Out of body experience: The Palace of Eternity (1969) by Bob Shaw [Review]

An old soldier gets a radically new view of the universe.

Bob Shaw (1931 - 1996) knew how to pack ideas into his short, sleek science fiction entertainments. His third novel, The Palace of Eternity, is a good example. Shaw weaves a fast-moving tale that explores interstellar war, environmental destruction, and even the source of artistic inspiration. The narrative shifts and jukes excitingly, taking an almost outrageous cosmic turn that the SFE says “displeased some critics” but is an “effective handling of a traditional SF displacement of ideas from metaphysics…”

The Palace of Eternity was originally published as part of series 1 of the Ace Science Fiction Specials in 1969. This series was key to Shaw’s career, and he saw three consecutive novels published through it - this one was preceded by The Two Timers (1968) and followed by One Million Tomorrows (1970). It is vintage Shaw - propulsive, thought-provoking, and written to entertain.

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War and peace

When the novel opens, humanity has been a starfaring power for some time. Unfortunately, the only other known starfaring power is the Syccans. These aliens resemble melting humanoids, and seem to have only one aim - to destroy human beings by any means necessary, for reasons best known to themselves. The resulting war has lasted for generations, and there is no end in sight.

As a boy, Mack Tavernor saw his parents killed during a Syccan raid on his homeworld. As an adult, he enlisted in the military and became something of a war hero. His fame stemmed both from his battlefield exploits and his engineering skills, which he used to develop a new kind of rifle. Eventually, Tavernor becomes disillusioned and retires from the human forces. He chooses to settle on a uniquely peaceful planet, Mnemosyne.

Named for the Greek goddess of memory, Mnemosyne is largely insulated from the wider human community. This is partly because it is orbited by the countless fragments of a destroyed moon, shattered in a cataclysm long ago. The local area is also lacking in the hydrogen used by Earth’s interstellar “butterfly ships”, which are based on the Bussard ramjet. As a result, only slow haulers can visit. This relative isolation has made the colony a haven for artists of all kinds. Tavernor makes a living as a mechanic, servicing their vehicles.

Things begin to change when Tavernor witnesses a new cataclysm, being “unable to remain indoors when it was time for the sky to catch fire”. Light has just reached Mnemosyne from the destruction of a nearby star, which was accomplished by the military seven years earlier. Through this destructive stellar engineering, Earth’s forces have flooded the area with energetic particles - and so Mnemosyne is about to transform from peaceful backwater to strategic frontline.

Twists in the tale

As complex as it may sound, this is merely an outline of the way The Palace of Eternity begins. Shaw’s plot - while simple enough to follow - is stuffed with bold twists and surprises that are better left undescribed. Being a square-jawed ex-forces man, Mack Tavernor is not the most dynamic or original protagonist. But Shaw places him in a succession of unexpected situations, and rarely gives him even a chance to win the day through force of arms. 

Instead, The Palace of Eternity strikes out in excitingly odd directions. This is a novel which begins on a colony world in the far future, but at one point involves its hero speaking with the Roman military figure Titus Labienus, who died in 45 BC. 

Just as with Barrington J. Bayley, one of Shaw’s strengths was his ability to take familiar story structures from SF’s earlier pulp era and put novel new spins on them. Often, the new dynamic chimed in some way with the contemporary vogue of the New Wave. The Palace of Eternity is a great example. The basic setup is a variation on interstellar war scenarios that had been done many times before, but were never taken in Shaw’s brazen, cosmic direction. 

Again, as with his debut Night Walk (1967), Shaw delivers another sequence of satisfying conceptual breakthroughs as he guides the plot to its conclusion. The Palace of Eternity is another wonderfully brisk and concise novel from Shaw, certain to please those already familiar with his work and with the potential to win him new fans.

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• I read the 1986 Panther edition, with cover art by Tim White (1952 - 2020). Shaw’s books have sadly been out of print for many years, but are available as ebooks through Gollancz’s SF Gateway. They are also not too troublesome to obtain on the second-hand market.
  
• Other novels in series 1 of the Ace Science Fiction Specials which have previously been covered here include The Black Corridor (1969) by Michael Moorcock and (an uncredited) Hilary Bailey and The Left Hand of Darkness (1969) by Ursula K. Le Guin.
  
• On his Vintage SF YouTube channel, Richard Remple has covered the Ace Science Fiction Specials and hasdocumentedthemextensively. 
  
• The idea of a colony planet which has become a haven for artists of all kinds is also explored, more extensively, in Eric Brown’s debut novel Meridian Days (1992).