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Tags: Danish Me Review Science fiction

Review of Runaways from heaven (Flygtninge fra himlen) by Tage Eskestad.

Outline: Semjasa and Asasiel lead a 200 man rebellion against the matriarchy on Mars. Women rule because men just lead to war, spaceships and other disasters. To avoid being neutered the men flee to Earth. It's an okay place to flee to, because Jahve (another spacetraveller) has been able to prepare the Martians and the humans for each other.

Is it science fiction? Well. The focus is on explaining, that the archangel Gabriel and other nice people really are aliens. So, well, yeah, I guess.

Themes: I guess I've already suggested, that there's something about men and women here. There's actually quite a bit. It develops into the men not having such a good stay on Earth, because they keep falling into the arms of the women bustling about. And this is bad, because the Martian men can't procreate with the earth women -- not in a way, where the offspring is nice and intelligent anyway. So after the men run from Mars, because they're not trusted to do anything right, they destroy Earth. Yeah.

The book started out by confusing me, because it's described how the narrator had religion in school in 1935, and heard about the book of Enoch. But then I suddenly realized this was a foreword (called "Genesis"). This foreword raises some questions it's nice to remember while reading. The short version is: Who is that guy Gabriel, and why did they think he had a halo? Yes, it's like this, he was from Mars, and ...

I keep tripping up in the language. 1) I think there's a few old words here. 2) I think the language has to make room for names like Semjasa, Asasiel and Gabriel to sound quite natural. So some of the spaceships are called vimanas. On the other hand some words seem quite Danish. 3) I don't think the language is intended as spoken language.

In some regards the language here reminds me of the language of Alice, Alice, like the ranking of plot, thoughts, emotions and atmosphere resembles that of Inge Eriksen.

I haven't read the book of Enoch, so I can't tell you whether it's groovy to have so many quotes from it. On the other hand I can tell you quite clearly there's no reason a Martian would choose to think of "the western hemisphere" as we do.

The rebellions return to nature. Stupid. Therefore they are judged by the new ruler of Mars, an intelligence created from brain copies (run on computers) and a telepathic group conscience. The Earth is also judged: their development regarding technology and psychology are out of step with each other, so they have to start over. Noah, could you please build some sort of boat?

Is it good? Hm. I tripped a lot of times here. The language. Enoch and his friends, who I don't find that interesting. The battle of the sexes, not that interesting either, at least not in this way. So I have to admit it was hard getting through it. And I don't really want to read anything else by this author.

Created: 30 July, 2009 - Last changed: 30 July, 2009 - Comments (0)