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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Trilogy works on many levels., 14 Jun 2002
Helliconia is Big, not just in pages, size of planet or time scale covered, but in number of themes it tackles. Other reviewers have complained about the thinness of character development. I think they miss the point, the people in Helliconia are all too human, flawed and weak. Do we really need yet another scifi series full of epic all conquering heroes. Yes plotlines peater out, but isn't life like that, lots of incomplete experiences ? Early in the first volume the new leader of the town and a highly intelligent women's , initial closeness turns to astrangement, bitterness and eventual regret for what might have been. Who hasn't experienced sometime similar ?
Above all for me the books are about the context within which we and the characters live in. Helliconia's extremes means its peoples have to navigate a perilous course over generation upon generation with many setbacks. Most helliconians cannot see the context within which they live, just the consequences of the enormous forces at work. In contrast the humans that observe helliconia, do so from a serile technological world that never changes; they live within no context at all. These two themes
mend there way through much of the books. Though there's much more here for all sorts of readers.
Helliconia is a work of imagination and ideas. The very things I need from reading. Its almost the perfect Scifi paradigm, in comparison much modern scifi is just cowboys and indians in space or indeed therapists on starships.
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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
I am completely bemused., 17 Mar 1999
By A Customer
Apparently, somebody just doesn't get it. This is one of the best SF trilogies ever, and I mean ever, written. Don't take my word for it, it won the John W. Campbell award. This is world building at its very best. There is nothing 'unnecessary' about its rich, original and a diverse detail, that is at once 'alien' and disturbingly familiar. Helliconia is a world where biology, ecology and society is turned upside down and inside out the better to present a theme no less than the birth and death of civilization. What if winter lasted one thousand years? Would we come out on the other side with our technology intact? Or would we be doomed, like the Helliconians to a recurring and deadly cultural amnesia? This is a huge book, with a huge theme that is masterfully handled. The writing is beautiful and evocative and very thought provoking. But. It is not an easy read, I admit. For me the first 50 pages were pretty rough going. But after those first 50 pages I found myself in world I had never been to before (or since - and I have read a lot of SF). I really can't do these books justice. I was just passing through and happened to spot the review below and couldn't leave without trying to set the record straight. This is not 'Clan of the Cave Bear' with funny critters. This guy totally missed it! Don't you miss it.
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8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An Astrophysical Fantasy, 7 Oct 2000
By A Customer
Helliconia is ground-breaking science fiction. Those who read it expecting to be able to identify with a particular character will be disappointed; the book presents a God's eye view of an alien world as it undergoes dramatic climatic and cultural changes.The planet Helliconia orbits the sun-like star Batalix every 480 days (a "small year"). Batalix in turn orbits a white supergiant star, Freyr, once every 2498 Earth years (1825 Helliconian small years). During this time, Helliconia undergoes climate changes ranging from Arctic to Saharan. It is important to keep in mind as one reads Helliconia, that this is not a story about people, but about a planet. Brian Aldiss portrays the evolution of a world over two and a half millennia, so naturally any one character is going to diminish into insignificance when set against the history of his or her people. The real beauty of this story is the fact that it draws the reader so vividly into the world of Helliconia, from a Godlike perspective. It shows to us our own insignificance in the vast stream of history. One identifies not so much with the transient characters, but with the cultures they represent, and ultimately, with the planet Helliconia itself. The books subtly link the fate of Helliconia with that of Earth by occasional references to an Earth space station, the Avernus, so that in the end, the reader is left with a deeper understanding both of his or her place in the Universe, and our individual relationships with the vast living organism that is our own planet Earth.
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by Terry Pratchett
