186 pages
Published 1968
Read May 12
Rating: 2 out of 5
* Denotes a reread
I read a novella-length version of this book as a teen in an ancient best sci-fi of the year anthology. It's an early example of the time-prison concept, one later explored in Julian May's The Many-Colored Land and many other places. In the not-so-distant future of 2019, a totalitarian America sends political prisoners, dissidents, and failed revolutionaries on a one-way trip to the Cambrian, where they waste away and slowly lose their faculties on a barren rock shelf and fish the shallow seas for trilobites. Our hero Jim, whose physical size somehow endows him with natural leadership qualities, is the "king" of the titular station. When a mysterious newcomer materializes, Jim's not ready for where his revelations might lead.
Like many sci-fi books published between the 1940s and the 1970s, Hawksbill Station began as a short-form story originally published in a genre litmag (Galaxy, in this case). So far as I can tell, the novel contains the full text of the novella, but adds several chapters detailing Jim's career as a revolutionary. These chapters interrupt the flow of the Cambrian end of the narrative, and contribute little except for a broader canvas for Silverberg to employ grotesque mid-century bigotry, in particular a loathsome vein of misogyny. (The sole named woman character is a young revolutionary who Jim passive-aggressively manipulates until she loses weight and starts wearing a bra.)
As a story, Hawksbill Station is a vast improvement over Dinosaur Beach. It's amazing to me that Beach was published after Station; Station very much fits into the mold of New Wave sci-fi, built on character exploration rather than gee-whiz science, whereas Beach is pulpier, with a distinct Silver Age vibe. Both are very much products of their time, with manly-man protagonists bending women to their wills and being casually bigoted toward anyone who differs from them. Both are getting chucked into the donation bin after this.
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