Subject: Prograde Reviews--Robert Reed:The Remarkables

From: [email-masked] (Aaron V. Humphrey)
Date: Sat, 09 Apr 1994 02:03:34 GMT

Robert Reed: The Remarkables

A Prograde Review by Aaron V. Humphrey

I haven't read much of Robert Reed before, so I had little idea what to
expect from him.  In fact, all I've read is his Writer of the Future
Contest-winning story, which he published as "Robert Touzalin", and it
didn't stay with me very well.

This is a good book, but it may not be to everybody's tastes.  It's very
slow-moving and low-key, and it ends in an odd place.  It's interesting,
though.

Mankind has only found one other planet, out of billions terraformed and
inhabited in the galaxy, with a complex ecosystem like Earth's, and
intelligent life.  That planet was named Pitcairn, after the ship that
stranded early colonists there years earlier, and the lifeforms were called
Remarkables.  The Remarkables, being sessile, had developed a symbiotic
relationship with another race of beings; several groves of them adopted
humans instead, and thus allowed the colonists to survive, although they're
no longer very human in their behaviour.

A man named Goottich organizes a group of companions, all, including
himself, professional terraformers.  They have gotten permission to follow
a _passion_, a ritual journey of juvenile(and still mobile)Remarkables
before they root for life, accompanied by guardian Pitcairns.

The bulk of the book is concerned with the _passion_, and they trudge and
boat through vast tracts of alien terrain that would no doubt make fabulous
scenery in a movie version.  The only interesting things going on are the
interactions among the terraformers, between them and the Pitcairns, and
the Remarkables.  Oh, yes, Goottich has a secret agenda which sparks a
mutiny among the Pitcairns.

To his credit, Reed managed to make this interesting indeed.  The
terraformers are a mixed bunch--the narrator, Ranier, has a bizarre disease
which allows him to feel the pain of others; Bedford is a member of a
religion that believes humans have a God-given right to populate the
universe; Effie is Bedford's wife, somewhat suppressed by him; Pachel is a
bureaucrat who really didn't want to come at all; and Lumiere is a man who
was born on Old Earth and has lived far too long.

If you like books that involve more character development than action, this
is the book for you.  If not, you'll get bored halfway through and go read
something more interesting.

%A Reed, Robert
%T The Remarkables
%I Bantam Spectra
%C New York
%D March 1992
%G ISBN 0-553-29362-1
%P 344 pp.
%O Paperback, US$4.99, Can$5.99

-- 
--Alfvaen(Editor of Communique)
Current Album--Love & Rockets:Earth Sun Moon
Current Read--Antony Swithin:The Nine Gods of Safaddne
"pretend the needle thickens."  --lstewart