The Voices of Heaven

Frederick Pohl, 1994

I think the only other Pohl I've read is The Space Merchants. In Voices, I was constantly distracted from the narrative flow by the narrator's/author's trick of introducing a topic, then backing off for a few paragraphs or pages, then getting back into it. Not just once or twice, for big plot reveals, but constantly. It's like walking arm in arm with someone, getting into a good stride, but the other person keeps taking a step BACKWARD every now and then. Most annoying.

The title is a bit off-kilter. The "heaven" or sixth-stage forms of the native people do not speak; it is the third through fifth forms that speak to the human settlers. I know; the heaven of Christianity is also one of the threads of the novel, but if one of the characters was hearing voices from his or her heaven, I missed it.

Helge, a character mentioned repeatedly in Chapter 4, becomes Helga in Chapter 27 - poor editing.

The native people, and their interactions with humans, remind me a lot of those in Speaker for the Dead.

Some of the key moments receive little attention. Notably when the narrator is shanghaied - he comes to terms with the fact, after a decade or two of cold-sleep and many lightyears of distance away from home and loved ones, with surprising acceptance, almost complacency.

Too much acceptance of mainstream, and even fringe, Christianity for my taste, but that's just my taste. It is what the novel is about, after all.

I did think they would go ahead and intentionally or otherwise split the Pangaea-like continent into parts, which would solve several of the colonists' problems. Oh well, not my plot.

I love the cover art, by Ron Walotsky.