Subject: REVIEW: "The Alien Years", Robert Silverberg

From: "Rob Slade, doting grandpa of Ryan and Trevor" <[email-masked]>
Date: 26 Mar 2000 16:00:10 -0500

The Alien Years by Robert Silverberg
	Review Copyright 2000 Robert M. Slade

Silverberg is an experienced novelist.  He has some fairly complex
characterization in this book, although the attempt to make this a
multigenerational work strains the personae a bit.  Despite an early
disparaging of H. G. Wells' cop out in "War of the Worlds," Silverberg's
deus recidivus machina is every bit as forced.

The titular aliens come among us with a highly advanced technology, about
which little is said.  Even though almost nothing can be inferred from the
information given, there are still a number of contradictions in the book.

Some of the contradictions seem to be simple carelessness.  One section of
the book, having given numbers for the population of a specific area,
thereafter asserts a number of vehicles that means there are more cars
running around than there are people to drive them.  Having said that the
world's population has been cut in half, with minor local variations,
another section has the number down to about one percent.  In regard to
the population drop, the book outlines a collapse of government,
communications, commerce, and transport which even the book finds
strangely extreme, and yet only a relative handful of people die in the
kind of disruption an event like that would create.  Technology and
production plummet, with car parts and even cloth becoming impossible to
obtain, yet intermittent times in the book find advanced weaponry,
advanced computers, and advanced car models suddenly appearing.

Let us start with some fairly basic technical problems.  The alien
technology is said to be able to stop electrical devices, including
generators, batteries, and even simple light bulbs, from working.  In
regard to our own technology, this interference with electrical circuitry
is said to stop any kind of transport.  Diesel engines, as only one
example, have electrical systems but do not require electricity to run:
the ignition part of the diesel cycle relies on compressed air, and not an
electric spark.  However, the aliens are also able to be selective about
this electrical impediment.  Modems are specifically said to be forbidden,
while telephones still work.  Mind you, later in the book everyone seems
to be communicating via email, so this is yet another careless
contradiction.  Since almost all telephone switches are digital, this
means that codecs (coder/decoders) work while modems don't.  A. C. Clarke
and his comments about a sufficiently advanced technology to the contrary,
this kind of "magic" still has to obey the laws of logic.  The kind of
differentiation required here strains the limits of the ability to
determine intent in technical devices, which the work of Fred Cohen
indicates is not reliably possible.

Finally, we have a cracker breaking into the aliens' computer system.
Given the ability to control electricity remotely for an entire planet, we
have to figure that these guys know enough about TEMPEST technology to
shield their computers from transmitting through the sewer pipes.  Our
lone cracker is also able to succeed where thousands of others, working in
concert, with access to more technology, and knowing that it is possible,
fail to follow in more than fifty years of trying.

But that is probably to be expected.  The computer technology in this book
is Tekwars technology, Lawnmower Man technology, Sneakers technology: all
graphics, flashes, and feeling.  No function.  The description of being
able to "see" over a serial link, "feel" unknown systems at a distance,
and "get behind" access controls that guard the only connection
demonstrate a rather wilful ignorance of the realities and necessities of
computer and communications technology, regardless of who builds it.

%A   Robert Silverberg
%C   10 East 53rd Street, New York, NY  10022-5299
%D   1998
%G   0-06-105111-X
%I   HarperCollins/Basic Books
%O   212-207-7000 fax: 212-207-7433 [email-masked]
%P   488 p.
%T   "The Alien Years"

======================  (quote inserted randomly by Pegasus Mailer)
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I hate, I despise your religious feasts; I cannot stand your
assemblies.  Even though you bring me burnt offerings and grain
offerings, I will not accept them.  Though you bring choice
fellowship offerings, I will have no regard for them.  Away with
the noise of your songs!  I will not listen to the music of your
harps.  But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like
a never-failing stream!                               - Amos 5:21-24
http://victoria.tc.ca/techrev    or    http://sun.soci.niu.edu/~rslade