Book Review: Voyage to the City of the Dead

© 1984 by Alan Dean Foster

 

Alan Dean Foster – ADF, for this review – has a special place in my heart, right behind Asimov and Silverberg and adjacent to Goulart and Wolf. Who are these names? Well, you should know Asimov and Silverberg, SF Grandmasters, writers who first introduced wee young Hopper to science fiction. ADF, Goulart, and Wolf filled out that introduction. I must’ve read twenty or so of the novels of these men before I entered my teenage years.

 

I first learned of ADF primarily through his novelizations of science fiction movies. For my twelfth birthday an uncle bought me Alien. Through friends and magazines and whatnot I knew about the Ridley Scott film and was super-excited about it, but because of my age there was no way my parents would ever allow me to see it. So I devoured the novel. Again and again.

 

Other ADF novels followed. Star Wars, ostensibly written by George Lucas but actually ghost-written by Foster, was read that summer, quickly followed by The Black Hole. The early 80s saw me burning through Krull, Outland, and The Thing. Then a long pause until 1991, where I remember reading a roommate’s copy of an original ADF work, Cachalot. In 2007 I tried another ADF original, Midworld, the review of which in a very, very early blog posting can be found here. In 2013 I read his Splinter in the Mind’s Eye, the supposed sequel to Star Wars before Empire took its place, and re-read The Black Hole for nostalgia’s sake.

 

Thus my pedigree with ADF.

 

This copy of Voyage to the City of the Dead I picked up in a used book store on Hilton Head, SC, while visiting my in-laws way back in August of 2015. I remember reading 5 or 10 pages of it down there and being completely overwhelmed. Could be all the activities we were doing – swimming, kayaking, sightseeing – or it could be the dinner parties my in-laws constantly had. Or it could be the thick alien society we’re thrust into in the opening pages. Regardless, it felt daunting but I sensed it to be worthwhile, perhaps thinking back on my Midworld experience. I brought it home and put it on the shelf, where it sat for six years, and took it down to Texas with all my other possessions in the move last year.

 

What a wise choice that turned out to be!

 

Yes, the novel’s first chapter is dense as the reader learns to familiarize himself with the world of the Mai. An intelligent humanoid species I envisioned as hairless apes working the great river Skar, which splits the planet Horseye nearly in half, from equator to northern pole. The temperature’s a moist 115 degrees, and the Mai are traders and sailors who seem to have internalized the best and worst of capitalism as sort of their spiritual philosophy.

 

Oh – I forgot! Like any worthy science fiction or fantasy novel, there’s a map! There’s also an elevation chart! Plus a temperature elevation chart! You see, ADF is a master at creating ecosystems. If that’s your thing, he’s your writer. Horseye seems to have not one, not two, but three alien races. The Mai at sea level, plying their trade upon the Skar. The great river cuts a deep valley nearly 8,000 meters deep through the continent. So about halfway up that are the intelligent humanoid anteaters called the Tsla (very like Tibetan lamas in the novel), and up on the “surface,” 8 kilometers above the Skar, are tribes of Na, very much resembling, in my humble mind, the Bumble from Rudolf the Red Nosed Raindeer. Each has its own society, customs, language, beliefs, and temperament.

 

All this is introduced to us as we follow bickering husband-and-wife scientists Etienne and Lyra Redowl as they journey from equator to pole to map out the new world. The journey is done in their futuristic AI riverboat, about the only thing keeping them alive on Horseye. Since Etienne’s a geologist and Lyra’s a sociologist, the planet and its inhabitants come to life to us through their discoveries and interactions.

 

That alone would make this a worthy book to read, but there’s more. Not one, not two, but three double-crosses, all of which the Redowls barely escape with their lives. The last takes us up to the northernmost source of the Skar, where a character is revealed to be Something Else than we suspect, and the Something Else reveals something so mind-blowing that I hesitate to reveal it here on the off chance one of the tens of people who might read this in the next century might want to take it upon himself to read Voyage. It gave me goosebumps, which is a fairly uncommon yet very pleasant thing to experience when reading a book.

 

So, of course I give it an A+. Could be the best book I’ve read this year so far, here at the halfway point. It’s part of ADF’s “Commonwealth” series, a series of books set in a specific universe though not necessary sharing the same characters. (Both Midworld and Cachalot are Commonwealth books.) I think next time I’m at the used books store I’ll search these types of books out. The next time the SF bug hits me again (probably by September).