7 December 2011

1. A week ago, I arrived in Helsinki, after two torturous flights where, having not booked specific seats, I found myself jammed in the centre aisles of the two planes. Comfort was given me by Rise of the Planet of the Apes, which, if not a great film, at least was attuned (like the original Planet of the Apes itself), to the doom-ridden times. Talk of an Oscar for the ape seems also - this time sadly - attuned to the times. More comfort was offered by Robert Silverberg's Nightwings. Sitting at Helsinki airport, waiting for a predictably delayed flight to Jyvaskyla, the sun broke over the tarmac. Birch forests flanked the far side of the runway. The ghostly figures of exhausted travelers were reflected in the window.

2. Halfway through the flight to Jyvaskyla, I looked down to see little gleaming patches of snow: here, on a little hillock, there, sheltered by a patch of forest. When I came down, the landscape was one of fairytales and legends.



3. Written in the early part of Robert Silverberg's period of sustained brilliance, which lasted roughly 1967-1974, Nightwings is a breathtaking book. Sharing many of Silverberg's characteristic themes - guilt, loss, redemption, transcendence, Nightwings is first and foremost a feat of technical virtuosity. For the SF writer, Nightwings is a case study in carefully measured structure, interrelation between social and personal themes (planetary and personal guilt and redemption), careful plotting of character relations, and the luminous prose. Only rarely does Silverberg fail to make the most of his material. And yet, there is something (as I think John Clute once wrote) too-conscious, too perfectly crafted, something androidal to the formal brilliance. Make no mistake, I love this period of Silverberg's, but I am also reminded of M. John Harrison's post on the party game Black Swan/White Swan, in which he reference a party game described elsewhere as:

The party game is simple; all things can be paired up and divided into white swans and black swans. White swans have technique but black swans have essential style. The white swan is the brain, the black swan is the crotch ...

Madonna/Debbie Harry
Debbie Harry/Chrissie Hynde
Diana Ross/Donna Summer
Michael Jackson/Prince
Luke Skywalker/Han Solo

To which Harrison adds, "New Worlds had the f/sf version of this game at the heart of its manifesto, I suppose the classic distinction being White Swan: Robert Silverberg, Black Swan: Alfred Bester. But I soon began to think of them both as technicians." [as an aside, I came to think of one version: J. G. Ballard/M. John Harrison - again, I love Harrison, but that's immediately where my brain went]

4. Ted Goia describes the writing of Nightwings thus:

The circumstances that led to the writing of Robert Silverberg’s
Nightwings were hardly conducive to creating a masterpiece. A fire
had destroyed most of the author’s house, and he was living out of
crates and cartons in improvised quarters. He desperately needed
money to pay bills and cover the cost of rebuilding. He was exhausted
and stressed out from dealing with insurance
company bureaucrats, putting his life back
together, and the general craziness of that
turbulent year 1968.

In this unpropitious environment, Silverberg
wrote a 19,000 word novella called
“Nightwings” in “something like five days,”
as he later recalled. Frederik Pohl, editor of
Galaxy magazine, paid him $500—which was
a considerable sum for the time, the
equivalent of several thousand dollars of
purchasing power today. Silverberg
immediately began hatching plans for
two more related stories of approximately
the same length, with the plan to combine all
three of them in a single novel.

5. The snow melted. Then it snowed again and I found myself running from window to window, not unlike an animal searching for a way out, saying, "Look, it's snowing, it's snowing!"

6. The difference between O degrees Celcius and -3 is considerable.

7. Meanwhile, I continue to rewrite Unwrapped Sky. Each time, it creeps forward towards something worthy, even if I sometimes sit back and think, "This is unreadable!" At other times, I discover passages which seem, well, quite good.

8. Reading Nightwings as one writes a novel is both a blessing and a curse.

9. I think of who the Australian literary and SF versions of Black Swan/White Swan might be. But I resist the temptation to name them, just yet.

10. A gingerbread cake was made. L was happy. It took us four hours.