SF/F Review – Ancient of Days
Ancient of Days, by Michael Bishop
Synopsis: A Homo habilis (evolutionary ancestor of modern humans) is discovered, learns English, and becomes a scientific celebrity. He struggles with the meaning of life, humanity, and theology.
Book Review: Widely acclaimed when it first released, I think this book struggles to stay relevant nowadays. It has a strong voice, I felt like I was having a personal conversation with a charismatic dude from the early 80s. It made the past feel like a foreign country that I was familiar with, and visiting yet again with an old chum.
The subject matter is very dated, though. Exploring life, humanity, and theology before New Atheism is almost embarrassing in its bizarre deference to religious authorities and mores. I didn’t realize just how mentally smothering the atmosphere was back then. It was like watching legit medical professionals doing their honest-to-goodness best to reconcile their knowledge of antibiotics and organ transplants with their knowledge of the humours and chakras.
This poor monkey (ok technically a proto-human ape named Adam) is desperately searching for answers regarding his moral worth and man’s inhumanity to man (and ape), and he’s studying religious texts for this, and not one single person has the decency to come up to him and say “Look, I know some of this sounds deep, but it’s all ancient BS that too-smart people with an emotional attachment to it have tried making palatable for moderns. We don’t actually believe any of this. We pretend we do, but at best it’s a belief in belief, and it’s kinda embarrassing we’ve let it go on this long. You are too trusting and too vulnerable, and I’m sorry no one had the moral courage to stop you earlier.”
He quotes C.S. Lewis, for god’s sakes! The most unpleasant of the pabulum-spewers… and everyone nods along like this is OK. Adam does an amazing job of pretending to be wise, not knowing that this is what he’s doing, and all the humans around him politely applaud his fantastic performance. And this was the normal state of affairs in the 80s, even (especially?) among non-believers? Or at least, the intellectual ones.
I guess technically New Atheism wasn’t an official thing until 9/11 happened and The Four Horsemen were let slip. But I was there in the mid/late-90s, and we had already thrown off any pretenses that we needed to respect or revere the vapidities of the clerical elite. I didn’t realize that this was Not Done, and how much respect was still formally given to wizened charlatans. This book helped me to understand what my forefathers (and my actual father) came from. It is an inspiration to be proud of what we’ve done, and thankful for all we’ve achieved. It puts a lot in perspective.
That being said, any reader on this side of New Atheism doesn’t really have much to look forward to in this novel. When you don’t have an instinctual reverence for religious apologetics, there’s no internal struggle in watching a good-hearted monkey trying to navigate them in an unjust world. You just feel bad for the poor monkey, and bored by the bad religion. :( I assume this novel was important and did work in the era it was released, and could be of historical value. In terms of fiction reading, though: Not Recommended
Book Club Review: The novel is slow and long. It is also basically two novels stitched together, which makes it very hard to keep going when you finish the first one about 2/3rds of the way through the book. Our turnout was low. Unless everyone is specifically on board for an exploration of the issues I mentioned above, I don’t think this is a compelling book. Also Not Recommended.
Weird 1986 Note: What the heck was with 1986 and assuming women will fuck almost anything? Apparently that year everyone just accepted that it’s perfectly believable and not at all weird that a woman would fall in love with and consummate a relationship with a wise-cracking Duck, man-child Robot, or well-groomed Monkey. WTF?