The planet had been colonized by religious fanatics from earth generations, perhaps centuries earlier. The inhabitants have only vague and indistinct memories of how they got there, but they are not without a history. They know where they came from and why.
Much has changed since the settlers first landed. After a rough start, they have rebuilt civilization up to about a mid 19th century level, they have steamships and telegraphs, but no internal combustion, automobiles or aircraft. The political system is still rushing to catch up, it is still a century behind their technology.
The original religion for which they came has morphed, become softer and more tolerant, but it has left one solid and profound imprint on their culture. The society rejects the concept of individuality, of the worth of the individual as a psychological entity. No, they are not a communistic hive society, they are capitalist (or to be more precise, mercantilistic, the capitalism of the 18th century). Their political system is still based on landed aristocracies and merchant princes. But culturally, they reject the concept of the Self, (even though political, commercial and professional ambition still are ubiquitous). Like kinky sex in Victorian England, it is everywhere, but no one in polite society talks about it.
But culturally, the society consciously avoids the idea of open and expressed individualism. Even the personal pronouns “I”, “You” and “Me” are considered bad manners, and although existing in the language, are avoided by all except the closest of friends, or in pornography, dirty talk, or the most sophisticated intellectual and academic circles. The greatest social faux pas you can commit is to talk about yourself (they call it “selfbaring”). Among the uneducated and simple folk, it isn’t just bad manners, its a sin.
The culture is free and open about sex, they are not prudes, but it is a simple physical act, not a means of human bonding or an expression of affection. Affection and love are acknowleged to exist, but they are not discussed openly, even between married couples. Marriage is for business and political purposes only, its all about inheritance and legitimacy. The simple phrase “I love you” is grammatically possible, but is considered an obscenity, an unpermissable wallowing of selfbaring and sentimentality, an invasion of privacy and an unforgiveable declaration of selfishness and individuality.
The true human needs for friendship and companionship are met by the unique social institution of the bond brother and sister. Everyone has a bond brother and sister, they are not blood related to you, (they are selected at birth by the families involved) and they are the ones that you depend on for emotional support. You can let your hair down with them, be yourself, even use the forbidden personal pronouns and allow yourself some limited selfbaring. You just can’t have sexual relations with bond siblings, that is bond incest, and highly taboo. But the bond sibling connections form a network of social relations which span and unite the society, independent of family, business or political ties.
Our protagonist is the second son of a king of one of several nations in the one civilized continent of the planet. There is another continent within sailing distance, but it is inhabited by primitve selfbaring savages and is rarely visited. When the king is killed prematurely in a hunting accident, our hero realizes that as a younger son he will be forever suspected of wanting to take over the throne his elder brother has inherited. Against his brother’s earnest pleas, he announces his intention of leaving to continue his studies abroad, and gets out of the country before the message can be delivered. He knows his best guarantee of survival is to seek his fortune abroad, he will always be suspected of treachery in his own homeland, whether he is guilty of it or not. He decides to take a powder and get out of Dodge. And just in time, too. He has fallen desperately in love with his bondsister (unbeknownst to her), a very dangerous hobby in his world.
Our hero goes underground, works incognito for a while as a lumberjack, then a seaman, and eventually settles down in a distant port city where he has relations who take him in. He is given a clerical job at the Ministry of Trade and quickly works his way up to a high position in the local bureaucracy. Once secure and established in a new country, and under their protection, he re-establishes connections with his own family and bond siblings. He is a big shot, now, a minor celebrity. He even marries his bondsister’s cousin, a spitting image of her, although its not the same, and he bitterly realizes it. The marriage is in trouble from the start.
Silverberg goes to a lot of trouble showing us how this improbable world and its bizarre culture works, making it believable and consistent (much better than my own description of it). But he soon throws a monkey wrench into it and we get to watch it all fall apart.
A spaceship arrives from earth, with a slightly sinister, somewhat disreputable skipper; a merchant trader who finds this planet a brand new market and source of exotic products. The captain becomes a celebrity, is invited to all the best parties, and becomes a darling of the public and the press. His shamelessly selfbaring ways are accepted (he’s a foreigner, after all, he doesn’t know any better). People know little about earth, it is a place of legends and ancient history, and they are fascinated that they have finally met someone from the home world. They are back on the galactic map again after generations on their own. But this star sailor is a dangerous man. He finds the culture of this world incomprehensible, and he has no compunctions about letting people know it. For his hosts, he is a novelty, dangerous, exciting. One of the first things he does is hire a ship to the forbidden continent, where he brings back something that will change everything.
The new thing, a ritual concoction of the savages on the other continent, is a telepathic hallucinogen, a drug that will not only get you higher than hell, but let you read the minds of the people you are doing it with. The drug also has the additional properties that it cannot be detected by the primitive science of this world, and it’s effects are temporary. The stuff is totally benign, physically and mentally, and it is not physically addictive. The question is, can this culture survive the psychological and social impact of this new dope in town? Can you spell LSD?
Our hero tries it, and becomes a proselytizer for it. People in the aristocratic and social elites start dropping it (at first it is not illegal) and it becomes a craze, a cult. But once you use it, it becomes very difficult to reconcile its insights with the cultural conditioning of the planetary inhabitants. Our hero plunges into the shadowy world surrounding the drug’s users, and he comes to be one of its promoters and champions. And when he introduces it into his own close circle, it leads to disaster and tragedy. Can you spell Timothy Leary?
The result is the predictable catastrophe. The drug offers freedom from the strictures and constraints of this emotionally impoverished culture, but it also threatens the social stability of the entire society. The old rules and this new knowledge simply cannot occupy the same space at the same time.
The book asks a disturbing but important question. Can there be too high a price to pay for enlightenment?