Helliconia Summer [Hardcover]

This is a tale of adventures of foreign people on a strange planet in outer space, but Aldiss paints his human characters with such intimacy and familiarity that the average reader cannot help but strongly relate. It's one of those books that doesn't come across as science fiction, even though it's replete with descriptions of a cyclical ecology that could theoretically work in real life.

Helliconia Summer is the second of a trilogy. The first book, Helliconia Spring, takes over half of its space describing the evolution of the planet and, consequently, the humans inhabiting it. The last fourth of the novel zooms in on one small but key town and follows the goings on of about 10 characters. Helliconia Summer opens in the same zoom on a new set of characters many centuries later, and follows them until the very end, where about 8 pages are zoomed back out to describe the evolution of the planet again.

Aldiss won the John W. Campbell Award in 1983 for Helliconia Spring, but to my surprise, has not won any awards that I know of for Helliconia Summer, which in my opinion is a far better book. I am hoping that the final book, Helliconia Winter, will be even better!

Helliconia basks in the glow of the Great Summer. The continent of Campannlat is now dominated by the Holy Empire, a loose religious affiliation between the three great kingdoms of Pannoval, Oldorando and Borlien. These nations find themselves threatened by the far less technologically-advanced but considerably more populous jungle and desert nations to the west and the even more savage tribes to the east. When King JandolAnganol suffers a humiliating defeat to tribesmen using firearms (bought at great cost from the progressive nations of Sibornal far to the north), he divorces his wife so he might seek a more favourable alliance by marrying a princess of Oldorando. However, the queen is a greatly popular figure in Borlien and by divorcing her the king enrages the native population, triggering political turmoil and military action that will have great ramifications for all of Helliconia.

Meanwhile, the crew of the Earth Observation Station Avernus have fallen into internal dissent and debate over the nature of reality and their own orders from distant Earth not to interfere with life on Helliconia. Rejecting this order from a world they can never see or return to, the crew hold a lottery with a grand prize: to allow the winner to visit Helliconia, so for the brief few months it will take for the planet's viruses and bacteria to kill him he can live under a real sky. The arrival of Billy Xiao Pin in Borlien's capital likewise triggers events that will have unforeseen consequences.

Helliconia Summer picks up the story of the world of Helliconia some 355 local years - more than 500 Earth years - after the conclusion of Helliconia Spring. The planet is not far from its time of closest approach to the supergiant star Freyr and humanity rules supreme over the planet, the phagor population reduced to slavery or forced to hide in remote mountain valleys. It is a time of great technological innovation, with firearms, gunpowder and cannons flowing south from Sibornal, but also of turmoil, with the doctrines of the Pannovalan Church stifling the advance of technology and science within Campannlat itself. Like its forebear, the novel mixes thematic elements such as the rise and fall of civilisations, the advance of science and the uneasy union of progress and religion, with a more traditional action and character-driven narrative.

Helliconia Summer, appropriately, sprawls luxuriantly where its forebear was more focused and constrained in narrative scope and geographical area. It is in this novel that Aldiss' achievement in creating Helliconia is best-realised, with lush descriptions of the world and its myriad animal life and human cultures in full flower. The main storyline is compelling, combining intriguing politics and well-realised (if not particularly likable) characters clashing over the fate of their kingdoms in the face of warfare, religious turmoil and arguments over the fate of the phagors, the dominant nonhuman species of Helliconia reduced by the heat into docile soldier-slaves. The relevance of having an observation station from Earth is also made clearer in this novel, with one of the Avernus crewmembers becoming an important character. There are also some intriguing mysteries, such as a murder mystery whose conclusion is ambiguous and a deeper one surrounding the changes in pauk, the bizarre ability of the Helliconian people to commune with the spirits of their ancestors after death, which provide much food-for-thought going into the third and final novel.

On the negative side, the book suffers slightly from its lack of focus compared to the first volume and also from a somewhat clumsy chronological structure, where the first several chapters take place in the present and then we rewind a year and move forward to where the first part began, then skip to after it. The story doesn't really require this structure and would perhaps have benefited from a more linear progression.

In Helliconia Summer (****½) Aldiss' grand ambition, nothing less than a history of an entire world and its peoples across vast chasms of time, becomes clearer and more impressive. The book is available now (albeit somewhat expensively) in the USA and will form part of the new UK Helliconia omnibus due on 12 August this year.

Well, I have read Helliconia Spring, and I thought it was fantastic. A gripping, vibrant SF adventure tale (see my review). Therefore, I was looking forward to Helliconia Summer, hoping it would be more of the same. I finished it last night.

There are several points to make. The first one has to be, Helliconia Summer certainly does not carry on where Spring left off. There is a big jump in time, with completely different characters. Of course, it is not wrong for a book to do this, but in this case, the jump is so large, I found it a bit difficult to pick up the thread.

Secondly, Summer gets off to a slow start. This is true of Spring also, but Summer takes even longer to get going. However, it does eventually warm up.

Thirdly, and most importantly, Summer is a different sort of book to Spring. Whereas Spring was a rip-roaring adventure tale, Summer is more of a political thriller. This is fine, but was not always quite my cup of tea.

Now don't get me wrong here. Aldiss writes really, really well. His characters are strong and vivid, his descriptive language regarding the planet Helliconia is often gripping, and certainly there are moments of high drama in Summer. I do not question Aldiss' status as an SF Grandmaster. However, when I wrote my review of Spring, I stated that it had me "gasping with excitement" (which it did). This is, however, not quite true of Summer I am afraid. In that sense, it was perhaps just a titchy bit disappointing. But I do stress that Summer is still pretty good, with enough drama and twists and turns to satisfy, if not to have me constantly on the edge of my seat.

I may eventually get around to reading Helliconia Winter, but I'm not sure when.