≡ Download Gratis Hawksbill Station Robert Silverberg 9780425036792 Books

Hawksbill Station Robert Silverberg 9780425036792 Books

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Hawksbill Station Robert Silverberg 9780425036792 Books

Although it had been over 45 years since I initially read Robert Silverberg's novella "Hawksbill Station," several scenes were as fresh in my memory as if I had read them just yesterday; such is the power and the vividness of this oft-anthologized classic. Originally appearing in the August '67 issue of "Galaxy" magazine, the novella did not come to my teenaged attention till the following year, when it was reprinted in a collection entitled "World's Best Science Fiction 1968." Silverberg later expanded his 20,000-word story to novel form, which was duly published as a Doubleday hardcover in October '68. (So why then does the author's "Quasi-Official Web Site" list the book as a product of 1970?) It has taken me all these years to finally catch up with Silverberg's fix-up novel, but I am so glad that I did. To my delighted surprise--and I only say "surprise" because the author has long expressed his preference for the shorter of the two creations--I find the novel even better than the beloved original; a work that expands on the scope of the novella while adding character depth and reams of background to its wonderful central plot.

In both works, political prisoners of the near future are dealt with in a startling manner by the totalitarian government that had come to power in the U.S. in, um, 1984. By dint of a new time travel device that can send objects in only one direction--backwards--the government, starting in 2005, has started dumping its hard-core agitators 1 billion years in the past; i.e., the later Cambrian period, when Earth's surface was bare rock, devoid of soil, plants and even primitive insects, and the only life-forms to be found (invertebrates, trilobites) were in the sea. Thus, we meet some of the 140 men marooned in the eponymous Hawksbill Station, on the edge of what will one day be the Atlantic; a group of men slowly going mad, and held together by 60-year-old Jim Barrett, a 20-year veteran of the station. The men's lives are shaken one day by the arrival of a new prisoner, Lew Hahn, a youngish man who seems to oddly have little in the way of revolutionary fervor about him. But Hahn's later actions about the primitive camp leave the other inmates even more puzzled about his presence in their midst....

The novel-length "Hawksbill Station" differs from its antecedent in three main areas: (1) The novel has much more in the way of detail concerning the men and about life at the station; (2) the fate of the character Bruce Valdosto is completely different in the two works; and (3), and most significantly, the novel is three times as long as the novella largely because Silverberg has added numerous chapters showing us Barrett as a teenager, as a young revolutionary in the NYC of 1984, and as a cell leader, leading up to his arrest in 2006 and his "trial" shortly thereafter. These flashbacks on Barrett's part--paradoxically, they are more in the nature of billion-year flash-forwards for the reader--give us a much clearer knowledge of who Barrett is, and it is all fascinating stuff for those who, like me, had only been familiar with the shorter story. I have always been a sucker for novels with strong parallel plots, and Silverberg here gives us two doozies, brilliantly and suspensefully interlarded. Just as we are left with a cliffhanger situation with Barrett back in the Cambrian, the author brings us forward to modern times; just as things are growing tense for Barrett in the scary, dystopian days of 1994, we are back in the Cambrian again. This really is edge-of-your-seat storytelling, the result being a grippingly well-told yarn that is almost impossible to stop reading. Personally, I found the central plot device--political prisoners marooned at the dawn of time--a fascinating one, and Silverberg peppers his novel with any number of wonderful scenes. In my favorite, which I well recalled from 45 years ago, Barrett watches a trilobite crawl out of the sea, wonders if this could be the great ancestor of all future land animals...and then wonders what would happen if he were to stomp on it and kill it. The end of all future life on Earth's surface, perhaps? The author's descriptions of the Earth of a billion years past are quite convincing, and Barrett himself--a man of great inner strength, despite being a cripple due to a recently smashed left foot--is a terrific and likable central character. As usual, the author even manages to give us a prescient peek at some future technology; hence, the phone that Barrett wears on his ear while walking the city streets in the late 20th century! And in one moving section, Barrett tells us "a society has to obey its own morality, even when it's defending itself against possible enemies"; surely, words it would do well for us to remember today!

"Hawksbill Station," great as it is, is not a perfect book, and Silverberg, uncharacteristically, manages to make a few flubs during the course of the novel, and all as regards dates. He infers that "Minus One Billion, Two Thousand Oh Five A.D." is earlier than "A.D. Minus One Billion, Two Thousand Twenty-Nine," whereas it is of course 24 years later. He tells us that Barrett was arrested in 2006, 10 years after his girlfriend Janet had been taken by the authorities; that should be 12 years. And he mentions that Barrett had spoken to Edmond Hawksbill about his time travel invention six years before his own arrest; that should be eight years. Given that Silverberg is usually such a perfectionist with these kinds of little details, these gaffes come as even more surprising; one almost expects them with the notoriously careless Philip K. Dick. Still, these minor slips would in no wise interfere with any reader's enjoyment of this great tale. Be it the more insular and claustrophobic novella or the expanded novel, wonderful entertainment value is guaranteed. And here's another thought: In one section, we learn that all the female agitators of the early 21st century have been sent to a different time era; namely, the Silurian period, when only the most rudimentary plants and insects covered the Earth. Howzabout THAT for a much-belated sequel? The ultimate women-in-prison story! Pretty please, Mr. Silverberg....


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Hawksbill Station Robert Silverberg 9780425036792 Books Reviews

Robert Silverberg strikes gold with Hawksbill Station (1968), a dark, restrained, and powerful rumination. Hawksbill Station`s setting, Earth's Cambrian era, provides the perfect backdrop for the all-too human dramas that unfold. Jim Barrett's flashbacks enhance the poignant loneliness and sense of missed opportunity that pervades every page. The pangs of old age, responsibility, and disability that afflict the elderly Barrett are convincingly portrayed. Silverberg's use of time travel is limited, simplistic, and solely to facilitate the novel's basic premise. Thankfully it's not a cool gadget to expound endlessly on, to construct bizarre paradoxes, to kill world leaders and accidentally meet ones own parents i.e. the gaudy/silly type of time travel I despise (well, most of the time).

Hawksbill Station should be high on any sci-fi fan's MUST be read soon pile.

Brief Plot Summary (limited spoilers)

Hawksbill Station is a penal colony in the Cambrian era for political dissidents of an oppressive but humane future Earth. The penal colony is only for men for fear that if there were women they might reproduce causing drastic consequences for Earth's timeline.

The most disturbing aspect of the novel is the fact that time travel is a oneway process. The dissidents which are sent back are unable to ever return to their time. The prisoners occasionally receive supplies, games, and tools through the time machine (called the Anvil) but are unable to communicate their needs to the "present." These factors create intense isolation and claustrophobia.

The landscape of Cambrian Earth adds to the claustrophobia. The land is barren rock. The colony, consisting of prefabricated plastic huts, is perched high above the ocean. The ocean is teaming with trilobites and other animals. The inhabitants of the station supplement their diet with trilobites and one prisoner even starts a scientific study of trilobites despite the fact that he'll never be able to communicate his knowledge to Earth's present.

The barren landscape, the disconnect from the present, the absence of activities to occupy oneself, the absence of women/family/lovers drives many of the inhabitants into despair. A large percentage of the population are considered insane and have to be cared for by the rest.

One of the few remaining sane men is the one-time revolutionary Jim Barrett, the crippled 60-year old leader of the colony. It is from his perspective and flashbacks that the novel unfolds. We learn how Barrett became the leader of a revolutionary movement on Earth that never "did" anything but instead devolved into sessions of endless arguments over ideology. We learn about Hawksbill, the corpulent inventor of the time machine and his one-time role in the revolutionary movement. We learn about Barrett's intelligent lover, Barrett's rivalries, his eventual imprisonment. Even Barrett's depressing flashbacks provide relief from the claustrophobia of life in Hawksbill Station and Barrett's daily routine of caring for the disillusioned and insane.

The Hawksbill Station portion of the "plot" concerns the arrival of the mysterious Law Hahn who lacks any firm political beliefs (unlike the other prisoners who were sent to the colony because of their radical stances).

I won't spoil any of the the mystery but the end is spot on and unforced.

Final Thoughts

Jim Barrett is one of best realized characters I've ever come across in science fiction. He's old enough that he can reminisce about his youth. Likewise, he derives his will to live from caring for the others in the colony, a role that is challenged by his recent crippling foot injury. Barrett's flashbacks to his revolutionary past reveal the emptiness and aimlessness of his previous life and despite being severed from the world he was born in he is able to find purpose, however hollow it might seem, in his position as leader of the penal colony.

The tone of the novel is one of intense isolation and claustrophobia. The characters struggle to find meaning and purpose in their world and many completely are unable to do so. One writes a book on trilobites, another (verging on insane) attempts to construct a portal with his mind to the "present", others cry endlessly in bed, another (Barrett's old friend) lies drugged by the doctor all day in his hammock.

In my top five favorite science fiction novels. Silverberg at his best. I highly recommend Hawksbill Station to all sci-fi fans.
Although it had been over 45 years since I initially read Robert Silverberg's novella "Hawksbill Station," several scenes were as fresh in my memory as if I had read them just yesterday; such is the power and the vividness of this oft-anthologized classic. Originally appearing in the August '67 issue of "Galaxy" magazine, the novella did not come to my teenaged attention till the following year, when it was reprinted in a collection entitled "World's Best Science Fiction 1968." Silverberg later expanded his 20,000-word story to novel form, which was duly published as a Doubleday hardcover in October '68. (So why then does the author's "Quasi-Official Web Site" list the book as a product of 1970?) It has taken me all these years to finally catch up with Silverberg's fix-up novel, but I am so glad that I did. To my delighted surprise--and I only say "surprise" because the author has long expressed his preference for the shorter of the two creations--I find the novel even better than the beloved original; a work that expands on the scope of the novella while adding character depth and reams of background to its wonderful central plot.

In both works, political prisoners of the near future are dealt with in a startling manner by the totalitarian government that had come to power in the U.S. in, um, 1984. By dint of a new time travel device that can send objects in only one direction--backwards--the government, starting in 2005, has started dumping its hard-core agitators 1 billion years in the past; i.e., the later Cambrian period, when Earth's surface was bare rock, devoid of soil, plants and even primitive insects, and the only life-forms to be found (invertebrates, trilobites) were in the sea. Thus, we meet some of the 140 men marooned in the eponymous Hawksbill Station, on the edge of what will one day be the Atlantic; a group of men slowly going mad, and held together by 60-year-old Jim Barrett, a 20-year veteran of the station. The men's lives are shaken one day by the arrival of a new prisoner, Lew Hahn, a youngish man who seems to oddly have little in the way of revolutionary fervor about him. But Hahn's later actions about the primitive camp leave the other inmates even more puzzled about his presence in their midst....

The novel-length "Hawksbill Station" differs from its antecedent in three main areas (1) The novel has much more in the way of detail concerning the men and about life at the station; (2) the fate of the character Bruce Valdosto is completely different in the two works; and (3), and most significantly, the novel is three times as long as the novella largely because Silverberg has added numerous chapters showing us Barrett as a teenager, as a young revolutionary in the NYC of 1984, and as a cell leader, leading up to his arrest in 2006 and his "trial" shortly thereafter. These flashbacks on Barrett's part--paradoxically, they are more in the nature of billion-year flash-forwards for the reader--give us a much clearer knowledge of who Barrett is, and it is all fascinating stuff for those who, like me, had only been familiar with the shorter story. I have always been a sucker for novels with strong parallel plots, and Silverberg here gives us two doozies, brilliantly and suspensefully interlarded. Just as we are left with a cliffhanger situation with Barrett back in the Cambrian, the author brings us forward to modern times; just as things are growing tense for Barrett in the scary, dystopian days of 1994, we are back in the Cambrian again. This really is edge-of-your-seat storytelling, the result being a grippingly well-told yarn that is almost impossible to stop reading. Personally, I found the central plot device--political prisoners marooned at the dawn of time--a fascinating one, and Silverberg peppers his novel with any number of wonderful scenes. In my favorite, which I well recalled from 45 years ago, Barrett watches a trilobite crawl out of the sea, wonders if this could be the great ancestor of all future land animals...and then wonders what would happen if he were to stomp on it and kill it. The end of all future life on Earth's surface, perhaps? The author's descriptions of the Earth of a billion years past are quite convincing, and Barrett himself--a man of great inner strength, despite being a cripple due to a recently smashed left foot--is a terrific and likable central character. As usual, the author even manages to give us a prescient peek at some future technology; hence, the phone that Barrett wears on his ear while walking the city streets in the late 20th century! And in one moving section, Barrett tells us "a society has to obey its own morality, even when it's defending itself against possible enemies"; surely, words it would do well for us to remember today!

"Hawksbill Station," great as it is, is not a perfect book, and Silverberg, uncharacteristically, manages to make a few flubs during the course of the novel, and all as regards dates. He infers that "Minus One Billion, Two Thousand Oh Five A.D." is earlier than "A.D. Minus One Billion, Two Thousand Twenty-Nine," whereas it is of course 24 years later. He tells us that Barrett was arrested in 2006, 10 years after his girlfriend Janet had been taken by the authorities; that should be 12 years. And he mentions that Barrett had spoken to Edmond Hawksbill about his time travel invention six years before his own arrest; that should be eight years. Given that Silverberg is usually such a perfectionist with these kinds of little details, these gaffes come as even more surprising; one almost expects them with the notoriously careless Philip K. Dick. Still, these minor slips would in no wise interfere with any reader's enjoyment of this great tale. Be it the more insular and claustrophobic novella or the expanded novel, wonderful entertainment value is guaranteed. And here's another thought In one section, we learn that all the female agitators of the early 21st century have been sent to a different time era; namely, the Silurian period, when only the most rudimentary plants and insects covered the Earth. Howzabout THAT for a much-belated sequel? The ultimate women-in-prison story! Pretty please, Mr. Silverberg....