dht@druri.UUCP (TuckerDH) (02/03/86)
The Helliconia Trilogy is one of the best works to come out in the '80s. Aldiss stuck with a story line, or multiple story lines, and his prose has rarely been better, showing his wonderful knack for potent imagery and beautiful sentence structure, writing paragraphs that roll off the page as if they were rolling off the tongue. Of the three (Spring, Summer, and Winter), "Helliconia Summer" is by far the best. Not that the other two are bad, but "Summer" is so well-written, so complex and rife with meaning, so evocative of human events, that the other two pale by comparison. In "Helliconia Summer", Aldiss presents us with a kind of Renaissance civilization, filled with self-importance at its level of learning, still ignorant, where tradition is being broken and adhered to with little rhyme or reason. His characters live and breathe; you feel their exhalations on your cheeks as you turn the page. His king is not so great, and certainly not so good, for all that he is doing the right thing, and his adversaries, such as his wife, are in much the same boat. This is a common theme among his characters, that they do not have ironclad solutions or infallible information, that often the right thing is done for the wrong reasons, by the wrong person, and that just as often the things that must be done in the world are so unpalatable that there is no way that even a saint could dip his hands in the action and not become soiled. Aldiss pays attention to his minor characters, also, reminding one of Hugo, or Balzac, or Dickens, in that sometimes it is the minor characters who are the most telling and the most memorable. His description of a world in much different climactic straights is never gone over to the point of silly exposition, nor does he leave the reader wondering why something is a certain way. Unfortunately, in "Helliconia Winter" too much of the book is spent on this world-building, explaining it in relation to Lovelock's Gaia Hypothesis. "Helliconia Winter" strikes a wonderful balance, however. His alien psychology is exceptional, unsurpassed. The native race of the planet are creatures of intelligence ruled overwhelmingly by instinct. The way in which they react to the dictates of environment is fascinating, and intriguing in that the process is viewed from inside, not out. The other races that populate the planet are also well fleshed-out, their differences and similarities drawn into a coherent whole. All three are worth reading, if only to make "Helliconia Summer" shine even brighter as a set-piece. "Helliconia Spring" starts very slowly, but builds up with majesty, power, and restraint, a perfect segue. Aldiss is a writer who knows what makes human beings tick, what makes them love and hate and persevere and quit, and it is a pleasure to read the works of such a writer. Davis Tucker