The Chrysalids, by John Wyndham

As a teenager I read the usual dystopic novels: The Handmaid’s Tale, 1984, A Brave New World. Somehow I managed to omit John Wyndham from my nerdy reading list. What a mistake. Thanks to my favourite nerdy TV show (ABC‘s First Tuesday Book Club) I picked up The Chrysalids, and I’m glad I did. It is an inventive post-apocalyptic story that had me completely hooked.

The Chrysalids is set a few thousand years in the future, after what is strongly indicated to be a nuclear disaster. It is a coming of age story of David Strorm. David lives on a farm, on something akin to a frontier landscape, society having being reduced to a pre-industrial form. There is a memory of the ’old people’, a technologically advanced society who were all but destroyed by what they know only as ‘Tribulation’. Wyndham creates a strong set of rules that David’s community live by; they practice a fundamentalist form of Christianity, one that is obsessed with the ’true image’. Genetic mutation is common, but also hunted out and destroyed. Nearby are the fringes: land that is wild, where no pure strains can be found. Humans that are found to be mutations are sterilised and abandoned to the fringes. David and a small group of other children are telepaths, something they realise they must conceal if they are to avoid that fate.

David’s father, a prominent man in his community, takes his religion seriously, hunting out genetic mutation in his crops and household with zeal. We learn the fate of some of those not lucky enough to fit the norm; in particular the story of a mother whose newborn has a small mutation is a heartbreaking moment. As it is told through the eyes of a young boy we are spared the gruesome details, nonetheless, the sense of danger Wyndham creates for his protagonist feels very real. Wyndham also hints at a wider world - different communities in other places who also survived ‘Tribulation’. David’s uncle (and confidant) Axel, has travelled as a sailor, and is unable to follow the orthodoxy of their community.

most of them - whether they have seven fingers, or four arms, or hair all over, or six breasts, or whatever it is that‘s wrong with them - think that their type is the true pattern of the Old People, and anything different is a Deviation….You start asking yourself: well, what real evidence have we got about the true image?

Wyndham’s world building is excellent, but it is his characterisations that really make this book interesting. David himself is an atypical lead in that he is often unable to do the right thing, occasionally cowardly, and unprepared when he really shouldn’t be. It is the small characters though, that really make this book. Wyndham imbues minor characters with a sense of humanity, and creates real pathos, such as the aforementioned mother and child. One of the most interesting examples of this are the other telepath children: despite making only the briefest of physical appearances, some have a strong presence.

I’ve agonised a little over the ending, not being completely satisfied as it is dangerously close to deus ex machina. When I began to see it coming I felt bitterly disappointed. Thankfully Wyndham saves the book by not tying up every storyline neatly. While for some characters the ending is happy, the reality that others are left to face is dark and dangerous. Even the ‘happy’ ending leaves us asking some moral questions.

While it is certainly a novel of its time, it also asks questions that are relevant today. While we probably aren’t so concerned about nuclear apocalypse, we do face huge environmental challenges that could have similar impacts. Wyndham also asks us to think about who we will tolerate in our society: where does mutation end and evolution begin? How ‘superior’ are we as beings? Crucially, how do we treat those we deem ‘lesser’ beings to ourselves? Religious fundamentalism is probably even more of an issue in our society than it was when the book was written. People like David’s father are on our news every night.

When so many science fiction classics date badly, Wyndham’s imagined future seems horribly plausible. The book is short and fast paced, and the characters are strong. It is an enjoyable read, that still makes you think about the society we live in, or want to live in.

Railsea, by China Miéville

China Miéville is one of my favourite authors, so I’m pleased to finally be reviewing his latest offering: Railsea. Miéville writes what he calls ‘weird fiction’ - not strictly fantasy or sci-fi, but something that blurs the boundaries. He is attempting, within this, to write a book in every genre; so far he has written novels as diverse as a western (Iron Council), a sci-fi planetary romance (Embassytown), and crime fiction (The City & The City). Railsea is his young adult offering. Unsurprisingly, I enjoyed it; it is well written for the youth market, but is also clever enough to satisfy his adult readers.

Railsea takes place in a dystopic future of either our world, or one quite like it. Large bodies of water are nonexistent; instead, the lands people live on are divided by treacherous stretches of earth that may or not be poisonous (as is much of the sky). Crisscrossing these are train tracks, providing trade routes and hunting grounds to the train crews who work on them. Sham Yes ap Soorap finds himself apprenticed to a doctor on the moletrain Medes. They hunt the vicious beasts that live in the poison earth: the most profitable of these being the giant moles, or moldywarpes. While they hunt, Captain Naphi is on the lookout for one particular moldywarpe: Mocker Jack, the giant yellow beast that claimed her arm years ago. While she will stop at nothing to catch him, Sham discovers a quest of his own that will lead him down perilous tracks, perhaps as far as the ends of the earth.

What Miéville does best is world building. Apart from his three Bas-lag novels, all of his works take place within a unique universe. He is an absolute master of invention, and crucially in communicating his ideas in his books. Some of his worlds can take a bit of time to get your head around, but once you have done so they have a completeness and believability to them that is so often lacking in lesser writers’ works. Miéville explains his worlds very well, taking his time to lay the pieces before bringing it all together in your head. I remember reading Embassytown and feeling like I wasn’t quite understanding, then with one particular paragraph everything slotted into place. Talking to my husband later, he had the same feeling at the exact same place in the book. It is a real skill to be able to communicate so clearly his, often very weird, settings.

The book obviously contains a loose homage to Moby Dick, but that is only the start. It is jam packed with tributes to literature: Robinson Crusoe is referenced, and the works of R.L. Stevenson - with Treasure Island in particular coming to mind. It is also unashamedly meta-fictional. Miéville first widens the story to include further characters, such as the Shroake children; he then teases us with snippets of their story while always returning to his central character Sham

At last they pushed on, under a huge night, in the deeps of which upsky predators make sounds. The Shroakes-

-but wait. On reflection, now is not the time for Shroakes. There is at this instant too much occurring or about to occur to Sham ap Soorap

Miéville’s early work is not exactly known for its brevity; this narrative technique helps to keep the plot moving without dropping the Shroakes for long tracts at a time. It’s a clever ploy, and entertainingly written - reeling us in only to drop us again moments later.

One of the things I most admire and enjoy in Miéville’s writing is his language play. He has a knack of twisting words and grammar so they say not what they would normally, but exactly what he wants them to say. He imbues words with meanings of his own, that become important to the plot or ideas in his stories, such as ‘philosophy’ becomes in this book. His vocabulary is extraordinary, although perhaps at times beyond the young adult readers this book is aimed at. One of his quirks is that he has favourite words, and these can vary from novel to novel, but often these words will pop up. This has lead to what I affectionately think of as ‘the chitin game’, after a much used word in Perdido Street Station. Knowing which words in his early works he loves, you look out for them as you read new books. Which leads to scenes like my husband and I announcing ‘chitin’ abruptly into a room where we both had been reading in silence. Other words this can be played with include ‘puissant’, etiolate’, and words that start with ‘un’ but don’t usually.

A stylistic feature of this novel is the decision to use ‘&’ instead of ‘and’. Miéville also often starts his sentences with ‘&’. It is very striking - we are so used to the convention that you don’t begin sentences this way. Writers often deliberately flout convention - it is part of the skill of being a good writer. Just as you get used to it Miéville explains this choice in a short chapter directed at the reader. In which chapter, the antiquated spelling of ‘and’ is explained to have been replaced with ‘&’ because of its connection with the railsea.

‘What word better could there be to symbolise the railsea that connects & separates all lands, than “&” itself? Where else does the railsea take us but this place & that one & that one & that one & so on? & what better embodies, in the sweep of the pen, the recurved motion of trains, than “&”?

It is a lovely idea, which after all is what you read Miéville for.

He walks at times a fine line between his cleverness getting in the way of his stories or not. For me he manages to stay on the right side of the line. That’s not to say he isn’t without limitations. Characters can be a little underdrawn in his books. They are sometimes merely vehicles for the ideas he wants to explore, not believable people. This is a fair criticism of Railsea. It is obviously just not what he is interested in as a writer, though I don’t think this prevents his novels from having emotional impact. When it is important he manages to make you feel. I have mentioned he has a degree of vocabulary predictability, and this could also be said for his themes. Miéville is an ardent Marxist and these beliefs are often explicitly expressed in his books, something I find amusing rather than troublesome.

I’m something of a Miéville completist. He is also currently publishing a comic series Dial H for Hero that I’m buying, and enjoying. There is so much I love about his books; their inventive worlds being only the start. Miéville is an excellent writer of the dramatic set piece, huge battles and showdowns which are a joy to read. All of this is present in Railsea, so I was pleased to read it. I think it is also well targeted at its young adult audience, whereas I thought his children’s book Un Lun Dun may not have been. It is not my favourite of Miéville’s works, but he is one of my favourite authors writing today. I can’t wait to read whatever comes next. For those of you whose appetite has been whetted by my review, here is Covehithe , a short story published on The Guardian.

The Early Work of Philip K Dick Volume One: The Variable Man and Other Stories

From one sci-fi great to another, this time it’s Philip K Dick. This collection contains short stories from the first two years of his publishing career, 1952-53. They are not the polished science fiction he is known for, but they certainly touch on some of the themes familiar from his later work. It is an intriguing collection of stories; the quality can be, well, variable, but there are a lot of interesting ideas and some of these stories are very successful.

The collection is nicely published. The book has a good introduction (which does give away the first story, but not any others). It also has story notes at the back, with information about when they were published, and how they fit into his body of work. The stories range in length, beginning at only ten pages, while The Variable Man is almost a novella. I would expect they would be new to most people, except for Adjustment Team, which was made into a movie starring Matt Damon last year.

Some of the concerns of Dick’s later works are already cropping up. Robots feature prominently in many of these stories, as do post-nuclear societies. Some though are much more whimsical, such as Beyond The Door, which is about an overprotective cuckoo clock, of all things. One of the unfortunate things about science fiction is it can date rapidly, and Dick’s obsession with a futuristic Soviet threat is an example of this. Mind you, give the world another twenty years and maybe it won’t seem so!

There are some excellent stories in this collection. While sometimes you can see the twist at the ending coming a mile off, Dick knows how to deliver that twist with such panache it doesn’t matter. Even when a story as a whole doesn’t appeal, a scene or image can contain a spark of brilliance that hints at the mature writer he is becoming. Dick’s vision of a man wandering through an office building turning into dust around him in Adjustment Team is a great, creepy, piece of writing

The man slowly collapsed. He settled into a heap, a loose pile of gray ash. Dust. Particles. The two women dissolved when he touched them. Silently. They made no sound as they broke apart.

A favourite of mine is Beyond Lies the Wub, Dick’s first ever published story. It is very short, but a real gem. I don’t want to say too much about it, but it is available to read online and is well worth the time to read it. There were some that I enjoyed less; Of Withered Apples, about a young woman who becomes infatuated with a dangerous apple tree, was particularly weak.

Last year I read Embassytown by China Mieville, and The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Le Guin one after the other. Both books by great sci-fi authors, one newly published about colonialism and language, the other a classic exploring gender. It wasn’t planned, but they made an intriguing double bill. I feel I may have done Dick a disservice. I read this straight after reading The Dispossessed, also by Le Guin. While it is not about gender, feminism is present in the book. To go from that, to Dick’s (admittedly earlier) works I felt incredibly frustrated at his paper thin female characters. There are very few of them; his futures are all very patriarchal. Without exception, every female in this book is either weak or passive. This is part of what annoyed me so much to start with in Of Withered Apples - the story begins with a young woman requesting permission for a walk from her husband, by promising to be home in time to cook dinner. Urgh. On the other side, it adds to my appreciation of Le Guin’s work. While I think her books are anything but heavy handed, it does bring home the establishment she was reacting against. Dick’s stories are hardly unusual in this matter. It is merely a reflection of the society he was living in, but it still annoys me.

Feminist gripes aside this is a fine collection of stories. I’m no expert on Dick’s writing, but I could see the early traces of ideas explored in his later novels, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep being a particular example. It is also interesting seeing how his career got started. He was able to support himself publishing these stories in sci-fi magazines. While some literary journals still exist (McSweeney’s springs to mind), it is hard to imagine a writer financially supporting themselves from publishing in these. While many lament how the internet and text messaging are reducing our ability to digest longform writing, I wonder, how is our obsession with the novel hindering the careers of the novelists of tomorrow?

The Dispossessed, by Ursula K. Le Guin

Science fiction is often derided, seen as something appropriate to teenage boys. Perhaps the swathes of Star Wars fan-fiction on the sci-fi shelves in bookstores has something to do with that. However good science fiction can explore very complex ideas and themes that literary fiction struggles with. Like any genre it is a matter of knowing which authors to try, and who not to bother with. Ursula K. Le Guin is known to many people as the author of the popular Earthsea series they read as children, but she is also considered to be one of the great science fiction authors. Now that I’ve started reading her other books, I’m inclined to agree. While The Dispossessed is not my favourite amongst her novels, it is a worthwhile and thought provoking read.

The Dispossessed is one of the Hainish cycle: a series of works that take place in the same universe, though not on the same planet. The Left Hand of Darkness, one of her most well known works, is another of this series. The Dispossessed is set on the twin planetary system of Anarres and Urras. It is in many ways a thematic novel, rather than a character study, and explores as major themes anarcho-socialism, authoritarianism, time and metaphysics. The story centres itself around one major character called Shevek, a physicist from Anarres.

Roughly two hundred years before the start of this novel a group of anarchists on Urras, followers of the revolutionary Odo, were offered a permanent settlement on Anarres, which was only used as a mining base, thus removing their influence from Urras, and allowing the Odonians to create their vision of society. Contact between the planets has since been strictly limited. This changes when Shevek, a minor dissident on Anarres, is offered a posting at a university on Urras, where they want him to work on his principle of Simultaneity; a theory other physicists believe will be as important as the theory of relativity. Once on Urras, Shevek discovers he is not as free as he believed he would be. He finds himself a pawn in a political system he does not understand.

The beauty of Le Guin’s set up is she is able to explore two disparate political systems, and critique both. Anarres is run on a Anarcho-socialist basis with no political structures - decisions are made by consensus, by computers, or by temporary administrators; and no possessions - people are provided with what they need, but expected not to be greedy. Work is done for the collective good, and while people specialise, everyone is expected to contribute to jobs such as garbage collection in turn. If society is to function everyone must play their part. Urras has the capitalist society of A-Io, where Shevek lives. A-Io is also a patriarchal society; women do not work and appear to spend all their time looking beautiful for the men. No wonder Odo, a woman, started a revolution! This novel is sometimes subtitled An Ambiguous Utopia, as neither society is the utopia it could be perceived as. As Le Guin shows through the novel the collective society of Anarres exerts its own pressures, controlling the individual just as effectively as a state. Shevek, fleeing the pressures exerted on him as he parts from mainstream thought, believes he will find freedom and self-determination on Urras. However, everything in a capitalist society has a price.

One of the cleverest things about this book is its structure and how this interplays with Shevek’s theory of simultaneity. In explaining his theory Shevek makes the analogy of reading a book

The book is there, all at once, between its covers. But if you want to read the story and understand it, you must begin with the first page, and go forward, always in order.

That is to say, time is all there, at once, but we experience it by moving through it, chronologically. This book, though, is not written chronologically. The first and last chapters are set on Urras and Anarres both, with all other chapters alternating between one and the other, telling us both of Shevek’s present on Urras, and his past on Anarres, simultaneously. It is very clever, and I have to admit I missed it (thanks Wikipedia). Some people believe that it may even be unintentional, but Le Guin is clearly a clever and considered writer, surely she thought this through. The theories of physics in this book are integral to the plot. While Le Guin could have entirely fictionalised these, she instead grounds them in ideas that would be familiar to readers. She uses both the theory of relativity and Zeno’s paradox as starting points from which to explore her fictional ideas. I think this must be hard to write - she is after all a novelist, not a physicist - but she does it well. There is also a balance to be struck between exploring these ideas, and avoiding overwhelming the reader with scientific detail; once again I think Le Guin is successful.

While The Dispossessed is mainly a novel of ideas it does have successful characters. Shevek is engaging, both in exploring his new life, and back at home. He is likable, but, like the political ideals in this novel, flawed. The story of he and his partner Takver on Anarres provides a heart to this novel, preventing it from becoming a cold exploration of ideas. Finally, I hate to admit it, what stopped me truly loving this book was the ending, which felt, if not rushed, then perhaps just a little too tidy, preventing it from having the emotional cachet I expected. This is still, though, an excellent book, one that deserves its reputation as a classic of the genre.

The Island of Doctor Moreau, by H. G. Wells

After reading about fictional members of the Fabian Society I turned my thoughts to the fiction of a real life member; HG Wells was a radical thinker of his time, a socialist, Fabian, and eugenicist. He wrote many works of fiction and non-fiction, but is now mainly remembered for his science fiction works. The Island of Doctor Moreau is one of HG Wells’s most successful novels. It has been adapted many times into film versions with varying success. Like many early works of science fiction, and urban gothic novels such as Frankenstein, the ideas loom larger in public consciousness than the original text.

Shipwrecked on a remote island Edward Prendick finds himself in the company of Dr Moreau and his assistant Montgomery. At first he is happy to be offered their hospitality, but quickly develops a growing sense of unease over the mysterious happenings on the island, and the grotesque native inhabitants. He is provided with a room, which contains a mysterious locked door, from behind which emanates screams that torment Prendick. At first he believes it is a puma he can hear, but when the cries take on a more human aspect Prendick opens the door and discovers the truth: Dr Moreau is a vivisectionist. The island is inhabited by his experiments, animals that have been made into quasi-humans. With all memory of their animal past suppressed but not extinguished, Dr Moreau keeps his experiments in line with the Law, which dictates they cannot eat flesh, lap up water, or walk on all fours. Moreau is a godlike figure to them, who sees and hears all. However his experiments are all failures; in time the beast reasserts itself. Now a rebellious few have rediscovered the taste for meat. Moreau no longer has control over the inhabitants of his island..

The Island of Dr Moreau is narrated in first person by Prendick, in the form of a journal written at some later stage of his life. This was published by his nephew who found the documents after his death. It includes an introduction written by the nephew, informing us that the ship Prendick names was indeed wrecked, and that Prendick was found adrift at sea some eleven months after his disappearance. His initial ravings are dismissed as that of a man driven crazy, and subsequently he keeps quiet; the journal entry is the only explanation of this time Prendick has ventured. The nephew also confirms the existence of an island, later explored as uninhabited but populated by some unusual animals. This narrative style is common in books of the time; Frankenstein is narrated to a stranger who records the tale for his sister, Dracula is written in the form of diary entries and letters. By doing so the author conveys a sense of veracity: I do not make this up, I am merely the vehicle by which this strange and true tale is brought to you. In Doctor Moreau this style has another effect, as we know that Prendick escapes alive. We are never in suspense as to whether his life is seriously in jeopardy, therefore we are free to focus on the events themselves, and the ideas that are contained within them..

Doctor Moreau was published some forty years after The Origin of Species, and a little over twenty years after The Descent of Man. The idea of human evolution was still a recent and controversial idea. Indeed, some people still struggle with the concept. At a time when people still debated if different races were the same species, Wells published a novel exploring the bestial nature of humans. For that is what this book is truly about, not the failure of the animals to become human. Moreau himself is a nightmare, on the surface a civilised, rational, intelligent man, but he inflicts pain and terror on his creations, all in the pursuit of science. He states

‘I have never troubled about the ethics of the matter’.

However it is Moreau, in his contempt for his fellow human beings, who reveals the truth, ‘the mark of the beast’ that lives in all of us beneath the veneer of civilisation..

The novel reaches its climax in fighting between the animals and their creators, but as I have already said, we always know Prendick survives. The high point is the final chapter, where Wells finally explicitly reveals his theme: Prendick’s horror at finding himself in the company of humans again. In a few spine chilling paragraphs Wells deconstructs the societies we have created, asking the reader to question his own humanity, something that resonates now, but must have been truly shocking for its time. Like many of Wells’s books The Island of Doctor of Moreau is short, but the ideas are huge, and the prose clear and evocative. A deserved classic that should be remembered, and not as a silly Val Kilmer film.