Hot Sky at Midnight

by Robert Silverberg

“Intelligent and engaging science fiction” set against the backdrop of an environmental apocalypse from the SF Grand Master (The Washington Post).   Not so very far in the future, the icecaps have melted and many coastal communities have been flooded out. The ozone layer is destroyed. Some areas are livable with breathing masks and injections that protect the skin from the now-deadly rays of the sun, but the only real refuge—for those who can afford it—has become the near-space orbital colonies built and run by private companies.   Valparaiso Nuevo is one of these colonies—a haven and a center of action for hustlers, conspirators, and people looking for an edge. It is also the target of a disillusioned group of humans who become embroiled in a scheme to overthrow it. Their goals are individually motivated but the deadly combination of ambition, distrust, greed, stupidity, and lust leads to a dramatic conclusion that replicates in miniature the history of man’s destruction of his own living space on the planet. A bleak picture of future Earth and a complex plot peopled with dark, rich characters, comes together as one of Silverberg’s finer novels.   “Silverberg focuses on his characters and their ruined world, providing a convincing portrayal of life in a greenhouse effect-cursed future. . . . [He] delivers powerful images of a world blighted by ecological abuse, and a satisfying novel as well.” —Publishers Weekly   “It’s definitely major Silverberg and as such deserves all the readers it will undoubtedly get.” —Booklist  

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Speculative Fiction, Fantasy, Climate Change Fiction, Dystopia

344 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1994

About the author

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Robert Silverberg is a highly celebrated American science fiction author and editor known for his prolific output and literary range. Over a career spanning decades, he has won multiple Hugo and Nebula Awards and was named a Grand Master by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America in 2004. Inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame in 1999, Silverberg is recognized for both his immense productivity and his contributions to the genre's evolution.
Born in Brooklyn, he began writing in his teens and won his first Hugo Award in 1956 as the best new writer. Throughout the 1950s, he produced vast amounts of fiction, often under pseudonyms, and was known for writing up to a million words a year. When the market declined, he diversified into other genres, including historical nonfiction and erotica.
Silverberg’s return to science fiction in the 1960s marked a shift toward deeper psychological and literary themes, contributing significantly to the New Wave movement. Acclaimed works from this period include Downward to the Earth, Dying Inside, Nightwings, and The World Inside. In the 1980s, he launched the Majipoor series with Lord Valentine’s Castle, creating one of the most imaginative planetary settings in science fiction.
Though he announced his retirement from writing in the mid-1970s, Silverberg returned with renewed vigor and continued to publish acclaimed fiction into the 1990s. He received further recognition with the Nebula-winning Sailing to Byzantium and the Hugo-winning Gilgamesh in the Outback.
Silverberg has also played a significant role as an editor and anthologist, shaping science fiction literature through both his own work and his influence on others. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife, author Karen Haber.

Reviews

[Mark · Rating 1 out of 5]

"These are very sexually gifted women, and we who wander around looking for the solace of a little nookie are highly vulnerable to the mysterious mojo that throbs out at us from between their legs, but their heads are all full of stupid shit. They have no educations and no real knowledge of anything and they aren’t able to think straight: they just buy into whatever hysterical the-sky-is-falling garbage happens to be making the rounds, and they go around screaming and demonstrating and trying to change the world in five different internally inconsistent ways at once.”

Yikes.

Dripping with misogyny. Might be tolerable if the book was good--the premise, characters trying to survive on a climate-change-ravaged Earth, is appealing--but it's in serious need of editing. One of the main plots seems to meander aimlessly, which is unfortunate because it comprises half the book.

If you want to read Silverberg, I recommend starting elsewhere.

[Frank · Rating 4 out of 5]

Silverberg has always been one of my favorite sci-fi authors. This novel, published in 1994, is one of his later efforts and I wasn't sure if it would hold up against his classics from the 60s and 70s like "Book of Skulls" and "Nightwings", but I was pleasantly surprised. I really enjoyed this one about a very polluted earth in the not too distant future and how mankind is trying to deal with the pollution. This includes a very radical concept of genetically re-engineering the human species by changing its hemoglobin so we would be able to breathe the polluted air including methane and to alter the skin, etc. to withstand the unprotected rays of the sun. The new race would be "monstrous with scales, goggle eyes, and webbed feet..." In addition to this option, a stardrive has been developed to take earthlings to a possible new home in the stars. However, traveling at the speed of light is found to negatively affect humans' eyesight and makes them disoriented so a retrofitting to change eyesight into a kind of "blindsight" is in the works. Not only does this novel have some great concepts but the characters are all developed very well and the story-line has a lot of intrigue. The character "Farkas", who was blinded in the womb in a genetic experiment and has no eyes, is especially interesting. Overall, I would recommend this one highly.

[Steve Langley · Rating 2 out of 5]

Agree with Mark and Marescha: Silverberg's attitude to women is as lumbering as that of a 14-year-old boy in the middle of a wet dream. ("Silken thighs... glorious breasts... She thinks with her tits..." Pur-leeease.) Where did his belittling contempt come from? Is it apparent in his other novels? I haven't noticed.
You could argue that it's only a bit of scifi not to be taken seriously but Silverberg clearly wants us to treat this story as important. Time and again he illustrates the devastating implications of climate change. He is serious about the message.
But too frequently, that message gets lost and the narrative suffers. His breathtaking misogyny was the biggest fault here but there were quite a few others. All the brilliant believability of the worlds he creates and ideas he presents in Hot Sky are sabotaged by shallow, unbelievable characters doing too many unbelievable things, a rambling plot and a ridiculous, adolescent finale. I was prepared to give him a lot of leeway because of the positives in this novel but after a while, I just got tired of the garbage. For every descriptive flourish and sections of intelligent storytelling (the death throes of Earth's environment; the nightmare drive across the States; the moral dilemma at sea etc) there are whole chapters of lazy, cliched writing and feeble dialogue.
I expected much, much more.

[Jane · Rating 1 out of 5]

Being a big fan of Silverberg I was shocked that I just absolutely hated this book. In fact, I never finished it! I felt like he went a little too techno and left behind the little bits of fantasy from his earlier books that made his Sci-Fi work for me.

[David Zimny · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hot Sky at Midnight by Robert Silverberg is a complex novel with many facets. It is entertaining as well as thought-provoking, as it gives us a glimpse of what Earth might become in a hundred years if we don't take care of our environment.

The book takes place (I believe) about one hundred years into the future. The Ozone Layer is damaged, the Greenhouse Effect has turned the planet into a sauna, and fossil fuels and machine exhaust have polluted the air so much that people usually have to wear masks when going outdoors. Mega-corporations have taken over people's personal lives as well as professional lives. Two corporations in particular dominate the landscape- Kyocera-Merck and Samurai Industries. Many space stations are now orbiting the earth. These stations are full of Earth people who could no longer tolerate the conditions on the planet. In these habitats the air is cleaner and plants and animals thrive. The luxuries on earth can now be enjoyed on this space station, from restaurants to hotels to airports.

Space travel to distant parts of the galaxy has not been perfected yet, but Kyocera-Merck has developed a prototype drive that may enable people to travel at speeds greater than light. The company is looking for volunteers to travel on a spaceship with this drive. The only problem is, vision based on light will not work in a hyper lightspeed ship, so the volunteers will have to have their eyes removed. Instead of sight they will be given something called "blindsight", which is a hypersensitive 360-degree sensory experience.

As far as the characters, there is Victor Farkas, eyeless and given the blindsight capability from since he was in his mother's womb. He works for Kyocera-Merck and gets involved in a plot to overthrow the Big Brother type leader of the space station named Valparaiso Nuevo. Paul Carpenter is a jack-of-all-trades who works for Samurai Industries. He does whatever work the company tells him to do and wherever they tell him to do it. Paul's best friend is Nick Rhodes, a brilliant scientist who is working on changing the basic human body mechanisms to better adapt to Earth's changing environment. Hemoglobin based on sulfur instead of iron, for example. He is tormented between helping the human race survive and keeping them relatively "human". He does not want these changes to the body mechanisms to turn people into some kind of monsters.

I thoroughly enjoyed Hot Sky at Midnight. Based on my description it may seem like a jumbled mess, but Silverberg does a good job tying everything together. It is a rather male-oriented story; the female characters' sexual attributes are overly emphasized, so women may not enjoy it as much as men. There is more to swallow in this novel than in many other novels twice its size, but that's what I like about it.

[M.G. Mason · Rating 1 out of 5]

I'm writing this review despite the fact that this is one of only a handful of books I did not complete. it isn't very often I do that but I could see no point carrying on. I got about 2/3 of the way through and nothing was happening. I found the characters unlikable and the plot tedious and stationary. It wasn't even heavy going, just an unpleasat read that rambled on almost directionless while the world was falling apart

.The premise is good: Earth has been polluted and people have long since given up trying to cure the environment and decided to change the human genome to adapt ourselves to the environment. A good idea that should have opened up so many ethical questions and judging by the previous book I read by the same author, 'The Alien Years' I thought that was what we were going to get.

Unfortunately we don't get that, instead we meet some pretty mundane and often unlikable people with a few token references to scientific research. I don't even care enough about the end to look up the events on wikipedia. There is no real depth, but an illusion that something is happening... somewhere... but we see nothing of it. Is the writer trying to suggest that people are not noticing the urgency? Is he showing a people facing their doom but apathetic in their belief that it will all work itself out? Possibly, but if that is the case then it didn't work for me. It wasn't going anywhere so on page 288 I gave up.

See more book reviews at my blog

[Paul Medlin · Rating 4 out of 5]

As in a lot of Silverberg books the ending has a twist that takes the story in an unexpected direction. The depiction of a climate crisis world might be a bit overdone but it was written over 30 years ago.

[Rusty · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hot Sky at Midnight is a chilling prophetic story that combines intimate personal drama and adventure to depict "a sweeping tapestry of individual human lives trapped in a monumental catastrophe as tomorrow's men and women search for a new paradise among the social, political and ecological ruins of our past." This is a fine example of writing from an author who won five Nebulas, four Hugo awards, a Jupitor Award and the Prix Apollo. Wonderful story that boggles the mind.

[Aleksandr Plata · Rating 3 out of 5]

Le ciel paraissait froid, froid comme l'espace, avec cet air glacial de la montagne, d'une terrible limpidité, si différent de l'air des villes, constammment chargé de saletés. Mais Carpenter savait qu'il n'en était rien. En réalité, le ciel était brûlant, comme partout ailleurs. Sur toute la surface de cette pauvre planète, le ciel était brûlant, même à minuit, même à la lisière de ce sombre royaume de montagne semé d'étoiles


N'est-ce que ces lignes-là ne vous donnent des frissons quand vous en lissez? Pas du tout? Alors, vous devriez lire Ciel Brûlant de Minuit jusqu'à la fin de ce roman...¿de science-fiction dramatique?, ¿ou est-ce que ceci est-il plutôt un thriller? On dirait que cette histoire semble en réalité un fatras de tous ces genres que je viens de nomer.

Paul Carpenter est un homme du XXIV siècle aux multiples talents qui se sent de plus en plus accablé par son boulot au sein d'un groupe de météorologues qui travaillent pour Samurai Industries, dans un monde nouveau où tout à l'air d'être monopolisé, à la botte de quelques grandes corporations comme Samurai et Kyocera. Nick Rhodes, scientifique employé par cette dernière et ami de Carpenter, se trouve maintenant devant un choix assez difficile: Doit-il se méfier du projet scientifique actuel lequel soutient qu'il faut modifier les gènes et l'anatomie des humains afin de subsister sur cette planète à l'air toxique? Ou, bien au contraire, devrait-il accepter la mise au point de cette recherche qui pourrait nous transformer en véritables monstres mutés?


Voici un roman d'histoires entrecroisées dont chaque châpitre se concentre sur les expériences de chaque personnage (Juanito, Farkas, Rhodes, Enron, et surtout Carpenter). J'ai me rendu compte qu'il y a de nombreux utilisateurs ici sur GoodReads auxquels le roman ne leur a pas plut parce qu'il n'y a pas des aventures, à peine du progress dans l'histoire, un final loin d'être étonnant, et aussi pas de 'plot twists' ou même pas de descriptions des endroits futuristiques et des téchnologies de ce monde distopique, ce qui peut décevoir les mordus et mordues de la science-fiction qui espèrent retrouver dans Ciel Brûlant de Minuit un roman qui nous fasse éprouver quelques sensations semblables à ces qui suscitent des autres livres du genre: la fascination en retrouvant ce monde futuristique, grâce aux descriptions imaginatifs des navettes, des façons de vivre, des téchnologies de la nouvelle societé, etc.


Toutefois, Ciel Brûlant de Minuit n'est pas qu'un drame avec des questions existentiels, sans un autre but qu'éveiller au-dédans du lecteur la question de qu'est-ce qui se passera dans le futur, si ce qui arrive sera le monde aux appareils d'une sophistication inconcevable dont ces nouvelles avancements qui l'humanité réussira à inventer seront-ils le centre de notre attention, évoquant le même étonnement que de nos jours on éprouve d'en imaginer. Curieusement, les personnages de ce roman se demandent la même question constamment: qu'est-ce qui nous attend dans le futur?

Si on réfléchit un peu plus, la conclusion atteinte pourrait sembler cauchemardesque, aussi inquiétante comme le noir de l'espace, l'infini angoissant d'une extension trop vaste pour avoir connaissance de notre propre situation au milieu du vaste univers. Peut-être nous sommes condamnés à jamais avoir de la certitude au sujet du futur, n'importe si on naît dans le siècle XXIV ou plus tard, peut-être rien nous peut sauver de l'existence de ces questions, de l'incertitude sur l'avenir, de l'affreuse facilité dont on perd la capacité de nous surprendre par les choses, autant qu'on commence à tenir pour acquis tout ce qui les générations précédents eussent vu comme un idéal inatteignable, un rêve féerique, peut-être avec des noveautés qu'ils n'auraient pas pu imaginer.

Ciel Brûlant de Minuit tourne autour cette vision loin d'être optimiste et d'une austerité grise et froide, ironiquement froide puisque la planète portrayée par Silverberg n'abrite que des forêts devenues déserts, que des endroits sous le siège du soleil brûlant (à exception de quelques coins priviligés comme l'Israël). Il y a de virus mystérieux, des mutations biologiques lovecraftiennes et l'aide d'un masque qui plutôt qu'un bouclier protegéant les humains de l'air toxique avec plus de méthane que d'oxygène s'est devenue un accessoire comme un autre quelconque qu'on porte tel un casquette.

Bien sûr, il y a peu de progression de l'histoire, mais c'est un abord délibéré et même si au fond de moi-même j'ai m'attendu aussi un roman avec plus d'action et par au moins avec quelque avancement jusqu'à un climax, après un petit temps de réflexion j'ai conclu que ceci est une histoire autour du chagrin, de la tristesse, de les sentiments épanouis à travers la contemplation d'une telle planète. Un roman à éprouver et à réflechir...

J'aimé ce livre même si j'ai fini par considerer qu'il mérite justement trois étoiles, pas plus. J'aurais aimé quelque approfondissement dans les personnages et malgré l'histoire de drame dystopique autour de ces questions existentiels, tel atmosphère nihiliste, j'aurais aimé par au moins quelque climax, quelque rebondissement, et pas toujours cette planeité parce que cela est devenu fade et m'a deçu un peu malgré le grande intérêt qui m'ont suscité quelques sections du roman comme celle du remorqueur d'icebergs.


Voilà mon avis de ce roman!


6/10

[Brent · Rating 3 out of 5]

Earth is dying. What to do? Satellite habitats? Aim for the stars and hope to find an inhabitable planet? Gene splicing to mutate humans that would survive the environmental disaster Earth has become? Interesting ideas. Unfortunately a very average book with unlike-able characters that meander around too much, and an unimpressive ending. Wanted to like this more. Three-and-a-half stars.

[Paulo Goulart · Rating 3 out of 5]

Começou bem, poderia ter explorado a ficção científica, mas ficou-se pelo efeito de estufa... Gosto mais de naves e tal... ;)

[Nolan · Rating 1 out of 5]

Silverberg wrote this in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. Had the Cli-fi subgenre existed at the time, this book would have fallen resoundingly into that subgenre.

Earth is almost uninhabitable as the book opens. Its air is a toxic soup of overheated dryness in some places, and other places like Japan and even the Hawaiian Islands no longer exist because of oceanic changes. In short, this book is the climate change believer’s wet dream. All the worst horrors the most ardent of those believers concoct are already here in a single book. It’s also super outdated and extremely ‘80s. Those of us who were newly able to vote in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s feared the great Japanese juggernaut—megacorporations that would have swept into the United States and bought its land and businesses thereby damaging the nation’s independence and integrity somehow. I have vivid memories of Japanese business paranoia ginned up by a media that was already on its epic slide into irrelevance.

The megacorporations headed by Japanese businessmen run the Earth. It is a poisonous mess, and some of its inhabitants have built satellite planets whose air and water are pristine. Those fortunate or wealthy enough to go to them have done so. One such satellite is a sanctuary for criminals. To it has come an eyeless blind man who sees despite not having eyes or even receptacles where those eyes would have gone. He seeks the doctor who genetically engineered him, and there’s vengeance in his heart and other more secretive motivations for finding the scientist who did the experiment.

Other characters in the book are researching whether scientists can genetically engineer humans to breathe the sulfurous nastiness that is becoming their only air supply.

The Japanese want to build vast starships that will take a select few into the stars, and naturally, they have cloaked the project in extreme secrecy. It has its share of problems. Sighted people who opt for this method will be fully blind at the end of the journey. The Japanese look for a way to blind travelers early on and replace their defunct sight with a 360-degree sensory substitute the author calls “blindsight.”

The misogyny that fills the pages of this stood out for me. I can’t imagine what a female reader’s experience would be with it. A plus-size female sculptor gets particular focus, and the author depicts her as an easy lay with large breasts and a small brain. Not a comfortable read.

I didn’t even look at plot summaries before I started this. I just saw Silverberg’s name and figured it would be SF that ranged from at least solid to possibly spectacular. I finished it, and the ending was wort getting to, but the book shriveled and died steeped in its climate hysteria, ‘80s anti-Japanese paranoia, and unapologetic misogyny.

[Bryan Alexander · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hot Sky at Midnight is a novel about a decaying Earth. Climate change and pollution have wrecked things badly, while technologies have advanced and two giant companies dominate the world. Several plots weave through the setting, involving an artist, a scientist, two spies, and a hapless salaryman.

I think I've read Robert Silverberg my entire life. I remember some stories vividly, like "Nightwings" and "Passengers." Heck, I remember Isaac Asimov making jokes about Silverberg's astonishing productivity in a Hugo awards collection. I hope to include a passage from one story in one of my next books.

Hot Sky at Midnight... isn't that good, I'm afraid. The world is very interesting, yes, but the plots don't fulfill their potential: The scientist decides to go ahead with the human transformation project, but we don't see it advance. Carpenter rambled around after his crime.
The orbital coup misfires, killing most of the cast. Carpenter, who might be a savior (cf the job of Jesus), fails to save anyone and just runs away. The female characters feel like a cross between the worst of 1960s and 50s writing: 2-dimensional sexpots, not very bright, always manipulated, never having agency or serious contributions.

As climate fiction there are some good things here, starting with the idea of modifying humanity to survive a warped world. There are many impressive descriptions of the decaying skies, air, land, and seas.

...now I want to go back and read the great Silverberg I missed, or was too young to appreciate. Any favorites, readers?

[Lynda Engler · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this one to be rather boring, which is too bad because it had such a good premise! Dying Earth, future where we have huge L5 space colonies, a new potential star drive to get us to other planets that may be more habitable than our own destroyed environment, and advanced genetic engineering that could transform humanity on Earth to be able to survive our poisoned atmosphere.

Great plot idea, but ho hum execution. There were a lot of different character story lines and some of them were just not captivating.

Written in 1994, the future tech is dated, which tends to happen in classic scifi novels. I always marvel at how current technology surpasses what scifi writers envisioned to be revolutionary 200 or 300 years in our future!

Silverberg got a few techie things close to correct though, but the one I found most fun in our post-COVID world is the menu/ordering system built into the tables at restaurants is similar to a digital screen to place your order now.

[Louise H · Rating 2 out of 5]

Silverberg is always a hit or miss author but this one is frankly terrible. It seems to be an attempt at cyberpunk but the background is derivative, the plots are both implausible and uninteresting and the whole thing is saturated in a particularly unpleasant misogyny that's worse than his usual casual objectification of women. In this one the women are stupid, manipulative and promiscuous (but voluptuous, naturally) and far too much of the book is taken up with discussing the importance to men of pretending you don't despise women so that you can get sex. Silverberg can do a great deal better than this- go read Time of Changes or Downwards to the Earth instead (or best still The Man in the Maze but skip all the dodgy 'lending out his girlfriend' bits).

[Barry Smith · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was so bad I put it down and stopped reading it. Only because I had nothing else to read did I pick it back up. It’s not the worst book I’ve read but falls in the top 5 worst. The first part rattles around with no apparent direction. Once the seemingly separate stories come together it really just floats along. The ending is just a soft landing of no great product. Not recommended reading

[Zach S · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not one of Silverbergs best works. Even into the last 50 pages of the novel I had no idea what the pay off would be, which wouldn't have been a problem if not for the slow burn in the first half and the meandering pace in the 3rd act. Otherwise, 3.5, kinda of post environmental apocalypse with hints of cyberpunk corporate espionage.

[Mike S · Rating 4 out of 5]

Surprisingly good, Silverberg and classic sci-fi fans won't be disappointed.

[Калоян Захариев · Rating 3 out of 5]

Силвърбърг, без да е любимия ми фантаст, е майстор, не мога да го отрека.

[Chris · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 stars

[Matthew · Rating 2 out of 5]

Dated with racial stereotypes, and misogyny. Perhaps this will be the way the world ends but I pass on this rendition.

[The Poor Person's Book Reviewer · Rating 1 out of 5]

I wanted this to be good but it really started to meander at the end and you could tell it was a fixup novel

[Aricia Gavriel · Rating 3 out of 5]

What can one say? Mr. Silverberg, what were you thinking?! This book was brilliant up till about the last 30pp, and you can literally see a line on the page where Silverberg got sick and tired of it all, and rather than driving the plot to a stunning conclusion he just ... blew it up. Literally. I was loving it, almost till the end, and then --

Well, I want to give this one or two stars because the ending was such a copout and a let-down. But it's Silverberg, and it was 80% great, so ... on balance, I guess three stars, but I'll also shelve it under "disappointing reads." You have to wonder 1) what the author was thinking, and 2) why the editor let him get away with it! Grrr. There was a reason this beautiful big hardcover was in a book exchange for $5.

[Alex · Rating 1 out of 5]

I'm a big Silverberg fan so was sad I didn't like it. Love it when you find an author you love and source everything they've ever written and you love those too!
Perhaps there wasn't enough fast action and sensationalism for me.
(I agree with Brent's review.) Interesting ideas. Unfortunately a very average book with unlike-able characters that meander around too much, and an unimpressive ending.

[Larry · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the few Agberg books that I've read and I quite enjoyed it. Wish I still had it in fact to read again!

[Allan Dyen-Shapiro · Rating 5 out of 5]

1990s Robert Silverberg. Engaging with interesting twists. Very fine prose. I think of him more as a short story writer, and he's mastered that art form, but his novels are also enjoyable.

[Michael Nalbone · Rating 4 out of 5]

A look at an apocalyptic future full of bad people.

[Sparrow Knight · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think this is the first of Silverberg's longer works that I have read. Other than the oddity of colored, coherent masses of greenhouse gases blowing through town (purple? green?), he has nailed the devastating impact of shifting weather patterns, the disruption of eco-systems, the race to genetically manipulate food plants & finally humans to ensure continued survival on the cooking planet.

The story itself is one of trying to make salaryman career decisions in a world controlled by mega-corporations, corporate espionage, genetic manipulation, & screwing it all up set against a background of grimy end-state global warming. I'm not really sure what the point of that story is, it doesn't really seem to go anywhere. Maybe the whole pointlessness of a salaryman's life?