Orion Shall Rise

This was a an unexpected gem. Orion Shall Rise is set 800 years after a nuclear war has erased our civilisation. New civilisations have rebuilt and the world is dominated by the Maurai, a seafaring empire which polices the world to prevent the rebuilding of nuclear technologies. The Northwest Confederation occupies the northwest region of North America and seeks to recapture the old industry of the twentieth century. Between the two sits the Domain, a federation occupying the ancient lands of France and overseen by a massive floating citadel called Skyholm, which is used to defend the land against the lesser civilisations of Espayn, Italya and the Rhineland and to break up massive storms which sweep in from the Atlantic. As agents from show more the Northwest Confederation (Norries) scour the world for fissionable materials left over from the pre-holocaust days., a coup in Skyholm sends a young nobleman, Iern, deposed from his rightful place as heir to the Captain, on an epic journey across the world where he becomes involved in an illicit project to build a spacecraft using rediscovered nuclear warheads for propulsion. Once the project is discovered a terrible conflict begins, leading the world to the edge of a second holocaust.
It took me a while to get into this book, but once I had cleared the first 100 pages or so I was gripped by this marvellous, imaginative tale. At times the plot dragged a little, but the dragging passages served the purpose of fleshing out all of the key characters and some minor ones besides. The picture of the new post-apocalypse world was well-drawn and fascinating. Aspects of the world come across almost as medieval with old-fashioned titles and manners, yet threaded through that world are jet aircraft, laser weapons and battleships. I was especially interested in the fact that although Anderson wrote this in 1983, it has a very strong eco theme in which the world is swept by a religion focused on the concept of Gaea and all civilisations apart from the Norries seek to utilise technologies that preserve the land. This novel has war, technology, romance, philosophy, religion and visions of future technology and hasn't suffered from being nearly 40 years old. show less

After nuclear weapons ravaged the Earth, only Skyholm, a huge solar-powered station floating above Europe, remains in possession of high technology. But as Skyholm is seized by a religious faction, a young noble escapes to the ground below and joins a group who conspires to use the power of the atom, outlawed for centuries, to regain the lost heritage of space flight.

This is in some sense a sequel to a previous story about the post-apocalyptic earth dominated ( a a fairly mild way) by the Maurai, a Pacific-island based culture which wishes to at least delay of not prevent a return to the technology that led to the disastrous war. The previous story in Homeward and Beyond basically presented the Maurai as the "good guys" but in this story there is more sympathy for the side trying to revive industrial technology and space exploration in particular,

Originale ed interessante interpretazione di un futuro post-atomico in cui il pianeta si è risollevato grazie alla guida di una federazione Oceanica e di un stazione atmosferica iper-tecnologica-pre-apocalisse (stazionata sulla Francia) che guidano le altre comunità rimaste più indietro al livello tecnologico/sociale. Ma come è ben noto, ogni forma di governo “imposto” è fonte di ribellioni e guai vari.

Opera composita e ricca di situazioni, personaggi, avventure, speculazioni filosofiche e religiose, storie d'amore, poesia (...insomma...), una forte impronta ecologista e pacifista ed ancora fortemente impregnata del clima di guerra fredda che regnava quando è stata scritta (1983).
Il libro è piuttosto articolato e numerosi show more eventi si susseguono inchiodando il lettore pag. dopo pag. almeno per una buona metà; successivamente l'autore si dilunga troppo in sottotrame poco interessanti che rallentano un po' la lettura. Man mano che la storia principale prosegue, emozionante, aumentano anche quelle parti che sembrano proprio “allungature gratuite di brodo” e vien voglia di saltare qualche pag.
Il finale è, purtroppo, mediocre e patetico tanto quanto poco plausibile e per di più evidentemente tirato via. * ( vedi commenti)
Il libro, comunque, è nel complesso discreto. show less