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John Wyndham

Started by DavidXBrunt, 06 February, 2007, 11:50:23 AM

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DavidXBrunt

Stunned to Silence, Jimbo? Not read Lichen yet...but I will.

However, I finished the Outward Urge this morning and it's a lot of fun. The Outward Urge is both the story on mankinds conquest of space and also a generational saga of various members of the Troon family that are involved at various pivotal moments. Told in four chapters, really four linked but seperate novellas really, we see the first space station built, the battle to save the British moonbase from falling in war, the first disasterous landing on Mars, and the trouble caused by the Venus expedition.

Very much a slice of 50's future skiffy, and as such of a piece with Frank Hampsons Dan Dare, and Charles Chilterns Journey into Space. Stiff upperlipped chaps, do daring deeds, and there's little in the line of totty about.

Interesting reading it now, short of 50 years after publication, as the initial section is set in 1994, and even beyond that it feels like an alternate history novel than a speculative sci-fi novel. Written at the height of the cold war it posits that stalemate extending at least until 2044, and then...well it gets hot.

There's a lot more variety in the plots of each story than there is in character, the Troon family being very single minded and as the longest story is little over 50 pages there's not much room for character development. A lot of the fun of the novel is seeing whats happened to the world and the Troons in the 50 year gaps between sections.

This isn't the sort of thing I'd normally read but it whizzed by and I'd have finished the whol thing in one sitting but the night shift had left me worn out. Worth a look, and worth redoing with plenty of Chris Weston Ministry of Space style illos, I was constantly reminded of that when reading this and wondered whether Ellis is familiar with it...

Anyway, next up is Consider her ways and then the Secret People.

Dark Jimbo

Noooooo!!! My post, my beautiful post!!!

Well, I'm not sure what happened there, but the jist of it was -

I like the fact that 'Kraken' is brave enough to finish just as it's really getting good. It's fairly slowly-paced, but when the world actually floods, boy does it start moving at a frantic speed. And then, of course, it suddenly ends, leaving you (certainly me) desperate for more. It's a shame, in a way - the 'drowned world' could easily have been the equivalent of Trffids' 'blind world', if you get me. Of all Wyndham's books, it's surely the most amenable to a sequel.

And yet, judging by the mess that is 'Night of the Triffids' (a sixty-foot triffid? Please...) it's also clear why Wyndham generally avoided sequels. Having said that, I thought some people here might have been interested to know that he was working on a follow-up to the 'Midwich Cuckoos' when he died. Given that it's unfinished, we'll probably never get to read it, but it's tantalising to specualte on what it might have involved.
@jamesfeistdraws

DavidXBrunt

Yeah, I'd heard that, and also heard that he'd abandoned it mid way through. It was driven by the producers of the movie and was turned into Children of the Damned.

I don't think I'd want a sequal to Kraken but as it's two peoples view of the world there's room for lots of stories set elsewhere in that world. Whatever happened to that helicopter that was bringing their mates back from Yorkshire for starters...

Dark Jimbo

Fan-fiction ahoy! :-)

Come to think of it, if there's one thing that bugs me about any of Wyndham's work, it's the endings. Kraken aside, Triffids ends rather abruptly, with a scant few paragraphs cursorily telling us how they intend to try and defeat the triffids in the future; Cuckoos also ends pretty suddenly and abruptly; it's as if he would get bored by the end and just want to be finished.

I think it's because of this that I generally rate his short-story fictions higher than his novels. Incredibly imaginative and inventive, most of them would make some damn fine Future Shocks, and I've only ever read one that outstayed its welcome.
@jamesfeistdraws

GeorgeBernardShaw

I enjoyed all the Wyndham stories that I read, bar one.  That one was in a volume of short stories Wyndham had written under another name, and read like a teenager's scientifiction exercise unedited. It ran something like this "and then I saw a huge steel robot with big legs and then the robot had a fight with an army of vicious ants and then England split in half and then there was a new Ice Age....".
   His other works have been masterpieces of restrained English creepiness.  I think it would go against the grain of his writing to write sequels to his stories (which is not to say that somebody couldn't do an entertaining sequel, just that it wouldn't suit the stories)

ThryllSeekyr

I recall having to read this book for english assessment at school. I think I was in year nine. (1985)

We got to watch the mini series.

TordelBack

I like the fact that 'Kraken' is brave enough to finish just as it's really getting good.

I've always loved The Kraken Wakes, but I have to say, the 'happy ending' epilogue really annoyed me.  

DavidXBrunt

Yeah, me too. If it was integrated into the whole thing then fair enough but it feels really tacked on.

Finished Consider Her Ways last night and it's the first time I've been slightly dissapointed. A novella with half a dozen short stories to back it up the main story wasn't strong enough, in my opinion, to carry 90 pages although there were some very good ideas.

Of the rest 'Oh where...' must have been a dated piece of social satire when it was released. There are jokes about how  the movies are so tasteless they'd make a movie out of the Rape of the Sabines. By the time this was out they had done. The other lenghty story 'Random Quest' is a tale of someone who hops dimensions and falls in love with someone only to hop back and feel he has to find her. The structure of this was unsatisfying with the reactions of the narrator being sidelined for the framing narration.

The few remaining stories were very good, but with several stories revolving around the idea of transferred minds and the three longest stories misfiring I was dissapointed, especially after the quality of Jizzles short stories.

Anyway, 5 A.M. and tired I started Secret People and will plough through.

I, Cosh

he other lenghty story 'Random Quest' is a tale of someone who hops dimensions and falls in love with someone only to hop back and feel he has to find her.

Was that the thign that was on BBC4 recently?
We never really die.

DavidXBrunt

I think it probably was.

DavidXBrunt

It definatley was. Didn't see it though.

The Secret People - rewinding right back to the 1930's for one of John Wyndham (writing as John Benyon)'s earliest novels. This is a er...crypto-archeological thriller about the discovery of a race of pygmies who have lived seperate from the rest of humanity for over a hundred thousand years in the safety of a series of caves beneath the Sahara Dessert/Desert (delete as appropriate). The Sahara is being flooded to create a new sea and reclaim the land as usefull to the world at large and when two holiday makers (he sells shoes, she goes on holiday, together they fight gnomes) find themselves sucked under the waters they discover themselves in a mysterious tunnel complex filled with a stange civilisation. Mark The hero finds himself stranded in the caves jail complex, Margret The Heroine is spared that fate through a chance encounter with a stray cat.

What follows is a pacey adventure story with a mixture of P.O.W. camp style prison escape tropes, and beseiged fort antics, coupled with the embryonic Wyndam cliche of people sitting around speculating about what's going on. It's really so much high-brow pulp nonsense but none the less enjoyable for that. The characters are sketched in and there's as much time spent establishing the caves and the society of the pygmies as developing the characters but in a story like this that's all you need.

There's plenty of evidence that this book is a product of it's time (a certain N word is bandied about, but as a descriptive rather than a deletive) and whilst the characters all stick to firmly established racial stereotypes at least that's across the board with the yanks and Italians in for the same treatment. And Zickle is, interestingly, the only one to adopt art as a means of survival. It's also interesting that there are no villains in this novel, simply people who because of the way they react to situations make choices that bring them into conflict with the protagonists. Little details of how he portrayed the future (which is now our past) that caught my eye were a coin with Elizabeth the Second on, and a sensible lack of reference to technological developments beyond the Sun Bird McGuffin.

This was a diverting little read and I'm glad I read it despite its flaws

Proudhuff


spurred on to read The Chrysalids by this thread good fun, nice little twist on who is superior etc

Sealand Huff  
DDT did a job on me

DavidXBrunt

I know what you're thinking. Surely Davids not going to leave us hanging around without more reviews to add to the pile? Well, no. I'm not.

The Man from Beyond and other stories a.k.a. The Best of John Wyndham. I don't think I've raved about this one yet. It's actually a misnomer, as it's really the best of John Wyndhams short stories from pulp sci-fi mags rather than a best of per se. It's interesting for all that. Starting wth the earliers adventures from the 1930's and then progressing to the latest date of 1960 you can see Wyndham grow and progress as an author throughout the book. The earliest are basic pulp skiffy with little to make them to stand out from the herd apart from a nice line in wry humour and the authors later career.

He quickly finds his feet though and by the time you reach the halfway mark of Pawleys Peepholes he's on fine form. That story, with it's fine line in silly humour and clever use of sci-fi staples is a highlight of the middle years, and a marked contrast to Vendetta by Proxy, which takes it's cues from a classic horror novel. To tell you which, or even to describe the narrative form would, would spoil the plot but it's a fine horror tale.

The Red Stuff and Dumb Martian are proper sci-fi tales of astronauts and rockets, and interesting takes on standard themes.

The last story, Emptiness of Space, sees a return to the world of The Outward Urge and made me wish that more had been made of that creation. Like Dumb Martian it explores the effects of space travel on a humans psyche and also his soul. Adult in tone, rewarding in theme, rich in detail that last story may actually be the Best of...

I've just this moment finished Midwich Cuckoos but I'll ruminate on it for a while. It's fantastic though.

The Library has furnished me with Exiles on Asperus, Chocky, and Trouble with Lichen. Another three are on order and they're buying Seeds of Time. Soon, barring a few stories here and there and the long out of print foul play suspected will mean I've read the lot. Glad I started, and it's been a fruitful distraction from my normal reading habits. I've also realised how blessed I am to get the time to sit and read...

Proudhuff

Finished The Outward Urge whilst holiday: intrguing view of how things could have developed and some fine twists on who 'wins' the space race and why.

Going to pass it on to my local reselling bookshop unless anyone here fancies it? (let me know by tomorrow lunchtime)  Its the old orange penguin edition so no monies need change hand  ;D
DDT did a job on me

Bolt-01

Not sure if anyone here is interested but just seen this:


The Trouble With Lichen - Ebook 0.99p.