Status
Available
Call number
Publication
Bantam Books (1961), 154 pages
Description
The survivors live deep underground, as far from the Original World as possible. It¿s true that some of the hot springs that sustain life are failing, and they are plagued by the huge and vicious soubats, and subject to sudden raids from other tribes. But they are safe from the Twin Devils, Strontium and Cobalt, and protected from the ultimate evil, Radiation. Then something strange and frightening starts to happen: terrible monsters, who bring with them a screaming silence, are seen and people are disappearing. One young man knows that to find out what¿s going on he must question the orthodoxies of his faith and defy the law. He must discover the nature of Darkness itself...
User reviews
LibraryThing member ChrisRiesbeck
A classic from 1961 that remains interesting, if a bit klunky towards the end. One of the great subgenre's in SF is to create a world predicated on one major difference. It might be high gravity, as in Mission of Gravity, no metal as in Ragged Astronauts, two cities in one place as in The City and
The story is about one man's search for the truth about what Light and Darkness really are. He knows they can't be gods, but what are they. Galouye works hard to make it clear to the reader that because they live in darkness all the time, they have no concept of what it is.
The plot is not the strength of this book. We know what's really going on pretty much from the start, and all goes as expected. What makes this above-average is the details of everyday life in this world of darkness, the careful avoidance of any reference to sight, days, and so on. If anything, the plot distracts getting to see -- I mean hear -- even more about this world.
If you ever want to point out the difference between a science fiction novel and a literary novel using science fiction ideas, use this paragraph, where the tribal leader is explaining why the loss of several hot springs is so important: "Each hot-spring feeds the tentacles of a hundred and twenty-five manna plants at the most. Nine dead boiling pits means almost twelve hundred fewer plants... with nine less hot-springs we can support only thirty-four head of cattle instead of forty. All the other livestock will have to be reduced proportionately. In the long run it will mean seventeen less people can exist here!" This world is not a metaphor for some spiritual issue. It's a physical fact with economic realities.
Show More
the City. Most of the fun is in how the author replaces the familiar with analogues. Dark Universe's difference is light: humans living in deep caves completely devoid of all light. Most people get around by echo-location. Instead of streetlights, there are central echo casters, clicking away. Instead of flashlights, you carry click stones. For food, there are the aptly named manna plants, that grow in hot springs and provide both food and fiber. The story is about one man's search for the truth about what Light and Darkness really are. He knows they can't be gods, but what are they. Galouye works hard to make it clear to the reader that because they live in darkness all the time, they have no concept of what it is.
The plot is not the strength of this book. We know what's really going on pretty much from the start, and all goes as expected. What makes this above-average is the details of everyday life in this world of darkness, the careful avoidance of any reference to sight, days, and so on. If anything, the plot distracts getting to see -- I mean hear -- even more about this world.
If you ever want to point out the difference between a science fiction novel and a literary novel using science fiction ideas, use this paragraph, where the tribal leader is explaining why the loss of several hot springs is so important: "Each hot-spring feeds the tentacles of a hundred and twenty-five manna plants at the most. Nine dead boiling pits means almost twelve hundred fewer plants... with nine less hot-springs we can support only thirty-four head of cattle instead of forty. All the other livestock will have to be reduced proportionately. In the long run it will mean seventeen less people can exist here!" This world is not a metaphor for some spiritual issue. It's a physical fact with economic realities.
Show Less
LibraryThing member SimonW11
I had assumed this would never re-emerge so did not expect to ever read this. Dan Galouye wrote about different perceptions of the world and how those perceptions changed the nature of the world. Perceptions and conceptions were big in the sixties and seventies. but I thought his novels had died
Into a world of darkness comes a new phenomena "silent sound" How will people cope with it.
Show More
with the zeitgeist It seems I was wrong.Into a world of darkness comes a new phenomena "silent sound" How will people cope with it.
Show Less
LibraryThing member crazybatcow
Very well imagined world where nobody can see - but beyond that - it is a world where humans have lost any understanding of sight; even the verb "to see" is lost to language.
While the premise might be a bit on the edge of believability (how many generations, really, would it take for humans to
The book has a philosophical look at light versus darkness (firstly in a literal sense, and then in a spiritual one) and this is also quite well-done: it doesn't feel patronizing or moralizing at all.
The story is perhaps a bit "dry" and involves a lot of rushing around, and the interpersonal relationships seem a bit contrived, but is very interesting in the different perspective it provides, more than for its storyline.
While the premise might be a bit on the edge of believability (how many generations, really, would it take for humans to
Show More
forget they ever could see?), the author is very consistent - there are no "slip ups" in referencing any aspect of sight.The book has a philosophical look at light versus darkness (firstly in a literal sense, and then in a spiritual one) and this is also quite well-done: it doesn't feel patronizing or moralizing at all.
The story is perhaps a bit "dry" and involves a lot of rushing around, and the interpersonal relationships seem a bit contrived, but is very interesting in the different perspective it provides, more than for its storyline.
Show Less
LibraryThing member isabelx
The new witness was a young boy whose excited account left no doubt that he had heard the impossible sounds.
"And how would you describe these - sensations?" Elder Averyman completed the question.
"It was like a lot of crazy shouts that kept bouncing against my face. And when I put my hands over my
Jared Fenson lives in the Lower Level, and has no concept of light and darkness, since he lives in an underground world of caverns and tunnels and uses sound to perceive his surroundings, as do the inhabitants of the Upper Level. The main living areas have echo-casters that allow people to hear their surroundings without using the click stones that they carry when they move around the tunnels. A third group of humans in this underground world, known as the Zivvers, are descended from an single mutant outcast who was born with the ability to use temperature differences for thermal-imaging. They can protect themselves from the giant soubats with spears and bows and arrow, but none of them are prepared to deal with the monsters with flapping skin folds, who invade the tunnels with silent, screaming sound.
This book has a similar theme to Galouye's "The Last Perception", in which humans are driven mad by re-discovering a lost sixth sense called zylphing. Very interesting indeed.
"And how would you describe these - sensations?" Elder Averyman completed the question.
"It was like a lot of crazy shouts that kept bouncing against my face. And when I put my hands over my
Show More
ears I kept on hearing them."Jared Fenson lives in the Lower Level, and has no concept of light and darkness, since he lives in an underground world of caverns and tunnels and uses sound to perceive his surroundings, as do the inhabitants of the Upper Level. The main living areas have echo-casters that allow people to hear their surroundings without using the click stones that they carry when they move around the tunnels. A third group of humans in this underground world, known as the Zivvers, are descended from an single mutant outcast who was born with the ability to use temperature differences for thermal-imaging. They can protect themselves from the giant soubats with spears and bows and arrow, but none of them are prepared to deal with the monsters with flapping skin folds, who invade the tunnels with silent, screaming sound.
This book has a similar theme to Galouye's "The Last Perception", in which humans are driven mad by re-discovering a lost sixth sense called zylphing. Very interesting indeed.
Show Less
LibraryThing member MarkBeronte
Nominated for the Hugo Award *** The classic tale of a post-apocalyptic world where humans have built a society in the dark underground. The descendents of the survivors only remember the pre-apocalyptic world in old stories, legends and myths. *** Light, itself, is remembered as something holy,
Show More
and Radiation is feared as the ultimate evil. *** Jared is the son of the Prime Survivor, the leader of the Lower Level Clan. In a world of darkness and monsters both real and imagined, Jared embarks on a quest for Light. Little does he know just how dangerous his quest will turn out to be. Show Less
LibraryThing member KateSherrod
It's tricky to do a whole lot of world-building in just 154 pages, even if that world, as in Daniel F. Galouye's Dark Universe, is small and confined by nature. The trick is to be telegraphic, to let every line convey something about the plot, characters and setting all at once -- or to just let
I mention this because right from the first page, Galouye made the choice I favor less, and went a little overboard, to the point of raising goose eggs on my noggin with his invented slang and cursing and expressions of folk belief. This is a post-apocalyptic (nuclear war), underground world, and, as the title might just suggest, one in which there is maybe not so much light, but that does not mean that every other word coming from a character's mouth needs to be "Radiation this" and "Light that." To say nothing of substituting "period" for "day" in the context in which "gestation" means, more or less, "year." How could I not snicker like an adolescent?
It all reminded me more than a little bit of the South Park episode in which the Otters and Ostriches and other warring atheist types would use "science" as a substitute for "god" in common locutions. Oh my science!
And speaking of that, that same episode of South Park featured one Richard Dawkins, who named this book as his pick for "brilliant sci-fi that got away". And one can see why it would be dear tobhis heart, for the novel's hero, Jared, spends most of the story calling his people's cherished shibboleths into question and facing the consequences. Well, of course that's why he would like it.
To focus on either of these qualities -- annoying overuse of invented locution or hero-as-heretic -- is to miss what's amazing about this novel, though. I return to the world building, for Galouye has created a philosopher's delight of a universe, in which no one can recall what light or darkness actually are, and everyone has come to rely on other senses -- mostly hearing and smell -- to get around, to grow food (a must-be-engineered fungus they call manna that provides not only food but fiber and building material as well), to fight off predators (giant mutated "soubats"), and to perceive each other. As is legendary about the blind, these other senses are exquisitely highly developed in the dwellers of Galouye's underground world -- except among an offshoot tribe, the "Zivvers" who, it turns out, can see into the infrared spectrum, and are thus the only people in this story who actually use their eyes. They are rare exceptions to the rule here, though; everyone else echolocates, using "clickstones" and a giant central "echo-caster" to perceive their small world.
Galouye put a lot of thought and care into developing these cultures, and achieved something frankly marvelous thereby. That the plot of the story is a hackneyed coming-of-age/what-really happened narrative doesn't matter. Galouye succeeds in immersing the reader in a sightless cave of a universe, and in the process leads her to think about something she has always taken for granted, is taking for granted even as she reads his words: light ("silent sound" Jared calls it at first, struggling for words to describe the phenomenon to himself), and what it might be like to encounter it for the first time after generations without it.
Who would have thought a retelling of Plato's Allegory of the Den could be so absorbing?
Show More
the world building take care of itself, let the reader's imagination do that work. I realized, as I read through this, that I prefer the latter.I mention this because right from the first page, Galouye made the choice I favor less, and went a little overboard, to the point of raising goose eggs on my noggin with his invented slang and cursing and expressions of folk belief. This is a post-apocalyptic (nuclear war), underground world, and, as the title might just suggest, one in which there is maybe not so much light, but that does not mean that every other word coming from a character's mouth needs to be "Radiation this" and "Light that." To say nothing of substituting "period" for "day" in the context in which "gestation" means, more or less, "year." How could I not snicker like an adolescent?
It all reminded me more than a little bit of the South Park episode in which the Otters and Ostriches and other warring atheist types would use "science" as a substitute for "god" in common locutions. Oh my science!
And speaking of that, that same episode of South Park featured one Richard Dawkins, who named this book as his pick for "brilliant sci-fi that got away". And one can see why it would be dear tobhis heart, for the novel's hero, Jared, spends most of the story calling his people's cherished shibboleths into question and facing the consequences. Well, of course that's why he would like it.
To focus on either of these qualities -- annoying overuse of invented locution or hero-as-heretic -- is to miss what's amazing about this novel, though. I return to the world building, for Galouye has created a philosopher's delight of a universe, in which no one can recall what light or darkness actually are, and everyone has come to rely on other senses -- mostly hearing and smell -- to get around, to grow food (a must-be-engineered fungus they call manna that provides not only food but fiber and building material as well), to fight off predators (giant mutated "soubats"), and to perceive each other. As is legendary about the blind, these other senses are exquisitely highly developed in the dwellers of Galouye's underground world -- except among an offshoot tribe, the "Zivvers" who, it turns out, can see into the infrared spectrum, and are thus the only people in this story who actually use their eyes. They are rare exceptions to the rule here, though; everyone else echolocates, using "clickstones" and a giant central "echo-caster" to perceive their small world.
Galouye put a lot of thought and care into developing these cultures, and achieved something frankly marvelous thereby. That the plot of the story is a hackneyed coming-of-age/what-really happened narrative doesn't matter. Galouye succeeds in immersing the reader in a sightless cave of a universe, and in the process leads her to think about something she has always taken for granted, is taking for granted even as she reads his words: light ("silent sound" Jared calls it at first, struggling for words to describe the phenomenon to himself), and what it might be like to encounter it for the first time after generations without it.
Who would have thought a retelling of Plato's Allegory of the Den could be so absorbing?
Show Less
LibraryThing member ikeman100
This was my first Galouye book. It's a juvenile SF story and fits nicely with the young adult books of the early 1960s. If this is his normal style then I doubt I will try another.
As an adult I found everything in the story to be predictable. It was just a matter of reading long enough for it to
As a teen I would have enjoyed it for the pure invention. As an adult I lost interest.
As an adult I found everything in the story to be predictable. It was just a matter of reading long enough for it to
Show More
happen. A common theme of "golden age", SF was that science would replace all religion. Another common theme was the post nuke-war degeneration of humanity. This book is based on those two themes inside a boy's adventure tale.As a teen I would have enjoyed it for the pure invention. As an adult I lost interest.
Show Less
LibraryThing member DinadansFriend
A human mutated to live in total darkness, and moving by echolocation tries to find his way to the surface, to find the original world.
LibraryThing member Steve_Walker
I read "Dark Universe" 30 years ago for a course in the Philosophy of Literature.
This is unique book, one in which the language used by the characters plays a role
in the telling of the story.
This is unique book, one in which the language used by the characters plays a role
in the telling of the story.
Awards
Hugo Award (Nominee — Novel — 1962)
Language
Original language
English
Original publication date
1961
Physical description
154 p.
Similar in this library
Who? by Algis Budrys