Another pre-goodreads book i liked. Literary masterpiece. ( )

Story: 3 / 10
Characters: 6
Setting: 6
Prose: 5

Another directionless piece. Dying Inside isn't simply about a telepath: It is about a telepath that is losing its powers. Some books go too far into an idea. Basically, Dying Inside is the opposite of an origin story. There is very little forward action in the book: Most of it is a retrospective and a lot of irrelevant, contextual information as well. For example, there is one chapter entirely composed of an essay the main character ghostwrites. Certainly, it shows how he makes a living. However, those 10 pages (5% of the book) could have been better spent (or simply removed).

Not recommended (for anybody: Well, telepaths only). ( )

Silverberg's speaker-protagonist David Selig is a freak telepath who has concealed his talent for his whole life and is now losing it, i.e. "dying inside." The book is framed as a memoir; it includes biographical reflection along with events more immediate to its writing. Selig ghostwrites academic papers for pay, and pieces of these appear embedded in the larger text. The narrative isn't very linear, and sometimes it indulges in stream of consciousness, but it didn't feel very experimental or avant-garde to me; these modes were suited to the subject matter.

I enjoyed this book, which seemed to me very vividly of its time, the exhausted post-countercultural moment of the beleaguered nineteen-seventies--letting go of anxious utopian and mystical aspirations. The story moved quickly, and while there was a fair amount of plot in retrospect, it felt very much like an exploration of character throughout, both Selig's own and his understanding of the people to whom he had been close.

This book was psychological sci-fi, with the main character being a telepath. So we have a lot of descriptions of people's minds and this is what the author really good at. But here comes the first downside for me, unfortunately. Maybe it was just a problem with my edition, but there were so many pages with descriptions without any paragraphs and I didn't find it out to read like this enjoyable.
The entering of people's minds was so well written so I don't understand why did the author focus on the women's outside appearance so much. There were so many descriptions of women's breasts and I mean probably of every woman in the story. That seemed so unnecessary.
The last thing to point out is that the book was switching timelines of the main character during the story. So it was a bit confusing sometimes.
I don't read psychological sci-fi very often, but this one was ok. The main story didn't interest me much, but the descriptions of people's minds were just on point as said before. ( )

Þessi bók var tilnefnd til fjölda af helstu vísindasögu- og fantasíuverðlauna á sínum tíma. Framúrstefnuleg og óvenjuleg. Silverberg lýsir lífi Seligs, einstaklings sem hefur notið þeirrar náðargáfu að geta lesið hugsanir annarra. Öfugt við afburðahetju sem við mættum búast við að lesa um líkt og í öðrum slíkum sögum hefur þessi geta einangrað hann og að mörgu leyti skemmt hann. Þegar sagan hefst er hann byrjaður að missa máttinn og glímir við þunglyndi og örvæntingu vegna þessa. Djúp saga sem tekur á samskiptum og hliðarverkunum ofurhæfileika. ( )