The Steps of the Sun by Walter Tevis
Mass Market Paperback, 259 pages
Published
April 1st 1985
by Berkley
The May 2022 Tevis-a-thon ends as it did for him. This morning I listened to an interview Tevis did with Don Swain for his radio show Book Beat from January 1984. It was about seven months before his death from lung cancer. There are painful moments when he talks about going back to smoking every once in and awhile. He also speculates about what he wants to do with the books that we the listener now know he will never write. When I was reading this I was not aware that this was the final novel Tevis wrote, assuming that The Color of Money the last released would be the one he wrote before he died.
“But having done two novels in a row in which people smoke Marlboros and drive Buicks and turn on the Sonys and they inhabit the world, the real world that we all know and aren't slightly bored with, it's--it would be fun, I think, to do another fantasy novel, another speculative fiction novel in which I can invent my world. You know, when I invent a future as I did in The Steps of the Sun, which takes place around in the 2060s, I'm not interested in predicting the future. I don't know what the future is going to be like. And, I'm not arrogant enough to pretend to be a futurologist. Most of which, I think, futurology, I think, its largely nonsense, anyway--extrapolating from curves. But, so, I don't know what the future will be like. But I like to invent my own version of the future for the fun, for the play.”
Tevis also called the novel a serial comic novel. The Steps of the Sun is in many ways the black sheep of the small Tevis catalog. There is a reason for that. There is no getting around the reality that it is the weakest of his work. That is not to say there is not value in this book, the reality is when every other book you’ve written is a masterpiece it is a bit unfair to judge against them. We have six Tevis novels and they are rare gemstones compared to the over forty by Philip K. Dick or a dozen Kurt Vonnegut novels. Some writers I like have entire lost decades of writing nothing great.
The Man Who Fell to Earth and Mockingbird are science fiction masterworks and that is undeniable, so one of the things that really interested me in my second time reading The Steps of The Sun is why is this third SF novel not as good? Don Swain asked Tevis about the term speculative fiction is on the cover ofhis collection Far from Home and I think his answer is important.
“The term speculative fiction is used by editors in a desperate attempt to let the public know that this is not "Star Wars" or "Buck Rogers" or whatever. Unfortunately, science fiction is a very big term. We don't have in our critical vocabulary a term to describe exactly what it is I do. I'm not trying to say I'm unique. I think other people have worked somewhat in similar genres, but I like to play games with time and space. I like to imagine what the world might be a hundred years from now, that sort of thing. But, I am not interested in writing about menaces, giant the giant cockroach eating New York, or something like that. I'm not it, which is what some people think of when they think of science fiction. I'm not interested in writing about nuclear catastrophe, devastation, interplanetary war, you know, and that sort of thing. So, in an attempt to find some way of describing what I do, editors come up with terms like speculative fiction.”
The Man Who Fell to Earth and Mockingbird are bookends of Tevis's bouts with drinking and getting sober. Mockingbird plays with grand themes but is a book about getting sober at the heart of it. Mockingbird follows a character who saves the human race by learning to read a skill we lost when Robots took over most tasks for us. The Man Who Fell to Earth is a very deep novel inspired by Tevis feeling like an alien growing up in Kentucky after being transplanted at 10 years old from a very different San Francisco.
I think the heart of the difference is at the end of the quote above. “For the play.” Tevis was coming off the mainstream hit of The Hustler when he wrote his first SF masterpiece, he had a lot to prove. When he wrote Mockingbird he had been away from publishing for almost 20 years he had a lot to prove. The Steps of the Sun is not as tight and coiled as the other Tevis books. He is playing around a bit more. As such the first half that takes place in space is more focused.
TSOS is like all Tevis works slightly autobiographical, this time about a middle-age crisis. Ben Belson the point of view character is impotent, something Tevis admits to experiencing at the time. He was recently re-married at the time. The amount of time spent talking in this novel about a reluctant penis is reason enough to take away a star in the rating. Honestly, that is the reason this book is not the classic the others are because many, many words are wasted on Belson’s flaccid member. There is also a scene when Belson towards the end of the novel argues with a computer therapy simulation (very PKD) and asks it to imitate his mother so he can tell it off. (anyone reading his collection knows Tevis had serious issues with his parents)
Okay moving on…
It is also a novel of the late 70s and 80s that despite Tevis downplaying his predictions of the future makes serious statements about what he thought the future might be. It is important to remember this is coming after the energy crisis of the late 70s. At the very beginning of the talk about the climate crisis. Sad enough we have not solved these things. In the 50s Tevis wrote about the 1980s as an age of enlightenment, now that he was writing in it he saw it as the beginning of the end.
If my quotes from the book focus on World-building it is because Tevis was very interested in the details. The story is about Ben Belson a sort of pre-Elon-Musk type who creates a warp ship and takes off from the grim and dying earth to find a new source of energy. “Clean” burning uranium anyone? That is why he traveled to Fomalhaut 25 light-years away. “I was born in 2012 when the population in the industrial societies was plummeting. It was a wonder I was born at all.”
This is an interesting notion because in our real-world despite the climate crisis, pandemics, and epidemics of school shootings we have never had decreased birth rates, most people still want to have children no matter how bad it gets, but in this future child rates are dropping. After fossil fuels go bust uranium becomes popular and society bounces back.
That is when Ben Belson got rich in real estate… “It was the 2040s, the time of the uranium bust. Nobody was having babies; the military had its crude hands on all the crude oil; whole industries were reeling; just taking away the Mercedes limousines away from all those grey-templed hustlers who sat on their boards had thrown most U.S. corporations into tailspins.”
Belson got rich selling short and while the rest of the world fell apart he became rich. Lost in most reviews of the book is how it spoofs capitalism. “Anna and Myra and I lived in that mansion for eight months toward the end the student riots began. Things were bad all over and the student riots began. Things were bad all over and the students had decided capitalism was to blame. I had no real quarrel with that, although I felt the scarcity of fuels deserved equal billing. For a few days of it a lot of the sons and daughters of the upper-middle class decided I was the enemy, and I got edgy when they started chanting things like “Belson go home.” Hell, I was home. They hanged me in effigy, and it was a damned good effigy too.”
Belson gets rich exploits the failing system, tries to save by going to another world, and ends up declared a pirate. Tevis appears to be commenting on the suicidal nature of capitalism and human civilization. In many ways, the earth and its ecological problems are a mirror to Tevis and his feelings of midlife crisis. Much as his return to writing brought him back to production Belson takes a dying New York/ Earth and brings it the fuel to re-open the skyscrapers and get the elevators running again. (That is the examples the novel uses as silly as it might sound to us.
“But having done two novels in a row in which people smoke Marlboros and drive Buicks and turn on the Sonys and they inhabit the world, the real world that we all know and aren't slightly bored with, it's--it would be fun, I think, to do another fantasy novel, another speculative fiction novel in which I can invent my world. You know, when I invent a future as I did in The Steps of the Sun, which takes place around in the 2060s, I'm not interested in predicting the future. I don't know what the future is going to be like. And, I'm not arrogant enough to pretend to be a futurologist. Most of which, I think, futurology, I think, its largely nonsense, anyway--extrapolating from curves. But, so, I don't know what the future will be like. But I like to invent my own version of the future for the fun, for the play.”
Tevis also called the novel a serial comic novel. The Steps of the Sun is in many ways the black sheep of the small Tevis catalog. There is a reason for that. There is no getting around the reality that it is the weakest of his work. That is not to say there is not value in this book, the reality is when every other book you’ve written is a masterpiece it is a bit unfair to judge against them. We have six Tevis novels and they are rare gemstones compared to the over forty by Philip K. Dick or a dozen Kurt Vonnegut novels. Some writers I like have entire lost decades of writing nothing great.
The Man Who Fell to Earth and Mockingbird are science fiction masterworks and that is undeniable, so one of the things that really interested me in my second time reading The Steps of The Sun is why is this third SF novel not as good? Don Swain asked Tevis about the term speculative fiction is on the cover ofhis collection Far from Home and I think his answer is important.
“The term speculative fiction is used by editors in a desperate attempt to let the public know that this is not "Star Wars" or "Buck Rogers" or whatever. Unfortunately, science fiction is a very big term. We don't have in our critical vocabulary a term to describe exactly what it is I do. I'm not trying to say I'm unique. I think other people have worked somewhat in similar genres, but I like to play games with time and space. I like to imagine what the world might be a hundred years from now, that sort of thing. But, I am not interested in writing about menaces, giant the giant cockroach eating New York, or something like that. I'm not it, which is what some people think of when they think of science fiction. I'm not interested in writing about nuclear catastrophe, devastation, interplanetary war, you know, and that sort of thing. So, in an attempt to find some way of describing what I do, editors come up with terms like speculative fiction.”
The Man Who Fell to Earth and Mockingbird are bookends of Tevis's bouts with drinking and getting sober. Mockingbird plays with grand themes but is a book about getting sober at the heart of it. Mockingbird follows a character who saves the human race by learning to read a skill we lost when Robots took over most tasks for us. The Man Who Fell to Earth is a very deep novel inspired by Tevis feeling like an alien growing up in Kentucky after being transplanted at 10 years old from a very different San Francisco.
I think the heart of the difference is at the end of the quote above. “For the play.” Tevis was coming off the mainstream hit of The Hustler when he wrote his first SF masterpiece, he had a lot to prove. When he wrote Mockingbird he had been away from publishing for almost 20 years he had a lot to prove. The Steps of the Sun is not as tight and coiled as the other Tevis books. He is playing around a bit more. As such the first half that takes place in space is more focused.
TSOS is like all Tevis works slightly autobiographical, this time about a middle-age crisis. Ben Belson the point of view character is impotent, something Tevis admits to experiencing at the time. He was recently re-married at the time. The amount of time spent talking in this novel about a reluctant penis is reason enough to take away a star in the rating. Honestly, that is the reason this book is not the classic the others are because many, many words are wasted on Belson’s flaccid member. There is also a scene when Belson towards the end of the novel argues with a computer therapy simulation (very PKD) and asks it to imitate his mother so he can tell it off. (anyone reading his collection knows Tevis had serious issues with his parents)
Okay moving on…
It is also a novel of the late 70s and 80s that despite Tevis downplaying his predictions of the future makes serious statements about what he thought the future might be. It is important to remember this is coming after the energy crisis of the late 70s. At the very beginning of the talk about the climate crisis. Sad enough we have not solved these things. In the 50s Tevis wrote about the 1980s as an age of enlightenment, now that he was writing in it he saw it as the beginning of the end.
If my quotes from the book focus on World-building it is because Tevis was very interested in the details. The story is about Ben Belson a sort of pre-Elon-Musk type who creates a warp ship and takes off from the grim and dying earth to find a new source of energy. “Clean” burning uranium anyone? That is why he traveled to Fomalhaut 25 light-years away. “I was born in 2012 when the population in the industrial societies was plummeting. It was a wonder I was born at all.”
This is an interesting notion because in our real-world despite the climate crisis, pandemics, and epidemics of school shootings we have never had decreased birth rates, most people still want to have children no matter how bad it gets, but in this future child rates are dropping. After fossil fuels go bust uranium becomes popular and society bounces back.
That is when Ben Belson got rich in real estate… “It was the 2040s, the time of the uranium bust. Nobody was having babies; the military had its crude hands on all the crude oil; whole industries were reeling; just taking away the Mercedes limousines away from all those grey-templed hustlers who sat on their boards had thrown most U.S. corporations into tailspins.”
Belson got rich selling short and while the rest of the world fell apart he became rich. Lost in most reviews of the book is how it spoofs capitalism. “Anna and Myra and I lived in that mansion for eight months toward the end the student riots began. Things were bad all over and the student riots began. Things were bad all over and the students had decided capitalism was to blame. I had no real quarrel with that, although I felt the scarcity of fuels deserved equal billing. For a few days of it a lot of the sons and daughters of the upper-middle class decided I was the enemy, and I got edgy when they started chanting things like “Belson go home.” Hell, I was home. They hanged me in effigy, and it was a damned good effigy too.”
Belson gets rich exploits the failing system, tries to save by going to another world, and ends up declared a pirate. Tevis appears to be commenting on the suicidal nature of capitalism and human civilization. In many ways, the earth and its ecological problems are a mirror to Tevis and his feelings of midlife crisis. Much as his return to writing brought him back to production Belson takes a dying New York/ Earth and brings it the fuel to re-open the skyscrapers and get the elevators running again. (That is the examples the novel uses as silly as it might sound to us.
Uncharacteristic of Tevis this novel is full of asides and commentary that strays from the narrative. Nothing like modern novels, but enough that I noticed the difference having just read The Hustler. Some of the best writing and storytelling in the novel involve the fun Tevis was clearly having writing Belson’s time on the planet he named after himself. Important stuff happens when Ben returns to earth but the best moments are on the planet that has an obsidian surface for huge amounts of land. Singing grass reminded me of PKD’s Three Stigmata. My favorite moment in the book…
“I looked up. Two suns shone pleasantly down on my body. At night there were half a dozen moons. Everything about this place was generous, replete, fulfilling, I breathed as deeply as my lungs would allow, exhaled, and walked slowly down the rest of the hill, into the valley.”
This is a beautiful highlight of what Science Fiction and only Science Fiction can do. A character sitting on a hill looking at another world. Wonderful moment. Once we get back to earth Tevis has his tongue firmly in cheek when he writes about Macy’s being a coal storage or that the air force base is named after Kissensinger. There is more. All funny but might be lost on readers not alive in the 80s.
The Steps of the Sun in the worst moments is a story about a mid-life crisis. In the best moments, it is an ecological warning. At times the goofy stuff overwhelms the good stuff for stretches that other Tevis books never did. That is one reason this book is not remembered like The Man Who Fell to Earth Mockingbird or The Hustler. It is not fair as it is a good book, and a sad last statement. Tevis probably would have been happy to know That The Color of Money was the last novel that entered the world. There are rumors of two kids' books that never got released. I am interested in seeing that. I hope the family finds a deal that works.
The Steps of the Sun is the worst Tevis novel, but it still is pretty great. One nice thing about his short career is there are not entire periods of bad novels like some writers. John Brunner for example is one of my favorite writers but there are a double-digit number of novels he wrote for money. That is not a Tevis problem. I also respect a novel that will come out and say what it means as clearly as possible.
“You Americans did not create that oil you used for your cars, your air conditioners, your lawnmowers, or for the plastic films you wrapped toys and pens and vegetables in. The oil was made by the world itself when great ferns covered Texas and the Persian Gulf. It took millions of years to make it. You and the Arabs threw it away in a century.”
The Steps of the Sun is not a masterpiece but an important piece of the Tevis canon and like it or not it was his final work.
Thanks for this excellent review. I too am a great admirer of Tevis’ novels, and agree that this is the weakest, while still being very good. I’d only add one thing to your analysis, which is that there is more humour and optimism in his novel than in the previous five. The three sports novels and two other sci-fis are almost perfect, not in the sense that they are Shakespeare (thought they are very good novels indeed), but in that the are perfectly structured to accomplish their aims, while ‘Steps of the Sun’, as you point out, has some bagginess to it. I’d also say that the style/feel of the novel changes once Belsen returns from space and begins the adventure story in Washington DC and then China. Nevertheless there is lots of outright comedy in this novel and it lacks the melancholy tone which predominates in all the others. Thanks again for your piece - I enjoyed reading it.
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