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Summary: A story of redemption and hope
Comment: This is one of my all-time favorite books. It tells the story of sin and redemption - not only of one lonely wanderer, but all of fallen mankind.
On a future earth, an aging Watcher scans the heavens four times a day, looking for signs of a promised and long-overdue invasion. The Watcher has begun to lose faith in the invasion, however, and feels that his life was wasted in a meaningless occupation.
The book is divided into three sections. At the beginning of the book, the Watcher is traveling to the ancient city of Rome (Roum, in the book) with two companions: a winged Flier, and a deformed Changeling. Unhappy surprises await him in Rome, and he leaves the city a different man, sadder and wiser, and no longer a Watcher.
The second section of the book tells the story of his journey, now accompanied by a new and surprising companion, to the city of Paris (Perris) to join the Rememberers in their work of safekeeping mankind's past. In Paris he learns much, and leaves the city with a great stain on his soul. And the third section tells the story of his journey, under yet a new guild and with a different traveling companion, to the holy city of Jerusalem (Jorsalem) where he will seek redemption and renewal.
The book skillfully weaves together several obvious religious motifs, and I am surprised that other reviewers did not mention this. There is, for one thing, the pervasive presence of the Will throughout the book, which the former Watcher comes to trust. Other important themes include the notion that sin is both personal and planetary, the notion that enemies can be used as the tools of our salvation, the redemptive value of suffering, spiritual and bodily renewal in the watery tanks, and the directive, at the end of the book, to go forth and abroad with the good news.
I found this book by chance, and I'm glad that I did. Highly recommended.
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Summary: Elegiac
Comment: As there are a number of excellent reviews of this book that praise both Silverberg's elegant writing and the poignancy of the novel's themes, I'd simply like to correct the glaring inaccuracies of Amazon's wretched editorial reviews.
1. Alveula's "wings" do not lead the Watcher to Roum. He happens to be walking there and meets her along the way.
2. The Watcher does not "in a moment of weakness" fail in his vigil. In point of fact, he gives the alarm that warns Earth of imminent invasion.
3. The Watcher does not "set out alone" for Perris. He travels with the deposed Prince of Roum.
4. It isn't "the secret of Earth's salvation that lay hidden" in the deep archives of the Rememberers, but the truth about the ways in which haughty and disdainful human beings had mistreated the aliens who whould one day conquer them.
5. Avluela does not know the "riddle to free all men". She is simply, like the Watcher, one of the vanguard of a new Guild that holds the promise for humankind to rise above its degenerate state.
6. The invaders certainly do come and "conquer", but nothing much changes. It's simply a decrepit Earth under new management.
The Amazon editorial reviews were written by someone utterly unfamiliar with this story. Indeed, the novel isn't about Avluela at all, it's about the Watcher - his journey, his experiences, his transfomation. It's about the consequences of hubris. It's about the possibility of renewal. It is many things, but it is most assuredly not about Avluela and her "riddle".
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Summary: When the invasion comes down, the only way left to go is up
Comment: Back in the seventies, Silverberg really could do no wrong, at least by my estimation. Pretty much everything he did was an interesting bit of SF in its own right and often explored topics that SF didn't normally cover, or did it in ways that were new at the time. And he did this without being overly avant-garde or lessening the emotional impact of the work. "Nightwings" is probably overlooked because it was in its most famous form as a novella and in fact won a Hugo (and was also nominated for a Nebula) that year. Novellas are hard to release because they aren't long enough to warrant their own publication, so you either have to bundle them up in anthologies or piggyback them onto other books that may or may not have anything to do with the story in question. Fortunately Silverberg seemed to get around that problem by writing two other novellas to act as continuations of the story begun in "Nightwings". In the story he takes us to a far-future Earth that exists in the wake of a far more technologically advanced society that collapsed some centuries back. In this world humanity had fragmented into guilds, each serving their own purpose. Our viewpoint character is a Watcher, one of those who scans the skies in the event that we're invaded. Nobody really expects that to happen. But it turns out that everybody is wrong. The invasion, though, is almost beside the point. While it's the main bit in the first novella, what Silverberg does in the other two is deepen what we've already seen, exploring the intricacies of this new society and also how it reacts to sudden outside influence. In doing so, the Watcher sees humanity attempting to figure out if it has a place on its own planet, as well as trying to face its own shameful history that led it to this point. Its telling that for all the attention paid to the pretty flying people, they barely figure into the story, except to symbolize what most of us can't do. Silverberg manages to sketch out a fairly complex society in what amounts to very few pages, giving us enough for the big picture while letting us fill in the blanks, especially when it comes to the past history of Earth. He does this without making the novel six hundred pages and part of a larger trilogy. His prose, as is typical of this period, is sharp and lyrical, and he gives us plenty of nice mental images to take home: Pilgrims slouching toward renamed cities of our day, Fliers soaring into places most people can't go, people walking amongst the ruins of a past nobody can fully contemplate, decadent palaces and men both petty and bestial. It's fascinating and what other writers would spend entire series exploring, Silverberg nails it all in barely two hundred pages. And at the end we don't need to see more, he's shown us enough. Its impact isn't as great as his better known novels (it appears to share some of its themes with "Downward to the Earth") but the images it leaves us with of a future that is still recognizable even after everything is changed makes it one of his more notable works, and well worth giving your time to.
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Summary: Beautiful, Lyrically Poetic Tale of Far Future Earth
Comment: "Nightwings", an elegant collection of three novellas, shows the young Robert Silverberg at his lyrical best, telling a haunting, mesmerizing tale of a far flung Earth subjugated by the citizens of a distant planet once ruled by a brutal, imperial Earth. Told through the eyes of a "Watcher" - a former member of a feudalistic guild whose members were in charge of Earth's defense - the entire book works as a memorable tale of almost insurmountable loss, followed by redemption. Silverberg takes us on a magical journey through the streets of Roum (Rome), Paris and Jorslem (Jerusalem). Not surprisingly, the first novella, "Nightwings" - which chronicles the Roum adventures of the Watcher as the city is conquered by aliens - earned a Hugo Award.
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Summary: "Nightwings" is a classic story, but available elsewhere . .
Comment: The opening story of this collection, "Nightwings," is a classic: dealing with a decayed Earth, sexaul jealousy, a fascinating "guild" system, and alien invasion, it is one of the high points of the post-Golden Age era. The other two stories in the collection, while not terrible, do little more than flesh out the world. The major problem here is that "Nightwings" is avaiable in Silverberg's excellent collection _Phases of the Moon_; if you like science fiction at all, that book should be on your shelf. As such, it renders this collection somewaht unnecessary.
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