Nightwings

**Spoilers** I thought this was a good story, the main character was interesting and sympathetic, and Silverberg does a good job creating an earth that is at once recognizable and very much different. It didn't seem like much happened, although the entire planet gets taken over by aliens--there's almost a sleepwalking quality to the action, as if it's happening all around the narrator but not to him. The other conflicts were muted also, and I think the ending it the weakest part of the book--everything gets resolved and fixed more by a different point of view than any action, and it's all a little too neat and complete for my taste. His novel Dying Inside is one of my all-time favorites, so I'm using the availability of discounted show more ebooks to read more of his stuff. show less

Have you ever noticed the weird psychological effect where, if you're reading a new edition of a work, it just doesn't "feel" old (but if you're reading an old paperback with yellowed pages and a half-naked chick on the cover, it will undoubtedly feel dated?) Well, this copy of 'Nightwings,' which was written in 1968, does, admittedly, have the unclad female (tho' such a pretty, tasteful one!), but it's all new and shiny, and I didn't feel the story seemed dated at all. Interesting.
Anyway.
Silverberg gives us, in his Hugo-award winning 'Nightwings' an Earth approximately 35,000 years in the future. Humanity has risen, and (through hubris, bad political moves, and the unfortunate effects of trying to change the planet's climate) show more subequently fallen.
Society is strictly governed by membership in guilds, some of which fill expected places in society... politics, mercantilism, historians, service industries... and some groups which are odder, such as the beautiful butterfly-winged fliers, created by genetic engineering in the Second Age, or the guildless Changelings, monstrous-looking outcasts, mistakes engendered by that same tinkering.
Our lead character is a Watcher, his life devoted to using a cart of instruments which allow him to monitor space for unknown alien invaders. It is barely remembered why the Watchers were set up - they seem practically useless... but little known to humanity, the invasion is nearly upon Earth...
Through three linked novellas, we follow the elderly Watcher on a journey through three ancient cities... first Roum, where he loves the lovely flier Avluela, but she loves the grotesque changeling(?) Gorman... Invaders set him on the path to Perris, along with a prince in disguise, where he becomes an historian, and later, a traitor(?)... and then to fabled Jorslem, where Pilgrims may have their bodies renewed and their sins cast aside...
At different times, the book reminded me slightly of Tanith Lee's books of Paradys, of Arthur C. Clarke's The City & The Stars, of China Mieville's New Crobuzon.... and also, of Silverberg's own 'Valentine' series... but overall, it was itself... with a beautiful dreamlike quality... very nice. show less

My listed Reading Dates are "re-reading dates", at least for the first, Hugo-award-winning novelette "Nightwings."

I first read the tale c. 1972 in the SF Book Club edition of THE HUGO WINNERS Vols. I & II, edited by Isaac Asimov. I do not recall previously reading the second and third novelettes that compose the final "novel." As shared in the new introduction to this book, Silverberg's then editor and friend, Fred Pohl', had profound "reservations" regarding these two subsequent tales -- but still published them. While the novelty of the original tale's world-building cannot be duplicated by a sequel -- this being inherent in any sequel, the experiences that befall the main characters, particularly "the Watcher," the novel's main show more protagonist, remain poignant.

For, it is not the external conflict related to the conquering if the Earth that is the heart and soul of this novel, but, instead, the internal conflict of the Watcher's challenges: the fulfillment of his very long life's professional purpose -- and the subsequent consequences thereof: the loss and search for new purpose, and his confusion and guilt over his more than platonic love for the seventeen year-old winged girl Avluela in his care from which in self-denial he takes refuge in his old age, while pained by her being loved (willingly abd not) by others.

Despite the shared Lolita-like discomfiture with Nabokhov's protagonist, for the Watcher and presumably for Silverberg, where there is love there is hope, and, in this far-flung future Earth, the promise of redemption, new purpose, hope, and (more than metaphorically) a return to youth and ageless love.

Nightwings" remains resplendent in, first, its worldbuilding, of a declined future Earth wary of a centuries-long foretold alien invasion -- as a consequence of the sins of their fathers, as it were (there is a strong spiritual essence, and journey toward redemption, at the heart of this novel), and, second its empathy-inspiring characters bound up in the events and after the conquering and, deserved, and surprisingly benign, subjugation of the Earth.

PER THE PUBLISHER [Nightwings https://share.google/PoT0b5zG65bnri0rf]
Nightwings is a story about the Watcher, a servitor to the stars. Every day he assembles a complicated device made of instruments and levers which is a trance inducing telescope used to open visions of deep space, a radar detection system to look for the arrival of hostile invaders. This is what people do in the future, a future where Earth is in its “Third Cycle,” a future that is both better and worse than now.
Organized religion is over. Spirituality is innately tied to a universal force called “The Will.” Genetic engineering is part of normal everyday reality. Society is made up of “guilds” whose members are divided into sects called Watchers, Rememberers, Dominators, Masters, Swimmers, Somnambulists, Defenders and Fliers, among others including a guildless group called Changelings. Earth’s oceans and geology have been totally rearranged by climate change and the polar ice caps were melted (on purpose!) No need for internet. In this future the archived memories of actual human brains are preserved in electromagnetic tanks. Alien life forms have already arrived/made themselves known during Earth’s Second Cycle and so, by the time of the events in Nightwings, this planet has become an intergalactic tourist trap. A truck stop on the way to scenic nebula clusters, a budget version of Disneyland visited by alien families from outer realms who spent their whole light year’s income on a vehicle capable of star tripping to the other side of space/time.
And the Watcher watches and waits for an invasion. He has been waiting a very long time. It’s been so long that he has become a somewhat creepy old man. In fact, he doesn’t remember why an alien race would want to invade Earth in the first place. Eventually though, during a late in life career change to the Rememberer guild, he learns that humans (never very nice to other species) once kept the ancestors of certain interplanetary visitors in zoos and laboratories for both study and amusement. This species’ ancestors (with a code designation of H362 since their real name is unpronounceable) have now technologically evolved to an extent which spells out a real threat to Earth people.
With Nightwings Robert Silverberg transposes facets of history and global politics onto one possible future that is not much diverged from the past. The planet’s First and Second Cycles have influenced the events of the Third Cycle. Global geography, both spiritual and physical, is permanently altered, but both inter and outer species communication remains central to the intrigue. Indeed, Silverberg’s characters bear resemblance to actors from the Shakespearean Renaissance era. Only instead of stalking the wooden planks of The Globe, these intergalactic players move across living cellular stages of pulsating matter and walk forest paths where menacing spaceships float overhead.
Nightwings has a certain prescience, but is also very much of the time it was written, circa Earth date 1968. The series of cities which the Watcher wanders through are marked more by psychedelic atmosphere than operatic space western environment that had dominated much of science fiction up to that point. The progress through each location comes to resemble a vision quest in more ways than one: vision and eyes being a central plot theme in the literal, figurative, and Oedipal sense. It’s a quest that climbs towards a cosmic peak which almost seemed obtainable in the late 1960s but today is increasingly distant: an interplanetary, interspecies communion between all living beings. There is something recognizable in the similarities between historical transformations of idealist hippie communes into cult-like nightmares and Silverberg’s framing of the dogma in his various guilds. Then there are the characters themselves: The Watcher, the fairy-like Flier Avluela (possessor of the wings which only fly by night), the mutated Changeling who is not what he seems, and other mismatched wanderers met along the way. Together they come to resemble an unsettling version of ragtag travellers stumbling out of the haze of one era into a much more complicated future. Sometimes the future really is what it used to be.
This new edition of Nightwings features an introduction by Robert Silverberg as well as a bonus interview. It has new dustjacket, endpaper, and interior illustrations by Alejandro Olmedo. In addition, the book’s frontispiece is a reprint of Jim Burns’s cover for the 1980s Bantam paperback, here reproduced in gorgeous full color. There are other full-color reproductions of previous covers as well. show less

Now I get why people love Robert Silverberg.

Give me this kind of world building over the over-expository bloat that's popular these days. So many questions left unanswered, and that's perfectly satisfying.

I almost gave it five stars, but a few minor missteps and an ending that didn't quite connect with me, kept me from it.

A re-read after many years. It is not so much a novel as three connected novellas, the first of which, called 'Nightwings', won the 1969 Hugo novella award. I've just re-read it in The Hugo Winners 1963-1968 so will first reprise what I said in my review of that volume:

I still enjoyed 'Nightwings' and found in it a prefiguring of Gene Wolfe's The Book of the New Sun series, published over ten years later. Set in the far future on an Earth which is old, having seen many cycles of civilisation, it is told in the first person viewpoint of an old man who is one of the Watcher guild, his duty being to 'watch the skies' with an instrumentation cart, to look for a long forecast alien invasion. After centuries without an invasion, his guild is show more looked on as a joke, and even he is starting to wonder if he has wasted his whole life. He travels with a Flyer, a modified human female with gossamer wings which can only support her weight after sundown, and an apparent Changeling, an odd-looking character who is guideless, to Roum, which is clearly Rome. Similarly, other famous cities have changed name after aeons, and we eventually learn that he originates from what is left of the Americas, which have been mainly covered by the sea and are now a series of islands. An atmospheric and interesting story.

In a way, that first novella/third of the book is the best, with a good open ending. The second segment is probably the weakest. In it, the ex-Watcher leaves Roum, in the company of its Prince who is now blind and is travelling incognito in the guise of a Pilgrim to Perris (Paris). Their relationship is prickly, yet the ex-Watcher feels a certain responsiblity for the ex-Prince's fate, and his sense of obligation comes into conflict with his own desire to pursue the vocation of the Remembers guild in Perris. The job of this guild is to carry out archaelogical digs and analysis in order to piece together past history. The conquering alien race are very interested in the past also, although it becomes obvious that their interest is biased towards one particular aspect of Earth history.

In the Second Cycle (which began when contact was first made with offworlders and ended when the people of Earth became so arrogant that they tampered with the planet's magnetic fields and climate), Earth had risen to become a fabulously cultured and technologically advanced planet, and a tourist destination for many alien races. But as centuries passed, this civilisation fell into decadence, the Earth people developing a self importance amounting to hubris. As part of this, they had set up a zoo where non-humanoid aliens could be viewed as specimens, and as time passed, abducted more human-looking aliens with developed societies. Other alien races visited Earth to take advantage of the ability to see so many species in one place, while deploring the way it was done. One particular race, not yet achieving spaceflight but represented by others, had objected strongly and when Earth's civilisation collapsed, they bought up the planet's assets with the intent of coming to take their revenge when they finally developed spaceflight. Thus the ex-Watcher's guild had been established, although most ordinary people including himself no longer remembered who the Watchers were meant to provide early warning against.

After the disasters which occur in the second segment of the book, the ex-Watcher is now an ex-Rememberer apprentice also and is forced to leave Perris in the company of another character who played a main role in the disastrous sequence of events. Together they travel to Jorslem (Jerusalem) where the sole survivor of Second Cycle technology is preserved: the establishment where people can be regenerated and made young again. It is possible to do this two or three times in a lifetime and it is seemingly free, but the criteria for acceptance are mysterious and it is impossible to predict whether or not the ex-Watcher and his companion will be accepted. While in Jorslem, his fondest hope is realised when he again meets the Flyer from whom he was separated at the end of the first segment. There are some interesting parallels in this section between the newly formed guild of Redeemers and the early Christians, although that might just be coincidental.

I made allowances for the 1970s 'dodgy' cover on the second hand hand copy I was reading, but will comment on its inaccuracy: Flyers do remove their clothes to keep their weight down for flying, but are lean to the point of gauntness because of the difficulty of getting themselves off the ground otherwise, and the character being portrayed does not have a 38D chest!

On the whole, I found this book an enjoyable read. Not quite five stars because of the weaker middle section, but worthy of four. show less

In the far future, mankind is separated into guilds, who all perform unique tasks. The main character is a watcher, who keeps looking for signs of an alien invasion, which is triggered by some brutal human behavior thousands of years in the future. Accompanied by a Flyer and a Changling, he travels from "Room" to "Perris" as at the first step in a pilgrimage which will occur during the alien invasion. The tale is well-told, and the main character and some others are well drawn. Still, it's clumsy in spots (as in the names of those cities), but still has a narrative pull.

To say this book was interesting is a back-handed compliment. The initial premise had me hooked - a far future Earth, technology declined, plumbing the achievements of the past and awaiting conquerors from the stars. The story touches on the philosophy of conquest, and that gives the story some depth. But very little actually happens, with most of the interesting events occurring offstage.In the end, we are left with a wandering daze of a story.
An interesting premise, an interesting idea, but very little is delivered.