From archive (archive)
From: mcb@tis.llnl.gov (Michael C. Berch)
Organization: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore CA
Subject: Palimpsests/Ace Specials
Date: 30 Dec 87 21:35:45 GMT




wmartin@ALMSA-1.ARPA (Will Martin -- AMXAL-RI) writes:
> > ...  While it's true that some of Carr's selections
> > were somewhat traditional science fiction (Kim Stanley Robinson's
> > THE WILD SHORE, for example), others like Shepard's GREEN EYES and
> > Carter Scholz's PALIMPSESTS were more unusual stylistic experiments.
> 
> I'd like to read comments anyone has on PALIMPSESTS. I've been reading
> it slowly for some time now, stopping and reading other things and
> coming back to it. So far, it hasn't seemed to be SF at all, except for
> the "McGuffin" (weird object) in it. Maybe it will get more SF-like
> later on (I'm about halfway through it).

I just finished PALIMPSESTS; it was the only one of the Carr Ace
Specials that I hadn't read.  PALIMPSESTS, to me, is an example of
excellent writing -- utterly brilliant in places -- that just didn't 
seem to hang together well as a novel. (Another Ace Special, Michael 
Swanwick's IN THE DRIFT, is a second example).  One odd thing is that 
PALIMPSESTS really seems to be two different stories (with two related 
but different prose styles) concatenated in one novel.  I'm trying to 
avoid spoilers here, but about halfway through the book PALIMPSESTS just 
sort of takes off on an bizarre ballistic course that is (to me) only 
tangentially related to the first part.  Yes, it becomes "more SF-like" 
(I decline to define this, but I think I know what Will means), but 
has much less in common with hard SF of the Benford/Niven, etc., school 
than with the highly intellectual, philosophical/analytical school of (say) 
Kim Stanley Robinson [e.g., in THE MEMORY OF WHITENESS] or Delany or LeGuin.  
To say more would verge on spoilerhood.

PALIMPSESTS is very dense prose, with many foreign-language allusions
and puns; I am not totally incompetent in Latin and French, but all the
German and Greek ones got by me.  There are a fair number of gibes at
academics and fine artists (the scenes involving the California artist
who is attempting to build a Christo-like glacier in the middle of
nowhere are particularly amusing). I can see where an unsuspecting reader 
of "normal" SF might become impatient with a novel that is filled with 
philosophical speculation and little action, and where the original 
plot involving archaeology and the finding of a mysterious object
has very little to do with what the novel is really about.  Nevertheless,
finding, and finishing, PALIMPSESTS is well worth the effort.

Michael C. Berch 
Internet: mcb@tis.llnl.gov
UUCP: {ames,ihnp4,lll-crg,lll-lcc,mordor}!lll-tis!mcb