Bryan Alexander's Reviews > Nightwings

Nightwings is a far future science fiction novel. Well, a fix-up novel, consisting of three linked short stories.

I first read the short story "Nightwings" when I was around 13 years old. I didn't understand all of it, but the ending demolished me. That same week I read Poul Anderson's "Goat Song", which had a similar effect: mental stretching and emotional shattering.

I reread it now, almost 40 years later, thanks to a nice Kindle sale.

Nightwings takes place thousands of years from now. Humanity has risen to great heights, then fallen into a semi-medieval decline. Civilization is structured by fiercely structured guilds and run by some form of aristocracy. Humans don't seem to voyage into space much, but aliens frequently visit.

Our narrator begins the first story, "Nightwings," as a Watcher, part of a guild charged with using cryptic tech to scan space for a promised alien invasion. He visits the city of Rome ("Roum") with two genetic mutants: Gorman, a guildless, monstrous, and mysterious outcaste; Alvuela, a tiny person with wings who can fly at night. The second story, "Among the Rememberers," takes our protagonist to another city (Paris) , a different guild, and a love triangle. The last one, "The Road to Jorslem," adds a third city (Jerusalem), a new guild, a road trip, religious discussion, and reunited characters.

The novel's style is dreamlike, elegiac, mannered, and lush. Dialog is theatrical. The world is sketched out lightly, not encyclopedically, with touches: alien plagues, three moons, the replacement of computers with networked human brains, sunken continents and a bridge spanning Italy and North Africa. Silverberg sometimes offers quick glimpses on rich details, like this: "Gormon, slouching disdainfully against a wall embellished with the shells of radiant mollusks..." (44) The effect nicely suggests a qualitatively different world than our own.

Let me say more about the plot behind spoiler shields. (view spoiler)[The novel moves quickly to darkness.
"Nightwings" is a tragedy, as the aliens successfully, even easily, conquer Earth. Gorman turns out to be an alien scout who runs off with Alvuela. The Watcher takes Roum's blinded and prince on the road and learns a new guild, that of history, only to betray the human race and run into murder and disgrace. At last he finds a source of hope and reunites with the flier. (hide spoiler)]

Silverberg is playing with a lot of references and themes here. The stories are clearly set within the "dying Earth" tradition of Jack Vance and Clark Ashton Smith. Some Dante riffing is going on, as each story draws on each volume of the Divine Comedy. The second story engages Oedipus at Colonus. Sf is in play, too. I'm reminded of contemporary interest in myth and deep time, like Delany's Einstein Intersection. Olaf Stapledon's ghost moves across the second story.

Overall, I recommend Nightwings as a fine work of 1960s sf. Especially of interest for those interested in the dying Earth subgenre.