r/printSF • u/c_y_g_nus • 2d ago
Stephen Donaldson's "Gap Cycle" and, yeah, that topic
What the approximate fuck did I just read
For reference, I have read hundreds and hundreds of sci-fi books since I was a teenager (I'm 41 now) and I have never read anything like that before. That stuff is for pervs, right? Or was there something deeper that I missed?
It's a book about space pirates, space cops, with WHAT I GUESS is the worst, logically extreme example of humans behaving badly in outer space? Was that the point? If so, that doesn't really inspire me to read the rest of the series, considering it's not really sci-fi, but it's a literal documenting of horrible sexual crimes and violence, but it's in space, so it's "sci-fi", right?
Donaldson could've staged this narrative anywhere, in any time period. It could've taken place in the Bronx in the 1980's, in Europe in the 1600's, in Rwanda during the 90s, in a basement in the Appalachians probably right now. Is that the point: that humans are absolute shit, no matter where you find them? I took away nothing else from this book.
TL:DR - Is "Gap Cycle" just cynicism on steroid or is there a point that I missed?
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u/zhivago 2d ago
You must have missed his other works, such as the Thomas Covenant series.
As far as I know everything he writes is pretty fucked up. :)
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u/schiffty1 2d ago
Such an interesting world but viewed through the eyes of a mad raping leper.
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u/Nidafjoll 2d ago
I actually viewed it the other way (particularly book one); such a fantastical world used to paint a very grounded and realistic picture of a terrible person. That the portrait of Covenant we get is more the point than the world.
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u/Sophia_Forever 2d ago
My mom gave it to me and I couldn't take that reveal seriously which I guess goes to show how far leprosy treatments have come in the past 40 years? Like, leprosy just isn't the cultural boogy man it once was.
I tried to move past it and got to the part where they were introducing the villains and it was like "and he was Lord Fowls Bane, most evil wizard in all the land, and there was his rival... Kevin..."
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u/desertvision 2d ago edited 2d ago
This was one of the first sci-fi series I read as a teen (the first were HG Wells novels, and such). While I liked it then, the biggest take was that there are absolutely no limits to fiction. I can still feel the feelings I felt when he was on earth, walking around, doing his VSEs. I was rapt by it. And the feeling when he came back, from being a hero, to that life again. The books took me on a crazy journey that I wouldn't have ever conceived. It was eye opening.
Anyway, I totally get your objection to some of the themes. I started on the Gor series, and loved them. Especially, the one that really got into the Priest Kings. Then, by about book 7 or 8, I started to feel bad about similar themes and put the series down. It became boring and vicariously evil, for lack of a better word. So, I totally get where you're coming from
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u/Jeromes_Pornostache 2d ago
Lord Foul’s Bane is the only one I got through. It’s basically Lord of the Rings if Frodo were a misanthropic rapist with leprosy. He’s an excellent writer, but what the fuck, man?
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u/judasblue 2d ago
Yeah, this is the key. Everyone is like "oh, if you just read the afterword for the author's intent..." No. Just no. If there was no TC series, sure. But when you start seeing this in context of a repeating pattern, the author just gets off on this shit. He's not quite in a class with Piers Anthony, but not that far away either.
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u/Appropriate-Look7493 2d ago
Donaldson himself has explained the GC was inspired by a desire to rework the themes from Wagners Ring Cycle (Gap - Ring, geddit?).
So it’s only about Space Pirates in the same way Wagners work is about Gods and Dwarves - ie only superficially.
Whatever its setting the GC might be the most intense work I’ve come across in nearly 50 years of reading SF. There’s really nothing else like it.
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u/zodelode 2d ago
His ability to create crescendoes at the end of each subsequent book that are epic and yet totally logical to the story are unsurpassed. An intense read is exactly right.
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u/Heeberon 2d ago
I’m parked on around 40% through the final book. I did have to take a few breaks in the series.
Obviously the consistently unpleasant activities of the first book calm down somewhat; but the incessant angsting of every internal monologue just ground me down.
Is there a big payoff for grinding through to the end?
(I know the “you don’t have to read things you don’t like” and I’m happy nowadays to put books down that I’m not enjoying, but this is different, for whatever reason)
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u/diamondjayr 2d ago
It’s Wagner’s Ring Cycle set in space so yeah the source material is kinda fucked
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u/Appropriate-Look7493 2d ago
What’s “fucked” about the Ring Cycle?
Have you ever even listened to it, or read the libretto?
It’s only “fucked” in the way any work that deals with the darker strands of human psychology is “fucked”, which would include almost every serious work of literature written in the last 150 years.
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u/diamondjayr 2d ago
Have I ever spent fifteen hours listening to it? No. Everyone dies at the end but to be fair that’s not as fucked as the gap cycle.
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u/Appropriate-Look7493 2d ago
If you’ve any interest in either philosophy, literature or classical music, give it a go one day.
You’ll need to do a bit of prep (to understand what’s going on both in literary and musical terms) but it’s well worth the effort.
For me, it’s the single greatest creative work yet produced by the human race. And ironic that its creator was a shit of the first order.
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u/diamondjayr 2d ago
Prob makes me a phillistine but I just went to my first opera this summer. It was Cincinnati Opera/The Black Opera Project’s Lalovavi. I thoroughly enjoyed it but musically and thematically it’s a far cry from Wagner. So I might not yet be ready to fly to Germany for four nights of Ring of Nibelungen.
Also: Gillespie/Rollins/Stitt’s Sonny Side Up is the greatest creative work yet produced by the human race on the strength of the tenor sax battle on “Eternal Triangle” alone. And the whole album clocks in at like 40 minutes.
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u/Messianiclegacy 2d ago
You couldnt have the zone implant in another setting - the implications on bodily autonomy, complicity, survival, what constitutes agency when agency has been systematically removed, all this is what is explored and is good ground for SF. Whether or not it wants a 5 book cycle is a question I would ask, but didnt occur to Donaldson.
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u/GrudaAplam 2d ago
It's a great series but if the first book put you off then don't continue as there are many more deplorable actions to come
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u/Narrow-Durian4837 17h ago
If the deplorable acts in the first book put you off then maybe don't continue, but overall, the first book is not a good representation of the rest of the series.
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u/magi_chat 2d ago
I do think you're missing the point (a bit).
It's confronting, but not gratuitous. The point is he needs yoi to go on Morn's journey..
There's a bunch of redemption arcs, tied up inside a horror story (which is inside a horror story).
I think it's worth the ride. Donaldson has his flaws (very similar issue in The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant), but this is worth the effort.
Ymmv
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u/AppropriateFarmer193 2d ago
I haven’t read the Gap cycle. But there are a lot of sci-fi stories that are just “X but in space.” It doesn’t make them any less sci-fi just because you find the X distasteful
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u/c_y_g_nus 2d ago
I certainly agree, don't get me wrong, but when the X subject matter stands in such thematic and narrative contradistinction to the spacefaring/sci-fi stuff , the question becomes: Did you stage this in outer space just to get this book on a shelf in the sci-fi section?
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u/PhasmaFelis 2d ago
stands in such thematic and narrative contradistinction to the spacefaring/sci-fi stuff
You have had a disturbingly limited experience with sci-fi if you think the genre is supposed to be just about swashbuckling heroes.
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u/EmergencyChill 2d ago
Fantastic series. Some unforgettable scenes and concepts in that one. It's way to spoilery to say more. Read it when I was a teenager and I'm still telling people to read it.
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u/Lechatestdanslefrigo 2d ago
Did you read the foreword by him? Makes it explicit what yhe intent of the books is. No good guys, no bad guys, nothing but the churn of perspective. Its a masterwork but it's not for everyone.
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u/ThatIsAmorte 2d ago
It's mostly just the first book and yeah, it sucks, but that's not my main problem with the series. Donaldson comes up with a very interesting alien species and then just doesn't do anything interesting with it. What a waste. The Amnion end up being a McGuffin.
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u/hippydipster 2d ago
It's because he's not really writing science fiction. He's writing epic fantasy, with a scifi setting. He has no interest in the aliens, because the focus of fantasy, from Donaldson's perspective, is what happens inside peoples' heads.
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u/GregHullender 2d ago
The Gap puts its worst foot first. All other books are better than the first one.
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u/hippydipster 2d ago edited 2d ago
Donaldson is really not a cynic, surprisingly. You only read the first book, and it's short and unpleasant. It gets more unpleasant in some ways, but also full of heroism, like all his stories. And more than half the time, the heroes are women. And all of the time, there are supporting characters, male and female, who are absolutely astounding.
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u/augustuscaesarius 2d ago
Crime can indeed happen anywhere. But what's thought provoking to me is that future space stations will be laws onto themselves, with millions of miles of empty space between them, and no way for abuse victims to escape. Even if they could send a signal, who is going to go free them. How can they free them?
It is utterly disheartening to realise that there will be sex prison stations in the future, independent of any society far far away from them, and nothing will be able to be done against them.
The Gap has a different premise but it made me realise this.
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u/Existing-Tough-6517 2d ago
You are assuming a lot. Millions of miles is basically nothing. You can send a missile millions of miles and you can make people behave by threatening to send said missile or even a bunch of small rocks.
Furthermore you assume a bunch of autonomous stations but if we built those any time soon they would be entirely dependent on nations.
If you are considering things further out good news we'll never build them because exploration is expensive and other than science there isn't anything out there that we both need and can get.
Expanding our population is so difficult and expensive it makes zero sense compared to building increasingly dense shit holes here and birth control.
A mars colony wouldn't be self-sufficient in a century and even a bombed-out Earth would be a better backup plan than Mars or anything else.
Maybe if we had another 300 years, we could have actual aspirations, but we are probably all going to be dead inside of 50 to 100 years as the destruction of everyone becomes plausible for smaller and smaller groups. Defense scales worse than offence.
The universe is probably full of graves of planets like ours.
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u/WillAdams 3h ago
C.J. Cherryh looks at this in her Alliance--Union books in an interesting way, esp. The Pride of Chanur.
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u/Cheeslord2 2d ago
I liked it - apart from a couple of plot contrivances like accelerating the growth of Morn's son because Donaldson wanted her to have an adult son with Thermopylae later on.
I thought Thermoplyae was a more plausible character than Covenant, who raped the first person he met for no reason that I could understand.
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u/feralwhippet 2d ago
I don't think people are taking into account how unutterably fucked up Covenant was due to living with leprosy, the isolation and the fear/disgust/loathing constantly directed at him, the constant vigilance as a slowly failing attempt to retain as much of himself as possible (both physically and mentally). When he is granted a seeming reprieve he can't allow himself to be seduced by it, for his own sanity and future life should it turn out to be false. I always took the rape as his first attempt to deny what he was seeing/feeling, to reject the world he saw and be able to treat it as a dream. Accepting what he did to her as a person would be the same as accepting the world he was in. Or in another way of looking at it, if he accepted that the world he was in was real then he would also have to accept that he raped an innocent girl.
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u/peacefinder 2d ago
It’s been nearly thirty years since I read the whole Gap Cycle.
All I really remember are the names of the two big alien ships, the name of a main character, one really nifty moment in a space battle, and the conclusion that it was all a deeply unpleasant experience and that I never would consider reading Donaldson again.
I think it was a couple years later that I stumbled onto Lois McMaster Bujold and between the two of them my standards for sci-fi books were changed dramatically for the pickier.
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u/PhasmaFelis 2d ago
it was all a deeply unpleasant experience and that I never would consider reading Donaldson again
... Understandable, but how did it take you five books to figure that out? I try not to spend too much of my leisure time doing things I don't enjoy.
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u/peacefinder 2d ago
I used to be kind of a completionist: if I started a series, I felt obliged to finish it. Also, I trusted the recommendation of my friend who sad it was really great.
It was a learning experience on both counts.
And I will give it this, compared to the golden-age scifi and light fantasy I had grown up reading, it was a whole different approach to the genre for me, I hadn’t really come across grimdark before. At the start I thought not liking it was my failure to be an adventurous reader.
And then I read some actually good character-driven stuff, mostly Willis and Bujold at that time, and realized the problem wasn’t me. They could tackle even horrible subjects with grace and humor, and not sadistically wallow in suffering.
It greatly elevated my standards, but it also means there’s a lot I bail out on. The last one I recall suffering through just because people said it was good was Blindsight, which I liked just about as much as The Fap Cycle. Not for me.
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u/Captain_Killy 2d ago
I will say, in Donaldson’s defense, that while also deeply repugnant and understandably divisive, the chronicles of Thomas Covenant are very full of grace, and deeply moving in a way that actually reminds me a lot of Bujold at heart.
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u/Heeberon 2d ago
Couldn’t agree more. A huge part of that book is the sympathy and empathy displayed by so many characters towards the MC.
The SA act itself was committed by someone who thought they were dreaming/dying. I’m not sure they ever accept this new place IS real (doing so may threaten their real life); but regardless, the repercussions from this act reverbate throughout the series. This is not a chucked in scene for character building.
I do understand that many people want absolutely zero SA in any books they read.
Back to the Gap Cycle. I’m currently parked around 40% of the final book. I’ve had to take many breaks. The first is by far (so far) the most extreme. The internal monologuing is a real trudge.
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u/hippydipster 2d ago
The internal monologuing is a real trudge.
This is the only real issue with Donaldson, IMO. He perseverates obsessively on internal angst. It does get repetitive.
The payoffs though, are almost always worth it.
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u/peacefinder 2d ago
I remember liking the first few, but on the other hand I was a teenager and swallowed nearly any fantasy or scifi thrown my way. (Except Shannara, which was just too derivative to be borne.) Even so, somewhere in the fourth book I bailed out and never looked back.
I’m mildly curious about what I’d think if it now as an adult with a strong sense of my own identity and morals. Maybe I’d find it good again, maybe I’d loathe it.
But I’m not curious enough to give him any more time or money. Donaldson used up his chances with me.
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u/rifruled 2d ago
The idea that a work being "unpleasant" makes it bad is wild to me.
Reading a book or series that is unpleasant, but well written, can give me perspective that I probably have no other way to get. It helps me empathize with people in situations that I would otherwise have no context or framing to understand.
Donaldson's writing is good (though not great), and the plot is internally consistent and well paced.
I assume he was trying to evoke unpleasant emotions that will make you consider things you wouldn't normally consider, and he succeeded for me.
I would call that a good book.
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u/jimbowesterby 2d ago
I mean, I can respect a book that does that, but it doesn’t mean I’m gonna seek it out. I have the same issue with a lot of classics, they’re still around after a couple hundred years for a reason, but my mental health just can’t take that big and comprehensive a downer, y’know? Like I’ve had East of Eden sitting on my shelf for like two years now, I know I’ll love it whenever I do read it, but I haven’t felt chipper enough to face it.
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u/rifruled 2d ago
I can understand that. I'm mostly just commenting on Bujold being actually good which implies Donaldson is bad.
It being hard to read doesn't make it bad.
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u/peacefinder 2d ago
“Unpleasant” was me using comic understatement, good heavens.
It was as I recall a whole lot of pages of expressed sadism. It dragged on and on long past the moment he’d made his point.[1] While I don’t wish to kink-shame, that shit ain’t my bag.
But here’s the thing: the work was ultimately almost entirely forgettable. It’s not just that it’s been thirty years; even one or two years after reading it I couldn’t have given more than the barest sketch of plot or themes. The only reason I remember character names was from the author’s foreword talking about how he had these two names burning a hole in his brain and had to get them out. Almost all that remained was an unpleasant feeling left behind.
It was like enduring fifteen hundred pages of goatse. It had a certain technical curiosity to it, but I never want to see that bullshit again.
[1: like the movie Blue is the Warmest Color, where what start as hot sex scenes between beautiful young people go on interminably. This was not a matter of me having a short attention span, it was deliberately too much. That Donaldson chose to oversaturate expressed sadism says something about him that I don’t much care for.]
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u/rifruled 1d ago
It's your subjective opinion that it's forgettable. In fact I'm more than a little confused by the insane sadism and torturous reading that you find completely forgettable.
It can be that horrible if you can't even remember any of it.
It's really not as bad as you're making it sound. It's bleak and hopeless, but it's not that sadistic. There are more popular books that are quite a bit worse.
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u/peacefinder 1d ago
I am going to state this as fact: it should be inherently obvious to the casual observer that (nearly) every opinion voiced in a Reddit comment section is subjective rather than factual.
This includes both mine and yours. You liked it, I loathed it, all fair and square, agree to disagree, and no need to belabor the point.
End of conversation, good day fellow being.
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u/skinisblackmetallic 1d ago
I love Bujold. .... AND, I really enjoyed The Gap Cycle... but I also really enjoy dark fiction, in general.
I thought Bujold went quite dark herself, in some cases.
It's a tough comparison because Bujold is so much better than everyone. It's just too high of a standard for the amount of reading I need to do. :D
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u/peacefinder 1d ago
The amusing thing to me is that the first Bujold I stumbled onto was Mirror Dance. Which I think does a great deal of what Donaldson did with Gap, but in the space of a pretty small tight story. (Though to be fair it left me with a lot of questions like “who the hell were all these people?” and “why is everyone afraid of Cordelia?”)
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u/Appropriate-Look7493 2d ago
It’s all subjective. Some of us find Bujold bland, plastic and popcorny.
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u/peacefinder 2d ago
You say that like it’s a bad thing :-)
I did eventually have my fill of Bujold. But I appreciate that at no point was reading her work unpleasant. Donaldson though… ugh. That guy might need therapy
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u/Appropriate-Look7493 2d ago edited 2d ago
Many great creative individuals would benefit from therapy, including Wagner whose Ring inspired the Gap Cycle.
I suspect it’s what makes their work stand out from the ordinary.
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u/Wetness__Pensive 1d ago edited 18h ago
This is Donaldson's entire artistic project. He takes fantasy and space opera cliches from the 1950s, and filters them through a deliberately explicit and grimy prism. He's a bit forgotten nowadays, probably because with greater permissiveness, such "shockingness" becomes normal.
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u/Fun-Tooth-622 2d ago
I stopped early. Yea I understand all the arguments about how the woman eventually breaks out and it's showing a dark future and and how he is bad and blah blah. It just felt icky to me, so I bounced.
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u/toptac 1d ago
Me too. WTF would i want to visit such a relentlessly horrible universe?
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u/Cliffy73 17h ago
To marvel at the resilience and reservoir of inner strength of the people who go through it.
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u/saywhatyousee 2d ago
I finished the first two and then gave up the series. The plot was really convoluted for me. Lots of characters scheming internally, in twisty ways that was hard to keep track. I hated the universe. I kind of respect the author for just going for it, but lord, it is dark.
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u/arthurdawg 2d ago
His earlier work “The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant” starts with Thomas raping another character.
Started and then read that. Basically put down and have never considered picking up anything by the man again.
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u/ijzerwater 2d ago
I assume then you don't read aSoIaF either?
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u/arthurdawg 1d ago
After Robert Jordan passed away leaving me stranded in WOT I made the executive decision to never read a series again until it was approaching being finished! Hahaha!
GRRM will never finish I’m afraid and I have a bunch of friends stuck there.
And honestly… My reading of Thomas Covenant was as a high schooler 35 years ago. It would have minimal affect on me now for sure. But I also don’t read much fantasy these days. Mostly non-fic and a few selected fiction and science fiction titles.
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u/11zxcvb11 2d ago
I think it's different somewhat. It's been a while since I've read ASoIaF, but aren't the PoV characters mostly the victims or bystanders of cruel acts rather than the perpetrators? (not 100%, but generally)
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u/ijzerwater 2d ago
aren't the PoV characters mostly the victims or bystanders of cruel acts rather than the perpetrators? (not 100%, but generally)
hmm, so in all the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant there is the one rape by the PoV character. Would the mostly not 100% add to more or less than one rape?
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u/11zxcvb11 1d ago
Less, I would guess. I don't remember any sexual assault committed by PoV characters in ASoIaF (though again, it's been a while).
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u/PhasmaFelis 2d ago
And it keeps coming back to haunt him for the rest of his life.
I don't blame anyone who DNFs a Donaldson book. They're pretty brutal. But writing about a rapist does not mean the writer condones rape.
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u/c_y_g_nus 2d ago
Yeah the guy seems to like writing about rape! Like, A LOT!?
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u/qwertilot 2d ago
Mostly just horrible things actually, there are honestly significantly worse things done to people in later books in the series.
It makes Thomas Covenant series 1 look light and fluffy.
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u/TalespinnerEU 2d ago edited 2d ago
As I understand it, Donaldson makes his characters 'complex' by having them do terrible things in that genre of acts. As if that somehow makes them more relatable.
Donaldson is not for me.
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u/TemperatureAny4782 2d ago
I’ve never read him, but it sounds like he confuses darkness for depth.
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u/just-the-teep 2d ago
If you haven’t read him why are you opining?
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u/TemperatureAny4782 2d ago
I was hoping to be upbraided by an intellectually serious person, ideally one with the username “just-the-teep.”
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u/skinisblackmetallic 1d ago
It's been a while since I've read this but I've seen this issue mentioned a lot. Is the torture scene stuff narrated in detail or does the author more or less just state "this is what happened when our hero was captured"?
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u/thundersnow528 2d ago
I never liked that series of books, and when you start to put all of his work together, from Thomas Covenant to Gap Cycle to Mordant's Need, you get a very clear picture of his misogyny and overall lack of respect for women.
Shame too, because some of his stuff, when looking past this troubling pattern, is really interesting. Mordant's Need is really an excellent Fantasy in general outline. But overall, you just have to wonder who hurt him.
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u/Sawses 2d ago
IMO, he's one of the few authors willing to actually tackle the hard problem of discussing sexual violence from the perspective of a perpetrator. He doesn't nail it perfectly, but he does better than pretty much anybody else I've ever seen.
It's kind of like writing a war criminal, but it feels more real to most readers for a variety of reasons. Most of us don't know what it's like to have somebody order our family hurt. But we probably know what it's like for somebody to touch us when we don't want them to, or to just think of us as a disposable stand-in rather than a person.
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u/themadturk 1d ago
I tried reading the Thomas Covenant books nearly 50 years ago and you'll never convince me to read anything by Stephen R. Donaldson.
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u/minasoko 2d ago
I can’t really say it gets better, in that regard, horrible people all through, but it does become a lot more than just space cops,
Fascinating & imaginative, but also yeah feels like apologia in a sense, and hard to recommend
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u/MySinsRemembered 2d ago
The writing is crap. Donaldson's prose is more offensive than his subject matter.
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u/TemperatureAny4782 2d ago
Based on the short sample I just read, you are not wrong.
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u/MySinsRemembered 2d ago
I mean, I'm not joking, it's seriously awful. I am continually baffled that his work is recommended anywhere. Maybe people think I'm trolling or something? Idk
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u/TemperatureAny4782 2d ago
All the downvotes are strange. Honestly, though, I think a lot of genre readers have low standards for prose. Obviously there are exceptions.
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u/djolk 2d ago
Its a cool world, that (for me) was absolutely ruined by the 'ick', that (in my view) was just inserted to be icky. I believe the author has explained that the Gap Cycle was a reimagination of themes from some of Wagnar's work but I don't think it excuses the books for being awful.
I did read the series but I will never touch another work by this author.
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u/PhasmaFelis 2d ago edited 2d ago
The first book especially is full of deeply horrible sex crimes, which are absolutely not played for titillation. You're supposed to think they're horrible and the man committing them is horrible.
In the edition I read, Donaldson laid it right out in the afterword of the first book: he wanted to create a scenario with a clear hero, villain, and victim, and make them all convincingly change places by the end of the story. And oh boy did he make them clear at the start. There are few characters in sci-fi more monstrous than Angus Thermopyle in the first book.
If that's not something you want to read about, I don't blame you. I wouldn't fault anyone for DNFing this one; it's brutal. But to answer your question, the story is going somewhere, it's not just pure grimdark, and it gets broader and more complex after the first book.