The novel “The Shadow Of Heaven” by Bob Shaw was published for the first time in 1969. It was re-published in a revised edition in 1991.
Vic Stirling is a journalist who is following a crime story. The discovery of the bodies of two strangers leads him to check the list of missing people, where he also finds the name of John Considine, his half-brother. Although his contacts with his family are sporadic, he gets worried and goes to talk to their mother, who confirms that John seems to have vanished.
Vic starts investigating and a lead makes him think that John somehow managed to go to Heaven, an artificial island floating in the sky thanks to an antigravity engine. This, like other islands of the same type, has an agricultural use but the crops are handled by an automated system and it’s forbidden to humans to go there. Vic manages to find a way to go to Heaven and discovers a completely unexpected situation.
In “The Shadow Of Heaven” , Bob Shaw describes a future in which humanity struggles to survive after a faction that has never identified used a herbicide so lethal that not only it destroyed crops but has poisoned the land around the world. The effect was so devastating that decades later the human population is still concentrated on the coasts of seas and oceans, which have become by far the main source of food.
The only crops are possible on artificial islands that float in the sky, where the work is fully automated. Since the coasts are overpopulated, someone tries to go to one of those islands even though this is prohibited but no one has ever returned to tell the tale.
When John Considine disappears, his half-brother Vic Stirling follows his tracks up to Heaven, one of the flying islands. He manages to smuggle himself to Heaven, where he discovers a group of people who have formed a small independent society, obviously illegal. For this reason, those who reach the place aren’t allowed to leave.
I think the basic problem of “The Shadow Of Heaven” is that Bob Shaw develops it in a way too different from his typical way of writing. In most of his stories, this author uses a discovery or an invention as the basis then describe its consequences, including social ones. In this novel, the story begins decades after the lands of the world have been poisoned and human society has changed dramatically.
In “The Shadow Of Heaven” the conflict between two half-brothers is described. That ends up being at the center of wider power struggles in the small society created on Heaven but also the one between the government and the Food Technology Authority (FTA), the powerful organization that runs the collection and distribution of food from the sea and the floating islands.
Basically, Bob Shaw starts telling the story when the situation is complex but at least to some extent stabilized. This’s not necessarily a bad thing, nor is the fact that the author develops a story in a different way from his habits. The problem in my opinion is that doing so he fails to adequately develop the elements of the novel.
“The Shadow Of Heaven” had a good potential with the problems of the people forced to live in restricted and overcrowded areas with all the social and political consequences. Somehow Bob Shaw mentions the problem of the FTA that has become all too powerful but this is one of the elements that deserved a much greater development.
This flaw isn’t just Bob Shaw’s fault but also the fact that at the time when “The Shadow Of Heaven” was written the market where he worked required novels of a length limited by today’s standards. This novel also contains other elements which makes sense because the author describes a society that is considerably different from today. This is also a bit unusual for an author who tended to focus on one or two bases for his stories. Unfortunately, this makes it even more difficult to develop the story as it deserves in a limited number of pages.
As it is, the novel isn’t even bad but in the end there’s the feeling that its potential hasn’t been adequately explited. Bob Shaw wrote it professionally but a story so complex needed a greater development. For this reason I think “The Shadow Of Heaven” can be liked mostly by Bob Shaw’s fans.
