|
|
5.0étoiles sur 5
This Author Will Be Missed, Juil 24 2003
For years Charles Sheffield has been one of my favorite science fiction authors--right up there with current "wouldn't miss" authors like Greg Bear, Orson Scott Card, Ursula LeGuin, Robert Sawyer and Gene Wolfe--and this will be as much a eulogy as a review of COLD AS ICE. I looked forward to a Sheffield novel or novelette every year or so. Some say he wrote space opera--but if so, it was a superior kind. COLD AS ICE, set in the near-future solar system and something like a sequel to THE JUPITER PROJECT, is less of a space opera than, say, Sheffield's "Convergence" tales. I read it years ago and reread it last week before going on to its 2002 sequel, DARK AS DAY. Sheffield's last book is quite good after a somewhat frivolous start, grows better with each chapter, and I genuinely recommend it, but COLD AS ICE remains my personal favorite of all his longer fiction.Sheffield had the mind of a scientist, a waggish wit, and the soul of a poet--a rare combination in science-fiction, which has been able to attract writers of significance like Ted Sturgeon, humorists as prolific as Ron Goulart and Terry Pratchett, and scientists like Gregory Benford, but seldom has the genre had an author whose elements were so mix'd as in Charles Sheffield, enabling us to shout, "This was a writer!" Sheffield's poetic diction and irrepressible wit probably emerged from his own temperament. He seems to have been a glorious romantic who had next to no male supremacy hangups. "At the Eschaton," a novelette that whirls us, a la Olaf Stapledon, from our time to the far distant future, is the most genuinely romantic work ever to emerge out of science-fiction, a mind-blowing exploration of "eternal love." It remains the best sci-fi short novel I've ever read (although the novel-length expansion was one of Sheffield's lesser efforts). In a different way COLD AS ICE is also a superb romance, with realistic, sometimes imperfect, relationships of many kinds, from friendship to love (both mature and immature). While these interactions are building, the action never for a moment lets up, and the science, while cutting-edge, is extrapolated from current physical theories. The setting, mainly on Jupiter's ice-covered moon Europa, is deliciously described and the preservation of Europa from human contamination has resonance for our time. It's a slam-bang adventure tale, with (as usual in Sheffield) a mystery to be solved. But most of all I appreciate Sheffield's subtle, realistic, and warm humans in this fine book--something, alas, Arthur Clarke has never achieved. Humans like "Megachirops" the Great Bat, a fat and sometimes too-arrogant genius (whom we met in THE JUPITER PROJECT and who shows up for a third appearance in DARK AS DAY, I'm happy to report), the three young people of special talents whose mystery is the backbone of the book, and even the lesser characters. It's correct to call this a next-step-in-human evolution novel, but it takes evolution in small steps--don't look for CHILDHOOD'S END or BLOOD MUSIC. In Sheffield's mature stories the main characters may be superior but are never one-dimensional. Like Bat, they are quite fallible. The up-and-coming young sci-fi novelist, Peter Hamilton, could learn a lot by studying Sheffield's books. Hamilton's space-operatic "Confederation" series shows promise, but the hero is too much a universal genius to be true, and ultimately he becomes a crashing bore. Sheffield never bored us. I don't want to believe he's gone!
Aidez d'autres clients à trouver les commentaires les plus utiles
Ce commentaire vous a-t-il été utile ?
 
|
|
|
|
