"Tower of Glass" by Robert Silverberg

[a425couple]

(This book has some very direct tie ins to Clarke's books,
and a bit to Heinlein. I sent this post to rec.arts.sf.written,
see there for follow-ups)

"Tower of Glass" by Robert Silverberg
is, it seems to me, the most interesting, thought provoking,
and ambitious of the Silverberg books I've read.
It describes a very economicly advanced time with reduced population.
It has androids (people from the vat) in 3 levels,
transporters/teleporters for people and goods,
attempts to communicate with other worlds,
building a generational starship to other worlds,
and technology of shunting, which allows the swapping of identities
(machine-assisted telepathic exchange) for a period.

The ending struck me as unnecessarily wasteful and damaging,
but oh well!
(As I get older, I have less patience at redoing things, and
I had a post on this book almost ready to go a month ago,
then a computer kick back destroyed it. Sorry, this is all
I can do today!)

from
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/202172.Tower_of_Glass
"Simeon Krug has a vision--and the vast wealth necessary to turn dream into
reality. What he wishes is to communicate with the stars, to answer signals
from deep space. The colossal tower he's constructing for this purpose soars
above the Arctic tundra, and the seemingly perfect androids building it view
Krug as their god. But, Krug is only flesh-and-blood, and when his androids
discover the truth, their anger knows no bounds...and it threatens much more
than the tower. "...a multi-levelled work of high adventure, considerable
tension and social consciousness."--Harlan Ellison.

One ov the most serious reviews is:
Stuart Sep 23, 2015
Stuart rated it liked it · This is another of Robert Silverberg's
ambitious novels from his most prolific period in the late 60s/early 70s. In
those he was churning out several books each year that were intelligent,
thematically challenging, beautifully written stories that explored
identity, sexuality, telepathy, alien contact, religion and consciousness.
At his best, he produced some masterpieces like Downward to the Earth and
Dying Inside, as well as some dreadful books like Up the Line, but his
unfettered imagination and prolific energy was undeniable.

Unfortunately, a wealth of ideas can sometimes overwhelm even the best
books, and I think Tower of Glass is a perfect example. It is the story of
Simeon Krug, a brilliant genetic engineer and industrialist who develops
androids with human-like intelligence who he nevertheless considers mere
tools to serve human interests. Krug's driving ambition in to build a
massive tower of glass in the Canadian tundra that will extend into space
and allow FTL tachyon communications with NGC-7293, a nebula which has been
emitting intelligent alien signals.

At all costs, Krug wishes to establish contact with these aliens beings, and
assigns his top engineer android, Alpha Thor Watchmen, to oversee the
construction. Meanwhile, his decadent and unambitious son Manuel uses the
"transmat" matter transporters to shunt people across the world to enjoy a
global 24-hour party. Manuel has a love affair with a beautiful android
named Lilith Meson, who wants to enlist his support for the growing android
rights movement. Unbeknownst to Krug, the androids have formed an elaborate
religion built around Krug the Creator, and expect to receive salvation from
Krug sometime in the future. They have actually created an Android Bible and
complete set of rituals, services, etc. As the story develops, Krug gets
increasingly obsessed with building the tower even at the price of android
lives lost in the construction. When a android-rights activist is killed
accidentally, he shows little sympathy.

The book introduces enough ideas for at least 5 or 6 full-length novels, so
it's inevitable that each story line doesn't get full shrift. For example,
the technology of instant teleportation around the world recalls the great
SF classic The Stars My Destination (1954) by Alfred Bester, but there
aren't
enough pages devoted to exploring the implications since the entire book is
194 pages long. There is also the technology of shunting, which allows the
swapping of identities (machine-assisted telepathic exchange) for a period.
This sharing of minds was more fully explored in Dying Inside and A Time of
Changes, but gets only passing mention until the end of the novel.

There is also a very lightly-sketched sub-plot about Krug's other
side-project to build a generational starship to visit NGC-7293, which would
be manned by androids. In yet another side-plot, Silverberg explores the
social problems encountered by the three tiers of android society (mirroring
Aldous Huxley's Brave New World), broken down into alphas (the most
intelligent), betas (the middle caste), and gammas (the lower proletarian
class of androids). The main characters visit a gamma ghetto, which
resembles an ethnic ghetto in a major city, complete with crime, drug abuse,
discontent, and resentment. Finally, Silverberg devotes a great deal of time
to exploring the religious conflicts of the androids' religion of salvation
via Krug. There are quotes from their Android Bible that sound just as fully
developed as the human Bible. The painful irony is that Krug himself
dismisses the android's worship of him, and he has contempt for their
misplaced aspirations.

The story reaches a climax when Krug and his android engineering chief Thor
Watchman share a telepathic link in which Watchman discovers Krug's contempt
for the androids, crushing his religious belief and his faith in the merit
of Krug's Tower of Glass. There are all kinds of metaphors involves, the
most obvious being the Tower of Babel, as well as the conflicted
relationship of creator and creation, which we see in the confrontation
between replicant Roy Batty and Dr. Eldon Tyrell in Blade Runner (1982).
Though the android religion is the most fully-explored of themes in Tower of
Glass, it is battling for space with all the other ideas.

In the end, I felt like Tower of Glass simply had too many good ideas to be
properly explored in under 200 pages. Normally I really appreciate the
brevity of SF novels from the 1960s/70s, this is a rare case where
Silverberg should have cut down on the number of ideas or devoted full
novels to them instead. Nowadays, Tower of Glass would probably warrant a
1,000 page door-stopper, but Silverberg's real genius was in creating
fully-developed novels with exciting ideas and lyrical writing in a tight,
fast-moving story. Unfortunately, this novel is a case of too much of a good
thing. (less)

It is also discussed at
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tower_of_Glass
and reviewed and buyable at
https://www.amazon.com/Tower-Glass-Gollancz-SF-collectors-ebook/dp/B005K8FX8Q
(delivered to your door for 1 cent plus $3.99)
and Ricky's review mentions: "The central character in this novel,
Krug,wants his androids to build him a tower of glass. That's the set up
that explores issues of religion,slavery and the treatment of sentient
beings."