The Quill & The Keyboard

Review; The Best of Henry Kuttner

2012-02-13T00:00:00.000-08:00

The Best of Henry Kuttner (1975)

Henry Kuttner was a remarkable science fiction writer with a quirky, broad repertoire that never failed to delight or surprise. This collection of short stories published between 1939 and 1955 is in no way exhaustive, but it does serve as an excellent introduction to the breadth of his talents. In here can be found what is probably his most famous story, "The Proud Robot", a couple of the marvelous Hogbens stories, the whimsical fantasy of "Housing Problem" and the bittersweet commentary on parenting, "Mimsy Were the Borogroves"

Reprinted recently as "The Last Mimsy", it is an excellent example of a bad movie acting as an excuse to republish a far superior book.

Translation

2012-02-10T00:00:00.000-08:00

Review: A Clash of Kings

2012-02-09T00:00:00.001-08:00

A Clash of Kings by George R R Martin (1998)

Here we see the Seven Kingdoms at war as Robb Stark declares himself King of the North and the brothers of the dead King Robert both declare themselves the true heirs to throne while denouncing the incest-sired bastard King Joffrey. Tyrian tries to keep Joffrey's follies from getting everyone in King's Landing killed, at the same time, Jon Snow is riding into the unknown of the North and across the seas, Queen Daenerys tries to keep her nomad kingdom together.

The second part of Martin's Song of Ice and Fire, we have all the strengths and weaknesses of part one, but with more of the weaknesses laid on. The main characters are still well drawn, but there are far too many of them and the secondary characters are a blurry mass. And there are those maddening parallel plots that seem be never destined to actually converge. Martin also has increasing trouble keeping so many balls in the air with plot lines chopping off, fading out and never coming to an adequate resolution. He even falls to the amateurish fault of reusing the same plot device over and over again. How many sudden rescues can there be in one story? And if you're going to get a character drunk to get the truth out of him, do it only once per series, please–not twice in the same book!

But the worst problem with A Clash of Kings is that it slowly (there's no other pace here) becomes obvious that Martin is aiming for quantity over quality. There is a lot of story here, but it isn't due to depth nor to complexity, but merely by layering character on character and storyline on storyline and then resolving never to move anything forward with any sort of speed. Thought there's a lot of fighting, intriguing, running about and simplistic brutality masquerading as realism, the plot hardly moves at all from chapter one to chapter 187,265. Worse, it promises to get even slower as Martin in future volumes apparently hits on the idea of not making the next but a continuance of the story, but more parallel plot lines to the ones in the previous book.

Any slower and this series will start to roll backwards.

Review: The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

2012-02-08T00:00:00.000-08:00

The Restaurant at the End of the Universe by Douglas Adams (1980)

Earthman Arthur Dent, his Betelgeusean friend Ford Prefect, ex-galactic president and con man Zaphod Beeblebrox, Zaphod's astrophysicist girlfriend Trillian and Marvin the Paranoid Android are a bit peckish after escaping certain death several times and decide to stop off for a bite to eat. Unfortunately, there plans are disrupted by an attack by a Vogon fleet, sidetracking to Ursa Major, getting dumped into the Total Perspective Vortex and meeting the ruler of the universe. They are, in other words, famished by the time they reach the titular eatery.

Then things get weird.

The second volume in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy trilogy in five parts, Restaurant is also the last volume to follow the BBC Four radio scripts as a guide. After this, it's all virgin territory. While very entertaining, Restaurant, isn't as uproariously funny as the first instalment and the jiggling and cutting from the radio scripts often only serves to show the superiority of the source material. It also suffers from the fact that Adams clearly intended the series to end here, but Fate and paperback sales said otherwise, so we end up with an ending that isn't really an ending. That does not, however, keep it from being a really hoopy read.

Review: Dying Inside

2012-02-07T00:00:00.000-08:00

Dying Inside by Robert Silverberg (1972)

This is the book that I keep pointing to after a disappointing half hour skimming the new sci fi books down the local book shops. This is the sort of book that is just not written today; a small story focusing on an individual caught up in a fantastic situation. There aren't any vampire armies here or invading alien fleets facing those of Earth. There aren't any parallel societies or huge societal changes. No galactic dynasties or... look at the shelves yourself and you'll see what I mean.

This is the story of David Selig; a middle-aged man in New York who makes his meagre living ghost writing term papers for students at Columbia University. He is down and out, lonely, disaffected–and he's telepathic. He's used his powers since childhood as a substitute for human contact. Why bother to connect with people when you can read their psyche like a railway timetable? He can touch people's minds and enjoy the heady ecstasy of seeing their souls. Unfortunately, as he hits his forties, Selig is starting to lose his powers. He is dying inside.

This is not a slam-bang adventure novel, nor is it filled with the sort of tropes that science fiction has been lumbered with since the genre started dying in the 1970s. This is a sort of Rake's Progress or mid-life crisis novel about what happens to a man whose gift has also been his curse who finds that gift starting to go away. It's also an interesting take on the idea of the superman where this particular superman discovers that his power is ruining his life because it utterly alienates him from his fellow man. Even when he learns that there are other telepaths in the world, he soon realises that even the most successful have shrivelled souls.

My recommendation put away your inch-thick "first volume of the ____ saga" where "Ensign ____ of the Family _____, who have protected the ______ Federation for eleventy generations must _____ her ______ as the feared _____ invade______ space" and pick up a book that actually has something that it wants to say. It's not the best sci fi ever written, but even forty years later, it is damned refreshing.

Review: Who?

2012-02-06T00:00:00.000-08:00

Who? by Algis Budrys (1958)

An American nuclear scientist is injured in an explosion near the Iron Curtain. A Soviet team responds and carries him over the border for medical attention. When he is released four months later, Allied intelligence are presented with a man with a stainless-steel skull, an artificial arm and a chest filled with mechanical organs. Is this Dr Lucas Martino? A Soviet agent? Who?

On the surface, Who? is a Cold War espionage novel revolving around the mystery of who the man with the metal head is. How, in the absence of the usual tests can his identity be established? He has no face, no teeth to match against dental records and his one remaining arm is certainly Martino's, but is the rest of the body his? How can you even question a man who doesn't react properly because his organs are now artificial? Worse, how far can security conciousness go before it becomes counter-productive? How much doubt is reasonable doubt? This works as a lightweight thriller and there's even a coy twist when we learn that the KGB mastermind is as equally worried about his Western counterpart as the other way around. However, Who? is a much deeper novel as it parallels the problem of who the mystery man is against the life of Dr Martino. In flashbacks, we see the maturing of a young genius as he follows a carefully thought-out career that leaves him little room for a personal life. As the story progresses, it soon becomes apparent that part of the reason this mystery exists is that before his accident Martino was already something of a cipher; a man as dedicated to his work as a thinking machine whose lack of friends and family make it so easy for him to vanish inside his steel shell.

Part spy story and part study about a man being forced to rediscover the life that he turned his back on and attempt to reconnect with a world he'd cut himself off from, Who? is another example of the sort of small sci fi stories that don't get written today.

Review: The Collected Editorials of John W Campbell

2012-01-18T00:00:00.000-08:00

The Collected Editorials of John W Campbell edited by Damon Knight (1966)

John W Campbell Jr was one of, if not the, major players in turning science fiction from just another pulp genre into a major branch of fantasy fiction. When he started editing Astounding Science Fiction magazine (later Analog: Science Fiction/Science Fact), science fiction was very much a "gee whiz" sort of reading, but under Campbell's direction and his careful cultivation of a stable of writers, he moulded the genre into something more mature, or at least, more competent.

One part of Campbell's method was to generate new ideas for writers to work on and part on this generation was Campbell's editorials where he would deliberately make outrageous and provocative statements in order to stimulate debate. Campbell had great fun showing that black was white, up was down and then defying his readers (and prospective writers) to rise to the bait. The only problem was that Campbell was also a man of very strong and often eccentric opinions and it in reading his editorials it's hard to tell what is rhetoric and what is Campbell's real opinion.

These editorials from the late '50s and early '60s are a valuable collection of fascinating writing that would have otherwise have been restricted to the browning pages of pulp magazines. In here we see Campbell's worship of science combined with his paradoxical suspicion that science was dominated by blinkered fogies who refused to see any new discovery until they were bludgeoned over the head with it. There's some wonderful arguing going on here, but bear in mind this is also a man who firmly believed in psionics, anti-gravity and various quack cures and thought it was only hide-bound conservatism that kept them from respectability. He's also the man who helped launched Dianetics, though he distanced himself from it once it became too mad, and championed the Dean Drive until it proved an obvious failure.

Take along a large grain of salt and give this one a look in.

Review: A Princess of Mars

2012-01-17T00:00:00.000-08:00

A Princess of Mars (1917) by Edgar Rive Burroughs

Sometime after the American Civil War, Virginia gentleman and soldier of fortune John Carter is prospecting for gold out west when he set upon by an Apache war party. Taking refuge in a cave, something inside frightens the Indians off and Carter is transported to the planet Mars by some mysterious agency. He is captured by the Tharks, the four-armed, gigantic green men of Mars. Carter's courage combined with his much stronger Earth muscles impress the warlike Tharks and Carter's victories in combat quickly raise him to the rank of Chieftain. When the Tharks capture the far more human and lovely Princess Dejah Thoris of Helium, Carter finds a new purpose in life and dedicates himself to her rescue and protection.

A Princess of Mars is Edgar Rice Burrough's other great series. Though less well known to the general public than his Tarzan stories, the Barsoom (after the native word for Mars) series has been a perennial favourite for almost a century. Those who have been raised on Star Trek and Star Wars may be put off at first by a science fiction adventure where the hero wields a rapier and rides a six-legged Thoat, but Burroughs has created a world perfectly suited to the needs of romance and adenture. Taking his cue from Percival Lowell's writings about Mars, Burrough's Barsoom is a dying world where the population is shrinking as the water evaporates into space and the atmosphere is kept by huge air generating plants. The great old cities long abandoned, new city sates have sprung up along the canals used to keep the southern regions fertile and hoards of green barbarians ride across the mossy bottoms of the ancient oceans. Despite and advanced technology, the inhabitants prefer to fight with swords instead of their radium pistols because combat is first about population control and only secondly about settling disputes.

It's also a world that suits John Carter; a chivalrous southern gentleman whom the world has passed by. On Barsoom, he finds foes to battle, wrongs to write, and a beautiful princess to woo and win. This he manages through a thrilling series of marches and counter-marches where the newly-arrived Virginian must battle his own ignorance of local languages and customs as well as the dastardly villains who oppose him.

The character of John Carter isn't as well done as Tarzan, but then Burroughs did have a world to describe as well while Tarzan kicked about in a Jungle on familiar planet Earth. Wasting a bit of effort on the odd thoat.

Review: Casino Royale

2012-01-13T00:00:00.000-08:00

Casino Royale by Ian Fleming (1953)

James Bond, secret agent on Her Majesty's Secret Service is in the past-its-prime northern French town of Royale-Les-Eaux playing baccarat at Casino Royale. Though he is a professional gambler who uses his winnings to allow him to live in a style that his Secret Service pay can't afford, he's on other business now. A Soviet paymaster, Le Chiffre, is running a baccarat game in hopes of recouping the money he embezzled and lost before his KGB masters realise what has happened and have him liquidated. Bond's mission is to see that he doesn't succeed, thus eliminating a KGB agent and discrediting the Communist trade union that Le Chiffre supports. Helping him is fellow agent Vesper Lynd, Deuxième Bureau official Mathus and CIA agent Felix Leiter. None of this is enough because in the end it all rests on Bond's ability to ride the luck of the cards. And even if he wins, the battle is just beginning.

The first of the James Bond novels, this is the one where we're introduced to 007–a number that today is steeped in romance, but which to Bond means that he merely killed two men in the line of duty. This is certainly not the Bond of the film series,who is much more of a fantasy figure. This Bond has many more doubts, is less insolent and even in the first book is so tired of the spy game that he's considering chucking it all in. That being said, he's still Bond; resourceful, charming and brave. He is also a much harder man than his cinematic counterpart and his sexual conquests are as likely to end in tears as passion.

But even from the start this is Bond is Bond. Even though Ian Fleming only took three months to write Casino Royale, he had carefully thought out Bond as well as supporting characters like M and Leiter. Bond is a combination of various agents and characters that Fleming had known during his years with British Naval Intelligence mixed in with his own tastes and habits. It's telling that where Bond survives to this day, those habits did for Fleming at the age of 56. It's also an interesting point that the plot of Casino Royale was based on a real life experience where Fleming tried bankrupt an enemy agent at baccarat, except in that case Fleming lost his shirt.

What is fascinating about this novel is how mundane all the high living seems. Casino Royale is a has been gambling spot trying to regain its glory and though Bond does wine and dine Vesper Lynd on caviare, one of the most exotic dishes he indulges in was an avocado. It's easy to forget that this book was written almost sixty years ago in a world that was much poorer and in a Britain that was still living under rationing. In those days, even for the upper middle class a holiday at a run down Normandy resort eating oily avocados and rubbing shoulders with bland gamblers would have seemed as exotic as the headiest jet-setting crowd of ten years later.

In the end, one comes away from this book with two important insights: First, that the Vesper sounds good on paper,but tastes like lighter fluid in real life and second, if you are a man, you will never be able to look at a carpet beater in an antique shop again without wincing and crossing your legs.

Review: Planet of the Apes

2012-01-12T00:00:00.000-08:00

Planet of the Apes (AKA La Planète des Singes) by Pierre Boulle (1963)

In the year 2500, journalist Ulysse Mérou joins a three-man expedition on the first flight to another star system. Mérou and his companions Professor Antelle and physicist Arthur Levain travel to a star system 350 light years from Earth, but by travelling at relativistic speeds, they've aged only about a year despite their centuries long voyage. Taking a shuttle down to the surface of an Earth-like planet, they are attacked by the mute, primitive humanoid inhabitants, who rip their clothes to shreds and destroy their landing craft. If being marooned wasn't bad enough, the explorers are set upon by the true masters of the; intelligent apes, who kill Levain in a hunt and capture Mérou, sending him to an animal behaviour laboratory run by a Chimpanzee named Zira.

Yes, it's the plot of the 1968 adaptation by 20th Century Fox that, at least in its basic premise, follows Boulle's novel fairly closely. However, where the film version's script by Rod Serling and Michael Wilson was a science fiction adventure laced with stinging social commentary, Boulle's Planet is a Swifitan satire that uses science fiction as a convenient plot device. In the film, the ape society is a relatively primitive one with hints of having bits of a more sophisticated culture handed down to it, but in the novel the apes live in a modern, technological world that is an obvious fun house mirror version of 1963 France. Also, the conflict is entirely different and Mérou, though in danger from the blinkered Dr Zaius isn't in immediate danger as is able to explore the planet like a latter day Gulliver in a land of the degenerate humans standing in for the yahoos and the apes for the Houyhnhnms. What is interesting about this upside down society is something that is only hinted at in the film; the ape society is merely a distorted imitation of the earlier human one it displaced. The apes are merely "aping" their former masters and Boulle is saying that there are very few creative people and the rest of human society are simply imitators. In Dr Zaius he's also taking a dig at the French academy system, though I would have thought that by the '60s this was already flogging a dead orang-outang.

Not as intensely dramatic as the film, it stands up very well on its own merits. I give it three bananas.

Review: The Man of Bronze

2012-01-11T00:00:00.000-08:00

The Man of Bronze by Lester Dent (AKA Kenneth Robeson) (1933)
Clark "Doc" Savage, Jr and his five companions Monk, Ham, Long Tom, Renny and Johnny are mourning the sudden death of Doc's father from a mysterious tropical illness. However, things become complicated when a sniper tries to kill Doc by shooting at him through the window of his study on the 86th floor of the Empire State Building. This and other attempts on his life lead Doc and his friends on a chase to the Central American country of Hildalgo where they discover a lost Mayan civilisation and Doc's incredible legacy.

In 1933, Street & Smith were flush with the success of The Shadow magazine, a pulp spin-off of the popular radio series of the same name. Hoping to keep the trend going, they thought up a new hero, Doc Savage, who would be to the Shadow what Superman would be to Batman. Where the Shadow is mysterious and potentially deadly character of the city, Doc Savage would be a larger than life superman who roamed the world battling evil in exotic locales. Throw in Doc's stalwart "brain trust" of simian chemist Monk, dapper lawyer Hamm, electrical wizard Long Tom, Engineer Renny and archaeologist Johnny; add a formula of our heroes on the trail of a mysterious treasure while fighting baddies and you have a recipe that would keep boys coming back to the news stand until the bottom fell out of the pulp market in the 1950s.

Boys is the operative word here. The prolific Lester Dent, who wrote under the house name of Kenneth Robeson so that the magazine would always seem to be written by the same man even if Dent quit, understood his audience and their parents. The Man of Bronze is filled with blood and thunder of fights, shoot outs, escapes and tight spots galore. However, to please worried mothers, Doc Savage and his friends were always virtuous to a fault, never killed anyone–at least, not directly–and Doc method of maintaining his incredible mind and physique were explained in a way that encouraged readers to study and exercise daily.

As to characters, what you see in The Man of Bronze is exactly what would be there for the next twenty years with all the character work being repeated literally word for word from one issue to the next. And while there are women in the story, the reader is assured time and again that there won't be any "mushy stuff".

Dent knew his audience.

We're back... Sort of.

2012-01-06T11:42:00.001-08:00

Good news: The internet connection is finally fixed and I'm back on line. The bad news: I have insane deadlines over the weekend thanks to all the disruptions.

Back Tuesday.

Author of the year

2011-12-29T00:33:00.000-08:00

George R R Martin chosen Author of the year by USA Today.

Slow Week

2011-12-26T23:19:00.000-08:00

We have family visiting Chez Szondy this week at the same time I'm facing a string of deadlines that Christmas has already kept me away from for too long. Therefore, though I'll be posting the usual video features on Ephemeral Isle, other posts will be as and when I can find time.

Normal service will resume as soon as possible.

Happy Christmas

2011-12-25T00:00:00.000-08:00

Happy Christmas

from

The Quill & The Keyboard

Back after Boxing Day

Review: The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle

2011-12-23T00:00:00.001-08:00

"The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle" by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1892)

In some households, Christmas is marked by reading Dickens's "A Christmas Carol". Others with "The Gift of the Magi" and some by opening up a traditional ghost story. At Chez Szondy, we celebrate the Yuletide with "The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle".

I feel that this is appropriate, not only a proper Christmas story, but the season also looms large in Sherlock Holmes lore. It was in the Beeton's Christmas Annual of 1887 that A Study in Scarlet was published and it was in the Christmas issue of The Strand in 1893 that Watson's editor, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, tried to kill off Holmes at the Reichenbach Falls. In "The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle", Christmas has Holmes and Watson by the throat. Watson visits Holmes at their old digs at 221B Baker Street to pay the detective the compliments of the season only to find Holmes intently studying a battered old hat. This had been lost by a man who'd been set upon by roughs in Tottenham Court Road along with a fine Christmas goose. The commissionaire who witnessed the scuffle and the fleeing of both the roughs and the man found himself in the possession of hat and goose and took them to Holmes because he knew that the detective found even the smallest problems of interest. In the interest of waste not, want not, Holmes told the commissionaire to keep the goose for his family's Christmas dinner while Holmes retained the hat.

Naturally, Holmes is able to deduce all manner of things about the headgear, but what he couldn't deduce was that the commissionaire would find a fabulous jewel in the crop of the goose–a jewel that had been a sensation since its disappearance earlier in the week. The question is, how did it come to be inside the bird and what did the owner of the hat have to do with it? What follows is a tale of Holmes and Watson descending into the would of London poulterers as they retrace the goose's career.

"The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle" is one of the best written, certainly one of the most charming of the Sherlock Holmes stories. Never mind that many over the years have delighted in picking apart Holmes's hat deductions. They were never meant to stand up to serious examination in the fist place, since they were merely a literary device to convince the reader of his analytical powers, They serve their purpose and serve it well and Holmes uncovering the secret of Mr Henry Baker's life from the stains and dust on his hat are a classic of the mystery genre.

Beyond that, we have what truly makes the Holmes stories unique. In this adventure, we have on display Conan Doyle's spare, economical writing style that has held up so well after over one and a quarter centuries. He brings Victorian London to life so well that the modern capital can't compete with it for all its wifi hot spots and bicycle lanes and glass gherkins. It is a live, vivid city that we feel that we are truly visiting.

And, of course, there is the friendship between Holmes and Watson that is the foundation of the stories and what keeps drawing us back. See the two in a Christmas settings is a cozy, reassuring episode that ends with a neat little dispensation of justice, Yule spirit and another mystery with a bird as the centrepiece.

Happy Christmas from The Quill & The Keyboard.

Review: A Game of Thrones

2011-12-22T00:00:00.000-08:00

A Game of Thrones by George R R Martin (1996)

Winter is coming, but the Seven Kingdoms don't seem very bothered about it. While the men of the Black Watch stare at the northern wastes and its unknown dangers from their gigantic wall of ice, the lords of the kingdoms to the south play at a game of thrones to determine who will rule over the others. For 15 years after slayer the Mad King, King Robert has sat on the Iron Throne, but the mysterious death of his first minister, the King's Hand, as set into motion events that will through the realm into civil war. Caught in the middle of this is Robert's old friend Lord Eddard Stark, who is selected to replace his dead predecessor. It's an unwelcome appointment, as Eddard would rather remain in his home of Winterfell with his family and he finds that Robert is not the man he used to be. Worse, Eddard and the entire Stark family soon find themselves caught in a web of mystery and intrigue as Eddard tries to get to the bottom of what is going on while keeping his honour and those he loves safe.

A Game of Thrones is the first volume of George R R Martin's A Song of Fire and Ice series. As such, it is the sort of book I dislike on first principles. I'm never keen on airport doorstop novels and have little relish for ploughing through 700 pages only to discover that it ends with "To be continued" I dislike it even more when the series is still continuing after five massive volumes. Either Martin has an incredible plot mapped out in great detail or he's winging it and I'd hate to have to flip 30,000 pages to find a train wreck at the end.

That being said, Thrones is a definite improvement on the HBO series that it spawned. Where the television incarnation is confusing and I often felt like I'd forgotten to bring my study guide, the novel delves far enough into back story and the characters to clue me in on the plot. It also makes more sense because the story telling is tighter, there's no budget to restrict the action and the book is mercifully free of gratuitous naked boobies and homoerotic shaving scenes.

It's not badly written. In fact, Martin's style is disciplined and his main characters are nicely handled, though second tier cast and below blur together in a maddening fashion. The main problem is that there is just too much going on and much of it is needless. There are entire plots that have nothing to do with the main action and could easily have been dropped. Others are like over-laboured set ups that could have been achieved much more economically with a few lines of dialogue and one is merely distracting. This is a pity because Martin's main plot lines are very good. What he should have done is taken one of the plots, Eddard's or that of the dwarf Tyrion (the only really interesting character) and used that as the basis of a single, smaller book. I'd have been happy to read a 200 page novel about Eddard's mystery solving or Tyrion's attempts to stay alive in hostile territory, but mashed together with a load of filler until it tips out at 750 pages? No, thank you.

Some might council patience and point out that it's part of a larger story like The Lord of the Rings. To this, I'd remind them that LOTR was one book broken into three by the publisher and that even in a multi-volume series it is reasonable to expect each one to be self-standing. Cliff hangers are fine, but wondering what the deuce dragon girl has to do with anything else in the story is too much, sorry.

The best take on the whole thing, a coffee stand sign I saw that said, "Winter is coming–So, why not warm up with an egg nog latte?" Every problem is an opportunity.

The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle

2011-12-21T00:00:00.000-08:00

Review: Wilt

2011-12-20T11:52:00.000-08:00

Wilt by Tom Sharpe (1976)

Henry Wilt is unhappy. After ten years of trying to teach English literature to day-release apprentices in classes like Meat One and Plasterers Two, he's fed up. He's a good teacher, but hasn't a chance of getting anywhere because the nitwits who run the college are desperate to get the place upgraded to a poly, so they're only interested in promoting post-modern poseurs who can't string together a coherent sentence. Worse, Wilt is married to Eva, a large woman of even larger enthusiasms who throws herself so completely into whatever she does that she can turn a flower arranging class into a threat to life and limb. Seeing his life sinking deeper and deeper into a grey mass of unchanging attempts at having something like a peaceful home life while trying to get gas fitters interested in Shane, Wilt tries to console himself as he walks the dog with fantasies of murdering his wife.

Then Eva meets a sophisticated American couple who seems to be everything she yearns for, but it's a meeting that results in Wilt being arrested for murder and the start of a nightmare–for the police inspector who arrests him.

Tom Sharpe is one of those authors who is very hard to explain in summary. His novels are always gut-bustingly funny with passages that leave the reader literally breathless with laughter, but his humour works by the build up of a carefully constructed farce. Wilt's attempt to dispose of a rubber sex doll is uproariously funny, but it's impossible to explain why. You have to read it yourself to get the build up to the climax. The same goes for the sequence of events that lead to Inspector Flint looking at his pork pie and realising that he may be an accessory after the fact to a murder.

What can be said is that Wilt is arguably Sharpe's best novel. His creation of Henry Wilt is a masterpiece of an Everyman who sees his life slipping away from him on a daily basis, yet comes to discover hidden talents in himself that ultimately allow him to overcome all obstacles. His wife, Eva, is equally well written. As Wilt describes her,

Eva is not forceful. She is a force. There's a difference. And as for character, she has so many and they're so varied it"s difficult to keep up with them all. Let's just say she throws herself into whoever she is with an urgency and compulsiveness that is not always appropriate. You remember that series of Garba pictures they showed on TAI some years back? Well, Eva was La Dame Aux Camelias for three days after that and she made dying of TB look like St Vitus' dance. Talk about galloping consumption.

They are a perfect match for one another and when they are unleashed, woe to the world.

The other thing that is delightful about Sharpe is that he is so gloriously un-PC. Having been deported from South Africa during the Apartheid era, he saw up close and personal what mental conformity looked like and has no truck with it. In Wilt, as in his other novels, he takes great delight in skewering targets on the Left and Right, but takes particular pleasure in going for the soft targets of liberal pretence and hypocrisy. This is probably the reason why his books, though still in print, don't get the recognition they deserve.

Something Henry Wilt would understand.

Review: The Science of Sherlock Holmes

2011-12-19T00:00:00.000-08:00

The Science of Sherlock Holmes by E J Wagner

Sherlock Holmes is regarded as the world's greatest detective. More than that, he is that rare instance of a fictional character who has not only become a household word, not only become a part of popular culture and folklore, but has joined that elite group of characters whom many people firmly believe really existed. Dr Watson's accounts of his exploits, edited by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, are wonderful stories filled with adventure and the portrayal of a remarkable friendship, but they are also a primer of logical thinking and of proper crime detecting methods. Indeed, much of modern police work can be traced back to Sherlock Holmes. Therefore, a book about the science of Holmes would be a fascinating exploration of both the Holmesian Canon and forensic investigation.

Unfortunately, this book is not it. The Science of Sherlock Holmes is a major disappointment. Far from examining the science behind Sherlock Holmes, Miss Wagner merely uses the great detective as a framing device for a book that is little more than a potted and very superficial history of forensic science. We are introduced to fingerprinting, the acid bath murders, Crippen, and the usual assortment of the lurid and the mundane, but it is territory that has been ploughed much more deeply and thoroughly by better writers and using the gimmick of referring occasionally to Holmes before dancing off to talk about blood stains does a disservice to both topics.

Interview: Harlan Ellison

2011-12-16T00:00:00.000-08:00

Harlan Ellison

2011-12-15T08:59:00.000-08:00

Frederick Pohl looks at science fictions perpetual enfant terrible, Harlan Ellison.

Review: Kalin

2011-12-14T00:00:00.000-08:00

Kalin by E C Tubb

In his endless search for his home planet Earth, Earl Dumarest manages to forget the lost of his first love Derai when he meets a troubled woman named Kalin, who has the ability to see into the future. Lost in a life bubble after surviving a botched hijacking attempt that destroys the ship they were travelling on, Dumarest and Kalin are rescued by a slaver. Though Dumarest has enough money to keep them from being sold on the auction block, they instead find themselves dropped on the planet Chron; a miserable mining planet where the mines run on slave labour and there is no other way to earn a living. Dumarest must find a way to keep both himself and his new love alive while finding a way off the planet. Meanwhile, on another planet, the Cyclan sends one of their order to offer his services to a local noble, despite the fact that their world is too poor to afford their services. What is it that they seek there?

The fourth book in the Dumarest Saga, this is where the series settles down into the pattern it will maintain from now on. With less of an emphasis on intrigue than on a plot revolving around survival in various forms, Kalin is a simple, harsh story with moments of real tension when it seems that Dumarest is well and truly screwed for good. More important, up until now, the relationship between Dumarest and the Cyclan has been one of mere mutual hatred–the Cyclan have killed those Dumrest loved and tried to kill him repeatedly, while he has been a thorn in the order's side. By the end of this book, this changes when Dumarest comes into possession of a secret that the Cyclan want desperately and will stop at nothing to recover. After this, Dumarest's quest becomes a chase as well. Also, we learn more about the benevolent Brotherhood, who become allies of Dumarest in his adventures, though only as far their code permits. Nevertheless, we get more insights into their organisation and another dimension is added to the saga.

This novel not only marks a turning point in the saga, but it is also the one where Tubb reveals a greater love and command of the English language. His descriptions become more on the mark and the world that forms the backdrop to Dumarest's adventures becomes more vivid and even stark at times. It is here that the saga really begins.

Review: The Road to Wigan Pier

2011-12-13T00:00:00.000-08:00

The Road to Wigan Pier by George Orwell (1937)

A remarkable thing about Orwell's writing is that even his prose rises so easily to the level of literature. The Road to Wigan Pier is, at the end of the day, a work of sociology and a polemic call to action. Orwell's concise yet evocative style provides a moving account of working class life in the coal mines and industrial cities of Northern England in the 1930s. In fact, he does such a good job that anyone who pounds the table about poverty in Britain after 1955 looks like a fool to anyone who recalls the true privations and hardships that Orwell so movingly records

The second half of the book has dated very badly. There Orwell gives a very open and honest account of why he became a Socialist, his idea of a proper Socialist society and what he thinks of fellow Socialists who are little more than poseurs and opportunists. It's reasonably thought out, though one is astonished that Orwell seemed to regard the economy as a zero-sum game and it never occurred to him that the way to raise the poor out of their misery was largely a matter of making everyone more prosperous. The idea of wealth creation never seems to have crossed his mind.

Worse, after over seventy years, we have a tremendous wealth of hindsight with which to judge the Socialist experiment; how it has been an abject failure across the board resulting in everything bankrupt welfare states at one end and murderous Communist and Fascist regimes at the other. It is tragic that Orwell never saw that what he regarded as aberrations of Socialism were, in fact, the core of an ideology that did not understand human nature, never delivered what it promised and proved a ready-made template for every busybody, bureaucrat or totalitarian who craved more power.

The ironic thing is that Orwell did actually see one great truth, but he never recognised it as truth. He observed that the working classes saw Socialism as being nothing more than being allowed to live their lives as they'd always lived them, holding on to the ideals, beliefs and institutions that they loved and were familiar with, but where they were paid more, worked less and treated decently. Ironically, that's all they did want, expected to receive when the Welfare State reared up, and what they were denied as the Socialists unveiled their contempt for Britain, her history and her people as the old Establishment died and the New Political Class rose in its place; a class that looks more like something out of a couple of Mr Orwell's later, more prophetic books. This is why so many in Britain today see the fruits of Socialism as making Britons feel like strangers in there own country.

Perhaps someone needs to make take another trip along that road to find that elusive pier.

Stephen Fry on language

2011-12-12T00:00:00.000-08:00