- Paperback: 248 pages
- Publisher: Gollancz; paperback / softback edition (20 July 2000)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0575068973
- ISBN-13: 978-0575068971
- Product Dimensions: 23.3 x 15.3 x 2.2 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (32 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 259,000 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Salt (Gollancz S.F.)
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Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
The publishers of Salt, the debut SF novel by a British author, compare it to Frank Herbert's Dune--and certainly the harsh beauty of the planet Salt makes arid Dune seem cosy and lush. Here are great deadly deserts of salt-crystal dunes, "seas" that are supersaturated lakes scummed over with hard salt, free chlorine in the air, inedible salt algae, a corrosive wind called the Devil's Whisper and a sleet of cancer-spawning radiation from the sky ...
Ill-assorted groups of Earth colonists were lured across space by misleading survey reports--or did Salt change during the long voyage? They build their makeshift cities around the salt lakes, struggling to tame this dreadful world. Unfortunately two of the settlements are desperately incompatible, hardly able even to communicate. Senaar city has a rigid, disciplined hierarchy with every person in their place, ordered like atoms in crystalline salt; Als is a leaderless anarchy where anyone might tackle any job, all as fluid as seawater. (Yes, Roberts loves salty metaphors.)
The viewpoint alternates between Petja of Als and Senaar's leader, Barlei, whose non-communication escalates into a war for which Senaar has been prepared all along--although Barlei has hypocritical justifications for everything, including oppression of his own people and Orwellian rewriting of history. Meanwhile, against all his Alsist principles, the gentler, poetic Petja hardens into a charismatic terrorist leader. Their entwined stories are grim, sad and bitter as salt. (Roberts does sometimes overdo the metaphors.) Salt is a skilful, intense, gloomy novel. --David Langford --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Product Description
Two narrators tell the story of the simmering tensions between their two communities as they travel out to a new planet, colonise it, then destroy themselves when the tensions turn into outright war. Adam Roberts is a new writer completely in command of the SF genre. This is a novel that is at once entertaining and philosophical. The attitudes and prejudices of its characters are subtlety drawn and ring completely true despite the alien circumstances they find themselves in. The grasp of science and its impact on people is instinctive. But above all it is the epic and colourful world building that marks SALT out - the planet Salt rivals Dune in its desolation and is a suitably biblical setting for a novel that is powered by the corrupting influence of imperfectly remembered religions on distant societies. From the early scenes set on a colony ship towed by a massive ice meteorite, to the description of a planet covered in sodium chloride, to the chilling narrative of a world sliding into its first war this is a novel from a writer who shouts star quality.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Mass Market Paperback
Adam Roerts' _Salt_ is a sparse and harsh book just like the planet on which it is set. It doesn't allow much sympathy with the main characters - both are basically war criminals who end up being responsible for the deaths of thousands. It also paints scarcely any picture of the world in general outside of the particular situations faced by the colonists, and gives almost no background for its characters. Basically, it doesn't give us any soil with which to foster a more comfortable experience with the narrative. Its aridity is the factor that shrinks it down to 250 pages.
This doesn't mean that as several previous posters said, the characters are undeveloped. On the contrary, the characters are very completely developed. It's just that the complexity of the characters isn't spelled out for us. To get a complete understanding of the characters you have to read deeply into the limited material available. Take Barlei's weird obsession with his lieutenant jean-Pierre, which reminds one of Achilles' affection for Patroclus and along with remarks made in the final chapter suggests a radical interpretation of his behavior. Or the references in both narrators' accounts to combat and war being analagous to musical compositions, which seem to suggest that our two protagonists are similar in some deep way.
It's possible as well to use the few references to Earth to figure out that the world left behind isn't exactly the kind of world we live in now. References to the New Vatican States and the World Ecclesiastical Union (or somesuch) paint a picture of a world divided again on religious lines, where the main impetus for space travel is escaping persecution and colonist fleets are privately funded. The group of colonists on Salt seem to be not a wide sample of the human race, but an assemblage of a few Eastern European religious sects that presumably felt that the political consolidation of religion left them little freedom to practice on Earth. (It is never stated precisely which church the colonists belong to but mandatory male and female contraception points to it being radically different from any on Earth today.)
Because Salt has been pared down to its essentials, it reads as carefully structured and highly concentrated prose. You have to work a bit to get what you want out of it, but once you do the book os pretty rewarding.
This doesn't mean that as several previous posters said, the characters are undeveloped. On the contrary, the characters are very completely developed. It's just that the complexity of the characters isn't spelled out for us. To get a complete understanding of the characters you have to read deeply into the limited material available. Take Barlei's weird obsession with his lieutenant jean-Pierre, which reminds one of Achilles' affection for Patroclus and along with remarks made in the final chapter suggests a radical interpretation of his behavior. Or the references in both narrators' accounts to combat and war being analagous to musical compositions, which seem to suggest that our two protagonists are similar in some deep way.
It's possible as well to use the few references to Earth to figure out that the world left behind isn't exactly the kind of world we live in now. References to the New Vatican States and the World Ecclesiastical Union (or somesuch) paint a picture of a world divided again on religious lines, where the main impetus for space travel is escaping persecution and colonist fleets are privately funded. The group of colonists on Salt seem to be not a wide sample of the human race, but an assemblage of a few Eastern European religious sects that presumably felt that the political consolidation of religion left them little freedom to practice on Earth. (It is never stated precisely which church the colonists belong to but mandatory male and female contraception points to it being radically different from any on Earth today.)
Because Salt has been pared down to its essentials, it reads as carefully structured and highly concentrated prose. You have to work a bit to get what you want out of it, but once you do the book os pretty rewarding.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Mass Market Paperback
It's obvious that some people hate Salt and some love it. This is an effect of the way the book tells the story. The whole point is that you see the flaws of both sides and don't get a one-sided view of the events. This isn't a goodies-and-baddies book, and that seems to have been the objective. Since this is fairly new, it makes the book a fresh read, and I'm very glad that I read it.
Having said that, I found it difficult to get into at first. The reason for this is that I found myself hating both characters for their hypocrisies and dodgy reasoning that I'd just get annoyed with them and have to put the book down before it went flying out the window.
On the comparisons with Dune...? I don't get it. Well, yeah it has a heavy political component but its implementation is much simpler. Dune was a baroque galaxy-spanning feudal empire, and Salt is not. If you want another Dune, go and read Iain M Banks' The Algebraist.
I don't think this was trying to be like Dune, and the comparisons would have both Herbert and Roberts scratching their heads and frowning.
So, then, a decent book? Yep. For everyone? No.
10 of 12 people found the following review helpful
Format:Mass Market Paperback
THE STORY:
Several colony ships head to a new world full of promise. However, upon arrival they discover their surveys were wrong and the world gains the nickname 'Salt'. Two groups of colonists rise to prominence, but their strongly opposed philosophies inevitably lead to a terrible war.
Several colony ships head to a new world full of promise. However, upon arrival they discover their surveys were wrong and the world gains the nickname 'Salt'. Two groups of colonists rise to prominence, but their strongly opposed philosophies inevitably lead to a terrible war.
WHAT'S GOOD:
If you approach this book as a real 'what if...' SF story, you'll be disappointed. It's more a story about human nature with Als, Senaar and Salt itself being largely metaphoric (sorry if that sounds really pretentious, but that's what I got from reading the book). The world of Salt is beautifully described and yet Roberts never leaves you in any doubt about just how dangerous a planet it is, making it a powerful crucible for the people who find themselves stuck there. The really clever thing about the book is that it leaves open the decision of which philosophy (Senaar's militaristic dictatorship or Als' free-living anarchy) is the better one. Petja, at first, seems to be the better man, but when his free and unrestrained emotions lead him to violence and rape, we have to question whether an oppressive yet ordered society is not the better option. But by the same token, the parts of the book dealing with Barlei leave you chafing at his all-too-familiar megalomaniacal mind set.
WHAT'S BAD:
This book isn't a comfortable read, nor a cheerful one with a clever moral, so people looking for a good STORY should look elsewhere. Looking for a good BOOK, however, and here one is.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
A Man For All Seasonings
This is an enjoyable, engrossing book, featuring the colonisation of a new planet - one rather more arid and unforgiving than had been expected. Read more
Published 15 months ago by M. LOCK
Lost ideals
Adam Roberts' first book is remarkable. After thirty-seven years of travelling through space, the colonists arrive on a less than friendly planet. Read more
Published 19 months ago by Diziet
Between a rock and a hard place
I suppose if I was forced to choose between the grubby and graceless anarchists of Als and the fundamentalist and slightly fascistic free marketers of Senaar I'd have to go with... Read more
Published on 12 Nov 2009 by Sarah A. Brown
at last....a good one
As a younger man I loved SF, but after years of throwing Bova, Brin and whoever else across the room in disgust after 50 pages, I finally found Adam Roberts. Read more
Published on 18 April 2005 by Anthony J. Bell
Avoid
This book wasted hours of my life, and I want them back.
The characters are unbelievable extremes, it is difficult to believe that two such extremist groups could 1) exist in the... Read more
Published on 18 July 2004 by Nick Taylor
Thought-provoking
Salt is a very interesting novel. It is about differing political outlooks, the inevitability of war and the danger that, in defending your way of life, you become like your... Read more
Published on 19 Jan 2004 by Tom Douglas
Pointless
Not too bad a start, but I couldn’t relate to the characters and I ended up despising all the main protagonists. The book ends in a very disappointing manner. Read more
Published on 6 Jan 2004 by Fred
Occasionally brilliant but patchy novel
Salt takes a fairly bog-standard sf idea – the colonisation of another world, and gives it a new twist by way of its telling. It’s not always successful though. Read more
Published on 23 May 2003 by Jane Aland
Political Sci- Fi
No matter where they are, no matter how far into the future people will never understand each other, that is the message of Salt. Read more
Published on 2 Feb 2002
Old and tired
Maybe I've read too much sci-fi, but this didn't seem anything new to me. The writing is fairly dull, the landscapes and ideas have all appeared in 'Golden Age' Sci-Fi and the... Read more
Published on 7 Jan 2002 by "jugadora"
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