Rating: 3.5

Son of Man by Robert Silverberg

Back in the 1970s, there was a certain type of film that, whether by chance or design, became highly favored by the cannibis-stimulated and lysergically enhanced audience members of the day. These so-called “stoner pictures” — such as Performance, El Topo, Pink Flamingos and Eraserhead — played for years as “midnight movies” and remain hugely popular to this day. Well, just as there is a genre of cinema geared for stoners, it seems to me that there could equally well be a breed of literature with a genuine appeal for those with an “altered consciousness.”

The 13th Immortal by Robert Silverberg

The 13th Immortal is one of Robert Silverberg’s earliest novels, and though it’s not considered one of his great works, I certainly enjoyed it thoroughly and recommend it to those who like short science fiction novels from the 1950s. It’s a post-apocalyptic story about twelve immortals who have divided most of the world among themselves into separate Empires, leaving a few other places to whoever claims them. Those few key other spaces include a mutant city, a computerized city with no human inhabitants,