A Billion Days of -- say what?

Today's blog is about the sci-fi novel A Billion Days of Earth by Doris Piserchia, first published in 1976. I read it sometime in the 1980s, lost the book in a move from Florida to Washington state, and only recently re-read it.

I love the book. I just don't understand it. At all. Usually I don't enjoy books - or movies - that I find totally confusing. I don't like anything that feels like deliberate obscurity on the part of an author. And, as a rule--OK, Twin Peaks excepted--I don't like excessive weirdness.

Here we have a seriously weird, confusing--and often depressing--book. Which I totally enjoyed. Go figure.

The 'billion days' of the title refers to the time period of the story--3 million years from today, more or less. Human beings - the real Homo sapiens - have evolved into - gods? - who have extraordinary powers. I guess. Anyway, they can float on clouds.

Our protagonist is Rik - he's human, more or less, except he's descended from rats. The rat-people are the humans of the story. There are also lengs - dog-people, also sentient. And did I mention the zizzies, who are a combination sparrow/cat/bee, flying furred creatures with a three-foot wingspan and a stinger?

Yeah. Anyway, the story begins with the entrance--creation?--of Sheen, a lifeform (I'm echoing Data, here) made of silver. Sheen absorbs sentient beings, who then lose their independent will--and turn silver themselves.

What I find interesting about the book are the changes in tone. Sheen's actions, at first, seem almost good-natured. He absorbs a creature here and there, and has funny, almost friendly conversations with Rik, who resists him. We even have time to visit other sub-plots, including one about a family of uber-ultra-rich rat-humans, the Fillys. But somewhere around the middle of the book, things start downhill in a big way. Sheen has absorbed so many people by this time that society collapses, and the result is just as ugly as you might expect. After the initial low-key tone of the story, you feel things tip and crash down; there is a truly horrifying scene where the rat-humans are herded into a slaughterhouse and forced to choose between violent death and absorption by Sheen.

What is the author trying to say here? That society is fragile? I'm not sure.

At any rate, the end of the story brings a second shift. One of Sheen's first victims 'escapes' back to real life, and it turns out that anyone can do the same. They only have to want to. Rik gets his wife back (another sub-plot). Sheen decides he doesn't have the heart for total destruction.

And the gods (Homo sapiens) decide to leave the earth on rocket ships.

No, I don't understand the book at all. But it kept me interested, beginning to end. And if there is anyone out there who does understand it, drop me a line, heh?