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3.43 AVERAGE
3.43 AVERAGE
sdwoodchuck's review
3.25
Lloyd Paul lets his ex wife--famed commercial artist RuthClaire--live in his old home, because secretly he's hoping to rekindle their past romance. When he receives a call about an intruder in the old Peach orchard, he thinks this might be his chance. Instead, his intruder turns out to be a proto-human homo habilis, thought extinct for millions of years. Where did he come from? How human is he? How can RuthClaire possibly be falling in love with this thing she's named Adam? And why is it that Lloyd finds himself considering this man his friend?
Meanwhile, Adam and RuthClaire's relationship draws the ire of the scientific community who wants Adam caged and studied; of civil rights groups who insist RuthClaire must be exploiting him as a kind of slave labor; and of the Ku Klux Klan, who know only that Adam is not white, and by no means human, in their book.
After absolutely loving Bishop's Brittle Innings, this was the only one of his novels I could find at my local used book store. I started out completely baffled by this one, but by around fifty pages in, I was completely on board with this story that aims to explore what it means to be human... Only for it to take another turn around 2/3 in, and fumble much of the goodwill it had earned from me. Here is a tonal misstep so severe, leading into some philosophical navelgazing so tiresome, that it really threatens to sink the whole endeavor.
Overall Grade: B-. The first two thirds are really good stuff, absolutely ballsy, but what would have been an easy A faceplants in the last act.
smcleish's review against another edition
4.0
Originally published on my blog here in October 2002.
After the death of [a:Philip K. Dick|4764|Philip K. Dick|http://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1264613853p2/4764.jpg], Michael Bishop seemed to be the author most willing to follow in his footsteps. He has written a direct tribute ([b:Philip K. Dick is Dead, Alas|165921|Philip K. Dick is Dead, Alas|Michael Bishop|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1311998364s/165921.jpg|1407157]s) but, more importantly, has taken on the question more central to Dick's output than any other, "What does it mean to be human?"
Ancient of Days is explicitly (at least, for a novel) about this question. It concerns a surviving member of the species homo habilis, an ancestor of modern humans thought to be long extinct, who turns up as a refugee on the American coast near Atlanta, Georgia. There, he is hidden and befriended by an artist (RuthClaire Loyd) living on a remote farm; eventually they marry. Taking the name Adam, he sets out to find his identity, embracing theology and art, fathering a child and eventually undergoing surgery so that he is able to speak instead of being forced to use sign language. With his gentle, but slightly alien outlook, Adam is a figure reminiscent of Michael Smith in Robert Heinlein's [b:Stranger in a Strange Land|350|Stranger in a Strange Land|Robert A. Heinlein|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1156897088s/350.jpg|908211].
Like Smith, Adam has to face a variety of difficulties and misunderstandings
These include the jealousy of RuthClaire's former husband, the narrator of the novel; intrusive attempts by anthropologists to treat him as a scientific specimen; a tele-evangelist who tries to take advantage of Adam's instant celebrity and interest in spiritual matters; and, most seriously, attacks by the local Klu Klux Klan, who find his marriage to a white woman disgusting. Bishop makes his point by contrasting the actions of Adam and his enemies - it is our behaviour which makes us human, not our genes. Adam is revealed to be human in the ways that matter, with his attackers exposed as lacking in human virtues. (The narrator is mainly just confused rather than having an abiding hatred for Adam.)
The attacks on Adam brigh real tragedy to the novel, especially as it explores the stupid inhumanities of racism. Its major flaw is that Adam is made far too saintly to ever really come alive as a character (something which could also be said about Michael Smith), though the other characters go a fair way to making up for this. It has strangely never been as well known as its companion novel, [b:No Enemy but Time|637400|No Enemy but Time|Michael Bishop|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1327048929s/637400.jpg|909468] (which features a time traveller joining a group of homo habilis), but to me Ancient of Days is one of the best science fiction novels of the 1980s.
After the death of [a:Philip K. Dick|4764|Philip K. Dick|http://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1264613853p2/4764.jpg], Michael Bishop seemed to be the author most willing to follow in his footsteps. He has written a direct tribute ([b:Philip K. Dick is Dead, Alas|165921|Philip K. Dick is Dead, Alas|Michael Bishop|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1311998364s/165921.jpg|1407157]s) but, more importantly, has taken on the question more central to Dick's output than any other, "What does it mean to be human?"
Ancient of Days is explicitly (at least, for a novel) about this question. It concerns a surviving member of the species homo habilis, an ancestor of modern humans thought to be long extinct, who turns up as a refugee on the American coast near Atlanta, Georgia. There, he is hidden and befriended by an artist (RuthClaire Loyd) living on a remote farm; eventually they marry. Taking the name Adam, he sets out to find his identity, embracing theology and art, fathering a child and eventually undergoing surgery so that he is able to speak instead of being forced to use sign language. With his gentle, but slightly alien outlook, Adam is a figure reminiscent of Michael Smith in Robert Heinlein's [b:Stranger in a Strange Land|350|Stranger in a Strange Land|Robert A. Heinlein|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1156897088s/350.jpg|908211].
Like Smith, Adam has to face a variety of difficulties and misunderstandings
These include the jealousy of RuthClaire's former husband, the narrator of the novel; intrusive attempts by anthropologists to treat him as a scientific specimen; a tele-evangelist who tries to take advantage of Adam's instant celebrity and interest in spiritual matters; and, most seriously, attacks by the local Klu Klux Klan, who find his marriage to a white woman disgusting. Bishop makes his point by contrasting the actions of Adam and his enemies - it is our behaviour which makes us human, not our genes. Adam is revealed to be human in the ways that matter, with his attackers exposed as lacking in human virtues. (The narrator is mainly just confused rather than having an abiding hatred for Adam.)
The attacks on Adam brigh real tragedy to the novel, especially as it explores the stupid inhumanities of racism. Its major flaw is that Adam is made far too saintly to ever really come alive as a character (something which could also be said about Michael Smith), though the other characters go a fair way to making up for this. It has strangely never been as well known as its companion novel, [b:No Enemy but Time|637400|No Enemy but Time|Michael Bishop|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1327048929s/637400.jpg|909468] (which features a time traveller joining a group of homo habilis), but to me Ancient of Days is one of the best science fiction novels of the 1980s.