter that favours the Phagors and the summer that favours the human equivalent. The ecology is thought through carefully and appears flawless. The only problem with this book is its size; being a compendium it is definitely a two handed read but worth every page and pulled muscle.
January 18, 2016
I had more hopes from this trilogy considered a classic of world-building. To me, most of the Helliconia - Spring (Book 1) felt like a waste of time. It's a slow unimaginative tale of scattered primitive tribes. The rich potential of the concept (an earth-like planet revolving around twin suns) is not exploited as well as it could have been. Some other points, separately for each book, are below:
Book 1 - Helliconia Spring
1. The characters do not feel authentic and fully developed. Their actions are absurd to the point of being irritating and motivations not quite right.
2. The writer; perhaps in an attempt to give an alien feel; has used a lot of uncommon words. However it feels artificial, unnecessary and imposed.
3. The world-building is mediocre at best. The biology is all inconsistent, physics almost non-existent except for some rudimentary astronomical terms thrown in here and there. The terminologies; including the names of twin suns and the villages; are borrowed from Norse mythology another difficult to digest fact.
4. There is an undercurrent of 'sickness' in most of the Book 1. This in itself may seem like just a literary device; in the vein of Edgar Allan Poe; but in contrast to Poe's, here it is inelegant and poorly executed. The disgust that you feel while reading, just doesn't contribute to the story in anyway aside from making it more irritating and drab.
5. The science fiction element is sorely missing, and it feels more like a boring one-dimensional history of a bunch of primitive tribes for which you as reader just couldn't care less.
Book 2 - Helliconia Summer
As you move to Book 2, there is a marginal improvement. One reason being that Aldiss abandons the approach taken in the first book and sticks to a single set of characters throughout the Book 2. The first half suffers from the same defects as mentioned above for the Book 1, but the later part of the book is much better, mostly because of the central character comes into his groove near the end and lights up the lackluster plot. But the low point here is that Aldiss stoops to cliches and proven selling techniques at the cost of his original vision.
Book 1 - Helliconia Winter
... Coming shortly :)
Book 1 - Helliconia Spring
1. The characters do not feel authentic and fully developed. Their actions are absurd to the point of being irritating and motivations not quite right.
2. The writer; perhaps in an attempt to give an alien feel; has used a lot of uncommon words. However it feels artificial, unnecessary and imposed.
3. The world-building is mediocre at best. The biology is all inconsistent, physics almost non-existent except for some rudimentary astronomical terms thrown in here and there. The terminologies; including the names of twin suns and the villages; are borrowed from Norse mythology another difficult to digest fact.
4. There is an undercurrent of 'sickness' in most of the Book 1. This in itself may seem like just a literary device; in the vein of Edgar Allan Poe; but in contrast to Poe's, here it is inelegant and poorly executed. The disgust that you feel while reading, just doesn't contribute to the story in anyway aside from making it more irritating and drab.
5. The science fiction element is sorely missing, and it feels more like a boring one-dimensional history of a bunch of primitive tribes for which you as reader just couldn't care less.
Book 2 - Helliconia Summer
As you move to Book 2, there is a marginal improvement. One reason being that Aldiss abandons the approach taken in the first book and sticks to a single set of characters throughout the Book 2. The first half suffers from the same defects as mentioned above for the Book 1, but the later part of the book is much better, mostly because of the central character comes into his groove near the end and lights up the lackluster plot. But the low point here is that Aldiss stoops to cliches and proven selling techniques at the cost of his original vision.
Book 1 - Helliconia Winter
... Coming shortly :)
June 17, 2009
This book was utter hell. 1,200 pages of absolutely nothing happening. Why did I perservere? God alone knows as I didn’t even feel a sense of accomplishment when I’d finished reading it. Just the mourning of a couple months lost time when I could have been doing something I enjoyed.
It's a trilogy that happens (for want of a better word) on a planet that has a super extended orbit of its sun (several thousands of years if memory servers) which means its season last longer, centuries in fact. And during its orbit it gets further away and closer to its sun making the summers blisteringly hot and winters Arctic cold.
Therefore the whole planet is constantly dying and renewing itself never being able to build upon the progress of the previous season as everything becomes destroyed by the seasonal extremes.
It's a trilogy that happens (for want of a better word) on a planet that has a super extended orbit of its sun (several thousands of years if memory servers) which means its season last longer, centuries in fact. And during its orbit it gets further away and closer to its sun making the summers blisteringly hot and winters Arctic cold.
Therefore the whole planet is constantly dying and renewing itself never being able to build upon the progress of the previous season as everything becomes destroyed by the seasonal extremes.
June 18, 2014
Was probably moderately good at the time it came out.
Does nothing for a modern reader as since then better books came out, the genre evolved, the storytelling evolved.
Most of the tropes are by now so overused by other authors you recognize them from the start and so even the small amount of entertainment this book could bring disappears.
Philosophically speaking the book does not deliver as well, as it fails to be even moderately sound on this front.
So everything you encounter in this book is just unexciting and the book itself is too long for the simple stuff it contains.
In general what was at some point potentially readable now tastes like a stale chewing gum.
My recommendation - don't waste your time and pick something better
Does nothing for a modern reader as since then better books came out, the genre evolved, the storytelling evolved.
Most of the tropes are by now so overused by other authors you recognize them from the start and so even the small amount of entertainment this book could bring disappears.
Philosophically speaking the book does not deliver as well, as it fails to be even moderately sound on this front.
So everything you encounter in this book is just unexciting and the book itself is too long for the simple stuff it contains.
In general what was at some point potentially readable now tastes like a stale chewing gum.
My recommendation - don't waste your time and pick something better
June 20, 2021
Helliconia is long.
That was going to be the entirety of my review, but having read all the others from one to five stars, I feel that I should add something that has - unaccountably - been neglected by every single one: amongst the epic world building, the poignant pointed stories of human struggle, the parallel histories of three worlds rising, falling and sprawling together across the millennia, and the philosophical musings that improbably hold the whole thing together, Aldiss found the creative and narrative wherewithal to drop in a spaceship overrun by giant, carnivorous, genetically-modified, genitalia. For this alone, Helliconia is worth reading.
That was going to be the entirety of my review, but having read all the others from one to five stars, I feel that I should add something that has - unaccountably - been neglected by every single one: amongst the epic world building, the poignant pointed stories of human struggle, the parallel histories of three worlds rising, falling and sprawling together across the millennia, and the philosophical musings that improbably hold the whole thing together, Aldiss found the creative and narrative wherewithal to drop in a spaceship overrun by giant, carnivorous, genetically-modified, genitalia. For this alone, Helliconia is worth reading.
October 8, 2015
The Helliconia series is an amazingly vast story, spanning thousands of years, and two (and a bit) worlds.
Brian Aldiss has a beautiful prose, a deep sensitivity for the complexities of human nature, and a rare ability to maintain an incredible, can't-put-it-down pace that makes a large book like this flow easily.
A very fast, enjoyable read. Wonderful characters, an expansive and well crafted universe, and enough science to keep the sic-fi junkies happy, without slowing the story down.
Highly recommended!
Brian Aldiss has a beautiful prose, a deep sensitivity for the complexities of human nature, and a rare ability to maintain an incredible, can't-put-it-down pace that makes a large book like this flow easily.
A very fast, enjoyable read. Wonderful characters, an expansive and well crafted universe, and enough science to keep the sic-fi junkies happy, without slowing the story down.
Highly recommended!
May 16, 2020
Often touted as Aldiss Opus the Helliconia sequence is three stories dropping in on the life and times of the people populating the titular planet. The planet has a long year that causes many generations to live through a wintry environment before spring emerges and several more before the baking heat collapses into cold once again. The planet is constantly being observed by an expedition from earth far above from a monitoring station orbiting Heliconia.
The ecological and anthropological aspects of the setting are truly something special and have been well thought out and portrayed. Interesting concepts like the cyclical conflict between the two dominant species humans and phagors and the viral infection that prepares the humans for the changing climate provided an insight into an alien society and environment.
It’s clear Aldiss struggles a bit more with writing the human relationships and interpersonal conflict side of things in these novels. Having said that the first in the sequence Helliconia Spring is very good in that it effectively captures a society emerging out of the dark to a new world where they can regain knowledge they have lost. Here the characters are dynamic, unique to each other and help to drive the plot forward.
Unfortunately this falls apart a little in the following two parts and the momentum isn’t well maintained. There are flashes of brilliance and engaging scenes and ideas especially when describing the ecological side of things as I’ve already mentioned but Aldiss’s inability to write women without running into cliches and gender stereotyping is infuriating.
Yes I know it was the 80s and Aldiss was old then but I thought he might have gotten a bit better with this since his 60s novels but apparently that was a bit too much of am ask. I just kept thinking LEFT HAND OF DARKNESS WAS PUBLISHED OVER 10 YEARS BEFORE THIS THERE IS NO EXCUSE TO BE QUITE THIS BAD. Oh well it is what it is and it’s mostly bearable.
There are some very fun belief systems/political systems to read about as well which is a plus point for me personally and as always Aldiss’s prose is better than most Sci Fi writers from this era.
Overall if you know what Aldiss is like from other books and his weaknesses and strengths then you know what to expect. I maintain that Hothouse and Greybeard are better books but this has a lot to offer and I’m glad I finally picked it up off my shelf.
The ecological and anthropological aspects of the setting are truly something special and have been well thought out and portrayed. Interesting concepts like the cyclical conflict between the two dominant species humans and phagors and the viral infection that prepares the humans for the changing climate provided an insight into an alien society and environment.
It’s clear Aldiss struggles a bit more with writing the human relationships and interpersonal conflict side of things in these novels. Having said that the first in the sequence Helliconia Spring is very good in that it effectively captures a society emerging out of the dark to a new world where they can regain knowledge they have lost. Here the characters are dynamic, unique to each other and help to drive the plot forward.
Unfortunately this falls apart a little in the following two parts and the momentum isn’t well maintained. There are flashes of brilliance and engaging scenes and ideas especially when describing the ecological side of things as I’ve already mentioned but Aldiss’s inability to write women without running into cliches and gender stereotyping is infuriating.
Yes I know it was the 80s and Aldiss was old then but I thought he might have gotten a bit better with this since his 60s novels but apparently that was a bit too much of am ask. I just kept thinking LEFT HAND OF DARKNESS WAS PUBLISHED OVER 10 YEARS BEFORE THIS THERE IS NO EXCUSE TO BE QUITE THIS BAD. Oh well it is what it is and it’s mostly bearable.
There are some very fun belief systems/political systems to read about as well which is a plus point for me personally and as always Aldiss’s prose is better than most Sci Fi writers from this era.
Overall if you know what Aldiss is like from other books and his weaknesses and strengths then you know what to expect. I maintain that Hothouse and Greybeard are better books but this has a lot to offer and I’m glad I finally picked it up off my shelf.
November 26, 2017
Helliconia, a distant Earth-like planet with a year almost 2,000 years long. It's red dwarf star and other planets captured by a white giant resulting a very elliptical orbit. Freezing winters hundreds of years long followed by blistering searing Summer's causing vast swings in nature and the human and nonhuman species. Around the planet an Earth observation station occupied by humans studying all aspects of the planet and beaming the story back to Earth. Earth follows it although the transmissions take 1,000 years to reach them. These books are so complex, so many characters, so much detail, so many interrelated themes it's hard to write a quick review. I liked the first best, .Helliconia Spring. The middle book, Helliconia Summer not as much. The last book, Helliconia Winter, was better. If you want to immerse yourself in a fascinating world expertly built and sink into some pretty deep themes of ecology and society I encourage to to try these.
December 13, 2017
I received a copy of this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
This is a book that I read a loooong time ago and came back to a generation later. It's a really original series (or was at the time) and the writing and imagery is quite beautiful. The bones are science fiction, but you have to go through lots of layers and pages to see that. The atmosphere is fantasy. It's the original "winter is coming" series, with winter lasting aeons and spring a miracle. The gender issues are quite dated and fall into the range of problematic. It's a bit psychedelic.
This is a book that I read a loooong time ago and came back to a generation later. It's a really original series (or was at the time) and the writing and imagery is quite beautiful. The bones are science fiction, but you have to go through lots of layers and pages to see that. The atmosphere is fantasy. It's the original "winter is coming" series, with winter lasting aeons and spring a miracle. The gender issues are quite dated and fall into the range of problematic. It's a bit psychedelic.
couldn-t-finish
May 7, 2021As of May 7, 2021, I haven't finished this. It's not that this is a bad book -- I haven't read a bad one from him, and I've read a lot of his books -- but it hasn't really kept my interest. I'm sure I'll finish it at some point. One problem may be that it's an e-book, and I do better reading actual physical books.
Basically, Heliconia is a planet with very long seasons -- like many years long. So the characters don't carry through from one season to another. It's a little hard to get involved with a character who doesn't make it through the book, over and over.
Still a good read, for those with more patience than I.
Basically, Heliconia is a planet with very long seasons -- like many years long. So the characters don't carry through from one season to another. It's a little hard to get involved with a character who doesn't make it through the book, over and over.
Still a good read, for those with more patience than I.
October 19, 2024
DEFINITLY A FAV!!!
Despite being a heavily dense trilogy, I liked that the main characters were different in all three books, which was sort of like a historical sequence.
A VERY GOOD REPRESENTATION of the birth and end of civilizations and their interactions!
I recommend it if you have time and like sci-fi and somewhat historical things.
Despite being a heavily dense trilogy, I liked that the main characters were different in all three books, which was sort of like a historical sequence.
A VERY GOOD REPRESENTATION of the birth and end of civilizations and their interactions!
I recommend it if you have time and like sci-fi and somewhat historical things.
Read
March 9, 2025DNF @ 10%. It is just not working for me in book format.
October 31, 2019
A grand sweeping narrative across some 1800+ years which mixes specific events at certain times with the ongoing natural changes in the world. Sometimes it reads a bit dated but the overall approach to how the living world affects a people and how the people affect a living world reflects strongly with James Lovelock's Gaia theory.
December 8, 2023
Took me a long time to get through this book. Had to start over once or twice. I really would have liked more information on what was going on in the Earth Observation satellite.
Maybe in the Summer and/or Winter books?
Gonna need a while before I wade back in
Maybe in the Summer and/or Winter books?
Gonna need a while before I wade back in
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 25, 2024
Good story, but would recommend reading as 3 stories instead of the omnibus
January 17, 2016
http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2583651.html
Brian Aldiss is one of my favourite writers, and the Helliconia trilogy is one of his core works: three novels set centuries apart on Helliconia, a planet whose orbit brings it from freezing winter to hot summer over the centuries, and whose two major races (humans and horned furry Pharos) are under constant observation from Earth. Aldiss himself promoted it at the time as a major breakthrough, and I think it was - for him, as it was his first really long fiction, and for the genre, in that he caught the wave of Gaia-style ecology but managed to wear his (extensive) research pretty lightly while hanging interesting stories on the context.
Reading Helliconia Spring when it first came out in 1982, when I was 15, was tremendously exciting. I last reread it, along with the other two, on holiday in Croatia in 1996, I think. I'm glad to say that it pretty much stands the test of time. It is in two parts, the first being the short tale of Yuli, who escapes the (vividly drawn) theocratic underground city of Pannoval (I was sorry that we saw no more of it) to bring new expertise to the town which becomes known as Oldorando, and the second, many generations later, being the story of how the people of Oldorando adapt to the coming of Spring. We readers are told what is going on in terms of climate change, but the characters are in the situation of their world gradually (and sometimes suddenly) changing out of all recognition.
Helliconia Spring popped up on my reading list again thanks to having won the BSFA Award in 1983 (beating a pretty tough field: Little, Big, Nebula-winning No Enemy But Time, Philip K. Dick's The Divine Invasion and Gene Wolfe's The Sword of the Lictor; the Hugo that year went to Foundation's Edge). It also won the Campbell Memorial Award (again beating No Enemy But Time).
Helliconia Summer also still worked for me - the twist here is that the Earth observation satellite sends a volunteer from its crew to the surface of Helliconia, where he knows he will not survive long due to a lack of immunity from local diseases, but gets very much mixed up in a complex dynastic / political / gendered dispute among local rulers. Aldiss plays the theme of technologically advanced individual failing to impress a much more medieval civilisation very nicely. It didn't win any awards, the BSFA going that year to Tik-Tok.
On the other hand, Helliconia Winter didn't work for me anything like as well as the first two. I found the plot meandering, the gender politics pretty unpleasant, and the Earth observation sections taken in unwelcome and not very interesting directions. I may be in a minority; it also won the BSFA award, though I must say I have not heard of three of its four opponents - Free Live Free by Gene Wolfe, Kiteworld by Keith Roberts and The Warrior Who Carried Life, by Geoff Ryman, though of course I know other work by all three authors. The other BSFA nominee that year was The Anubis Gates, by Tim Powers, which I read and loved when it came out. The Hugo and Nebula that year both went to Startide Rising. None of the BSFA shortlist was on either the Hugo or Nebula ballots.
Brian Aldiss is one of my favourite writers, and the Helliconia trilogy is one of his core works: three novels set centuries apart on Helliconia, a planet whose orbit brings it from freezing winter to hot summer over the centuries, and whose two major races (humans and horned furry Pharos) are under constant observation from Earth. Aldiss himself promoted it at the time as a major breakthrough, and I think it was - for him, as it was his first really long fiction, and for the genre, in that he caught the wave of Gaia-style ecology but managed to wear his (extensive) research pretty lightly while hanging interesting stories on the context.
Reading Helliconia Spring when it first came out in 1982, when I was 15, was tremendously exciting. I last reread it, along with the other two, on holiday in Croatia in 1996, I think. I'm glad to say that it pretty much stands the test of time. It is in two parts, the first being the short tale of Yuli, who escapes the (vividly drawn) theocratic underground city of Pannoval (I was sorry that we saw no more of it) to bring new expertise to the town which becomes known as Oldorando, and the second, many generations later, being the story of how the people of Oldorando adapt to the coming of Spring. We readers are told what is going on in terms of climate change, but the characters are in the situation of their world gradually (and sometimes suddenly) changing out of all recognition.
Helliconia Spring popped up on my reading list again thanks to having won the BSFA Award in 1983 (beating a pretty tough field: Little, Big, Nebula-winning No Enemy But Time, Philip K. Dick's The Divine Invasion and Gene Wolfe's The Sword of the Lictor; the Hugo that year went to Foundation's Edge). It also won the Campbell Memorial Award (again beating No Enemy But Time).
Helliconia Summer also still worked for me - the twist here is that the Earth observation satellite sends a volunteer from its crew to the surface of Helliconia, where he knows he will not survive long due to a lack of immunity from local diseases, but gets very much mixed up in a complex dynastic / political / gendered dispute among local rulers. Aldiss plays the theme of technologically advanced individual failing to impress a much more medieval civilisation very nicely. It didn't win any awards, the BSFA going that year to Tik-Tok.
On the other hand, Helliconia Winter didn't work for me anything like as well as the first two. I found the plot meandering, the gender politics pretty unpleasant, and the Earth observation sections taken in unwelcome and not very interesting directions. I may be in a minority; it also won the BSFA award, though I must say I have not heard of three of its four opponents - Free Live Free by Gene Wolfe, Kiteworld by Keith Roberts and The Warrior Who Carried Life, by Geoff Ryman, though of course I know other work by all three authors. The other BSFA nominee that year was The Anubis Gates, by Tim Powers, which I read and loved when it came out. The Hugo and Nebula that year both went to Startide Rising. None of the BSFA shortlist was on either the Hugo or Nebula ballots.
December 11, 2020
An epic tale of a planet that takes place over thousands of years. The Helliconia long year is told in a series of individual stories that are loosely related. We are introduced to small handful of characters who live their lives through portions of the long year. By putting together each story, we get an understanding to how the biotic and abiotic are interrelated, and intriguing explanation about gene-expression.
We also get glimpses of first person insight to other sentient species' culture and thinking; however, never enough to satisfy. On occasion, some of the individual stories are built up with extraordinary detail, only to be left to languish without another thought. Often, I was left wondering when we would learn more about how so-and-so's experiences and/or drama would affect generations to come, without satisfaction.
These are dense books, with an emphasis on the struggle for survival amid little joy; however, the main character is an entire planet and its unfolding drama told on a large scale. Finally, the excursions to the man-made satellite and the original Earth, attempt to parallel the destructive nature of humankind. In one instance we learn that humankind removed from nature is doomed, and in the other, humankind begins to assimilate fully into nature but also looses itself in the process. There seems to be a lot of ideas here, not all of them fully fleshed out, but perhaps it is an effort to encourage insight and questioning to the human perspective.
We also get glimpses of first person insight to other sentient species' culture and thinking; however, never enough to satisfy. On occasion, some of the individual stories are built up with extraordinary detail, only to be left to languish without another thought. Often, I was left wondering when we would learn more about how so-and-so's experiences and/or drama would affect generations to come, without satisfaction.
These are dense books, with an emphasis on the struggle for survival amid little joy; however, the main character is an entire planet and its unfolding drama told on a large scale. Finally, the excursions to the man-made satellite and the original Earth, attempt to parallel the destructive nature of humankind. In one instance we learn that humankind removed from nature is doomed, and in the other, humankind begins to assimilate fully into nature but also looses itself in the process. There seems to be a lot of ideas here, not all of them fully fleshed out, but perhaps it is an effort to encourage insight and questioning to the human perspective.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 11, 2018
Brian Aldiss was one of the finest writers of SF/F to arise in the 1960s. His work of those days was based in a deep knowledge of the field (and literature in general), and took pains at times to subvert its tropes to excellent effect.
In the early '80s, Aldiss published three volumes of "planetary romanceabout the planet Helliconia, which has a number of interesting characteristics. About 1000 light-years from Earth, Helliconia is the only planet humanity has discovered that supports sentient life: in fact, several sapient species, one of which is for all practical purposes human. The other main race, phagors, are descended from the local equivalent of cattle, but are ferocious meat-eaters. Phagors have a very different sense of time from humans, and a different - perhaps more limited - sense of self.
Humans and phagors do not get along very well.
But Helliconia itself, the backdrop for these and other races, is the real star of the show. Helliconia, prehistorically speaking, was the most Earthlike planet of the dim star Batalix. In its cold environment, the phagors evolved.
Then, millions of years ago, Batalix was captured by the giant star Freyr, in the process losing Helliconia's moon. The phagors still refer to this as "the catastrophe." Batalix developed a very eccentric orbit of about 2500 terrestrial years around Freyr. Since Helliconia still orbits Batalix, this means that Helliconia has a "short year" - the 480 of their (25-hour) days it takes to orbit Batalix - and a "long year" determined by Batalix's drawing near to, then far from, Freyr. Near Batalix's perihelion, the weather is hot to the point where life barely survives; during its aphelion, the weather is glacial. Obviously, the long-year winter is longer than its summer.
The overall energy budget of Helliconia is, nonetheless, greater than it was when Batalix was alone. This greater energy budget allows the local equivalent of apes to develop into several more advanced species, culminating in humans. Humans are susceptible to a virus, borne by the ticks that infest phagors, which strikes twice during the long year. During the spring, it is the Bone Sickness, which alters the genome and makes people taller and thinner; in the autumn, the Fat Death has the reverse effect and prepares them for the long winter.
The virus is inevitably fatal to Earth-humans, so Helliconia is off-limits to colonization, and can only be observed from an orbiting station.
The first volume, _Helliconia Spring_, takes place as Helliconia is beginning to emerge from the depths of winter. It has a long prelude, in which a young hunter named Yuli ultimately becomes the leader of a small settlement.
The main action of _Spring_ takes place several generations later, as Yuli's descendants fight for political power in a town built on ruins from the previous cycle. One faction sees the traditions that have let them survive the long winter as necessary for continued survival, while the other faction - led by women - seeks the increase of knowledge and freedom. There is no conclusive ending to this conflict.
But what is wonderful is to see life on Helliconia emerging from its long sleep. Great mammals emerge from various forms of hibernations, trees that spent the winter subsisting deep underground burst forth, and the human community struggles to cope with all the novelties.
Several hundred years later, _Helliconia Summer_ takes up in a neighboring kingdom. It has an interesting structure, slightly remniscent of Zelazny's _Lord of Light_. In the first few chapters, we see a King divorcing his Queen (whom he loves very much) for political reasons. Then the book flashes back to give us the story of how things came to this pass, as Church and State struggle for power. Finally, we see the outcome of all that has gone before, in an apocalyptic resolution of that struggle.
_Helliconia Winter_ takes place in late autumn and early winter, and moves the action significantly, to the northern continent of Sibornal. The Sibornalese found a way to carry some knowledge from one long year to the next, so they were more technologically advanced than the other continents throughout the warmer parts of the year (a fact which has major bearing in _Summer_). Here winter is beginning to advance. The continent is ruled by a Hierarch, whose identity is unknown and whose word is law.
When the Fat Death begins to spread in the equatorial regions, the Hierach decides, as a way of preventing it reaching Sibornal, to kill everyone coming from there - even a Sibornalese army returning in triumph from the last campaign of autumn - and enacts rules that gradually reduce the freedom of Sibornal's citizens, all in the name of avoiding plague. The cast of characters includes soldiers of Sibornal - both a soldier of that army and a soldier of the army sent to slaughter them; a woman taken slave during that campaign; and a merchant of foreign extraction who just wants to live his life quietly. They end up sharing a harrowing series of adventures that changes the fate of Sibornal in the coming winter.
By this description, the books are hard science fiction at its finest. But sprinkled in throughout the books are scenes in which both humans and phagors - by very different methods - commune with their dead ancestors, to real effect. Aldiss does not try to explain this away, or to give it a scientific basis; it's just something that seems to be true on Helliconia but not on Earth.
Another aspect of the story which may seem pseudoscientific to some is its heavy reliance on Lovelock's "Gaia" hypothesis, the idea that a planetary ecosystem is a whole similar to an organism, which regulates itself and attempts to correct imbalances. Aldiss goes so far as to suggest that this planetary organism may be conscious (in a very different way from human consciousness).
_Winter_ is a slow starter, but the trilogy builds momentum as it goes; by the middle of the first book, it's rapid enough, and the third rolls along at quite a pace.
This is a five-star wonder.
In the early '80s, Aldiss published three volumes of "planetary romanceabout the planet Helliconia, which has a number of interesting characteristics. About 1000 light-years from Earth, Helliconia is the only planet humanity has discovered that supports sentient life: in fact, several sapient species, one of which is for all practical purposes human. The other main race, phagors, are descended from the local equivalent of cattle, but are ferocious meat-eaters. Phagors have a very different sense of time from humans, and a different - perhaps more limited - sense of self.
Humans and phagors do not get along very well.
But Helliconia itself, the backdrop for these and other races, is the real star of the show. Helliconia, prehistorically speaking, was the most Earthlike planet of the dim star Batalix. In its cold environment, the phagors evolved.
Then, millions of years ago, Batalix was captured by the giant star Freyr, in the process losing Helliconia's moon. The phagors still refer to this as "the catastrophe." Batalix developed a very eccentric orbit of about 2500 terrestrial years around Freyr. Since Helliconia still orbits Batalix, this means that Helliconia has a "short year" - the 480 of their (25-hour) days it takes to orbit Batalix - and a "long year" determined by Batalix's drawing near to, then far from, Freyr. Near Batalix's perihelion, the weather is hot to the point where life barely survives; during its aphelion, the weather is glacial. Obviously, the long-year winter is longer than its summer.
The overall energy budget of Helliconia is, nonetheless, greater than it was when Batalix was alone. This greater energy budget allows the local equivalent of apes to develop into several more advanced species, culminating in humans. Humans are susceptible to a virus, borne by the ticks that infest phagors, which strikes twice during the long year. During the spring, it is the Bone Sickness, which alters the genome and makes people taller and thinner; in the autumn, the Fat Death has the reverse effect and prepares them for the long winter.
The virus is inevitably fatal to Earth-humans, so Helliconia is off-limits to colonization, and can only be observed from an orbiting station.
The first volume, _Helliconia Spring_, takes place as Helliconia is beginning to emerge from the depths of winter. It has a long prelude, in which a young hunter named Yuli ultimately becomes the leader of a small settlement.
The main action of _Spring_ takes place several generations later, as Yuli's descendants fight for political power in a town built on ruins from the previous cycle. One faction sees the traditions that have let them survive the long winter as necessary for continued survival, while the other faction - led by women - seeks the increase of knowledge and freedom. There is no conclusive ending to this conflict.
But what is wonderful is to see life on Helliconia emerging from its long sleep. Great mammals emerge from various forms of hibernations, trees that spent the winter subsisting deep underground burst forth, and the human community struggles to cope with all the novelties.
Several hundred years later, _Helliconia Summer_ takes up in a neighboring kingdom. It has an interesting structure, slightly remniscent of Zelazny's _Lord of Light_. In the first few chapters, we see a King divorcing his Queen (whom he loves very much) for political reasons. Then the book flashes back to give us the story of how things came to this pass, as Church and State struggle for power. Finally, we see the outcome of all that has gone before, in an apocalyptic resolution of that struggle.
_Helliconia Winter_ takes place in late autumn and early winter, and moves the action significantly, to the northern continent of Sibornal. The Sibornalese found a way to carry some knowledge from one long year to the next, so they were more technologically advanced than the other continents throughout the warmer parts of the year (a fact which has major bearing in _Summer_). Here winter is beginning to advance. The continent is ruled by a Hierarch, whose identity is unknown and whose word is law.
When the Fat Death begins to spread in the equatorial regions, the Hierach decides, as a way of preventing it reaching Sibornal, to kill everyone coming from there - even a Sibornalese army returning in triumph from the last campaign of autumn - and enacts rules that gradually reduce the freedom of Sibornal's citizens, all in the name of avoiding plague. The cast of characters includes soldiers of Sibornal - both a soldier of that army and a soldier of the army sent to slaughter them; a woman taken slave during that campaign; and a merchant of foreign extraction who just wants to live his life quietly. They end up sharing a harrowing series of adventures that changes the fate of Sibornal in the coming winter.
By this description, the books are hard science fiction at its finest. But sprinkled in throughout the books are scenes in which both humans and phagors - by very different methods - commune with their dead ancestors, to real effect. Aldiss does not try to explain this away, or to give it a scientific basis; it's just something that seems to be true on Helliconia but not on Earth.
Another aspect of the story which may seem pseudoscientific to some is its heavy reliance on Lovelock's "Gaia" hypothesis, the idea that a planetary ecosystem is a whole similar to an organism, which regulates itself and attempts to correct imbalances. Aldiss goes so far as to suggest that this planetary organism may be conscious (in a very different way from human consciousness).
_Winter_ is a slow starter, but the trilogy builds momentum as it goes; by the middle of the first book, it's rapid enough, and the third rolls along at quite a pace.
This is a five-star wonder.
February 17, 2014
This is a masterpiece of worldbuilding and storytelling. It has its weak spots (an overly long prologue with almost no apparent relation to the rest, a couple of somewhat absurd/surreal turns of events in the third volume) but all in all, Helliconia is a delight to read. The characters will stay with you, even though THE character is the planet itself. It's not easy to write a sci-fi saga of planetary cycles with a global scope that is also a collection of engaging personal stories, but Aldiss manages to do both.
January 10, 2012
1305 pages of unnecessary and unrelenting nouns, set on a beautifully realised vision of an alien world. The first and third books where the cold snow and ice are in force are the strongest parts but the middle book is a real slog. It's epic and is worth the read if you have plenty of spare time and enjoy learning huge lists of pointless names.
December 20, 2015
phew. I feel like I've been reading this book forever... it's a hugely ambitious piece of Sci Fi, actually more like a historical epic than a traditional piece of Sci Fi really, with a lot to like about it but at all over 1000 pages and covering generations of characters (some much more interesting than others) it can be rather a slog.
May 2, 2015
Unfortunately I couldn't finish it and it was my second attempt.
July 10, 2018
Almost perfect but marred in my opinion in the last book by an unnecessary detour to a subplot set on Earth
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