Chems are a race of aliens being who learned technology allowing them to live forever. With everlasting life comes boredom. To mitigate it, they watch and record lives and history of lesser races, one which being humanity. They can not intervene, but current team foreseeing operation on Earth may have broken this rule. Therefore, Kelexel is sent to investigate if this is the case, but he is pretending to be just a tourist.
At the same time we are observing humans whose lives are being recorded and (maybe) manipulated.
Heaven Makers is a 1967 novel written by Frank Herbert about an immortal race of space beings who treat humanity as a toy. OK, there’s more to that, but it all boils to this - it’s a simple story which gives no indications that just a few years before Herbert published Dune.
Let’s get this out of the way: Heaven Makers is not a great book. It’s not bad, by any means. The plot is decent, the twists are cool, the characters are (mostly) OK. It’s not insulting, but it’s never great. It’s also short, so all the underdeveloped or missed parts of the book never develop into real frustration.
And while I have enjoyed reading it over the course of 2 evening1 and would not call the time wasted, I’m afraid in a year I’ll have very little recollection of the events that I’ve witnessed. If anything, it reminded me that I really need to watch Twilight Zone. Heaven Makers is very much like an episode of that type a show. We’ve got an interesting question (what would you do with eternity?) with added twist (what if you are the victim of such creatures) developed into a full story.
One thing reader needs to keep in mind is the age to this book. Your life being subjected to constant surveillance was something not only seen as scary, but also incomprehensible. We’re now treating is as entertainment (Big Brother) or even a way of living. As always, SciFi comes with a twisted idea and warns us about it. What we do with it? Of course! Let’s build our lives around it!
If Heaven Makers finds a way in your hands, sure - it’s a nice read. But I would not propose people actively search for it.
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I am a slow reader ↩︎