The Face of the Waters – Robert Silberberg

A remnant human colony survives on the ocean world of Hydros. Humans live on artificial islands built by creatures called Gillies. On one such island, one of the humans offends the Gillies. Humans are ordered to leave. They begin an odyssey on the planet-spanning ocean to find the mythical “Face of the Waters”, a patch of land where they can be safe. But once they reach it, the nature of this land is revealed to be an enigma in itself.

The plot is quite dull and ponderous. The ideas aren’t very original. Mostly I was bored.

 

Nightfall – Isaac Asimov & Robert Silverberg

An expansion of an earlier story with the same name by Asimov. Very interesting novel about a planet with six suns. This astronomical oddity results in a world that (almost) never knows night, and has never seen the stars. Astronomy is all about calculating the orbits of the suns. An astronomer figures out that night is going to fall soon, for the first time in 2049 years. Chaos and madness follow.