THE MOON IS HELL - Book review

 

John W. Campbell’s novel The Moon is Hell was published in 1951; my copy was from 1975, some half-dozen years after the first moon landing. The back cover blurb states ‘... is a great writer’s vision of the first men on the Moon – not as the American space programme made it happen, but as it might have been!’

Regarded as a hard-science classic, it is a relatively short read, 123 pages. It’s in diary form by Dr Duncan, a physicist and second in command.

It’s 1981. Thirteen men have been on the moon in their protected dome for just over a year on the dark side of the moon. The crew consists of a surgeon, two chemists, two mineralogists, an astrophysicist, electricians and mechanics, and an engineer and cook. They expect to be relieved shortly. Unfortunately, the relief spaceship crashes, killing all crew and destroying equipment. ‘The burning fuel destroyed everything’ (p28); yet it’s unlikely that there would be any burning as there’s no air.

Because it’s on the ‘wrong’ side of the moon, there is no direct radio contact with Earth. To compound matters they learn that somebody is stealing food from the storehouse. Nil desperandum: the moon ‘is a single vast chemical laboratory’ (p33).  They begin to manufacture oxygen and, ultimately, artificial food from clothing and paper, and photo cells for electricity and power.

It’s a race against time. By trekking to the earthside of the moon they might be able to send a message to Earth and hope that a rescue ship can get to them. Their ingenuity is laudable and life-saving.

The narrative, being technical, cold and scientific, leaves little room for characterisation, so there isn’t a great deal of empathy for anyone. A story has to have conflict and in this sense their conflict is with the inhospitable satellite itself; however, none of the individuals evince any conflict, save for the thief when finally discovered. On p10 there’s a hint that not all of them will survive. Perhaps not surprisingly for the date of writing, when food becomes an issue cannibalism isn’t considered! Yet what shine through is their adaptability and the determined resistance to defeatism.

A worthy addition to any science fiction collection.

Of course the concept was used, with adjustments, to great acclaim by Andy Weir in The Martian (2014), some sixty-three years later...

THE PARADOX MEN - Book review

Charles L. Harness’s classic novel The Paradox Men was first published as a short story in 1949 and then in novel form in 1953. There’s an Introduction by Brian Aldiss – I read this after I’d finished the book.

We’re in the future – 2177 – (as viewed from the late 1940s), after the Third War. Now, there are small settlements on the Moon, Mercury and solarion stations that hover over the sun’s hot spots, the latter stations  harvesting invaluable muirium. Of the original 27 solarions only 16 now remain; ‘the average life of a station was about a year’ (p114).

It begins with a sort of prologue: ‘He had not the faintest idea who he was’ (p10). At this point we don’t know either. Then we’re straight into the action with a superior thief in the Society of Thieves, Alar, who is burgling Count Shey’s demesne. Shey is future Earth’s Imperial Psychologist. Alar is discovered but escapes. Alar is protected by a plastic invisible shell that makes him impervious to gunfire; however, sword and knife blades can penetrate the carapace. Swords and duelling have made a comeback!

Meanwhile, the Chancellor of America Imperial, Bern Haze-Gaunt is at loggerheads with his female partner, Keiris who used to be married to Kennicot Muir, who had created the Society of Thieves which was dedicated to rob from the rich and buy the freedom of slaves. Keiris is not quite what she appears.

Haze-Gaunt employs a disfigured man, the Microfilm Mind – ‘he functions on a subconscious level and uses the sum total of human knowledge on every problem given him’ (p29). In effect, he scans thousands of books and documents in order to formulate responses – much like AI today.

Imperial Police seem to be everywhere. This is a police state, after all.

There are debates and observations on time and space and gravity which threaten to be mind-boggling, and yet they’re carried off convincingly.

Alar joined the Society of Thieves five years ago and has no recollection of his life before that... So this is a quest for his identity, but also an attempt to overthrow the present administration. In his journey Alar begins to discover certain abilities he was not aware he possessed. His relationship with Keiris develops: there is a devastating revelation in Chapter 14 following an unpleasant torture...

The ending is probably not the ending but most likely the beginning...

Editorial comment:

Uses IP’s for Imperial Police; it shouldn’t have an apostrophe: IPs would do.

They travel to the Galastarium (p88) and yet on the same page it’s spelled Galactarium!

THE AERODROME - Book review

 

This is one of the 99 Novels that Anthony Burgess recommended in 1984 (Ninety-Nine Novels, Allison & Busby); this edition, 1982, also includes an introduction by Burgess comparing favourably it to Orwell’s Nineteen-Eighty-Four which was published eight years after The Aerodrome (1941).

Burgess considers the village represents fallen man, reflecting ‘the wretched or joyful human condition’. While outside the village is the ‘great aerodrome dedicated to cleanliness and efficiency. It is a self-sufficient totalitarian state with its eyes on the air not on the earth.’

Rex Warner explains that he does not aim at realism and considers both worlds (the village and the aerodrome) repulsive.

At the heart of the story is the narrator, Roy, who has attained his eighteenth birthday only to learn that the Rector, the man he considered his father was not, after all. A few subsidiary characters have names but not much description – Tom, George and Mac, for example. Yet we’re not made aware of the names of the remainder, the more significant characters: the Rector, the Rector’s wife, the Squire, the Squire’s daughter, the Flight-Lieutenant, the Air Vice-Marshal and the Landlord. However, the Landlord’s daughter is blessed with a name: Bess. Roy is drawn to her. And the sub-title of the book tells us why: it’s ‘a love story.’

Disillusioned, parentless, Roy seeks solace in the arms of Bess. Yet a further betrayal is not very far away, involving the Flight-Lieutenant.

There are several mysteries to be resolved: the Rector’s confession of murder; Roy’s true parents; Bess’s birth-right; the Flight-Lieutenant’s past… There are some twists towards the end, too. Interwoven are farcical scenes, the Flight-Lieutenant riding the bull Slazenger and the drunken revelries, and also some poignant moments too.

The Air Vice-Marshal is an unbending martinet who demands obedience from his men. He has plans for the village and even the country. He has a very low opinion of most of the population: ‘We shall destroy what we cannot change!’ (p223)

As for Roy, initially he was besotted with the Air Force and its charismatic leader, the Air Vice-Marshal; so much so that he is willingly recruited. He excels in his training and is ideal material for promotion. Yet, in time, the scales fall from his eyes: ‘It was as though there had been something in me like snow and ice which were now melting  and gradually revealing a landscape whose outlines I had not seen for some time and barely remembered.’ (p245)

This is an unusual imaginative study of power and human nature.

STAGECOACH - The BFI Classics book

 

This 95-page appraisal of the classic 1939 John Wayne/John Ford film (published in 1992) is written by Edward Buscombe, who is also the editor of The BFI Companion to the Western.

Seven of producer Walter Wanger’s pictures for United Artists hadn’t made a profit. So Wanger was told to rein back his budgets. Ford’s project to film ‘Stage to Lordsburg’ appealed: ‘a talented, tested and prestigious director, relatively unknown and therefore inexpensive stars and a type of story which, even if Westerns were not fashionable, was nevertheless of proven appeal.’ (p17).

The filming lasted about two months. But due to Wanger’s financial situation, UA wouldn’t agree to filming in colour, which was a great shame, considering the spectacular vistas presented by Monument Valley. At that time colour added about 30% to production costs. The film came in under budget, costing about $531,000. The salaries of some of the picture’s stars were Claire Trevor, $15,000; Andy Devine, $10,000; Thomas Mitchell, $12,000 (and he won an Oscar for the part too!); John Wayne, $3,700, considerably less than four other travellers in the stagecoach! (p18)

Essentially there are two narrative strands to the plot: first, a journey through dangerous terrain, echoing The Odyssey; second, revenge, which is as ancient as the Greek myth. The latter is ‘driven by the hero’s sense of personal honour, an inner compulsion rather than an external threat.’ (p25) And the theme emphasises that good prevails over evil.

One of the reasons for the film being a classic is the canny juxtaposition of the nine travellers in the stagecoach, and how they rub against each other, revealing their characters. The driver Buck, the whiskey drummer, Peacock, meek in character and temperament (played by Donald Meek), the Southern gambler Hatfield who is not quite the gentleman he likes to think he is, the disdainful and felonious banker Gatewood who is anxious to abscond, the wan wilting flower of womanhood, Lucy, keen to join her cavalry officer husband, well-oiled Doc Boone, evicted from the town for drunkenness and not paying his rent, escaped jailbird Ringo Kid, joining the coach a short way outside town, shotgun rider Sheriff Wilcox (who promptly arrests Ringo), and Dallas (who ‘is never actually named as a prostitute, but only the young and innocent Ringo does not instantly recognise her profession’[p37]).  

Between the lines, Ford reveals that ‘respectability and morality are very far from being the same thing.’ (p37)

Needless to say, screenwriter Dudley Nichols had to considerably enlarge upon the original short story. Lucy, the army wife, is not pregnant in the story; Nichols’s injection of her gravid state and the subsequent birth seem ‘expressly designed to give the film appeal to a more mixed audience.’ (p54)

Due recognition is also given to stuntman Yakima Canutt: ‘his contribution to the film was considerable,’ with examples. (p67)

Interestingly, Orson Welles confessed he learned to be a director by watching John Ford’s films: ‘John Ford was my teacher. My own style has nothing to do with his, but Stagecoach was my movie text-book. I ran it over forty times.’ (p58)

The book concludes with details about the press releases, the film’s overwhelmingly positive reception, and John Ford’s subsequent career and status. Throughout, the pages are interspersed with black-and-white stills.

An excellent insight into a piece of cinematic history.

There are many other BFI Classic books available; check them out on Amazon – search for ‘BFI Classics’

 

* BFI = British Film Institute

Book of the film - Vanity Fair

I watched the DVD of the TV six part mini-series Vanity Fair (1998), Andrew Davies’s splendid adaptation of William Thackeray’s classic tome, mostly while reading this version in the Penguin English Library (1983) edited by J.I.M. Stewart. The series featured Natasha Little as Becky Sharp, Frances Grey as Amelia (Emmy) Sedley, Philip Glenister as William Dobbin, Tom Ward as George Osborne, Nathaniel Parker as Rawdon Crawley, and the ubiquitous Anton Lesser as Mr Pitt-Crawley, among others.

For many a year I’d been meaning to read this ‘landmark in the history of English fiction’ (says Stewart). It seemed a daunting task, all 766 pages of it. As it happens, it wasn’t onerous at all. Possibly my reading was helped by the dramatisation; it was fascinating to detect swathes of speech used by Davies in his excellent screenplay.

Vanity Fair appeared in monthly numbers of an episodic novel from January 1847 to July 1848; it was published in book form in 1848 (revised 1853). He was thirty-four when he began the book.

Vanity Fair’s sub-title is ‘A novel without a hero’. However, as Thackeray writes, ‘… at least let us lay claim to a heroine. No man in the British army which has marched away, not the great Duke himself, could be more cool or collected in the presence of doubts and difficulties, than the indomitable little aide-de-camp’s wife.’ [i.e. Becky] (p353)

The term “Vanity Fair” is adopted from Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, suggesting a never-ending fair along the pilgrim’s route, loosely a playground of the idle and undeserving rich: a microcosm of several nineteenth century lives. ‘Vanity Fair is a very vain, wicked, foolish place, full of all sorts of humbugs and falsenesses and pretensions.’ (p116)

Rebecca (Becky) Sharp is penniless, cunning and attractive: ‘Green eyes, fair skin, pretty figure, famous frontal development…’ (p235) ‘She gave a sigh, a shrug with her shoulders, which were already too much out of her gown…’ (p734) She is also ‘a hardened little reprobate’ (p763) To begin with, she is determined to make her way in society. On leaving school (under a cloud) Becky joins her friend Emmy (Amelia) and stays with her family in London. Emmy is good-natured but naïve, and ‘the consummate little tragedian’ (p765). Her brother Jos is visiting and is attracted to Becky, but the potentially fruitful courtship is stymied by George Osborne, the suitor of Emmy, after an outing at Vauxhall. George’s best friend William is secretly in love with Emmy, but appreciates that she does not consider him in any kind of romantic light; he seems doomed to sustain unrequited love.

Throughout, Thackeray intrudes as the author – or puppet-master. He can be forgiven, for usually his asides are amusing or even insightful. ‘The novelist, who knows everything...’ (p389) And sometimes he has to pull himself up – ‘… But we are wandering out of the domain of the story.’ (p453)

‘… my readers must hope for no such romance, only a homely story, and must be content with a chapter about Vauxhall, which is so short that it scarce deserves to be called a chapter at all. And yet it is a chapter, and a very important one too. Are not there little chapters in everybody’s life, that seem to be nothing, and yet affect all the rest of the history?’ (p88)

Thackeray discloses his intent more than once, sometimes blatantly, sometimes subtly: ‘Such people there are living and flourishing in the world – Faithless, Hopeless, Charityless; let us have at them, dear friends, with might and main. Some there are, and very successful too, mere quacks and fools: and it was to combat and expose such as those, no doubt, that Laughter was made.’ (p117)

Thackeray employs omniscient third person point of view and author intrusion with good effect. (Though I was surprised he used the phrase ‘thought to herself’ (p229): the ‘to herself’ is superfluous, after all.)

Having failed to land a husband in Jos, Becky takes her leave of Emmy and finds employment at the dilapidated stately home Queen’s Crawley as a governess of the two daughters of Sir Pitt Crawley, a rather crude fellow (played with gusto by David Bradley); this character is the father of two sons, the cleric Pitt (to confuse matters!) and Rawdon. ‘The elder and younger son of the house of Crawley were, like the gentleman and lady in the weather-box, never at home together – they hated each other cordially.’ (p129)

Their aunt, spinster Miss Matilda Crawley, is rich and they all lust after her wealth so seek her favour… Her favourite appears to be Rawdon, however. Unfortunately, when she discovers that Rawdon has secretly married Becky, she turns against them both.

In the meantime, Amelia’s father has hit hard times and becomes bankrupt. When Dobbin encounters him, it is a sorry sight: ‘His face had fallen in, and was unshorn; his frill and neckcloth hung limp under his bagging waistcoat.’ (p240) There are many instances where the writing evokes sympathy and empathy: ‘He covered his face with his black hands: over which the tears rolled and made furrows of white.’ (p631)

I was amused to see that there was a Mrs Captain Kirk in the story… (p320) Long before Star Trek, of course! And later, we have none other than Reverend Silas Hornblower, ‘who was tattooed in the South Sea Islands.’ [A painful area of the anatomy, I imagine!] (p392)

With the help of William Dobbin, George marries Amelia but is disinherited as a result. When called to battle, he is grateful to be gone from her side [the cad!] (p355)

With the conniving help of Becky, George lived well (from his gambling prowess and by not paying his debts). Thackeray castigates his kind, who take advantage of honest traders, always promising payment, never paying it. ‘I wonder how many families are driven to roguery and to ruin by great practitioners in Crawley’s way? How many great noblemen rob their petty tradesmen, condescend to swindle their poor retainers out of wretched little sums, and cheat for a few shillings? … When the great house tumbles down, these miserable wretches fall under it unnoticed.’ (p438)

There are many memorable turns of phrase used: ‘Time has dealt kindly with that stout officer, [Colonel Sir Michael O’Dowd] as it does ordinarily with men who have good stomachs and good tempers, and are not perplexed over much by fatigue of the brain.’ (p506) Another – ‘If sarcasm could have killed, Lady Stunnington would have slain her on the spot.’ (p601)

And he has fun with names, too: Mr Wagg, Duchess of Stilton, Duc de la Gruyere, Marchioness of Cheshire, Comte de Brie and so on… (p589) and Rev. Felix Rabbits (whose wife birthed thirteen sisters! (p697)

The relationship between Amelia and Dobbin is laid bare, finally. ‘She wished to give him nothing, but that he should give her all. It is a bargain not unfrequently levied in love.’ (p776)

Despite her ‘wild and roving nature’ (p755), Becky gave Rawdon a son (though she could not bear to be with the poor boy). Amelia too had a son, named George, whose teacher was a Mr Veal: ‘And whenever he spoke (which he did almost always), he took care to produce the very finest and longest words of which the vocabulary gave him the use; rightly judging that it was as cheap to employ a handsome, large, and sonorous epithet, as to use a little stingy one.’ (p655)

Thackeray was aware of women’s plight in the man’s world he inhabited. ‘What do men know about women’s martyrdom? We should go mad had we to endure the hundredth part of those daily pains which are meekly borne by many women. Ceaseless slavery meeting with no reward; constant gentleness and kindness met by cruelty as constant; love, labour, patience, watchfulness, without even so much as the acknowledgement of a good word; all this, how many of them have to bear in quiet, and appear abroad with cheerful faces as if they felt nothing…’ (p659) Later (p663) he alludes to the ‘women for the most part who are … hospital nurses without wages…’ – in short, family carers. Still topical today, even…

Political leaks are nothing new, either. ‘When one side or the other had written any particularly spicy despatch, news of it was sure to slip out.’ (p732)

And perhaps Thackeray was cognizant of those who are easily offended (the nineteenth century sort, not the twenty-first century snowflakes): ‘… it has been the wish of the present writer, all through this story, deferentially to submit to the fashion at present prevailing, and only to hint at the existence of wickedness in a light, easy, and agreeable manner, so that nobody’s fine feelings may be offended.’ (p738) [My italics.]

The book has endured as a true classic, for many reasons, but not least because Thackeray made his characters seem real, complete with their faults. Nobody is wholly likeable, none are actually evil, but several are driven by greed, lust, or prejudice. In effect, he has shone a light on the human condition.

Book review - Halcyon Drift

Brian Stableford’s series of six books concerning star-pilot Grainger and his spaceship The Hooded Swan begins with this novel, Halcyon Drift (1972); they’re regarded as classics by the science fiction fraternity. Stableford has written in excess of seventy novels; yes, he’s prolific. I met his mother when she briefly attended a few of my writers’ circle meetings here in Spain. A brief review of his book Young Blood appears here

Stableford is a good writer who presents effective visuals with his prose: ‘Brown clouds move sullenly across the sulky face of the sky, washing the black mountain faces with hazy tears.’ (p7) Other examples from page 128: ‘Alien night is always a bad place to be.’ And ‘The horizon glowed white, surrounding us like a vast silvery ring set with a jewel-like flare at the point where the sun had vanished.’

The story begins with a prologue in the present tense, outlining the fact that Grainger has crashed his spaceship Javelin on an uninhabited rock, killing his partner, Lapthorn. So he’s alone.  The inhospitable place is plagued by winds, always blowing down the grave marker. Through his reminiscences, we get an insight into Grainger’s nomadic life with Lapthorn, trading and dealing from planet to planet, encountering fascinating and intriguing life-forms. Grainger is cynical: ‘A lot of spacemen are like me. Cold, emotionless men who don’t inherit any part of the worlds and the people that they see.’ (p13)  He reminisces about his friend Alachakh, a Khormon trader, whose life he saved once. That’s all he’s got, stranded on this rock for two years, waiting to die.

And then the wind starts to talk to him in his head. He isn’t going nuts: it’s an alien mind-parasite. It’s quite a lengthy prologue, ending with him being rescued by a passing ramrod ship, the Ella Marita. He gets away but he’s stuck with the mind-parasite – for life.

The rest of the tale is told in the usual past historic and it's inventive, in description and the alien life-forms, and in the leaps to a possible future: ‘I dialled through to the Illinois cybernet… a credit card, punched and banded, oozed out of a slot… I tapped out a query on the keyboard, asking how much the card was carrying…’ Bearing in mind this was written in 1972 or earlier: not bad. (I didn’t get my first credit card until 1987, when I was 39!)

There’s also irony and humour, to be enjoyed. Here’s the mind-parasite speaking in Grainger’s head: ‘I’m an expert on you, Grainger, and I’m learning more all the time. I’m right inside you. I’m with you every decision you take. I’m riding your every thought, and feeling everything you feel. This isn’t the most comfortable of minds to live in, my friend. I would appreciate it greatly if you could get it sorted out a little. Come to terms with yourself and the universe.’ (p34)

The nameless mind-parasite isn’t the only great invention in this story. Meet The Hooded Swan, a ship that can fly ‘like a bird. She’s jointed and musculated. She has the most complete and most sensitive nerve-net any mechanical device has ever had.…’ In fact, Grainger the pilot is connected to the nerve-system of the spaceship and feels what the craft feels; his body becomes part of the body of the ship. Grainger literally flies by feel.

One of the several inventions is the quite tragic Khormon race. When these people have filled their memories – nothing is ever forgotten – they have reached their end. As Alachakh says, ‘I wish I could forget a little and create some space, but I cannot. I am stuck in the day before yesterday. There can be no question of a long tomorrow, and I doubt the latter hours of today. Soon even the minute swill become painful to squeeze away into tight corners…” (p89) Another invention is the metamorphic life system Grainger encounters in his quest: ‘Our presence and progress would cause the plants which we touched unbearable pain.’ And: ‘… the feel of the furtive, glutinous chaos through which we moved. Myriads of tiny creatures were accidentally transferred from the plants to me, and I hoped none of them was adapted for chewing tough plastic.’ (p134)  

Grainger is hired to pilot The Hooded Swan and enter the Halcyon Drift in search of a spaceship that was lost in the drift eighty years ago; a distress signal has bleeped since then but due to the awesome peculiarities of the drift it hasn’t been located yet: ‘Drift space casually disobeys principles which are called laws in saner corners of the galaxy.’ (p97)

Perhaps the ending was a little rushed, but he was writing to fit into a specific format. How Grainger resolves his quest is intriguing – and moral, to boot. Needless to say, he survives to fly The Hooded Swan in another novel, and I’ll be reading all of the series.