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Gibbon Decline and Fall A Novel Sheri S Tepper 9780553573985 Books

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Gibbon Decline and Fall A Novel Sheri S Tepper 9780553573985 Books

Shockingly prescient given the current political climate.
Brilliant in her ability to bring you into emotional caring about multiple characters, not just the heroine.
Characters are rich, flawed, human, believable, yet soaring.
Deeply moving, a beautiful dance of multiple viewpoints in a seamless whole, a "quilt", as it were.
Distressing and thought-provoking view on the real-life choices women make and the choices society discourages them from making.
This is my fifth re-read and I am still finding new nuggets to love.
Cannot recommend this book highly enough!


Tags : Gibbon's Decline and Fall: A Novel [Sheri S. Tepper] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. A wave of fundamentalism is sweeping across the globe as the millennium approaches, and a power-hungry  presidential candidate sees his ticket to success in making an example out of a teenage girl who abandoned her infant in a Dumpster. Taking the girl's case is Carolyn Crespin,Sheri S. Tepper,Gibbon's Decline and Fall: A Novel,Spectra,0553573985,Science Fiction - General,FICTION Science Fiction Action & Adventure,FICTION Science Fiction General,FICTION Science Fiction Hard Science Fiction,FICTION Thrillers Political,Fiction,Fiction - Science Fiction,General Adult,MASS MARKET,Science Fiction,fiction;science fiction;fantasy;sf;feminism;sff;feminist;dystopia;near future;fundamentalism;women;speculative fiction;novel;religion;science fiction books;sci fi;sci-fi;sci fi books;science fiction and fantasy;fantasy science fiction;sci-fi fantasy;sf fantasy;science fiction fantasy;fantasy and science fiction;science fiction adventure;sci-fi books;literary science fiction;science fantasy;classic science fiction;fantasy sci-fi;for fans of sci-fi;science fiction thriller;science fictionfantasy

Gibbon Decline and Fall A Novel Sheri S Tepper 9780553573985 Books Reviews

This book is one of the best I've read for a long time feminist science fiction, with a lot of suspense thrown in. Kind of like "Jurassic Park" without dinosaurs questions about science, humanity, and what kind of world we're creating. It has characters who will appeal to anyone with women friends, a villain and his dupes who will send chills down your spine, and a relevance to, and echoes of, today -- despite the fact that it was published in 1996 -- that will make your skin crawl. Tepper is an author I plan to read wherever I find her, and recommend to all my friends who like a good read with moments of revelation and poetry. A real page-turner, and an absolute treat.
I've read this 10 times and given it to 5 friends. It is brilliant.
This book is dated, in exactly the same ask 1984 is dated, but it is at least as well written as Jàmes Patterson's books. Especially, in the light of the Trump, Presidency, it is an interesting read.
Recently rereading much of Ms.Tepper's work - and having a great time doing it! - I found Gibbon's Decline and Fall to be one of her most feminist works. While in most of her alternative fiction, she includes themes of equality (or lack thereof) of men and women, humankind and 'other' (animal, world, alien), in Gibbon's it was the main theme.

A group of women has met during college, and created a network between them that lasts well into their middle age. All of the stereotypes are there the bulimic beauty,the ugly duckling nun, the battered/fearful woman, the business woman, and one special and highly mysterious beauty who cannot bear the repeated, rude, attentions of the college boys, so the group helps her camoflage her siren beauty and dress as a drab.

Years go by, and they lose touch with 'the special one',Sophy, after one of their yearly reunions. No one knows where she is, nor where she came from originally; there are no tracks to follow to find this secretive but marvelous woman, yet each of them feels her presence still. All in the group have been deeply touched by some particular wisdom Sophy has shared with her.

Shades of huge military marches flicker behind your eyes as you read of great, threatening, half-maddened men gathering into a larger and larger group as they pass through cities looking for women so they can 'teach them their proper place'. Hmmm. Their proper place. Well, that would seem to be back to the old norm of being a posession, someone (something?)to be in servitude to men, only valuable as childbearing vessels or trophies.

The egalitarian Tepper doesn't leave out women of years, nor women of small means, as bag ladies somehow coalesce to cause distractions and add some misdirection to the changes they sense arriving all around them.

Realizing something is afoot with the attitudes of some men, especially a particular men's organization, the group vows to seek out Sophy as a last vestige of hope to combat this horrendous change.

There is magic and mayhem in this book, as well as a deep compassion for all types of women and the men who love them. Feminist? Yes. Humanist? Yes. Enjoyment and food for thought? Always.
I liked this book, but it made me uncomfortable that I liked it. For one thing, it is so rabidly anti-male that it's guaranteed to offend anyone with a Y chromosome, and plenty of people without one. For another, it's also anti-Christian and anti-Muslim, with plenty of jabs and barbs tossed at assorted other groups. (For the record, I'm a pagan, a feminist, and bisexual, so this doesn't have anything to do with my being personally offended or having my preconceptions shaken.)
That said, Tepper's novel does offer up some intriguing ideas and theories, albeit ones so far-fetched it's difficult to see how we can apply them to our current culture. Her first mistake, I think, was setting the book in such a near future - written in 1996 and set in 2000, it's impossible to believe that society could ever have deteriorated so drastically in 4 years, much less that this could be set in any plausible near future.
Anyway, the story starts with 7 women attending college in the 50's. They are unlikely friends (so unlikely, in fact, that it's sometimes hard to understand why they're friends at all, but whatever) who make a vow to each other each will find a pinnacle in her life to stand on, never to decline or fall from that place. Well, fast forward 40 years - Carolyn is a retired lawyer, married to one of the few "good" men in the story. Faye is a militant lesbian and a sculpter. Agnes is a nun, Jessamine a zoologist, Ophelia a doctor, Bettiann a trophy wife, and Sophy, well Sophy's dead - at least they think so. The mysterious girl whose goal in life was to figure out why women are so oppressed has mysteriously disappeared, although her voice still visits the six remaining friends. Meanwhile, society has gone down the aforementioned tubes. Women's colleges are being bombed, men are lashing women in the street, and the misogynistic Alliance is gaining political power, both in the US and internationally. Women, basically, are screwed. Then Carolyn is asked to defend a young girl who threw her newborn into a dumpster, and it all comes together.
Did I mention that I have a hard time with a book that completely excuses infanticide? I know the point Tepper was trying to make (that women are more than walking wombs), but doing it by having all her protaganists repeatedly explain why it was perfectly OK for this young mother to kill her baby is unsettling, to say the least.
That said, the scenario Tepper paints is interesting, if for nothing else in a sort of horror-chills sort of way. Sophy's origins, when they are revealed, are a stretch, but original, and bring the story back to it's fantasy roots. If you can wince your way past the worst of the male-bashing, and suspend your disbelief through most of Tepper's fanciful paranoia, you might even enjoy it - but your conscience won't.
Shockingly prescient given the current political climate.
Brilliant in her ability to bring you into emotional caring about multiple characters, not just the heroine.
Characters are rich, flawed, human, believable, yet soaring.
Deeply moving, a beautiful dance of multiple viewpoints in a seamless whole, a "quilt", as it were.
Distressing and thought-provoking view on the real-life choices women make and the choices society discourages them from making.
This is my fifth re-read and I am still finding new nuggets to love.
Cannot recommend this book highly enough!