From the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, this is the fourth instalment in the visionary novel cycle 'Canopus in Argos: Archives'.
The handsome, intelligent people of Planet 8 of the Canopean Empire know only an idyllic existence on their bountiful planet, its weather consistently nurturing, never harsh. They live long, purposeful, untroubled lives.
Then one day The Ice begins, and ice and snow cover the planet's surface. Crops and animals die off, and the people must learn to live with this new desolation. Their only hope is that, as they have been promised, they will be taken from Planet 8 to a new world. But when the Canopean ambassador, Johor, finally arrives, he has devastating news: they will die along with their planet. Slowly they come to understand that their salvation may lie in the creation of one Representative who can save what is most essential to them.
Lessing has written a frightening and, finally, hopeful book, a profound and thought-provoking contribution to the science-fiction genre the novel generally.
Industry Reviews
The fourth novel in Lessing's Canopus in Argus series is the shortest, the simplest, and (though frequently given over to long, lyric/philosophical monologues) the most fable-like. The narrator is Doeg, a "Representative" on Planet 8 who recalls "the times of The Ice" - when the beautiful, temperate little planet (a colony of Canopus) slowly began to freeze to death. Half the planet soon becomes an icy wasteland; the other half, protected by a great black wall, which has been built according to orders from Canopean agent Johor (cf. Shikasta), suffers more gradually. And Joher promises that the people of Planet 8 will eventually be "spacelifted" to paradisical planet Rohanda. So Doeg and the other Representatives labor to keep their weakening, greying people going until salvation comes: there's a harrowing journey to the cold side in search of food sources (the people have had to switch to an all-meat diet); a sacred lake is reluctantly violated - also in search of food; the Representatives go house to house, urging the people to resist torpor, to refrain from crime (which is escalating). But then Johor arrives with the worst of news: there will be no mass spacelift to Rohanda; though the Representatives may be rescued, millions will simply be left to die with the planet. And so - while the lake freezes, the black wall crumbles, and the icy apocalypse approaches - Johor, Doeg, and the other Representatives engage in a colloquy on the nature of existence: the relationship of the individual to all humanity; the elusive, perhaps illusory essence of "meness"; the place of a single life or memory in the endless universe, of a single thought in "this system of fine and finer" particles. None of these ruminations is particularly fresh, of course - and the longwinded exchanges sometimes become droningly static. But often here, with near-Biblical rhythms and imagery (and a spiritual-transfiguration finale), Lessing achieves the sort of primal resonances which weren't possible in the more intricately sociological Canopus books. And this time the ambivalent symbolism - again paternal, hapless Canopus seems to represent both empire-building Britain and God - is more provocative than confusing. (To get really confused, however, read Lessing's afterword - which explains the connections between the last two Canopus novels and Scott's Antarctic expeditions.) So: perhaps the least ambitious or demanding of Lessing's visionary parables - but one with moments of great, dirge-like, roughly poetic power. (Kirkus Reviews)
