Robert Silverberg, At Winter's End (Bison Books, 2005),
Robert Silverberg, The Queen of Springtime (Bison Books, 2005)
Robert Silverberg's The New Springtime saga was initially meant to be a trilogy, with a novel titled The Summer of Homecoming intended to be the final novel -- it was never published due to disagreements with Silverberg's original publisher. Nevertheless, the two novels that do exist in The New Springtime saga (At Winter's End was originally published in 1988, The Queen of Springtime in 1990) manage to stand alone, although in this new Bison Books edition, there is an explanation for the absence of The Summer of Homecoming in a pair of introductions and a handy outline of Homecoming provided at the end of The Queen of Springtime.
At Winter's End begins this tale of an isolated group's journey from barbaric tribe to civilized society. The setting is an Earth 14 million years from now, and seven hundred thousand years since a horde of meteors ravaged the landscape, threw the world into a millennia-spanning winter, and slaughtered most of the sentient species. Only the People, a race of furred, ape-like creatures equipped with sensing-organs capable of psychic communication, have survived, but only by holing themselves up in various "cocoons" to live a sheltered existence until the Long Winter comes to an end.
The People believe themselves to be humans, or at least the descendants of the humans before the meteors hit, and believe that when the Long Winter ends and they are permitted to emerge, it is their destiny to rule the world as the dominant species. A series of omens leads one cocoon, led by female chieftain Koshmar, to believe the Long Winter has at last ended, and that their destiny is at hand. However, after seven hundred thousand years of cocoon life, the sudden experience of a life without walls, without population restrictions, and without protection from the new malevolent creatures they meet on the outside, exerts a great psychological change upon the members of the tribe.
For young but preternaturally intelligent and intensely curious Hresh, this is the chance to finally discover the answers to all the questions he has pent up inside of him. For warrior Harruel, used to an existence of routine and service under the Chieftain, it awakens the hunger for power and personal gain. The lack of confined space leads to sexual discovery once it becomes apparent that they no longer have to restrict the number of births. And the decision of who is to succeed Koshmar as chieftain is altered dramatically due the fact that she is no longer required to leave the cocoon and die at the age of thirty-five.
The rest of the novel proceeds as a voyage of discovery, and Robert Silverberg ably describes how the tribe is forced to come to terms with the fact that they aren't the only people who survived, theirs isn't the only language that can be spoken or their gods the only gods that can be worshipped, and that they might not even be humans at all. Hatred and fear and greed emerge in a society that previously had no use for such emotions, and the tale Robert Silverberg weaves is intriguingly complex, an interesting study of society at its best, and worst.
Also, the concept of the People's "sensing-organ," a kind of tail that allows for psychic contact, allows Robert Silverberg to add a brilliant extra layer to the dynamics of the People's relationships. While the actual act of intercourse is no longer strictly regulated in the tribe, the act of "twining," or communing with the sensing organs, is something far more intimate, and is not restricted by gender, age, or relation, and can actually serve to magnify one's psychic perceptions to an entirely new level. While Koshmar is not entirely bothered when her twining-partner Tolyri seeks a mate to couple with, the idea of Tolyri twining with someone other than her causes the chieftain a great deal of anguish.
However, the Queen of Springtime fails to live up to the engaging premise created in the first novel. This volume takes place a generation after the events of At Winter's End, when the Long Winter is declared officially over, and the climate has finally returned to normal. The People have formed cities now, like Dawinno, which has Hresh for its Chronicler, and his mate Taniane as its Chieftan. The People have progressed ridiculously swiftly, having within the span of forty years invented currency, created a parliament, chosen politicians, adopted clothing, and given themselves even more tongue-twisting names than before (try saying Esperasagiot or Nialli Apuilana ten times fast).
And they're no longer the only sentient species to have survived the Long Winter, either. The hjjks (pronounced "hyiks," I assume), an insectoid species possessed of a hive mentality, were one of the five sentient species (humans excluded) who existed on Earth before the meteors hit. They have been the ruling species of the world for these last seven hundred thousand years, and the sudden appearance of the People has not deterred their wish to remain the ruling species for another seven hundred thousand years.
The city of Dawinno is thrown into an uproar of debate when Kundalimon, a member of the People kidnapped and raised in the hjjk's Nest of Nests, is sent back to his people as an ambassador from the Queen of the hjjks, carrying a peace treaty that gives the territorial insects an enormous advantage. From that event unfolds a series of conflicts, internal and external, with only a few of them being satisfactorily resolved at the end.
In The Queen of Springtime, Robert Silverberg employs an irritating tactic of switching from the usual past-tense to a confusing present-tense for short periods, a writing gaffe that is as unpleasant to read as it is distracting from the story. The narrative isn't as tightly knit as the that of the first novel, many of the events seem to come from out of the blue, the characterization is undeveloped and inconsistent, the motives poorly-explained, and the setting unrealistic. The outline provided for the never-published third novel of The New Springtime sadly seems to echo many of these problems.
The series of The New Springtime began with a great deal of potential, but was ultimately flawed, and if the outline is any indication, would not have improved with the publication of the last volume. Fans of At Winter's End and The Queen of Springtime, however, may want to pick up these Bison Books editions, because the introductions by Robert Silverberg, as well as the outline for The Summer of Homecoming, are quite comprehensive.
