The therapy regenerated his damaged neurons, but an unforeseen side effect was that they came back with many more dendrites, raising Leon’s intelligence and motor skills considerably. This first person science fiction novelette is narrated entirely in the point of view of Leon, a man who suffered brain damage and was given an experimental treatment, hormone K therapy.

Is the tower a symbol of man’s devotion to God, his wish to be closer to his creator? Or is the tower a symbol of hubris, as God cannot be understood and for man to attempt it is to reveal his lack of humility? Hillalum grapples with his doubts even as he climbs.Īs for what he finds at the top of the tower, I will not reveal it, except to say that the ending was as unexpected and imaginative as the rest of the story. The story’s central theme revolves around man’s relationship to God. They squinted at the moon’s pitted face, marveled at its stately motion that scorned any support. Before long, they were precisely at the same level as the moon when it passed they had reached the height of the first celestial bodies.

The moon flooded the south side of the tower with its silver radiance, glowing like the eye of Yahweh peering at them.

Within the passage of weeks, the sun and moon peaked lower and lower in their daily journeys. Climbing the tower takes up a good portion of the novelette, but reading about it never gets dull because the tower is a world to itself, and there are wonders all along the way. Hillalum is afraid to climb it-as his friend Nanni says, going up to dig seems unnatural-but climb it he does. The tower has taken centuries to build and is almost unimaginably tall. The protagonist of Tower of Babylon is Hillalum, a miner from Elam and a member of a group of miners who have come to Babylon to mine the vault of heaven near the top of the tower. My reviews of all eight stories follow.įrom the Tower of Babel (Babylon) myth springs this fully developed fantasy novelette. The novella did not disappoint, and I went on to read the other stories in the collection. After seeing Arrival, the movie which is based on your novella, Story of Your Life, I was eager to read the source material and reserved this collection at the library.

The story of my life novel