The Worthing Saga (original 1990; edition 1990)

The first half or so of this book is a novella about the life of Jason Worthing, a telepath born thousands of years before. Jason's world revolves around Somec, a drug that basically puts people into suspended animation and is distributed out based on merit, not money, to preserve the "most valuable" individuals for future generations. The greater the value of the person, the greater the ratio of time asleep to time awake, with the Empress at the highest Somec levels: awake one day for every five years asleep. Like a pebble skipping across a pond, these people skip across time, and ultimately the human race stagnates, as the most innovative minds are never awake long enough to accomplish anything. This is also the story of Jason's colony started from scratch, the colonists adults with the minds of infants. This part got a little preachy - one of the examples of how degenerate life in the capital city had become was how the citizens found defecation more offensive than fornication - but most of the rest of it was pretty good. The latter half was a bunch of short stories, some retelling tales from earlier in the book, others new stories of Somec. Though some of them were kind of interesting, the addition felt unnecessary. All in all, well, this book passed the time. It wasn't especially engaging. I find Card to be hit or miss; this wasn't a complete miss, but it wasn't a hit either. ( )

The Worthing Saga is a collection of Card’s works originally published separately that depict the zenith, subsequent collapse and rise again of a far-future human society. In this culture, a drug called somec, which produces a state of suspended animation, has made long-distance spaceflight a possibility, but has also engendered a pseudo-immortality for the rich and privileged, who sleep away years of their lives and only awaken for brief periods. As a result, they are like stones skipping along the surfaces of their lives, rather than actually living them.

In the opening novella, The Worthing Chronicle, Jason Worthing relates the history of this culture. His family has genetically inherited psychic abilities, but a massacre caused by Jason’s father has made all the Worthings outcasts. He grows up on a planet called Capitol, which has been completely covered by buildings and infrastructure. Learning of a plot to bring down Capitol, Worthing leaves for an unsettled planet with a pre-selected group of colonists: his own enemies and detractors. But an accident during the journey causes the colonists’ memories to be destroyed while they are under the somec. Essentially, they are adult infants who Worthing must teach and raise, giving him the opportunity to create a culture entirely from scratch. Eventually, he leaves his fledgling society in the hands of his descendants and goes to sleep for several thousand years, until they have advanced enough to figure out how to awaken him.

While Worthing is sleeping, his family’s genetic abilities are augmented by inbreeding, until they become so psychically powerful that they are able to control the lives of their subjects. They eliminate pain, grief and accidental death, creating a veritable paradise, one in which human progress is essentially stalled, however. Then one day, pain returns to the world, as does Jason Worthing.

This history, related by Worthing through dreams to a young scribe, is fascinating and often harrowing, covering tens of thousands of years of history and leading up to an explanation for why pain, death and sorrow have returned. The short stories that follow fill in the gaps left by the novella, detailing some of the more critical events in the history of Capitol and Worthing. Card has fully realized several societies in The Worthing Saga, and his answers to the what-if questions he poses — What if immortality were possible? What if pain and suffering were eliminated? — are both epic and meaningful.

Read because I like the author (2009). ( )

The Worthing Saga is in essence an examination of what might happen if some people could live their lives over the course of centuries by sleeping more years than waking - with the help of a drug called somec. The first ~half is a novella of Jason Worthing, who winds up using this technology to help kick start a colony planet after all but one of the colonists aside from himself have their memories destroyed accidentally while under somec sleep. Over the millenia a mythology develops and Jason becomes a god-like figure. Jason and Justice, one of his descendants, get another character to write down the history of the planet. The next ~third is a series of short stories that examine how somec altered human relationships and civilization on the planet Capitol - where somec was developed. And the final ~third are stories from that colony world that describe more fully some of the intervening years while Jason was somec sleeping.

Yes - I know that half plus a third plus a third does not equal one. But cramming all these stories together doesn't make one complete novel either, so it all works out.

Normally I really like OSC's writing but The Worthing Saga fell flat. Mainly because of the number of blatant contrivances used, some inconsistencies in the somec drug usage, the unrealistic character dynamics/relationships/dialogue, the poor writing that was all *tell* rather than *show*, and being hit over the head with answers to moral questions/scenarios that defy general reasonableness and my experience of human nature. Yet, it was the moral/philosophical situations that arose at various points through the book that were intriguing enough to keep at it and finish the book.

The afterward in my edition was a short essay about how The Book of Mormon has influenced OSC's writing and The Worthing Saga specifically. It argues that this book can be seen as a series of parables with moral lessons etc. OK. I can see that might be what OSC was going for, but I don't know that I would go so far as to compare it to The Book of Mormon (even though I haven't read that yet).

Several other reviews indicate that some folks have issues with the fact that this is not really one continuous story; that the time sequence is broken up; that characters appear and disappear; that some stories appear irrelevant or inconsequential to the plot or overall arc. Some folks quibble about whether the book - or at least some of the stories - are really science fiction or fantasy.

I don't have a problem with any of those and don't care about its classification.

My advice: Just take this book for what it is - a few novellas and several short stories that are connected only by their general setting and the theme of increasing the number of years of living though not the number of years of life. With a few strawman moral questions in there to keep things interesting enough.

2 stars. ( )

A good read... although I thought the second half (composed of short stories that give further background on some of the lesser characters in the main book) was unnecessary. ( )

This is one of Card's earlier, weirder SF stories. Very dark, but interesting nonetheless. ( )