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Roma Eterna (Gollancz S.F.) (Paperback)

by Robert Silverberg (Author)
3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)

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Product details

  • Paperback: 400 pages
  • Publisher: Gollancz; paperback / softback edition (21 Aug 2003)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0575073543
  • ISBN-13: 978-0575073548
  • Product Dimensions: 23.2 x 14.8 x 4.2 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 208,769 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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    #9 in  Books > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Authors, A-Z > S > Silverberg, Robert

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Product Description

Product Description

The Roman Empire never fell. Driven by political ambition and internal dissent, thrown into turmoil by rebellion and civil war, it changed and adapted, but it never fell. The balance of power between Byzantium in the east and Rome in the west ebbed and flowed, but the Empire never fell. And it continued to expand, taking in the New World, while still dominating the old. This ambitious and accomplished novel explores fifteen hundred years of alternate Roman history through the very human stories of some of those who lived through it: the soldier encountering the exoticism of the New World for the first time; the minor official exiled to Arabia for some misdemeanour whose meeting with a religious fanatic may have changed the course of history; the military hero seizing his destiny; the innocent British aristocrat witnessing the destruction of the royal family; the children who find the last emperor in a decaying wood are all vividly and memorably portrayed. Roma Eterna takes it's place among the great alternate histories.


About the Author

Robert Silverberg was born in 1935 and began to write while studying for his BA at Columbia University, publishing his first short story in 1954. He is one of the most prolific of all SF writers and among his many fine novels are Tower of Glass, Dying Inside, Downward to the Earth, Thorns, Shadrach in the Furnace and The Stochastic Man
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Customer Reviews

3 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
3.7 out of 5 stars (3 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Couldn't put it down., 27 Aug 2004
This review is from: Roma Eterna (Paperback)
This isn't so much a novel as a collection of short stories, each one worth reading in its own right.

As an alternative history it is based upon one imagined change in world history: if the Hebrews had never escaped from Egypt then Christianity would never have risen in Palestine and changed the way people think about the world, their place in it, and morality. The hypothesis seems to be that without the Christian principles of charity and social justice, the Roman Empire would never have fallen.

Credible? I don't think so, but in this book that doesn't seem to matter. There are oversights and assumptions - anyone who has studied Roman history will be disappointed by them, but they really shouldn't be. This is a very enjoyable read.

The pictures of Roman Europe (and beyond) you get from reading these stories are vivid and imaginative, but you aren't asked to stretch your imagination too far; it seems to work. It makes sense. You can believe it would have been possible. That's what makes this such an enjoyable book.

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1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars complex, clever alternate history, 21 Mar 2009
By Dr. Sarah A. Brown "Sarah Brown" (Cambridge) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
As I am equally interested in alternate histories and novels about Rome it's perhaps not surprising that I enjoyed `Roma Eterna' very much indeed. It is predicated on the assumption that Moses never managed to cross the Red Sea, that Christianity was never established, and that the Roman Empire never fell. The short stories are rather loosely connected yet I still felt (unlike some other reviewers) that `Roma Eterna' worked as a novel as well as a linked story collection.

Part of the pleasure of alternate histories is spotting events which are similar - yet strangely different - to things which have happened on our own world. This novel offers further patterns and puzzles for the reader to decode for the stories intersect, not just with `real' history, but with other works of literature. This is most clearly apparent in the very first story. The relationship between irresponsible young prince Maximilianus and his debauched older friend Faustus is full of echoes of Shakespeare's `Henry IV' plays - and this pattern of allusion offers clues as to how the story will end.

Other connections are more teasing and uncertain. One of my favourite chapters told the story of young Cymbelin, a native of the Roman colony of Britannia. The account of his first trip to Rome as an innocent abroad seemed at one point to work as a kind of reverse imitation of `Passage to India' with the Briton playing the role of Indian Aziz, but then started hinting at links with `Cabaret' as Cymbelin becomes increasingly bewildered by the sexual and political machinations of his sophisticated new Roman friends.
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3 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars Neat idea poorly performed, 4 Jan 2004
By A Customer
A neat idea about how history may have developed if Moses hadn't led the Israelites to freedom and the Roman Empire had never fallen. Chapters are tenously linked through convoluted ancestral relationships. The last chapter has a nice twist centreing on the 2nd Exodus.

However the writing was overly stodgy and repetitive leading to this being a very dreary book that was hard to read willingly.

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