Books like Nightwings

Nightwings, Robert Silverberg’s 1969 work is a very Ursula K. LeGuin type novel.It is actually, three novellas put together to make a novel sized work, anchored by the Hugo award-winning novella Nightwings.This is set in the far future, thousands of years, and the earth has survived, generations ago, a cataclysmic apocalypse which destroyed the “second cycle”. The first cycle would be where we are now, the second beginning when we first met aliens. Society is regimented into occupational guilds, similar to what was described by Ayn Rand in Anthem and by Lois Lowry’s The Giver. Earth has become an alien tourist attraction backwater and humans are coping with their new station in the cosmic pecking order.Like his 1969 novel Downward to the Earth, there is a spiritual journey and rebirth. A ubiquitous theme in Silverberg’s cannon is open sexuality and Nightwings is no exception, though this is less erotic than others. Telepathy and shared consciousness may also be a common theme in his work and is represented hereThe far future setting is also reminiscent of Poul Anderson’s Orion Shall Rise, especially in his description of the changes in geography and cultural icons.