The Good:The writing is brilliant, the story thought provoking, and the setting and characters utterly vivid. The ending is perfect.The Bad:It’s as much a morality tale as a science fiction story, so there is a mild undercurrent of preaching. The story concerns a collective of 22nd century Kikuyu (a Kenyan ethnic group) nationalists who emigrate to their own terraformed world to live in the manner of their stone age ancestors. This fact alone makes their motivations difficult to understand from

Yes, yet another Resnick review from me. Before I get to the actual review, let me answer the inevitable resounding "Whys?" echoing from my many readers (2, 3? I've lost count, time for another census). I started reading Resnick for two reasons: 1) because after hearing he was a huge Africa fan who used his African experiences in his stories, I looked him up, noted our mutual interest in Africa and crosscultural writing, and I got an email a few days later with a buttload (yes, that is an actual...

Quite by accident, I've been reading a lot of stories about righteous people who do wrong things for what they believe are right reasons. Some of these people reap the consequences of their decisions, and some do not. Some see the error of their choices, and a very few go on blindly believing that nobody else really understands, only they can see that they are right, and only they are able to interpret what is true.The religion of my childhood referred to itself as "The Truth." As a child, I tru...

Kirinyaga is a collection of inter-related short stories that center around a terraformed planet designed to be the new home of the Kikuyu tribe of Africa, where they can live their lives in the old, traditional way, without interference from modern society. I almost stopped reading this book 2 chapters (stories, technically) into it. Two main reasons for this: 1- I really dislike parables. They are usually obvious, simplistic, and preachy. 2- I intensely dislike Koriba, the main character. Pres...

One of the best books I read this year, deservedly considered sci-fi classic. Actual review might come at some point later.

I would rate Mike Resnick as not only a master storyteller, but also a master of the parable. While on the surface this is the story of Koriba, the witchdoctor, or Mundumugu of his tribe, the Kikuyu. This is a couple centuries in the future when Koriba has the will to get a planet terraformed so that his people can emigrate from the disgustingness that is Kenya with all its European influences and get back to the traditional soil-tilling, mud-hut living past that is the right of his people. So o...

The choice to make this novel out of a series of short stories is really perfect. Each story is okay on its own, but together they make a subtle arc as Koriba struggles to make the terraformed planet of Kirinyaga into a Utopia by evoking a simpler time before the Europeans came to Africa. The problem is that Utopias are static, while living things necessarily change--as time goes on, Koriba's vision becomes more and more out of step with the people he leads, and something has to give. Koriba isn...

5.0 stars. WOW!! This was an exceptional collection of inter-connected short stories that should be seen as one complete story. The cosmetic premise of the of the stories is about a group of 22nd century Kenyans unhappy with its evolution into "another European city" who emigrate to a planetary colony in order to live simply and in harmony with the land as their ancestors did. The real or underlying premise of these stories are about the struggle of one person against the inevitability of progre...

I’m wavering between 4 and 5 stars. This was an extremely fascinating and throught-provoking story, or should I say collection of stories - or parables. “For I have Touched the Sky” moved me deeply, but not all stories were equally interesting or were as strong as that. Together all of them formed a tale of a man with a vision of a utopia, and his struggle against progress in the name of maintaining his dream. It’s both sympathetic and provocative and you should experience it.

This is a story of obsession. Koriba is the leader of a group of people who live on a planet terraformed to be like Africa and designated as a Kikuyu Utopia. Koriba detests the European culture that has taken over Kenya, and how the European and Kenyan cultures have overtaken the identity of the Kikuyu people.His Utopia is established as a place for the Kikuyu people to return to their original culture and live in harmony with the land. He is their mundumugu, or witch doctor. He is their “teache...

Kirinyaga is what the locals tribes call Mount Kenya. The distinction is important because it marks the refusal by the traditionalist Kikuyu to accept the Western values, especially in view of the extensive environmental damage, overpopulation and loss of cultural identity they are confronted with in the twenty-second century. So, when new technological advances open up the Space for the creation of human colonies on carefully terraformed and climate controlled planetoids, these tribesmen decide...

Utopia, a European concept that never works anywhere.A Kikuyu man, Koriba, takes tribe members to a space colony he names after the sacred mountain Kirinyaga. A string of episodes of his life and the life of the colony ensue.He is the Voice Of N'aga, the old God, he is the supreme authority on how these people must live their lives - old traditions rule, nothing new is accepted.Which means he becomes a tyrant in the name of what he believes is right, but there is no way to put a society into a c...

I was torn on this one. I wanted to like it going in and was actually captivated by the opening story, "One Perfect Morning, with Jackals". That was a great introduction to the new world set up by the Eutopian Council (clever name, that) called Kirinyaga, an attempt to get back to the roots of the Kikuyu tribe of what we barbaric Europeans call "Kenya".And here's where the being torn comes in. As I read story after story, I realized that I didn't like the narrator, Koriba. At first I'd sympathiz...

This was the perfect Book Club book. I think that this is a book worth reading, discussing, and enjoying no matter what your genre preference is. It is a quick read, entertaining, well written, engaging, and thought-provoking. I am very impressed with this writer's talent.I spent a good deal of the book frustrated or angry with the main character (who is telling the story from his own perspective) but I still couldn't put the book down. It was too fascinating! The picture of the society he drew

The story follows Koriba who leaves Kenya because it has become polluted and overcrowded but most of all European. He petitions the government to terraform a planetoid where he can take willing Kikuyus and live there as their ancestors had lived. Very thought provoking! What is "utopia"? Can there be balance between traditional culture and modern culture....can they coexist? Must one be sacrificed for the other? I think culture is supposed to evolve, by how much...or how far I'm not sure. The on...

This is the book I usually mention when they ask me: “What’s a book that you consider a masterpiece and that nobody knows about?”. I really loved Kirinyaga, it reflects a lot of today's reality, expecially our world's quick changes, and its many conflicts between past and present. An old scientist from Kenya, desperate because the "good old days" of Kenya's uncontaminated tribal life have gone, decides to recreate that world artificially, on another planet. Despite the futuristic concept, this i...

Mike Resnick's Kirinyaga is an example of how science fiction isn't necessarily a genre; it's just a setting. Kirinyaga is technically science fiction, because it involves colonizing another world (the eponymous planetoid Kirinyaga, named for the mountain upon which the god of the Kikuyu, Ngai, lives). However, Kirinyaga isn't about spaceships or combat with high-tech weaponry or vast, evil empires. It's a collection of fables, and an extremely well-written one at that.The narrator of Kirinyaga

I'm writing this review because Kirinyaga came up in the recent SFWA kerfuffle. First, Kirinyaga is not sexist. I am a feminist myself, and I consider it profoundly feminist. And yes, it's true that many African traditions are not only sexist but truly horrifying for women. Perhaps African female genital mutilation which predates Islam has slipped the minds of Resnick's critics. The Kikuyu practice FGM though it has been decreasing. I also want to say this: There are also many wonderful African

This book is the Victor/Victoria of Utopian novels. The author is a white, American man writing from the perspective of a black, African man who's trying to rid his culture of all white, European influences.It's also a damn good read. The flow and pacing are excellent. And there are stories within the story, numerous parables told in every chapter. And somehow, the protagonist ends up being frustrating and sympathetic at the same time.A well-crafted an interesting take on the challenges inherent...

i devoured this book, and it was hard. My own cognitive dissonance wants me to dislike the protagonist, a fierce conservative theist who ignores facts in favor his own morals and passes them on to children as truth ("Facts are not truth", I believe was the quote) and who disowns his family and friends to maintain a way of life that no one in his life time has every lived but he. I wanted to dislike this man because he is the opposite of me - a nationalist of sorts, who rebukes convenience, scien...