It is the story of Simeon Krug, a brilliant genetic engineer and industrialist who develops androids with human-like intelligence who he nevertheless considers mere tools to serve human interests. Unfortunately, a wealth of ideas can sometimes overwhelm even the best books, and I think Tower of Glass is a perfect example. At his best, he produced some masterpieces like Downward to the Earth and Dying Inside, as well as some dreadful books like Up the Line, but his unfettered imagination and prolific energy was undeniable. In those he was churning out several books each year that were intelligent, thematically challenging, beautifully written stories that explored identity, sexuality, telepathy, alien contact, religion and consciousness.

This is another of Robert Silverberg’s ambitious novels from his most prolific period in the late 60s/early 70s. This also reminded me of Alfred Bester’s The Stars My Destination as teleportation has shrunken the world economy and made the global community one of accessible proximity.įinally, the plight of the Android civil rights movement can be a metaphor for the equal rights struggle of the 60s.

There is misdirected theology, there is mind altering processes and drugs, there is sex, lots of wild sex, and a bacchanal of global proportions. There is also his absurdist setting, the abstract theme and the almost Jungian vision of the leading protagonist. Silverberg’s 1970 publication (during his almost superhuman period of prolific writing) is about, among other things, androids. Clarke and Isaac Asimov? Stuff is being made up, situations are created to produce an effect, a message is being presented not on its face but peripherally, as metaphor and hyperbole. Was that humor I detected? Subtle, certainly, potentially a black comedy if at all, but isn’t Absurdist Theater only a first cousin of speculative fiction? Are Eugene Ionescu and Samuel Beckett that far removed from Arthur C. If this were a film I would want it directed, of course, by Wes Anderson or maybe Alex Proyas, he did a good job with I, Robot and The Crow and I would cast it with Albert Finney, Kevin Spacey, Hugh Laurie and … Will Ferrell? Tower of Glass is Robert Silverberg’s most Phillip K.

A Torre de Cristal by Robert Silverberg