Category: Science Fiction

The Invisible Man by H G Wells

Published on by Margaret6 Comments

The Invisible Man is my Classics Club spin book The rules of the Spin are that this was the book for me to read by 3rd March 2024 and I did. In fact I finished it about two weeks early and only got round to writing about it a few days ago. The Invisible Man was first published in 1897, a science fiction novel, originating in Pearson’s Weekly. But it was not quite what I expected. And I certainly didn’t expect it to turn into slapstick comedy.

Synopsis from Amazon

‘The man’s become inhuman … He has cut himself off from his kind. His blood be upon his own head.’

One night in the depths of winter, a bizarre and sinister stranger wrapped in bandages and eccentric clothing arrives in a remote English village. His peculiar, secretive activities in the room he rents spook the locals. Speculation about his identity becomes horror and disbelief when the villagers discover that, beneath his disguise, he is invisible.

Griffin, as the man is called, is an embittered scientist who is determined to exploit his extraordinary gifts, developed in the course of brutal self-experimentation, in order to conduct a Reign of Terror on the sleepy inhabitants of England. As the police close in on him, he becomes ever more desperate and violent.

In this pioneering novella, subtitled ‘A Grotesque Romance’, Wells combines comedy, both farcical and satirical, and tragedy – to superbly unsettling effect. Since its publication in 1897, The Invisible Man has haunted not only popular culture (in particular cinema) but also the greatest and most experimental novels of the twentieth century.

My thoughts

Griffin, a scientist, is a stranger to the village of Iping in West Sussex, staying at the Coach and Horses Inn. His story is a sad one. Whilst experimenting he has managed to make himself invisible, and dresses from top to toe in clothes, which even in winter makes him stand out from the crowd. Everything he does leads everyone to wonder what is wrong with him and draws attention to himself. What follows grows in intensity, as Griffin causes first confusion, then panic and finally madness. There’s a lot of shouting, pushing and fighting and surprisingly (to me at any rate) quite a lot of comedy – after all the invisible man is as naked as a new born baby.

I enjoyed it. There’s not much to the plot, it’s mainly a character study really, but what an amazing personality. And being invisible is not what he had thought – having to walk around with no shoes or socks on, especially in winter is not funny, neither is the sight of undigested food floating around mid-air. But it is worse than that because Griffin is only at the start of his escapade. By the end he is stark staring bonkers. Wells demonstrates the dangers of using science beyond control. Griffin has succeeded in lowering the refractive index of his body to make it invisible – ‘Either a body absorbs light or reflects it, or refracts it, or does all these things. If it neither refracts nor absorbs light, it cannot of itself be visible.’

Sadly, the end is all violence and drama!

Two Novellas in Now and Forever by Ray Bradbury:#NovNov22

Published on by Margaret2 Comments

HarperVoyager| 25 June 2012| 240 page| e-book| 4*

Now and Forever is the first book by Ray Bradbury that I’ve read. It contains two novellas – Somewhere a Band is Playing, in which a young writer discovers that all is not as it seems in a nostalgic community, and Leviathan ’99, a retelling of Moby Dick set in space. Two very different stories, each one fascinating, and both with a long history, as Bradbury wrote each one over several decades. They contrast both in style and content. I enjoyed both, but Leviathan ’99 is my favourite.

In the first, Somewhere a Band is Playing, (102 pages) a reporter James Cardiff arrives in Summerton, a small town in the middle of Arizona, a town which seems perfect, a quiet peaceful place. He can hear in the air the quiet sound of a band playing. But the more he explores the more mysterious Summerton becomes. For one thing there are no children and no hospitals or doctors because no one gets ill and even stranger the graves in the cemetery are empty. The story has a nostalgic feel, a sense of melancholy and myth as James, under the guidance of a beautiful young woman, Nefertiti, discovers the truth about Summerton.

Bradbury’s introduction to Somewhere a Band is Playing explains that he begun writing a screenplay and short story about a small town somewhere in the desert and how he had kept encountering Katharine Hepburn either in person or on the screen and was attracted by the fact that she remained youthful throughout the years. Then in 1956 she had made the film Summertime and this had led him to put her at the centre of a story and so Somewhere a Band is Playing slowly evolved. Another element of the story came when he saw the film, The Wind and the Lion and was so taken with the score that he wrote a long poem based on the enchanting music. He then put these elements together to produce this novella, which he dedicated to Anne Hardin, who had encouraged his work and to Katharine Hepburn.

Leviathan ’99’ (101 pages) is dedicated to Herman Melville because after spending a year writing the screenplay for John Huston’s Moby Dick he’d fallen under the spell of Melville and his ‘leviathan whale’. Bradbury then wrote his first script of Leviathan ’99’, which was eventually produced by BBC Radio in London, then as a longer version as a play in 1972. Finally thirty years later he finished writing it as a novella as his ‘final effort to focus and revitalize what began as a radio dream.’

I haven’t read Moby Dick, but I enjoyed this story about spaceships instead of sailing ships, mad astronaut captains instead of seafaring captains and the blind white comet instead of the great white whale. It’s set in 2099 and begins as Ishmael, an astronaut joins the Cetus 7, the largest interstellar ship ever built. The spaceship is on a mission, travelling beyond the stars. His cubicle roommate is Quell, a seven feet tall, green spider who is a telepath. The captain is mad, obsessed with finding the comet, Leviathan, the largest comet in history that had blinded him thirty years earlier. As Quell described it ‘the universe set off a light-year of immensity of photographic flash. God blinked and bleached the captain to this colour of sleeplessness and terror.’

It is an incredible achievement transposing Melville’s 19th century epic into a hundred page novella set in the future.

The Passengers by John Marrs

Published on by Margaret4 Comments

The passengers

 

The Passengers by John Marrs paints a scary picture of the future and I began to wonder whether this could actually happen one day as driverless cars become more advanced.

As I read it reminded me of those debates we had at school – about a hot air balloon which is losing height rapidly and will soon crash because it is overweight. The solution is to get rid of some of the passengers to enable the others to survive. Each passenger has to put forward a persuasive case as to why they should survive.

In The Passengers driverless cars have been developed to Level Five, with no steering wheels, pedals or a manual override option. A Hacker has taken over control of the cars, set them on a collision course, and tells each passenger that the destination they programmed into their GPS has been replaced with an alternative location. In approximately two hours time they are going to die. They are trapped inside unable to contact the outside world.

Meanwhile Libby Dixon has been selected for service on a Vehicle Inquest Jury, assessing liability for accidents involving driverless cars. Libby hates the way these cars are becoming the norm and she has reason to do so – but we only discover why much later on the book. So she is not comfortable with what she is forced to do and is determined to challenge decisions when she doesn’t agree with the other jurists’ verdict. The Hacker interrupts their proceedings and they are told that only one passenger can be saved. They have to talk to each passenger before deciding who is to be saved. In addition the whole thing is being broadcast and the public also has a vote. The passenger with the most votes will be spared when the cars collide.

This raises all sorts of issues as details of each of the passengers lives are made public – but are they all what or who they seem?  The passengers are: a TV star, a pregnant young woman, a disabled war hero, an abused wife fleeing her husband, an illegal immigrant, a husband and wife – and parents of two – who are travelling in separate vehicles and a suicidal man.

The tension rises, as the passengers’ private lives are exposed and moral and ethical questions about race, gender, immigration, religion and age are all scrutinised. I was expecting a particular twist in the plot and it came – but not when I thought it would! There were plenty of twists and surprises to follow before the book came to an end.

The Passengers is a shocking book. I found it riveting, even if it is preposterous, and sinister with a frightening view of the future that may not be that ridiculous. It kept me glued to the page right to the end.

  • Format: Kindle Edition
  • File Size: 21081 KB
  • Print Length: 406 pages
  • Publisher: Ebury Digital (1 April 2019)
  • Source: I bought it
  • My rating: 5*

The Time Machine by H G Wells

Published on by Margaret5 Comments

This morning the clocks went forward – does that mean we lost an hour? Quite by coincidence yesterday I read The Time Machine – it seems apt!

The Time Traveller has gathered together a group of his friends, who have names such as the Psychologist, the Editor, the Provincial Mayor and so on. First of all he treats them to an explanation of time – of how it is the fourth dimension, ‘with Time as only a kind of Space.’ He then tells them that he intends to explore time in a machine he has invented that transports him back and forth in time.

And to prove it he travels to the future – specifically to the year 802,701 where humanity has evolved into the Eloi, who are pretty little childlike people, strict vegetarians who live above ground and the Morlocks, bleached, obscene nocturnal beings who live underground. Their society is divided between these two – industry being carried out underground by the Morlocks and the Eloi above pursing pleasure and comfort.

On his return he describes his adventures. He was:

 … in an amazing plight. His coat was dusty and dirty and smeared with green down the sleeves; his hair disordered, and as it seemed to me greyer – either with dust or dirt of because its colour had actually faded. His face was ghastly pale; his chin had a brown cut on it – a cut half-healed; his expression was haggard and drawn, as if by intense suffering. … He walked with just such a limp as I have seen in footsore tramps. (page 15)

Whilst describing what happened to him the Time Traveller comments on the society he encountered. At first he thought it was a social paradise, but soon he realised the truth, that the perfection of comfort and security had actually resulted in the weakening of society with no need to struggle for survival or for work. And the truth about the relationship between the Eloi and Morlocks was devastating!

In addition he had soon realised that he had gone into the future particularly ill-equipped – without anything to protect himself, without medicine and without anything to smoke, or even without enough matches! And no camera:

If only I had thought of a Kodak! I could have flashed that glimpse of the Under-world in a second, and examined it at leisure. But, as it was, I stood there with only the weapons and the powers that Nature had endowed me with – hand, feet, and teeth; these, and the four safety matches that still remained to me. (page 69)

I was struck by Wells’s descriptions of the divisions in society between the Haves and the Have-nots and the conditions of the working class as a result of industrialisation in his own time, citing the new electric railways, the Metropolitan Railway in London, the subways and underground workrooms and restaurants:

Even now, does not an East-end worker live in such artificial conditions as practically to be cut off from the natural surface of the earth?

Again, the exclusive tendency of richer people – due, no doubt, to the increasing refinement of their education, and the widening gulf between them and the rude violence of the poor – is leading to the closing, in their interest, of considerable portions of the surface of the land. About London, for instance, perhaps half of the prettier country is shut in against intrusion. (page 62)

So, The Time Machine, which was first published in 1895, is a work of imagination and an early example of science fiction, but it is also a commentary on late 19th century society and a vehicle for H G Well’s views on socialism and industrialisation.

It’s a book I’ve had for a couple of years and so qualifies for the Mount TBR Reading Challenge and after I finished it I realised that it also fits in the ‘Time’ category for the What’s In a Name? Challenge too.

2014 Sci-Fi Experience Wrap-Up

Published on by Margaret2 Comments

Carl’s Science-Fiction Experience came to an end on 31 January. I enjoyed it much more that I anticipated and whilst I’d thought I’d give it a go, reading one book, I ended up Sci-Fi Experiencereading four:

  1. The Midwich Cuckoos by John Wyndham €“ review 3 December 2013
  2. Stowaway to Mars by John Wyndham €“ review 16 December 2013
  3. Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell €“ review 7 January 2014
  4. The Uncertain Midnight by Edmund Cooper €“ review 11 January 2014

I used to read a lot of science fiction many years ago but hadn’t read much recently. I began by reading The Midwich Cuckoos, first published in 1957, and then remembered that we had some old sci-fi books in a box up in the loft, none of which I’d read, so I had several more books to chose from.

Apart from Cloud Atlas, these are all old books, and very different from Cloud Atlas. My favourite is Stowaway to Mars, even though it’s so very dated – it was first published in 1936. I enjoyed it immensely. Another plus is that all four books are ones I’ve owned for years and thus have reduced my huge TBR Mountain!

My thanks to Carl, for hosting this Experience, which has encouraged me to go back to reading science fiction!

 

The Uncertain Midnight by Edmund Cooper

Published on by Margaret5 Comments

Cath’s list of her favourite books of 2013 included Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C Clarke, which reminded me that we have a copy of that book and I haven’t read it. It was up in the loft in a box of sci-fi books we’ve owned for years and I decided to get it down from the loft and read it. However, when I opened the box, Edmund Cooper’s The Uncertain Midnight looked more enticing and so I read that book – Rendezvous with Rama will have to wait a bit longer before I get round to it.

D and I aren’t sure how long we’ve had this book. He read it years ago at a time when he was reading lots of sci-fi books. It was first published in 1958 and our copy is a 1971 edition, so we’ve probably had it since the early 70s!

In the Foreword Cooper wrote that it was his first novel, which was published in America as Deadly Image, but he preferred his original title. In 1971 Cooper acknowledged that he wrote it a long time ago:

It was before the Space Age, before the development of lasers, before it was possible to give a man a new heart.

I like it because of that; it’s low on technology and high on philosophy. It’s not set in outer space, but firmly on Earth  – but Earth in the 22nd century, a world run by machines, androids, who have taken over the burdens of work and responsibility, a world where the humans are required to spend their lives in leisure pursuits, but are subject to ‘Analysis’ (brain-washing) if the androids think they are maladjusted .

John Markham emerges in 2113 after spending 146 years in suspended animation, frozen deep under ground after an atomic holocaust had devastated his world. In 2113 not all humans were happy to leave everything to the androids. Known as Runners these humans believed in ‘human dignity, freedom of action and the right to work’. Markham struggles to adapt and this raises the question of whether the androids could be said to be alive – leading to discussions about the definition of life, the difference between determinism and free will, and eventually leading to war between the androids and the Runners.

I thought it was fascinating.