Dark is the Sun – Phillip José Farmer

Published: 1 January 1979
Publisher: Ballentine
Pages: 405
Series: Stand Alone
Format Read: Audible
Duration: 14h  24mins

Blurp:

Fifteen billion years from now, Earth is a dying planet, its skies darkened by the ashes of burned-out galaxies, its molten core long cooled. The sunless planet is nearing the day of final gravitational collapse in the surrounding galaxy. Mutations and evolution have led to a great disparity of life-forms, while civilization has resorted to the primitive.

Young Deyv of the Turtle Tribe knew nothing of his world”s history or its fate. He lived only to track down the wretched Yawtl who had stolen his precious Soul Egg. Joined by other victims of the same thief, the feisty Vana and the plant-man Sloosh they set off across a nightmare landscape of monster-haunted jungle and wetland. Their search leads them ultimately to the jeweled wasteland of the Shemibob, an ageless being from another star who knows Earth”s end is near and holds the only key to escape.

Thoughts:

Hold on to yer butts, Salty has a few things to say…

Wheeeeeeeerrrreeeee does one start with a book like this? Forgive it for the period it was written in? I mean, the premise sure as shit sounded like a great idea. I actually had to go back and look at the date this was written. Bt by Grungi was this a weird and nonsensical tale. Shall I try paint a picture? I am no Shakespear or Picasso, so bare with me…

First of our main guy was called Dave but spelled wrong, this was kinda the only reason this book also drew my attention, I was going to meet another idiot Dave, one can never not know too many idiots running by that name, look at me, I share a blogspace thingy with one… Dave has been kicked out by his tribe to go make babies as he is of that age deemed old enough to do such manly deeds, but like I said, idiots… Dave has this trinket that all humans in this current time swear by called a soul egg, I have no idea what this egg was off, to tell the truth, I dont know what was going on throughout half of the fucking story. Anyhow Dave sleeps and at some point wakes up with Soul egg gone, soul egg’s one purpose is to sync with a possible mate’s egg, change to the same colour and soon enough Dave can get his willy wet becuase “the tribe has spoken thus”. Eggless Dave now has a delemma, as he cannot return to the tribe without being in possession of his egg, oh the DRAMA, the PURE EXISTNTIAL CRISIS of EPIC PORPORTIONS. Lucky for Dave, there is a femal he runs into not long after his ordeal. Dave meets woman, woman look good, sexy time can happen now right? Well, sadly for us, Dave has standards and cannot mate with a woman with no soul egg. He also happens not to be too into people that are self proclaimed cannibals. Yeah you heard that right, the only way we are going to make women feisty in the early 80’s is to write them as cannibals. Vanna had some other qualities that Dave did appreciate tho like a fit body and nice badonka donks, but then again, Vanna ate people, as the humans 5000 trillion years from now all reverted back to tribal superstitious idiots, I am kinda surprised not every one in this book was not called Dave…

Later on The duo find another individual that has been robbed of an item. A sentient plant/vegetable, with four legs like a centaur and two arms as well as an oversized brian that some how is more cleverer than our savage humans. Sloosh was a pain in the ass, if ever you thought Sherlock Holmes was a pompous ass, well, I am sure he took notes from this guy. Sloosh the know it all idiot vegetable man. Forever will he be known as captain obvious asshat in my books. Sloosh is not the only sentient being that evolved so far in the future though, there were these other creatures also flying and crawling around, but I was so bored by Sloosh’s prattlings ons that I have already forgotten what half of them were supposed to be. Navy vesels or sailing ships, helicopters that can birth mini hellicopters? Talking about sailing ships, there is a scene where Dave and co. are using one to get to a certain plot point and they are attacked by another sailing ship creature. Turns out the one they were riding on was the female version of the two and the missiles shot at them while being attacked turns out to be massive loads of sentient bout sperm…. To say this book was weird would be to make the understatemnt of the century… This book was “that weird tho”…

Getting to sort out that shindig about the world ending there is a lot of traveling to be done and sights to behold, along the way a lot of “sleep times”(litterally what night time will be called 7 gazillion years from now…). Dave decides that maybe he can tone down his holier than thou “I do not Like cannibals” act and not many sleep times after Vanna bares their first child, lucky we cannot grow too attached to Thrush(really?…) as he dies in the time that all of the crew Dave has now befriended find out that their is a portal to another world. Dave now has to decide if he is just gonna die or become the Messiah i the space of six pages just in time to finnish the book off and have a sense of they all lived happy ever after… I did say this book was weird… SO weird that i have no idea how exactly I am going to rate it. Surely ahead of it’s time in many aspects and ideas in my opinion.

3, I am going to give it a 3 out of 5 and just be done with it. Dark is the Sun was a weird one. One I picked out myself and has nothing with Dave pulling a blindside prank on me. I am angry with myself and will end this review on that note. Pick it up if you want to have a cry with me. It was free on Audible so at least I did not loose money on it.

Anyone out there that can cheer old Salty up a bit?