Another great one by Silverberg. I love good standalone SF novels. Silverberg seems to enjoy exploring moral and social issues. ( )

Corre el siglo XXIII. La sociedad, tecnológicamente muy avanzada, ha explorado el espacio exterior, pero no se ha encontrado vida inteligente. Ahora, desde una estrella en Acuario, llega una señal persistente. Hay una voz en el vacío del espacio… y la obsesión de Simeon Krug es responder a ella. Krug es un agresivo empresario muy astuto amasando dinero, y ha usado todo lo que posee para construir una torre que se alza en el Ártico canadiense. Cuando esté terminada, apuntará a Acuario y él podrá establecer contacto. En la torre trabaja una raza de androides que Krug, inventor incansable, ha fabricado. Y estos lo idolatran. Pero Krug es un soñador excéntrico, y solo piensa en terminar la torre y en su momento de gloria, sin saber que es Dios para sus androides… ¡y que un Dios nunca debe fallarles a sus criaturas!

I'm beginning to see a pattern with Silverberg. He is a good writer with a good imagination and has contributed much to classic SF. But... I am finding I don't like many of his protagonist. It's hard to enjoy a book when you don't give a hoot for any of the characters.

I admit I didn't finish this one. It appears to be skillfully written with the usual amount of Silverberg sex scenes. Unfortunately, I could tell where this one was going early in the book and couldn't be bothered to watch it unfold.

I'll try more of his works but it may be a while. ( )

http://speculiction.blogspot.com/2018/12/review-of-tower-of-glass-by-robert.html ( )

Original Review, 1980-10-28)

If it is in fact Silverberg's intention to make the sexual encounters uncaring in order to give an indication of the interpersonal encounters of the society in general, then why attribute them to the androids in "The Glass Tower" since it seems that he is trying to make the point that the androids CAN care and that they should therefore be considered equal to the humans? Is this contradiction his intention? Has he thought things out far enough that he even notices the contradiction? Or is this whole idea about his conscious decision to make the encounters uncaring simply a rationalization made by certain parties who would not like to see this type of cheap filler taken out of certain SF novels. In any event, I will admit that certain authors have used the technique of including uncaring sexual encounters in SF novels in order to show just the type of decadent society that considers such encounters typical. A notable example is "Brave New World". However, in order to make such a point, the number of such encounters need not be inordinately high. I highly doubt that this is what Silverberg had in mind when he wrote "The Glass Tower". My thanks go out to MD@XX for his remark about the coverless paper-back rip-off (no pun intended). I was not aware of this practice. The place at which I purchased this and other books in the same condition is not a book store at all, but merely a corner convenience store in Lisbon.

My parting comment is that this discussion of "The Glass Tower" is rapidly becoming more boring than the material in the book that I was initially remarking about. Let us cease and desist and get on with another discussion.

Some of you may recall that about 6 months ago I made a title/author request for which the winning answer was "The Man in the Maze" by Robert Silverberg. Recently, I re-read the book for the first time since I was 14. The book was still excellent. Good plot, execution, even good sociological commentary. However, to appease my curiosity about the general quality of Silverberg books, I then read "The Glass Tower" which happened to be the only other book by him that I happened to have on hand. I was severely disappointed. He raised several conflicts early in the book (the messages from space; his own ensuing mental breakdown; the building of the tower; his differences with his son; and the android equality issue) that led me to a point of eager anticipation. However, he then spent the next 100 pages continuing with characterizations that were not getting any deeper as well as several (read "too many") somewhat boring sexual encounters. And then as the topper, he finishes up with an ending that only resolves one and possibly two of the conflicts. The others are simply sidestepped as if to say, "They really weren't important ones anyway".

I am not the type that objects to sex in SF. I am even willing to have a lot of sex in the book and enjoy having it there (for example, Heinlein's "Time Enough for Love"). However, I am not willing to have another boring sexual encounter on every other page. I began to feel as if I was reading a gothic romance! The sexual encounters should ADD something to the characterizations, or should be an integral part of the plot, in order to justify their existence.

I realize that this is not a new book by Silverberg, but I felt so strongly about this one that I just had to write this post. I will not take this as a final comment on Silverberg, either; I intend to read more in the hopes that other of his works will be better.

[2018 EDIT: This review was written at the time as I was running my own personal BBS server. Much of the language of this and other reviews written in 1980 reflect a very particular kind of language: what I call now in retrospect a “BBS language”.] ( )