The Well World

Cafe Society
1

Jack Chalker’s five-volume saga of Nathan Brazil, the Markovians, Mavra Chang, and Obie was unaccountably fascinating to me years ago.

Now Amazon tells me that Chalker returned to the Well World with other books years later.

Any Well World fans out there that can opine about (a) how well the books stood the test of time, and (b) if the new stories were worth anything? I have the feeling that Chalker’s work may not appeal to a middle-aged man the same way it did to an impressionable youngster…

2

They’re OK. If you liked the first ones, you’ll like the later ones. IIRC, he did a four-volume series and a later two-volume series that involved mainly water hexes. He never did get back to covering the non-carbon-based Northern hemisphere.

Chalker wasn’t a hard-core SF type, and sometimes it shows. He was a historian, and on the rare occasions where that comes through, his stuff can be brilliant. His Well World stuff lies somewhere in between.

3

here’sd his website.
The new ones are:

**Echoes of the Well of Souls

Shadow of the Well of Souls

Gods of the Well of Souls** for the first set circa 1994

Then The Sea is Full of Stars

and Ghosts of the Well of Souls make up the undersea set.

http://www.jackchalker.com/jlc-bib.htm

Chalker says that TSiFoS can stand by itself, but it can’t. It just gets going and then grinds to a halt.

4

The latter books were ok, but sadly Chalker died in 2005. No more Well World.

5

I enjoyed the original 5 books quite a bit. Although Chalker was not a great writer, he was a decent storyteller, and the Well World itself and some of the aliens showed a lot of imagination.

I can’t say I liked the last 3 (the Watchers at the Well Series - Echoes, Shadow, Gods) very much. I thought Chalker was just recycling a lot of the ideas, and even alien types, from the earlier series. There seemed to me to be a lot of padding, and a lot of philosophical gassing in place of action. I personally wouldn’t recommend them, but if you really liked the first series maybe you’ll get enough out of the other one to make it worthwhile.

I wasn’t aware of the water-hex series. Maybe I’ll have a look at it.