Pages : 254
Overall Mark : 6/10
In a quiet British research institute, Chris Sole is investigating a strange language whose grammar could open up the vast psychic potential of the human mind.
In the depths of the Brazilian jungle, an Indian tribe is discovered, speaking a rhapsodic drug-induced tongue.
And in Earth’s orbit, alien beings monitor our planet, effortlessly mastering the proliferation of human languages. What they offer is extraordinary. But will their price be too high?
IAN WATSON (1943-)
Ian Watson graduated from Balliol College, Oxford, and lectured in English in Tanzania and Tokyo before beginning to publish SF with ‘Roof Garden Under Saturn’ for the influential New Worlds magazine in 1969. His work has been frequently shortlisted for the Hugo and Nebula Awards and he has won the BSFA Award twice. From 1990 to 1991 he worked full-time with Stanley Kubrick on story development for the movie A.I. Artificial Intelligence, directed after Kubrick’s death by Steven Spielberg. Ian Watson lives in Spain.
VERDICT
This was a fun story, though it takes a little while to really get going. I liked the comparison between how the people involved were treated, and how they tried to balance the price of knowledge against the price of a life. Watson makes this satire on the human condition funny and thought provoking, but I would have liked it to be a little more consistent.
