Fuck that was boring. I must have read half of it, what a waste of fucking time. ( )

Une critique de la colonisation.
Une très actuelle et pertinente réflexion sur le (et la fin du) travail par une auteure dont je ne connaissais que les écrits sur l'Afrique australe. ( )

This is my second reading of this book, and this time I read it immediately after 'Shikasta', to which it is a companion piece. It's fair to say that this book does not stand on its own and would even be baffling if one had not read Shikasta first. Unlike the other books in the Canopus in Argos Archives series, this one is closely coupled to the first. However it provides an interesting second perspective on that work. Where Shikasta was from the points of view firstly of Canopus and later various people of the stricken Shikasta, 'The Sirian Experiments' is told by a single narrator: Ambien II of Sirius, Canopus' galactic rival and neighbour.

Sirius is a materialistic empire. Its technology has conquered transport, communication, ageing, mortality, physical labour. But its immortal citizens have nothing to do: there is an existential crisis in the empire. Ambien II is one of the Five, immortal technocrats who semi-secretly run the Sirian Empire. Her interest in and envy of Canopus draws her to Rohanda, where she encounters the Canopean agent Klorathy. Klorathy shows her things on Rohanda/Shikasta which makes her begin to question herself and her Empire.

Ambien II is quite a dry and at times obtuse narrator (think of an immortal university bureaucrat and you might get the idea), so parts of this book can be heavy going at times. The structure is not innovative like Shikasta's. It is interesting to regard it as a very long companion document to Shikasta. It tells a somewhat long-winded tale of galactic evolution. ( )

Ambien II, one of the Five real rulers of the Sirian Empire, describes the Empire's experiments on Rohanda (later known as Shikasta) and her growing awareness, fostered by Canopus, that Sirius is not all that different from Shikasta after all.

Spiritual growth in a science fiction setting as a comment on man's inhumanity to man. ( )

Dreck, dreck, dreck, possibly the worst science fiction series I've had the misfortune of reading -- tedious to the infinite. Forced myself to read the series hoping it would improve... ( )