Nordenholt’s Million by J. J. Connington

The needs of the few outweigh the needs of the many

J. J. Connington was the pseudonym of a British chemist named Alfred Walter Stewart. Stewart wrote about two dozen detective novels under the name of Connington, as well as one science fiction novel. That sci-fi book, titled Nordenholt’s Million, was published in 1923.

In London, a laboratory-bred strain of bacteria is let loose from its petri dishes into the outside world, and it immediately begins to wreak havoc on the environment. This particular species of microbe is a denitrifying bacteria that breaks down the nitrogenous compounds in soil, thus depriving plant life of this essential nutrient. As the bacteria spreads by means of global human transportation, the soil around the world is devastated and plants die off at an alarming rate. The British government calls a meeting to discuss how to face the impending famine. The only attendee who has any idea how to tackle the problem is a billionaire industrialist named Nordenholt. He proposes that the only way to ensure the survival of the human race is to sequester a small portion of the population in an isolated location, provided with adequate food, while the rest of mankind dies of starvation. These select few million survivors, nicknamed Nordenholt’s Million, will devote their energies to manufacturing nitrogenous compounds to revitalize the dead soil so that humans may thrive once again and rebuild civilization. In order to execute this plan, Nordenholt declares himself dictator with absolute powers. He establishes his enclave in Scotland and selects his population of survivors. The novel is narrated by Jack Flint, an engineer, whom Nordenholt appoints as his right-hand man.

The apocalyptic idea that forms the basis of Nordenholt’s Million seems like a promising foundation for a science fiction novel. The way that idea is executed here, however, leaves a lot to be desired. The best scenes of the novel occur outside the Nordenholt compound, when Flint is describing the post-apocalyptic landscape of London—a violent, hopeless world reminiscent of the film Escape from New York, where people hunt each other down in packs like wild dogs and even resort to cannibalism. Only a few chapters, however, provide such dark glimpses of the end of the world.

Instead, far too much of the book is devoted to Nordenholt himself, whom Flint describes, discusses, and analyzes to excess. In doing so, he’s clearly holding Nordenholt up as Connington’s ideal of masculinity. Nordenholt is strong, decisive, pragmatic, rational, and ruthless, possessing supreme intelligence, fortitude, and stamina, etc. Although this novel came out a little late to be called Victorian, it feels like a throwback to that era. Readers of Connington’s time needed ideal heroes and moral lessons in order to justify and endure a work of science fiction, or so Connington seems to think. Today’s readers of science fiction, however, would rather read more about the ramifications of the disaster and the science behind a solution.

Although human-induced global warming was foreseen as early as 1800 by Alexander von Humboldt, Connington never even considers it here. In this novel, the destruction of the Amazon rain forest, and the rest of the world’s plants, has no effect on the atmosphere; Connington only mentions the ugliness of the barren landscape. If you habitually read fiction of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, however, you’re probably used to forgiving scientific inaccuracies and moralistic preachiness. Despite its antiquated faults, Nordenholt’s Million is not a terribly written novel for its time. It’s likely to adequately entertain those who appreciate “Radium Age” science fiction.

Chalk Face by Waldo Frank

The David Lynch of the Jazz Age

Waldo Frank (1889-1967) was an American novelist, literary critic, and leftist political activist. Although largely forgotten by mainstream American readers of today, his novels are worth noting because they are some of the more eccentric and envelope-pushing works of American fiction from the 1920s. Although Frank is a white author of Jewish descent, he has a literary connection to the Harlem Renaissance through his personal and professional friendship with Black writer Jean Toomer, author of the novel Cane, a book which Frank edited. Although clearly from a different walk of life than the writers in the New Negro movement, Frank’s writing shares some stylistic similarities with the innovative modernist literature of the Harlem Renaissance. Frank was also considered an authority on Spanish and Latin American literature, subjects on which he published a few respected nonfiction books. 

Frank’s novel Chalk Face was published in 1924. The book is related in the first person, with much stream of consciousness, by John Mark, MD. Mark is more of a medical researcher than a practicing physician, and although devoted to his work, his career is not particularly lucrative. He asks his wealthy parents for money so that he can pursue a comfortable marriage with the love of his life Mildred, a beautiful woman of high class, but they refuse to grant him financial assistance. Undaunted, Mark decides to go forward with his proposal anyway. When he asks Mildred for her hand, she confesses that she is in love with Mark, but she’s also in love with another man, Philip. She can’t make up her mind which suitor to spend the rest of her life with, so she asks Mark for 24 hours to consider his proposal. That evening, however, Mark and Mildred receive news that Philip has been murdered. Witnesses testify to having seen a suspect lurking around the scene of the crime: a man dressed in black with a bald head and startlingly white skin. Instead of simplifying Mildred’s decision, Philip’s murder only puts distance between her and Mark. Mark is worried that Philip might have been killed by another of Mildred’s admirers, and fearing himself the next possible victim, he decides to look into the murder himself

Despite the description above, this is far from a conventional murder mystery. Rather than a detective novel, Chalk Face bears more resemblance to a bizarre David Lynch film, such as Twin Peaks or Lost Highway, in which it is often difficult to tell the difference between what is reality and what is taking place in a dream state or parallel universe; where the villain may be a psychotic human being, a demon from Hell, or a manifestation of someone’s dark psyche. (Robert Blake in Lost Highway certainly has a touch of Chalk Face about him.) This ambiguity is compounded by Mark’s narration. Although he is a man of science, he has a rhetorical style more suited to an apocalyptic cult leader. He expresses everything in romantically grandiose and hyperbolic terms, digresses into much abstract musing on love and death, employs many confusing metaphors, and squeezes the last drop of juice out of his thesaurus. The result is a confusing and disjointed work where you never really understand exactly what’s going on.

Even though Chalk Face amounts to a very frustrating narrative, I admire Frank for his adventurous avant-garde intentions to produce something more challenging than the same-old, same-old. Although what he’s trying to say is difficult to comprehend, one can sense his sincerity in attempting to express deep thoughts. This isn’t just modernist hipster posturing, which is the feeling I got from a previous book of Frank’s that I read, City Block. Chalk Face leaves me with the feeling that maybe if I read this book three or four times, I might find some profound revelations in it, but on the other hand, it hasn’t convinced me that it’s worth that kind of effort.