"The World is founded on a pillar, which is founded on the Deep".

The Deep is my favourite book. Is has a strange, ethereal quality and a satisfying completeness that matches the encapsulation of the world described. I've read it at least 5 times, probably 10, limited only by having to leave a gap of a year or two between re-readings to forget the details. Fortunately I have a poor memory.

Engine Summer is also excellent, though pipped by The Deep.

Beasts I've read only once, many years ago, but remember it fondly.

If you've been put off Crowley by the unfortunate Little, Big then please try this instead.

How many books in the Amazon database have been called the best novel ever written (or the best novel in its genre) by *half* of all the reviewers? ENGINE SUMMER was actually the first novel John Crowley ever completed; the ms. then sat in a draw for years while he honed his craft with THE DEEP and BEASTS. The original draft was then rewritten. You thus have a unique combination of an author's most central concerns, his fundamental, primal Tale (always in the first novel), with the skills and knowledge of a mature artist.

Civilization has fallen apart and humanity has returned to a primitive way of life. It's one of the oldest ideas in science fiction, but ENGINE SUMMER is unlike any other post-holocaust novel ever written. Rather than a harsh existence and a struggle to return to former glories, Crowley has imagined a veritable utopian existence -- in a world which knows there can be no going back. This is the long "Engine Summer" ("Indian Summer" misremembered) of the world, and winter is coming. It's a setting of unbelievable poignance.

Rush That Speaks, an adolescent boy, finds himself in a strange place. An unfamiliar woman asks him to tell his story. Since Rush's ambition has always been to become a "saint" -- someone who tells the story of their life in a special way -- he is happy to comply. Where is Rush? Who is the woman? As Rush tells his remarkable tale, the special (and unbearably poignant) circumstance of that telling gradually becomes clear to the reader. ENGINE SUMMER is ultimately a story *about* Story, about the human ability to be moved by tales like this and about our desire to know what happens next. I would say more, but I don't want to even hint at what is going on here.

THE DEEP retells the story of the English Civil War in a unique setting which seems to be genre fantasy but turns out to be something very different. At the time it was published, I thought it was flawed but showed extraordinary promise. That promise was fulfilled in BEASTS, a novel I thought was the best sf novel of its year and one (I'm very proud to say!) I cited, in print, as evidence of Crowley's greatness before ENGINE SUMMER and LITTLE, BIG were ever published. You'll notice I made no attempt to summarize its plot. It's like that.

Unfortunately, while I have Engine Summer (and Little, Big) I haven't read either yet and I've never even seen The Beasts (though I'd snap it up if I found it, probably), this is the only place on Amazon where I can write about The Deep, Crowley's famous first novel. This is one weird book, let me put it that way and not weird like mindblowingly weird but just . . . weird. I don't know, I can't explain it but the book feels like it takes place in a fever dream, there's this unreal quality about everything. The plot then. Someone has apparently constructed a giant disk in space and attached a long cord to it (so they say) and there are people on the top of the disc and they endlessly fight in this war of succession. To this mess comes a Visitor who doesn't remember why he came here or even who made him and for most of the story he serves as an observer to the events going on. The only problem I had with this was some of the characters are hard to keep straight because they aren't given proper names, you've got "Red Senlen" and "Red Senlen's Son" and Redhand and Old Redhand and Younger Redhand and Learned Redhand and King Little Black and Black Harrah and Young Harrah . . . you can see the problem. That's a fairly minor quibble though, this is a book that deserves to be tracked down and read. Crowley's writing is amazing, especially since this was his first novel, it's entirely poetic without getting long winded, with a few words he paints brilliant pictures. The premise is utterly unique in its presentation (for the record, I believe that the folks on the disc are reenacting the War of the Roses) and the plot winds along nicely, there aren't many "explosions" but you just snake along, caught up in the dream. The ending is also totally unexpected and completely fits in with the tone of the novel. This is one of the few totally satisifying books I had read, I had expected a lot out of this guy because of the reputation I had heard and he blew away everything I expected. And he only got better. My advice then, get everything you can by this guy, it might take some effort but I have a feeling it'll be worth it. Again, the fact that this brilliant author is out of print and many many many lesser lights are kept in print is beyond me. Get the word out and keep his name alive!

This is one of the most powerful and moving books
I've ever read. Couldn't put it down and then couldn't
stop thinking about it afterwards. I'm still re-reading
passages in order to relive the sensations.
The act of translation and the ideas and issues surrounding
it are artfully used as a trampoline for delving into
many other interesting and emotional topics...
A wonderful, layered experience.

This is the kind of reading experience in which you may find that you are breathing quietly and slowly, forgetting to eat or sleep, and letting the kids watch way too much television. The dog will mourn at your feet until you, as slowly as possible, turn the last page.

John Crowley's prose, always a delight, just keeps getting better. Here it's polished like fine crystal: no flashy lyricism, no polysyllabic raids on Roget, just limpid phrases that speak freshly and place you, antennae quivering, in the center of the scene. "The Translator" presents itself as a quiet, small, well-lighted novel, a chamber piece with only four or five speaking parts. On those terms, it succeeds just about perfectly.

In a sense, all of Crowley's novels, even those set in some far future, have been historical novels. Lately, he's become confident enough to choose periods his readers can remember. His ongoing tetralogy (begun in "Aegypt") has been bringing the mid seventies back to life with perfect political and cultural pitch; "The Translator" does the same for the repressed, restless, hopeful, doom-haunted Zeitgeist of the few years between Eisenhower's fifties and LBJ's sixties. Within that grey-lit zone unfolds the story of a campus romance. Its special tincture of the erotic with the Platonic - when a Russian interlocutor, many years later, asks our heroine Kit whether she and Professor Falin were "lovers", she is honestly unable to remember - would have rung false in any other epoch.

But while Kit narrates her simple story, Crowley has many other fish surreptitiously sizzling in the fire. He is studying the nature of translation, the nature of personal identity, the nature of national identity; the ways in which poetry fails to be genuine poetry both when it is, and when it is not, politically "relevant." And finally the themes and the personal histories of this uncharacteristically realistic novel do not appear to be resolvable, apart from the angelic mythology explored in Falin's final poem.

I rate this book at four and a half stars, but I round it up because of my strong feeling that there's much more here than has yet met my eye. Perpetually fluttering his wings at this volume's edges and crannies is the figure of Vladimir Nabokov - also a "translator", also a Russian poet in exile, like Kit a fan of Lewis Carroll's Alice, and who famously adopted a position with regard to political relevance in art seemingly diametrically opposed to the one taken by Crowley's Falin. So, I suspect that this book is even more carefully crafted than its exquisite surface would suggest. In particular, its' worth considering whether by the time the story ends it is only poems that have been "translated."

An obviously underrated little masterpiece that needs to be resurrected and praised for what it is: a highly useful and user-friendly tool for the mind to awaken consciousness, hone mental skills and integrate the mystical experience to the betterment of your life.

There's a nice balance between methodology and subjective impression, satisfying both the scientist and the artist.

Wasserman does an excellent job of framing the elegantly twisted words of Crowley to the effect of creating lasting impressions
and tasty morsels of knowledge that spice up the brain and heart.

Buy it and use it!

I should begin by admitting that I had the opportunity to review this little masterpiece in manuscript. Good then, it's even better now.

It's good because it informs the reader, in sober prose, how to determine what works and what doesn't in medical practice, and what's safe and what isn't. It's good because it reveals what can go wrong when anecdotes ("it worked for me!") substitute for sound research as the basis for clinical practice. And it's good because it shows how serious are the consequences of even subtle failures to observe protocols in designing and carrying out clinical trials.

It is reassuring to read of the care and precautions advocated for government-sponsored research; it is accordingly unsettling to contemplate the pressure that commercial interests (drug companies, for-profit hospitals, equipment manufacturers) might bring on researchers to cut a few corners.

After reading "Clinical Trials" I came to appreciate that case studies, longitudinal studies, and retrospective questionnaires, so frequently hyped in the press and on television, are no substitute for actual well-designed and well-executed experiments. Because you and I are different, certainly genetically and probably in other essential ways, what helps you may well harm me. Only the proper application of statistics in designing clinical trials and in analyzing data from them can distinguish what's generally valuable from what's useless (however plausible and authoritatively touted it may be). Although the authors had the good taste to reject the aphorism, usually attributed to a nameless statistician, that "if experimentation be the queen of science, then statistics stands as the guardian of the royal virtue", its pithiness may give the reader the crucial insight into why alternative modes of research are untrustworthy.

Some readers may feel disheartened to learn the truth that many, probably most, promising therapies prove, when adequately tested, worthless, and some may feel in some fuzzy way that to accept this reality is cruelly to deny hope to those who need it badly. On the contrary, this book makes it clear that to offer false hope is the ultimate cruelty, for without experimentation there can be no knowledge, and without knowledge there can be no real hope.

Notwithstanding the slightly technical nature of this book (yes, there IS a chapter with mathematics), I recommend it highly for the general reader who is interested in such topics as personal health care, alternative medicine, managed care cost containment, and the like. Buy a copy for yourself, and, if you feel philanthropic, you might consider donating a copy to your health care provider. The world would be better if doctors' waiting rooms (like hotel rooms with their Gideon Bibles) all had a copy of "Clinical Trials in Oncology" available for patients' perusal.

"...This book is directed primarily toward the school system and library media specialist, but is recommended for anyone interested in understanding the mechanics of strategic planning and developing analytical skills for managing libraries: students of library administration, library managers, and librarians participating in some form of strategic planning." Feliciter

"According to Crowley, the library media specialist can become a leader in the process of restructuring a school through strategic planning methods. Gives detailed guidance on undertaking this process." American Libraries

"John D. Crowley provides excellent assistance in this quest, but goes further, and shows library media specialists how to use their unique skills to help direct the planning team that is charged with developing a vision for the entire school. This readable work will prove valuable to librarians, administrators, and teams planning school restructuring." Library Lane

"...a very useful text for all school personnel, not only the library media specialist to whom it is ostensibly addressed." Australian Library Review

The first three novels in one package.
The first, "The Deep", is a touch different from Crowley's normal work, but he comes into full form in the second book, "Beasts, and truly flowers in the third, "Engine Summer".

The last book is arguably one of Crowley's very best (for which I believe he was predicted to become 'the next Bradbury', a rather unfortunate title for him in my opinion), while the first two are not in the same league. That said, as with all of Crowley's work, The Style and The Meter of the first two are eminently enjoyable. Not to mention the creativity.

All three books are very worthwhile and necessry reads for Crowley fans. Like all of Crowley's novels up until the Aegypt series, all three are wondrous self-contained universes when compared with the majority of 'literature' that gets written.

Dr. Crowley's extensive research makes this book one of a kind for Primitive Baptists in South Georgia and North Florida, and a good historical reference for anyone. It also is written in a vein that holds the reader's interest, and is filled with personal and sometimes humorous anecdotes that make it a book that is not easy to put down.

In Aegypt, John Crowley creates not one, but two solid, fleshly worlds: a late seventies small town, complex enough to hold both the foolishness of failed coke dealer, scholar and desperate monogamist Pierce Moffett, and the ordinary heroic strength of newly single mother and artist Rosie Rasmussen; and the world of John Dee, court magician to Queen Elizabeth. Crowley's virtousic realism renders Dee's conversations with the angels and alchemical searching as sturdy and believable as Rose and Pierce's grocery shopping, angst, and romantic turnarounds. Both worlds can be balanced in the same book because both worlds are there to tell the same story. What is that story? What did the angels tell to John Dee? Who can catch a falling star? For all its realism, this is a book about occult knowledge. This book is an initiation. John Crowley is attempting a direct transmission of gnosis through literature. Does he succeed?

I read Aegypt with great anticipation after having been delighted by Crowley's book "Little,Big".I found Pierce Moffatt's explorations into history and collisions with the present almost as absorbing. "Love and Sleep", the second in the series(?) didn't satisfy as completely although I'd be willing to give it another chance. Has John Crowley dropped out of sight? It would be a shame because his writing has this radiant quality to it.Also, it seems such a long time that I left Rosie Rasmussen and her little girl. Please, how does it end???

Initially, Aegypt is an all-out barrage of images and information, in the midst of which it is difficult to assimilate the major themes that are developing. However, as you continue your journey along with Pierce Moffett, this mass of somewhat obscure imagery and information slowly begins to unravel. The miracle of Crowley's prose is that he guides the reader through a series of small revelations along with the main character that culminate in one entire running synchronistic metaphor. His brilliant excerpts from other sources, ie. his own fictional writer Fellowes Kraft, serve as slivers of allegory relating to Pierce and some of the other characters in the book's main story. Crowley patiently weaves a web of coincidences, of synchronicity, that serves as a sturdy metaphoric foundation to support all of the synapse-igniting ideas presented to the reader to be delineated and digested. This novel is so cleverly plotted, that I cannot help but wonder if it is somehow based on the ancient geometric principles that are discussed and reffered to throughout the book. This is not even to speak of the potential Jungian archetypes presented by the characters surrounding Pierce. Rosie as anima, Spofford animus, Pierce the ego, Fellowes Kraft the Shadow? Even these archetypes do not do the interconnectedness of the characters justice. In the Prologue in Heaven, when the skryer is looking into the stone, he sees an angel who holds another stone, in which there is a child with yet another stone, and within that stone the immense void, the eternal truth. Just as this ancient knowledge of Aegypt that Pierce is uncovering comes through himself, Kraft, Bruno, and so on. One more running metaphor to drive it all home is the reoccuring imagery of bouncing balls with stripes and stars, croquet balls colliding, and finally the dozens of hot air balloons filling the sky, again synchronicity. Crowley sets his sights high, and does not disappoint.

P.S. Pierce (Inverarity) Moffett, Rosie MUCHO. See The Crying of Lot 49. The horn from 49 and the ring symbol in Aegypt. Many similarities.

John Crowley is a great talent, but this is not his best effort. Every SF/Fantasy writer is compelled to write a post-apocalypse novel, a simpler people living in the aftermath of a future world technology-driven disaster precipitated by man upon himself - and this is Crowley's contribution. Within this sub-genre, there are better efforts to recommend (Miller's 'Canticle for Liebowitz' immediately comes to mind). It is an interesting story crafted by a gifted storyteller but it is not a compelling novel in a literary sense. This book by Crowley reminds me of several of Philip Dick's alternative history books, albeit more lyrical and sentimental and less philosophical and/or psychological than Dick. The comparison with Dick is an interesting one. Crowley the superior literary talent is almost completely out of print. Dick, appealing to the mainstream SF community with several movie take-offs to sustain him ('Blade Runner', 'Screamers', 'Total Recall') is available en masse - almost all of his novels and several collections of short stories are immediately available. Dick was not capable of anything along the lines of Crowley's masterwork 'Little, Big', although Dick was a creative, intelligent talent that went unappreciated for too long. Hopefully, Crowley will earn his due recognition in his lifetime.

If Little, Big is supposed to be his absolute masterpiece then I'm really looking forward to reading it (it's next on my list) because this book was one of the most lyrical and poignant books I've ever read. Crowley is one of the most poetic writers to grace the SF/fantasy genres, the only comparsions that come even close are Tim Powers, Michael Moorcock and Samuel R Delany and even then they're nothing like Crowley. This book here is his major contribution to the SF canon, but because of its out of print status (my edition was printed in the early eighties, how long ago did it go out? and why?) it's mostly stayed relegated to cult novel catagories, leaving people like me and others to sing its praises and get his name out there. But about the book. A riff on the theme of post-war America, this is completely unlike any of the books I've ever read on the topic. It's not surprising plot wise (in fact the plot is rather straightforward, progressing from point A to point B quite easily) and the idea of people growing up in the shadow of the end of the war, it having happened so long ago that nobody can even remember the old days, surrounded by pieces of machinery created by the old civilization (the angels) and just basically living. But I don't know, because of the way he writes, the entire novel is given this pastoral feel, like it takes place in an endless summer, I can vividly picture Rush That Speaks and his people frolicking in the lost land not even knowing what it all used to be. It gives it this dreamlike quality and sometimes the action borders on the surreal, but it's always gentle and lyrical. Simply put this is one of those books that has to be read, and slowly, to let the images develop in your head and lounge around there for a bit. And the ending is one of the best and most satisfying that I've seen in a long time and a little sad at the same time. Enough with the plaudits, this is one of the most distinctive SF books ever written and more than deserves everyone's attention.

After the destruction, little BelAir is a community of truthful speakers who have survived and built a unique city- a microoculture with deep roots in the recovering earth and a rich emotional life. Crowley's young protagonist goes on "Walkabout", in search of their version of sainthood and finds far more than he envisioned. He achieves his goal, but in a terrifying and poignant way that he (and you) never dreamed of. This powerful little masterpiece has remained in my heart for 30 years. I take it out and reaquaint myself with it often.

I recently re-read 'Little, Big' and was reminded what a superb book this is.

Crowley mixes American ruralism, European fairy tales and the pioneering fantasy of William Morris into a beautiful blend that somehow transcends its elements, and produces a book that you cannot help but love. 'Little, Big' is especially notable for walking the difficult faerie tightrope that falling from one side would land you in tweeness and on the other in cynicism, with ease. Characters like George Mouse and Daily Alice could have been so sugary and trite in a less skillful writer's hands. The gradual gathering darkness of the story as the book evolves could have been simple and unsubtle modern horror without Crowley's magic.

Finally, 'Little, Big' has a setting at the centre of it that is as memorable as the greatest places in literature. A house literally in the middle-of-nowhere, not entirely separate from the outside world and its developments but somehow immune from the worst, whose jumbled architecture and grounds get larger as you go in: Edgewater is a fascinating and timeless creation.

For once, a masterpiece that really deserves the accolade.

It took me a few attempts to get rolling with this book. There is no real action and not a lot of dialogue - the story just sort of meanders along. Still, my perseverance was well-rewarded...and how! John Crowley's writing has an elegance and beauty that is simply incomparable. I could throw out any number of adjectives - lyrical, sensual, dense, profound...in short, an amazing achievement. I have re-read it many times since, and each time I notice new details and depths. Like other reviewers, I always pick up extra copies to loan to my friends. The complex story is hard to describe or explain very well; I just tell them to read it (and return it, which they seldom do). I really don't know what else I can say about this magnificent book. As it has become my favorite novel, I cannot recommend "Little, Big" more highly. How John Crowley's novels remain out-of-print is impossible to fathom. I would also recommend E.R. Eddison's (also out-of-print) "Zimiamvia" trilogy - a beautifully-written fantasy, and Mervyn Peake's "Gormenghast" trilogy - like "Little, Big" it is short on action and dialogue, but the writing is superb.

Little, Big is not easy reading, and the writing isn't always consistent. That said, it is a moving, strange, and melancholy work that rightfully deserves a place as a classic in fantasy literature. The first sections, which detail the history of the Drinkwater family, are the most beautiful and intriguing pieces of fiction I have ever read. Crowley manages to write about fantastic things-- a house with multiple fronts, fish that talk, fairies in the woods-- and make their reality as unquestionable as a tree, a book, or a car. I can't claim to understand the book entirely, and there are times when it spins out of control, particularly towards the end, when Crowley writes about the strange resurrection and downfall of a Holy Roman Emperor, who takes over a 20th century city that bears more than a passing resemblance to New York. All the same, Little Big is a brave, shimmering thing, and I wish more people would read it. It is one of the few books I have read that succeeds in evoking a new, yet weirdly familiar world, for its readers.