Subject: HOT SKY AT MIDNIGHT by Robert Silverberg

From: [email-masked]
Date: 02 Feb 94 02:16:46 GMT

HOT SKY AT MIDNIGHT by Robert Silverberg
            Bantam Spectra, ISBN 0-553-09248-0, 1994, US$22.95.
                     A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper
		      Copyright 1993 Evelyn C. Leeper

     Robert Silverberg's last two solo novels (THE FACE OF THE WATERS and
KINGDOMS OF THE WALL) take place on alien worlds.  HOT SKY AT MIDNIGHT takes
place on Earth (and an orbiting space habitat) and is definitely a return to
the more familiar setting--Silverberg even has a large part of the action
taking place in the San Francisco Bay area, his current home.  But the world
of HOT SKY AT MIDNIGHT is not completely familiar--we are thrust into a
future in which many of the ecological disasters which have been predicted
have come to pass.  The ozone layer is destroyed, the air is unbreathable
without masks and filters, there are deserts where now there is fertile
land, and vice versa, and San Francisco and Los Angeles are reduced to
towing in icebergs for their water supply.

     In this world, Paul Carpenter is a "salaryman" for a multi-national
corporation who takes on any job assigned with the help of advanced learning
techniques.  His friend Nick Rhodes is a genetic engineer who is on the
verge of developing new techniques to modify humanity to survive in this new
environment.  Also a major character is Farkas, a man who had been
genetically engineered as a fetus by a renegade scientist: he has no eyes
but has instead some other sense corresponding to sight which could prove
valuable in space travel.

     Silverberg is too careful a craftsman for the names "Carpenter" and
"Nick" to be accidental.  Unlike the Biblical view of their predecessors,
both these characters have their good sides and their evil sides.  Carpenter
is taken into the desert (symbolically) and tested--he doesn't do so well
this time around.  Nick is not giving humanity a huge change in their mental
state, but rather in their physical state.

     I'm not sure all the futuristic elements--space stations, multi-
nationals with lifetime employment, environmental disasters, and so on--fit
together entirely consistently, but Silverberg makes it at least plausible
for the duration of the story.  HOT SKY AT MIDNIGHT has a lot of ideas, not
the least of which is "if we modify ourselves to live in a very different
environment, are we still human?"  The spy plot seems at times overdone, but
on the whole this book is worth a read.

%T      Hot Sky at Midnight
%A      Robert Silverberg
%C      New York
%D      February 1994
%I      Bantam Spectra
%O      hardback, US$22.95
%G      ISBN 0-553-09248-0
%P      336pp

-- 
Evelyn C. Leeper | +1 908 957 2070 | [email-masked] / [email-masked]

"Remember, high-tech means breaks down next week, while cutting edge means
breaks down this afternoon.  -Bruce Sterling