Harare Review of Books

496 pages.

To be published in August 2021.

Finished reading on 7 July 2021.

Genre: Science Fiction.

Shadows of Eternity is legendary author Gregory Benford’s return to interstellar science fiction as a discovery within the SETI library on the moon turns out to be deadly.

Shadows of Eternity is a novel set two centuries from now. Humanity has established a SETI library on the moon to decipher and interpret the many messages from alien societies we have discovered. The most intriguing messages are from complete artificial intelligences.

Ruth, a beginner Librarian, must talk to alien minds—who have aggressive agendas of their own. She opens doors into strangeness beyond imagination—and in her quest for understanding nearly gets killed doing it.

Gregory Benford is one of science fiction’s iconic writers, having been nominated for four Hugo Awards and twelve Nebula Awards. Shadows of Eternity marks Gregory Benford’s return to the sweeping galactic science fiction that readers have been waiting for.

Thank you to NetGalley and to Saga Press for this ARC.

I’d never read anything by Benford before, so I didn’t know what to expect. Because of the length of the book, I had a look at spoilerish reviews about halfway through, and what reviewers said a lot was “hard sci-fi”, which this definitely was.

But, bewildering. Because there are 6 stories in here, and you get a sense of time passing without an actual idea of where you are in time at each point (except, somewhere in the almost unimaginable future).

Sexism:

Oh, a strong hint about that future is that male and female relationship roles are apparently reversed (this I imagine by trying to get into the author’s mind, not because I myself believe in roles), with the main protagonist — a woman — using men for sex (and, memorably, forgetting one lovely man’s name after a lengthy interaction), and men all needy and wanting commitment. (!)

Oh, but then there’s (also bewildering) a foray into this woman’s hormonal “stuff” — how she controls her period using medication, an episode of PMS, how she must think about when she wants kids but career first! and so on. (The F-F friendship that’s used as a frame for this is decidedly odd.) I found myself squinting and frowning a lot, trying to imagine what this author thinks women are like. But then, it’s sci-fi, right?

Her male partners are also so bafflingly one-dimensional (except for the one whose name she forgets).

So, sexism! A kind of clever reverse sexism, but sexism, nonetheless.

Characters:

And then, the characters! Incredibly unlikeable, most of them; and especially main one. The (spoiler) alien is at least interesting, and memorable — but, turns out, that one was inspired by Pohl, who created a whole world of them (Ythri), so, 😕

As mentioned above, the main protagonist’s POV is supposed to be a woman’s, but she feels badly characterised.

Concepts:

Very interesting concepts, if you can catch up. The author often introduces a new scene, concepts and characters with no background (spoiler, e.g. the Mat, which you have to pause your imagination for until you get an unclear description later in the chapter. But why Mat? Because it’s like a mat?).

Lots of catch-up in this book, and sometimes you never really do. I don’t mind hard sci-fi, which is usually necessarily high-concept, so this alone didn’t put me off; but it may others.

In summary:

I read most books to the end to try and get into what the author was trying to do. With this one, though, I tweeted about my bafflement because I really couldn’t get my head around most of it. In retrospect, it’s possible that the author tried to do too much in one book. Also came away thinking either the author doesn’t like people, and/or tried too hard to create a strong female protagonist by making her into a horrible man (🙃🥲)

Ps: I forgot to mention the treatment of non-gendered (?) people in this book, which is atrocious. (It??)

It was interesting, though, for the concepts. For that reason:

Rated: 6/10, but unless you’re into hard SF, may not appeal.