Read this trilogy some years ago and from notes made at the time - "in parts was OK and I liked some of the characters, and in parts completely unbelievable especially aspects of the women" which applied to the whole trilogy. ( )

The book starts on the low level of Gaea becoming a slum hangout for rich and/or mentally and/or physically damaged humans. The story picks up with a round the world(Gaea) buddy-trip that does not end well for anyone; but manages to satisfy the reader for an entertaining story: there's something wrong with Gaea. ( )

I read this so long ago, I didn't remember much about it. This is an old scfi/fantasy crossover. The centauroid 'titanides' have come to Earth, representing Gaiea, the god-like entity that rules their giant spaceship that orbits Saturn. A group of humans and titanides ends up on a quest to see Gaiea, each with their own request to ask of the goddess.
My memories of this weren't great, but I picked it up again and paged through it, it was better than I remembered. ( )

There a lot to love in the second Gaia book.

I was honestly expecting a straight carryover from the first novel with its surprising end and lead, making the next title, Wizard, something much more than I might have expected, but I was surprised. Decades have passed in an eyeblink and Titan has turned herself into the goose that lays the golden eggs, opening up exploration and exploitation to her artificial moon.

Of course, with this fantastic alien landscape, there's the Titanides, the 29 times over ambisexual centaurs who like to do it every which way they can, even with humans, and killer blimps and vast and amazing adventurous locations full of glory and beauty. None of it is really quite easy to exploit. Nor do many people have the desire. After all, Titan herself is a god or near enough, technologically, so as to be the utter master of her domain... except for the twelve distributed ancient AI intelligences that make up her bulk. :)

Our captain is old but still looking young by this point, and since she's the Wizard and it's traditional to sing the Yellow Brick Road when they go on expeditions and status updates with all these distributed intelligences that are gods in their own rights, we're thrown into intrigue and a possible rebellion. :)

If you think all of this is pretty simple, think again. The novel is rife with questions of sexuality and cultural weirdness and lesbianism and even eye-rolling wackiness of a misinterpretation of rape that could only come out of a secluded orbital community of Wiccan lesbians who shun all men but import sperm to keep their numbers, drag one of their members out of the community, and put her into Gaia. Let sparks fly.

Is this novel nothing but sex? It feels like it. It's not horrible tho. It's weird. Vastly weird. The centaur aliens are nuts about it, and I'm just thankful there's a cheat sheet in the book that breaks down all the coupling combinations. And I thought that hind-sex and frontal sex was confusing enough when there was a profusion of multiple sexual organs.

From the standpoint of imagination and weirdness and worldbuilding and oddities, this book is brilliant and beautiful. Even the questions regarding sex and perception were sometimes clever and insightful even when it sometimes became enraging.

The fact is, for all its faults, this novel is fascinating and dense with goodies and is full of great ideas. My personal meh about the underlying story may be just me. Everything surrounding it is gorgeous.


( )

(Original Review, 1980-12-16)

It introduces more complications into the plot of the TITAN series, and clears up some nagging items as well; ever wonder what a satellite-brain looks like? What happens when tourism/ hits Gaea? What composers does a Titanide like?

I just finished reading “Wizard” by John Varley (at the cost of getting an incomplete in Philosophy because I was supposed to be writing a paper and of not studying for my Physics test tomorrow). “Wizard” was better than `Titan' and “The Ophuichi Hotline” (which are very good), but not as good as Varley's short stories (which are great). I don't know what that makes the book (excellent perhaps?), but in any case it is is definitely worth reading! It is the sequel to “Titan”. (I realize the period should be inside the quotes, but it looks really bad that way. Anyone interested in starting a movement to have punctuation placed where it should go and not where English books tell us it should go?) I suggest that you read `Titan' first if you want to read “Wizard” and haven't read “Titan”. From the end of “Wizard” it is obvious that it too will have a sequel called “Demon”. “Wizard” is the story of two humans, Robin (an epileptic) and Chris (a schizophrenic), who are two out of the ten people that are picked that year by Gaea - out of all humans - to be granted miracles. Robin and Chris want to be cured, but they find out that there is a big catch. They have loads of fun with Rocky, Gaby, and Gaea (who has gone somewhat bonkers). There is love, violence, sex, and buzz bombs. There are loads of neat creatures, new ideas, and wonderful imagination. To find out more, read it for yourself!

If you read "Titan", "Wizard" is a must read and in some ways I found it better. Varley's writing style is definitely showing signs of improving. I felt him to be fairly rough and simplistic in his early works. "Wizard" definitely picks up where "Titan" left off. Rocky has been "wizard" for many decades and has become tired of life. The story is of her and Gabby joining on a quest with two visitors who have come to Gaea to be cured of incurable illnesses and must prove themselves worthy of the "god's" notice. Of course, Gabby and Rocky have their own secret plans to take care of along the way, which is why they have joined this particular quest.

I found the book to be a good read, but since it is obviously the second book of a trilogy, borrow the hardcover to read or wait for the paperback to come out. (Unless you prefer to collect hardcover.)

This Voyager/Saturn activity has a Varleyesque feel to me. It really resonates with both Titan and the Ophiuchi Connection stuff. I wonder if it will show up in his future work. Speaking of Titan, it surprised me when I read it that he had ventured a specific number for the count of Saturn's known moons as of 2025 --- especially a number as low as 11. It seemed likely to me that Voyager would turn up more moons, as it has, making his book dated almost as soon as It appeared. That kind of specificity on real-world statistics is usually a bad idea in sf.

PS1. There are very substantial differences between the ANALOG version of "Titan" and the actual novel. A major subsection was simply eliminated from the novel in the serialization. Unfortunately that section plays a major role in Rocky's development. In my personal opinion, if you have only read the serialization you have not read "Titan".

[2018 EDIT: This review was written at the time as I was running my own personal BBS server. Much of the language of this and other reviews written in 1980 reflect a very particular kind of language: what I call now in retrospect a “BBS language”.] ( )