Things are never going to be the same here again.
The sun-bright face darkened. Nodonn’s voice rolled in their minds. ‘Go back where you came from, accursed!’
Claude said: You fool. We came from here. [The Golden Torc, p. 348]
I first read Julian May's Saga of the Exiles in the mid-1980s, not long after the final book in the quartet was published. I was captivated by the characters, the plot, and the setting, and May's Pliocene has become part of my mental furniture. Following a discussion (there was wine) the other night, I found myself craving a reread, and powered through the first two novels in just over 24 hours.
I still love them.
They're not without flaws, and my reading experience is very different now, almost forty years after my first encounter with May's Pliocene world, populated by time-travellers from the 22nd century and two races of aliens from another galaxy, whose names and feats echo (or, in-book, are echoed in) mythology and folk-tales. The aliens -- the tall, beautiful Tanu and the smaller, more ordinary Firvulag, who are opposed in an ancient battle-religion -- have psychic powers: humans are more or less enslaved, but their very presence has drastically changed the balance of power between Tanu and Firvulag, and has insidiously affected Tanu society. These first two novels deal with the arrival and subsequent adventures of a group of eight time-travellers ('Group Green'), who read like a collection of archetypes and who, in various ways, change the Pliocene world beyond recognition. Notably, it's the two youngest members of the group -- both under the usual age limit of 28 years old, both qualifying for time travel only because of their criminal acts -- who bring about the most dramatic transformations.
One thing that struck me this time around was how predominantly white the characters are. (All of Group Green -- five men and three women -- are white. The Tanu are pale-skinned, as are those Firvulag whose actual, as opposed to illusory, appearance is described.) There are humans from other ethnic groups, but they are definitely a minority in Exile. Another surprise was how heterosexual and cisgendered everyone is. The few exceptions are called out, and often mocked, by other characters. To be fair, the time-travellers are by definition people who didn't fit into the diverse and humane society of the 22nd century: I'd imagine that intolerance and abuse might be aspects of the not-fitting-in. But there are some especially unpleasant comments about the single trans character in these two novels, and some already-dated slurs against lesbian characters. (Gay men seem to get less abuse.)
And yet I still love these novels. The ingenious ways in which myth and folklore are woven in -- "Wouldn’t you agree that it was highly unlikely for future humanity to have retained any recollections of a race of small shape-changing exotic people who live in underground dwellings?" [MCL, 4614] -- and the humans' atavistic responses to the Tanu and the Firvulag. The ways in which the humans, as well as the exotics, come to personify (originate?) myths of their own: the Flying Dutchman, David and Goliath ... The spectacular geology and geography of Pliocene Europe; the hints of the Galactic Milieu, from which the time-travellers have fled for various reasons. The complex motives and self-analyses of the members of Group Green, and their interpersonal conflicts. The depictions of extinct fauna, and the delightful self-domestication of felis zitteli. The (mostly) well-paced and well-plotted prose, and May's knack for humour and for snappy dialogue.
A few notes on the Kindle editions: 1) I dislike the most recent covers, and it seems that the ones before those were even worse. My cover images here are from the 1980s Pan editions, which introduced me to the Saga. 2) the maps are almost unreadable. Hmm, do I still have my paperback copy of A Pliocene Companion? 3) I think the text has been recreated, or maybe OCR'd, for the Kindle versions: there are a few typos, transposed lines etc.
I'll probably reread the other two books quite soon, but not yet, not yet: they are darker, and the scope is broader.
Apparently my last reread was in 2006 (review here): I seem to recall a plain-text version with a lot of bad OCR -- 'tore' for 'torc', et cetera.
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