Hawksbill Station

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Writing in the political climate of his Cold War age he doesn't make clear choices : the "syndicalist" new government isn't left nor right. The counter-revolutionaries seem to be modeled on the Russians, at least in name - some characters are described as "Khrushchevist with trotskyite leanings", and similar denominations - but what they want doesn't seem to be much more than reinstalling democracy. So don't expect deep economical or political analysis - it seems as if Silverberg just picked the default revolutionary thought available to him at the time, and only used them as labels to add a bit of color, because that would be easily recognizable for his readers, and feel 'contemporary' too.

While art and literature inherently don't need to have political intentions, it is neigh impossible to escape ideological undercurrents. I think there is truth in Louis Althusser's dictum "Ideology represents the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence", and so that relationship unavoidably has an effect on writing too. As such, and especially given the subject matter of the book, it is a bit of a missed opportunity Silverberg didn't try to communicate his political thoughts better, but I get it: he tried to write an entertaining book first - that house, you know. So a political manifest this not, even though it isn't too bad as a short sociological sketch of a fictional case study.

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