In one of Robert Silverberg's novels from 1967, "Thorns," the future sci-fi Grand Master presented his readers with one of his most unfortunate characters, Minner Burris. An intrepid space explorer, Burris had been captured by the residents of the planet Manipool, surgically altered and then released. Upon his return to Earth, Burris was grotesque to behold, resulting in one very withdrawn, depressed, reclusive and psychologically warped individual indeed. And a year later, in the author's even more masterful "The Man in the Maze," we encounter still another space explorer who had been surgically altered by aliens, but this time, the alterations are mental, rather than physical, although no less devastating to the subject's sense of self-worth. "The Man in the Maze" was one of three sci-fi novels that Silverberg released in 1968, along with (the excellent) "The Masks of Time" and "World’s Fair 1992"...AND eight sci-fi short stories AND eight full-length books of nonfiction. Silverberg's writing had entered a whole new phase as regards craft and literacy in 1967, and "The Man in the Maze" shows the author in the full flush of his newfound abilities.In "The Man in the Maze," the reader encounters ex-interplanetary diplomat and space explorer Dick Muller, whose career had been going along swimmingly until, at around age 50, he'd been called upon to make contact with the first intelligent civilization that humankind had thus far encountered: the residents of Beta Hydri IV. After many months of seeming indifference to Muller's presence amongst them, the Hydrans had seized the Earthman and, for reasons never learned by either Muller or the reader, operated on his brain. On his return to Earth, Muller discovered that his fellow humans could no longer abide his physical presence. Somehow, all the nasty sludge deep down in his brain was now being telepathically communicated to others, like an infinitely less harmful variant of the Id Monster in the 1956 sci-fi classic "Forbidden Planet," or the psychic equivalent of the aroma that hits a NYC subway rider when he/she enters a car that contains an especially foul-smelling homeless person!Unable to turn off his repellent mental aura, Muller had immured himself at the center of the ancient maze on the dead planet Lemnos; a murderous, million-year-old labyrinth with limitless means of destroying intruders. After nine years, however, a ship lands on Lemnos, containing Charles Boardman (the man, now 80, who had sent Muller on his disastrous mission to the Hydrans), Ned Rawlins (a 23-year-old space cadet, whose father had been a friend of Muller's) and a ship's complement. Their mission: to somehow penetrate to the heart of the killer maze and persuade Muller to come out and undertake an even more dangerous mission. It seems that an extragalactic race has recently entered our galaxy and begun to enslave Earth colonies at the outer fringes, and that only a man with Muller's peculiar condition might be able to communicate with them. But will the understandably bitter and neurotic recluse be at all interested in helping the humans who had earlier rejected him?Of all the many novels that I have read by Silverberg, I believe that "The Man in the Maze" might work best as a $200 million motion picture. In the book's tremendously exciting first half, robot probes and then a trained group of soldiers meet horrific ends as they endeavor to map a path through the concentric zones of the maze. In the book's next section, Rawlins encounters Muller and uses lies and psychological manipulation to wheedle the bitter hermit back out. Silverberg presents us with frighteningly strange animal life on Lemnos and, via flashback, a glimpse of those Hydrans, a race of aliens that is truly alien. Ditto for those extra-galactics, when we finally encounter them near the novel's end; that elusive "sense of wonder" that is the hallmark of all great sci-fi is to be had in great abundance here. Silverberg's writing itself is of a very high order, too. He gives us marvelous dialogue, and his descriptions of some of the worlds that Muller had visited are both highly imaginative (such as the Earth colony on planet Loki, where the residents deliberately seek to attain weights of 400 pounds and more by means of "glucostatic regulation") and oftentimes almost poetical ("He had slept beside a multicolored brook under a sky blazing with a trio of suns, and he had walked the crystal bridges of Procyon XIV."). And then there are the passages that are almost psychedelic in nature (such as when Rawlins traverses the maze's distortion field), a warm-up of sorts for the lysergic passages in the author's 1971 novel "Son of Man." The author also gets to voice his feelings on the difficult lot of the telepath in this novel, a theme that would be explored in infinitely greater depth in 1972's brilliant "Dying Inside." It would have been wonderful had Silverberg come out with a sequel to this marvelous novel--the finale is certainly an open-ended one, with several important questions unanswered and the fate of the galaxy still very much up in the air (or should that be "up in the vacuum"?)--but what we have here is still quite satisfying enough."The Man in the Maze," naturally enough, is not a perfect novel, and a close reading will reveal a few slight missteps on the author's part. For example, Silverberg tells us that Lemnos has a 20-month year in one chapter and a 30-month year in another. Similarly, he tells us that Lemnos has a 30-hour day in one chapter and a 20-hour day 50 pages later. And he is guilty of some slight instances of ungrammatical writing, extremely untypical for him, such as when he writes "...mild-mannered ungulates which drifted blithely through the maze...," instead of "...that drifted." But these are trivial matters that Silverberg's editor should have caught 47 years ago, when the book was first published, and flubs that only the most nitpicking wackadoodle (yeah, that's me!) would notice. The bottom line is that "The Man in the Maze" is literate, exciting, suspenseful, adult sci-fi with an interesting trio of lead characters and a fascinating story line. One of my bibles, "The Science Fiction Encyclopedia," gives it a mere seven-word description ("a dramatization of the problems of alienation"), but this reader found it to be so very much more. Now, Mr. Cameron/Nolan/Abrams/Spielberg/Blomkamp, howzabout raising the requisite dinero to bring THIS awesome science fiction vision to the big screen?(By the way, this review originally appeared on the FanLit website, an excellent destination for all fans of Robert Silverberg: http://www.fantasyliterature.com/ )
fuck the world and fuck the people in it. right? fuck 'em. you spend your life trying to do things, accomplish things, putting yourself out there. do people even remember those things? does the universe even care? you are just a cog in the great world-machine that doesn't even want to know you, that doesn't recognize the things you've done. who could ever want you, you are a useless part now that you are you have many accomplishments, many great deeds. so why was that done to you, why are your insides on the outside, why are all the base emotions and fears and petty little anguishes out there on the surface, a formless cloud of contamination, making people sick to be around you. why should they fear those things? they have such things inside them too, a wounded and wounding toxic sickness of the soul. the hypocrites, they are all like you, full of flee to your new home. a maze and a death-trap. just let those who drove you away come and try to get you, now that they need you. feh! let them try! let them come to your world-maze. let them come and let them die. it is a book about a maze and the man in it. it is a book about three men. one bitter man on the inside. two men on the outside: one old and cynical and the other young and idealistic. it is a book about being a certain kind of man. different versions, different stages of the same sort of man: an explorer a change agent a man who makes things happen. it is about men who don't need women, or things, or ideas. it is a book about men who need to move forward and make their mark, maybe many marks. men whose accomplishments - and only their accomplishments - define them. what is a maze to such men? simply a place to go. it is a stark book and it is a melancholy book and it is a thrilling book and it is a surprisingly affecting book. it is beautifully written; it is a pulpy adventure as well. philosophies and perilous missions; rage and sadness and idealism and cynicism; transformation and alienation. alien beings; alien humans. so many things. project your own ideas onto the book; its body is pleasingly formed and ready to be clothed with your own perspective. the man in the maze made the maze his home; he made of himself a maze as well.
What do You think about The Man In The Maze (1969)?
I pulled this sci-fi novel from the depths of my bookshelves, looking for the magic that existed in the writings of the masters of the genre. In so many science fiction books of the 50's and 60's, writers like Isaac Asimov, Clifford D. Simak, and Robert Heinlein concentrated on the ideas, the aspects of mankind progressing out of their own microcosm here and out to the universe. Once in the stars, most sci-fi writers found that the universal themes they thought about were also at the very core of their own minds. To go outward, you must go inward. Robert Silverberg did a fantastic job in combining Roddenberry with Jung. Each of the main characters are introverted, brooding, well constructed men who decide the fate of the human race even while examining their own emotions. Dick Muller, the damaged soldier who lives on the planet of Lemmos and its large, deadly maze constructed by aliens from a long forgotten civilization. Charles Boardman, the confident manipulator of men, armies, worlds, whose weary nostalgia reveals an old man who tires in his actions even as he moves forward. And Ned Rawlins, the naive, ideological crew member of Boardman who, as a child, knew Muller. Boardman and Rawlins' mission is to retrieve Muller from his self-imposed exile in the maze which only he has mastered.The maze is, of course, a symbol of the inner workings of a man's mind. The maze is so well described by Silverberg, in direct prose that gives a vagueness of dimension and detail while allowing the imagination to fill in the rest. (I say this because there are too many authors, like Terry Brooks, for instance, that will describe every tree in the forest. Sometimes it's best to let the reader's mind make some of it up.) I also think that the 1978 Mass Market version which I have has the best cover, portraying the maze as an ornate, spiraling city of rooms and walkways, of endless deadly traps and machinations. In chapters spread throughout are the histories of the three men. What made Muller different, what the aliens he met did to him, and why he was shunned from the rest of humanity afterwards. What desperate mission do they need him for, even to risking the lives of men who must go into the maze, knowing that one false move will send them into spikes, boulders, or lakes of fire.In the end, we see mankind's outlook on his world and his future. The stoic, the cynic, the righteous, even the epicurean. It made me wish the book was longer, that the days spent in the maze were longer, the delving into the maze that is the human psyche was more complete. I felt as if there was something Silverberg was looking for, and it was he that could not finish the maze, and so had to leave it undone, damaged somehow. At the end, when Muller returns to the maze (and by saying that, I'm revealing nothing), he goes to retrieve something he'd lost. And maybe that was what Silverberg felt as well.***I will say one more thing about the novel, which to me meant absolutely nothing, as I've come to expect this from most sci-fi authors. The women in the story are simply sexual tools, empty bodies with breasts and long hair. They are the short skirted crewwomen walking down the halls of the Enterprise. And while this would make the modern reader bristle with politically correct righteousness, I do not think it takes away from the book itself. When you read sci-fi from the 50's and 60's, you must realize that there are few if any women characters with strong character traits. You have to look at works by Sherri S. Tepper, Ursula K. LeGuin, even Orson Scott Card, to find them. In other words, you pick the book up recognizing that the main characters will be men, and you find the underpinnings of the man's mind to be such. Enjoy the dark, brooding characters, and don't let modern ideas about writing come into play. It would be same as criticizing writers of times past from putting in strong, liberated African-Americans, or removing the prejudiced feelings of Whites from older books. You have to read these books about the future as works from the past. And find, like so many other classic works of literature, that their are lessons even in the oldest of writings.
—Denzil Pugh
The Man in the Maze (1969) 192 pages by Robert Silverberg. This could be classified as a first or second contact novel, but I would more of the psychological variety. Dick Muller is the title character, a man who years ago made contact with an alien species, and when he returned, being in his presence sickened was sickening or depressing, so much so that he decided to exile himself to the maze on Lemnos. The maze was surrounded top and bottom by an impenetrable force field. Only through a doorway could you gain entry. The maze was filled with deadly traps and vicious animals. Here in the center is where Muller has made his home.Now another alien species has been discovered, and Earth needs Muller's help to contact them and turn them away. So a group led by Charles Boardman tries to enter the maze and make contact with Muller, but no direct appeal for help is going to work, because Muller is disenchanted with humanity. Boardman employs Ned Rawlins, the son of a friend of Muller to make the contact using a cover story.The reader gets to see how Ned's character reacts and grows during the unfolding of the story, along with Muller. There is some action, Boardman has to figure out a way to penetrate the maze, it's almost a foregone conclusion that they will, but how many lives will be lost in the process. This book was good. If you haven't read any Silverberg, I would suggest Lord Valentine's Castle and the other Majipoor books if you enjoy that one.
—John Loyd
Richard Muller lleva nueve años fuera de la Tierra. Desde un lejano planeta, a noventa años luz de distancia, contempla en el firmamento el brillo apagado de una pequeña estrella: el Sol.En Lemnos no queda nadie ya; sólo Muller y el laberinto. Dividido en diferentes zonas, el dédalo se muestra impertérrito mientras defiende sus inextricables entradas y caminos con todo tipo de trampas.Creyéndose olvidado por todos sus congéneres y apartado de los asuntos mundanos en su exilio autoimpuesto, un dí
—Jack Moreno
