So, what strikes first when you read a text SF this time, it is the little attention that was brought to the form. Style is more level "schoolboy writing" that the literary style. SF of the time is really an idea literature, which cares more about "big events" as the intimate life. But Farmer gives the changes a bit on that side with this novel and others.
Farmer killed at least the effort to make believable characters and we tend to really love (although he never digs their psychology more than three centimeters deep).
The side of his scandalous love story (and its evocations of sex scenes) has completely disappeared (that is wiser than most things found on our shelves today). However, this reputation discern which earned him in Puritan America of the 60s and in the even more puritanical SF / asexual at the time, but that America is already there like another planet.
The scandalous side of his religious dystopia (outrageous by the fact that there is a clear Jewish connotation in the vocabulary and the "decorations" of the religion of this new prophet) is still discernible. And it probably would grind even more teeth today.
I missed a lot of things "when jje have read when I was little" in this religious dictatorship, and how it creeps insidiously into the private, to the heart of the couple, to oppress everyone and instill in them a form of "love" that looks more like hatred to the outside. This aspect had escaped me 80% in my first reading (torque reports at the time probably passed me far above the head).
When he arrived on the planet and meeting Jeanette, the love story, though somewhat schematically, is rather successful. And the revelation is still working (the reader expects it now, but at least it's a revelation for the character). The end is short, but on the other hand, everything had been said. He could not raise tension beyond the point where he had already brought, it had only stopped there.
*** Attention: mild spoilers about the end ***
There is always very artificial sides even (and especially) at the end (always linked to the aspect of "literature of ideas" that has little interest in development). For example, when Hal, collapsed, will artificially boost the discussion (as he is about to lose Jeannette!), It sounds wrong psychologically, and this is a time that destroys the effect of surprise when the true nature of Jeannette (in short, he had an idea, and it exposes, but it is neither "character driven" or with a pace that enhances the effect of this exhibition).
*** End spoilers ***
In short, the idea is good, the synopsis is good, rhythm and writing require "change mode" to be read today, push the button "golden age" and attune to this time packed with vibrant ideas that put the SF high-orbit with one thrust of its rocket engines, but without worrying too much about the form and writing.
