Son of Man by Robert Silverberg (1971)
1st edition cover art by
Ahhhh….early 70’s Silverberg, my happy place. One of the best novels by the Grand Master himself, Son of Man is poetic, literary sci-fi or perhaps a colorful stream of consciousness existence diary. As the back-cover blurb states, ‘A Fellini trip in literary form’. Psychedelic sci-fi? Totally. An extended dream in the form of the written word? Yeah bud. One review described it as the equivalent of looking through a kaleidoscope for 5 hours. Sound fun? SF on LSD.
“His skin is a labyrinth. His hands are hammers. A pulsing blue hose hangs between his legs. His toes are hooked claws. His knees have eyes but no eyebrows. His tongue is satin. His saliva is glass. His blood is bile and his bile is blood. “
A modern man, Clay, is transported to the future via the time flux, which is all we get for an origin story. He awakens in an unrecognizable earth billions (?) of years in the future and is shortly befriended by smooth skinned, sex swapping bipedal humanoids who act as his guides. It’s never clear when or where he actually is in the timeline of eternity, but it’s an earth so far in the future that memories of our time are nonexistent. Clay experiences everything from a sight seeing trip through the galaxies to exploring the earth’s core, always contemplating man’s place in the timeline of creation. He visits various lands like Slow, Dark, Heavy, Cold and Empty, all named for exactly what they consist of. He encounters all manner of fantastical creatures and takes part in futuristic rituals with his guides. Each trial he goes through gives him tiny tidbits of insight to help decipher the meaning of eternity and his brief time in it. He confronts classic roles of gender against the sexuality of the future and couples with his guides both as a man and as a woman. Over time he learns to give in to his experiences with less and less resistance, which is admirable. After his human form is dissolved in a river, Clay spends forever in a muddy riverbank where he simply exists as a firmly planted root vegetable, endless contemplation without moving. Weird enough yet?
“He sheds much of the unneeded luggage of his mind. He casts off the fallacy of forward movement, the absurdity of striving, the inanity of aggressiveness, the idiocy of acquisitiveness, the error of progress, the misconception of speed, the aberration of pride, the hallucination of curiosity, the illusion of accomplishment, the mirage of consecutiveness…”
Son of Man rips through the restraints of traditional sci-fi storytelling and world building, far from your classic motif of a spaceman in a rocket ship. This is a heady and strange literary landscape written at a time when Silverberg was simply unfuckwithable.
