Skip to main content

The Hair-Carpet Weavers (SF) - Andreas Eschbach *****

Penguin has decided to bring back some 'science fiction classics', in a handsome new series (if rather oddly formatted - they're unusually small books, perhaps to make them fatter, as we're less used to the sensible length books were in the past). While this title is stretching that 'classics' label a tad (the book only dates back to 1995, and this translation is from 2005), The Hair-Carpet Weavers was certainly a great addition to the collection.

Andreas Eschbach builds a fascinatingly weird set up in an interplanetary empire that has lasted tens of thousands of years. On the featured planet, each craftsman spend his entire life weaving a single carpet from the hair of his wives and daughters. The book consists of 18 linked stories, which gradually fill in the big picture of what is, to begin with, a baffling and unlikely society. We start on that single planet, but by the end have take in the whole Empire and how and why it is changing.

The stories are beautifully written - although to begin with the way that each story is centred on a separate character makes the whole thing feel rather episodic, as the different aspects begin to tie together to form a whole new patterns emerge in what is a satisfying (if highly unlikely) conclusion.

There were a couple of issues. Ever since the days of Asimov there has been an awareness that an Empire stretching across vast distances and hundreds of planets would not be sensibly manageable - it seems very doubtful that it would survive as long as it has. And the handling of economics could be better - the decision the hair-carpet maker makes in the first story, dependent on the idea that he can only have one living son, who will get all the money from the father's carpet to start his own, doesn't really make any sense as the older son could simply leave and do something else, as there is clearly a much wider economy on the planet. But these are picky details.

I'm not sure why, but I expected to be underwhelmed by this book - hair-carpet weaving seemed such a silly, knit-your-own-yoghurt idea. But actually The Hair Carpet Weavers is excellent, both in the writing and the clever structuring. If it is not yet strictly a classic, it is certainly a classic in the making.


Paperback:    
Kindle 
Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you
Review by Brian Clegg

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Decline and Fall of the Human Empire - Henry Gee ****

In his last book, Henry Gee impressed with his A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth - this time he zooms in on one very specific aspect of life on Earth - humans - and gives us not just a history, but a prediction of the future - our extinction. The book starts with an entertaining prologue, to an extent bemoaning our obsession with dinosaurs, a story that leads, inexorably towards extinction. This is a fate, Gee points out, that will occur for every species, including our own. We then cover three potential stages of the rise and fall of humanity (the book's title is purposely modelled on Gibbon) - Rise, Fall and Escape. Gee's speciality is palaeontology and in the first section he takes us back to explore as much as we can know from the extremely patchy fossil record of the origins of the human family, the genus Homo and the eventual dominance of Homo sapiens , pushing out any remaining members of other closely related species. As we move onto the Fall section, Gee gives ...

Pagans (SF) - James Alistair Henry *****

There's a fascinating sub-genre of science fiction known as alternate history. The idea is that at some point in the past, history diverged from reality, resulting in a different present. Perhaps the most acclaimed of these books is Kingsley Amis's The Alteration , set in a modern England where there had not been a reformation - but James Alistair Henry arguably does even better by giving us a present where Britain is a third world country, still divided between Celts in the west and Saxons in the East. Neither the Normans nor Christianity have any significant impact. In itself this is a clever idea, but what makes it absolutely excellent is mixing in a police procedural murder mystery, where the investigation is being undertaken by a Celtic DI, Drustan, who has to work in London alongside Aedith, a Saxon reeve of equivalent rank, who also happens to be daughter of the Earl of Mercia. While you could argue about a few historical aspects, it's effectively done and has a plot...

Amazing Worlds of Science Fiction and Science Fact: Keith Cooper ****

There's something appealing (for a reader like me) about a book that brings together science fiction and science fact. I had assumed that the 'Amazing Worlds' part of the title suggested a general overview of the interaction between the two, but Keith Cooper is being literal. This is an examination of exoplanets (planets that orbit a different star to the Sun) as pictured in science fiction and in our best current science, bearing in mind this is a field that is still in the early phases of development. It becomes obvious early on that Cooper, who is a science journalist in his day job, knows his stuff on the fiction side as well as the current science. Of course he brings in the well-known TV and movie tropes (we get a huge amount on Star Trek ), not to mention the likes of Dune, but his coverage of written science fiction goes into much wider picture. He also has consulted some well-known contemporary SF writers such as Alastair Reynolds and Paul McAuley, not just scient...