The Inner House by Walter Besant

A love letter to class inequality

The English author Walter Besant (1836–1901), though generally not known as a pioneer in the science fiction genre, did publish two novels set in dystopian futures. The Inner House, published in 1888, is one; the other being The Revolt of Man (1882). The Inner House opens with a German scientist calling a press conference in London. He announces that he has discovered a process to stop aging. This means immortality for mankind, at least as far as natural causes are concerned. Those undergoing this process will be frozen at their present age and able to survive for centuries, excepting any fatal accidents.

Flash forward to hundreds of years later. Most of the same characters are still alive. Society (the whole Earth or just England? it’s unclear) is now ruled by a socialist regime governed by an authoritarian intellectual elite, the Holy College. All individualism has been stamped out, all problems have been solved, and a tremendous apathy has settled over mankind. Humans have little interest in doing anything except eating, working, and sleeping. The past has been forgotten, until one young woman starts researching the 19th century. This sparks a small rebellion of disgruntled citizens who want what the past had to offer: individuality, capitalism, and love.

Besant’s intention with The Inner House seems to be a heavy-handed critique of socialism. In that regard, it reads like a precursor to Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, but without the sense of humor. It’s never convincingly explained how the discovery of immortality would lead to such a bizarre and extreme system of socialism, nor does the apathy and inactivity of the citizens ever seem logical. If they have so much time on their hands, and so little work to do, why wouldn’t they spend that time learning and amusing themselves, or striving for achievements in the arts and sciences? Instead, Besant depicts a very unintentionally cartoony caricature of a socialist society.

These rebels who idolize the past—what do they miss the most? For the women, it’s fancy clothes and shiny jewels. And hey, remember when men used to go off to war and kill each other? That was really cool! The men, of course, miss beautiful women in fancy clothes. What both genders long for more than anything, however, is the beloved British system of inequality. What I hate most about English literature is its relentless reinforcement of an oppressive class system in which one person is born with better “blood” than another. No nation buys into the trickle-down effect of the divine right of kings more than England. Wealthy people are born good and noble. Poor people are born evil. Hard work and education won't save you. Born a servant, always a servant. All Victorian literature endorses this genetic feudalism to some extent, but few authors or novels are as blatant about it as Besant and The Inner House. All of the rebels who so idolize the past are former “gentlefolk” who would no doubt prefer the way things used to be. One of the rebels defiantly scolds the Holy College with “You have made us all equal who were born unequal,” as if that were such a bad thing. (It’s not the “unequal” to which I object, but rather the “born.”) The villain of the novel is a former servant born in poverty, so naturally wicked. The hero is a former gentleman, so naturally virtuous.

Maybe The Inner House was the first novel to show a dystopian future in which individuality was prohibited. Since then, however, there’s been plenty more, and all of them better: Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We (1921), Huxley’s Brave New World (1932), Ayn Rand’s Anthem (1938), and George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), to name but a few. Therefore, there’s no reason to read The Inner House. I read it so you don’t have to.

Crashing Suns by Edmond Hamilton

Typical star wars fare

American science fiction writer Edmond Hamilton’s career spanned from the late 1920s through the 1960s. His novella Crashing Suns was published in the August and September 1928 issues of the pulp magazine Weird Tales. This is one of Hamilton’s first handful of published writings. He was a prolific contributor to Weird Tales, making his debut in 1926 and eventually publishing 79 stories and novellas in that magazine.

Crashing Suns takes place about a hundred thousand years in the future. Mankind has colonized all the planets of the solar system. (No mention is made of Martians or other alien races.) The narrator, Jan Tor, is a captain in the Interplanetary Patrol, the law enforcement agency for the solar system. He gets summoned by the Supreme Council, the governing body of the League of Planets, to return to Earth for an emergency meeting. In this council meeting, it is revealed that a nearby star system, that of the red giant Alto, has changed its course and is heading towards our sun. In a few months, Alto will collide with our solar system, wiping out all human life.

Much like Bruce Willis in Armageddon, Jan Tor is tasked with leading a mission to stop this catastrophe. Engineers on Earth have created the first-ever interstellar spaceship, in which Jan Tor will lead a small team to Alto to investigate the cause of the red giant’s wandering trajectory. After literally five minutes of preparation, Jan Tor and his crew load into the new spacecraft and take off for Alto, a voyage that will take a few weeks. What they find when they get there will be no surprise to anyone, but in the interest of avoiding spoilers, I won’t say. For the most part, the story proceeds as expected from that point forward. Crashing Suns is the first in a series of seven stories featuring the Interstellar Patrol, presumably the successor to this story’s Interplanetary Patrol.

I had read a couple of Hamilton’s stories in the past and found them to be quite original and innovative. Crashing Suns, however, is very familiar fare. That’s likely due to the fact that it was so early in Hamilton’s career that he was still finding his way, as was the science fiction genre in general. Much of the sci-fi published in the pulp magazines of the 1920s all reads alike. One can tell from Crashing Suns, however, that Hamilton is a good writer in terms of characterization and suspense, but the general plot is common to many science fiction stories and every sci-fi movie since Star Wars. I will continue to look into Hamilton’s work, since what little I’ve read indicates a promising talent, but next time I’m choosing a story I’ll aim closer to the 1960s than the 1920s.

Penguin Island by Anatole France

Satire in the tradition of Voltaire

The French writer Anatole France (1884–1924) won the 1921 Nobel Prize in Literature. His novel Penguin Island, published in 1909, is probably his best-remembered work, at least in the minds of English-language readers. In this comedic and critical novel, France establishes himself as the inheritor of Voltaire’s role as the great satirist of French literature.

Some time in the Middle Ages, a Breton monk named Maël (later Saint Maël) decides it is his mission to sail forth to unknown lands and spread the gospel of Christ to the savages. His boat drifts way off course, and he ends up in the Southern Hemisphere, where he lands on an island full of penguins. At 99 years of age, with failing sight and hearing, Maël thinks the penguins are an Indigenous race of people, so he baptizes them into the Catholic Church. The only witnesses to this sacrament are God and His angels in Heaven, who debate how to rectify Maël’s erroneous baptism of animals. God solves the problem by turning all the penguins into humans, albeit naked uncivilized humans. Maël then tows the Penguins back to Europe, where they establish a new nation in the area of what we know as France.

Spanning centuries in the history of the Penguins, the book is divided into eight related stories taking place in eight different time periods. The early chapters of the book, in which the newly humanized penguins are learning the ways of civilization, are the most funny and entertaining. France seems to be lampooning some of the Edenic noble-savage pipe dreams of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Like Voltaire’s Candide, however, Penguin Island doesn’t aim its mocking barbs at just one target but rather scatters its shots to make different satirical points in every chapter. In this book everything is game for absurdity and worthy of tongue-in-cheek scorn.

After a while, the fact that these people started out as animals becomes irrelevant. The Penguins of Penguinia are simply another nation of humans, often a surrogate for the French. Some targets for spoofing include religion in general and the Catholic Church in particular, capitalism, feudalism, gender roles and sexual inequality, various factions in the modern French political landscape, and even Dante’s Divine Comedy. The most extensive parody is directed at the Dreyfus affair of the 1890s, in which a character named Pyrot is a substitute for Dreyfus and Columban for Emile Zola. To a French reader, the characters and events being satirized in this book would be readily decipherable, but it’s not always easy for an American reader to recognize all the players of every political plot. That doesn’t become too much of an obstacle, however, because enough of the humor and derision is universal to human nature and society, not French-specific.

The early formative years of the Penguins are laugh-out-loud silly at times, but the latter, more modern episodes of their history take the form of more wryly stated indictments of hypocrisy. There is also a science fiction element to the book as the final chapters take place in the future. After all the satire and cynicism, France ends the book on a surprisingly inspirational note of hope. Penguin Island is a work of great insight and much wisdom, but perhaps presented too cleverly for the non-French reader to grasp all in the first read. I think I’ll give it a second look, eventually, because it seems worthy of further scrutiny.   

The Green Hills of Earth by Robert A. Heinlein

The mundane aspects of space exploration

American science fiction author Robert A. Heinlein wrote a series of roughly two dozen short stories and novels known as his Future History. These works were all originally published in fiction magazines such as Astounding Science Fiction or The Saturday Evening Post before being gathered into book-length collections. The first collected volume of Heinlein’s Future History fiction, published in 1950, was The Man Who Sold the Moon. The second collection, published in 1951, is The Green Hills of Earth. This latter volume contains ten short stories that were originally published in periodicals from 1941 to 1949. The book’s final selection, “Logic of Empire,” clocking in at 41 pages, is the longest entry in the volume. The rest of the pieces included are truly short stories in the 10- to 20-page range.

Many consider Heinlein to be the greatest science fiction author of the 20th century. Given such high praise, I found The Man Who Sold the Moon rather disappointing. Most of the stories were more about business and logistical matters than science and exploration. What was missing was any daring speculative thinking, deep thoughts, or any sense of wonder. In his desire to make his future realistic, Heinlein focuses on very mundane aspects of space travel and extraterrestrial colonization. For the most part, The Green Hills of Earth continues this prosaic approach. “Gentlemen, Be Seated,” for example, is about pressurized tunnels below the surface of the moon, and what happens when one springs a minor leak. “Delilah and the Space-Rigger” is set at the construction site of a space station, but the story is essentially about a human resources matter.

The first six stories in this volume are mostly about mankind’s base on the moon, the better part of which is built underground. There’s some mining going on. It’s not terribly exciting stuff. With story number seven, however, the book takes a turn for the better. In “—We Also Walk Dogs,” which takes place around the 1990s of Heinlein’s Future History timeline, mankind has established colonies on many planets and moons of the solar system, and some of those new worlds have Indigenous inhabitants—Martians, Venusians, etc. This story is essentially about a glorified interplanetary concierge service, but it provides an intriguing introductory look into Heinlein’s vision of solar system colonization.

The book’s title selection is about an interplanetary hobo-troubadour poet, kind of a Woody Guthrie or Leadbelly of outer space, who writes a famous folk song, “The Green Hills of Earth.” The aforementioned “Logic of Empire,” is the other notable piece in this volume. Two well-to-do Earthlings argue over whether the system of indentured servitude that prevails on Venus qualifies as slavery or not. Then the pair of friends get drunk and accidentally sign themselves to long-term contracts of hard labor on Venus, a jungle planet with amphibious natives. It’s really more of a prison story than a sci-fi story, but sci-fi has often been used to comment on social issues, and here Heinlein uses his dystopian Venus to critique colonialism and the exploitation of developing nations. I found the blunt pessimism of the ending admirably unexpected.

So far I haven’t been overly impressed by Heinlein’s Future History. Personally, I prefer the Terro-Human Future History of H. Beam Piper, which may not be as scientifically realistic as Heinlein’s universe, but it’s a lot more fun to read. Given his high renown, I’m guessing Heinlein has better work in his oeuvre. I suspect that his stand-alone novels, like Stranger in a Strange Land or Starship Troopers, are a whole different kettle of fish, so I’ll probably head in that direction next.

Stories in this collection

Delilah and the Space-Rigger

Space Jockey

The Long Watch

Gentlemen, Be Seated

The Black Pits of Luna

It’s Great to Be Back

“—We Also Walk Dogs”

Ordeal in Space

The Green Hills of Earth

Logic of Empire

The Complete Tales of Edgar Allan Poe, Part III: 1844–1849

Treasures are few in this batch

This year I set out to read the compete short stories of Edgar Allan Poe. To make this task manageable, I have broken these 65 tales into three sizable portions. The first and second installments in this series followed Poe’s published output chronologically. This, the third of such reviews, covers the last five or six years of Poe’s career.

In this third batch of short fiction, you won’t find much of what is considered classic Poe. “The Cask of Amontillado,” a story every American reads in school, is the headliner here. “The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar,” about a mesmerist who hypnotizes a dying man to see if the trance will survive the transition to the afterlife, is another skillful tale of horror and suspense. “The Purloined Letter,” is the third and final mystery starring Poe’s detective C. Auguste Dupin. It’s a familiar title in Poe collections, but a bit overrated. It’s the least ingenious and satisfying of Dupin’s trio of adventures.

A few other tales of horror, suspense, or science fiction include “The Premature Burial,” “The Oblong Box,” “The Sphinx,” and “Von Kempelen and His Experiment”—all capable efforts, but none of them earth-shattering. As with the previous two batches of Poe tales, a good portion of these 24 works are humorous stories, or at least intended to be. Such titles as “The Literary Life of Thingum Bob, Esq.,” “The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether,” and “X-ing a Paragrab” give some indication of what you’re in for. In most cases, Poe’s comedy has not held up well over the intervening century and a three-quarters. “Some Words with a Mummy,” however, really is quite a funny piece of social satire.

Another interest of Poe’s was gardening. “The Domain of Arnheim” is an expanded retread of his 1842 story “The Landscape Garden.” Neither of these are really stories but rather essays in which Poe pontificates on what makes a good landscape garden. Poe’s final published story, “Landor’s Cottage,” is also devoted to this subject. Poe describes his perfect landscape, perfect house, perfect furnishings, even his perfect woman. None of these three “tales” have any plot, they’re all quite boring, and when it comes to nature, Poe is no Henry David Thoreau or Walt Whitman. His natural descriptions read as surprisingly geometric rather than poetic.

Overall, reading Poe’s complete stories has proved rather disappointing. If you buy any collection of Poe’s tales of mystery, horror, and/or suspense, you’re probably going to get twelve to fifteen stories that are the cream of the crop. Most of Poe’s comedic attempts won’t be included in such collections, as they have deservedly faded into obscurity. On the whole, I would say Poe missed more than he hit, at least for a 21st-century audience, but the same could probably be said for his contemporaries Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville. At least Poe did leave us with some masterpieces­—like “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” “The Tell-Tale Heart,” “The Masque of the Red Death,” “The Fall of the House of Usher,” and “The Cask of Amontillado”—that are among America’s best works of short fiction.

Stories in this collection

The Spectacles

A Tale of the Ragged Mountains

The Premature Burial

Mesmeric Revelation

The Oblong Box

The Angel of the Odd

Thou Art the Man

The Literary Life of Thingum Bob, Esq.

The Purloined Letter

The Thousand-and-Second Tale of Scheherazade

Some Words with a Mummy

The Power of Words

The Imp of the Perverse

The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether

The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar

The Sphinx

The Cask of Amontillado

The Domain of Arnheim

Mellonta Tauta

Hop-Frog

Von Kempelen and His Experiment

X-ing a Paragrab

Landor’s Cottage

The Lighthouse (a fragment left unfinished)

The Haunted Woman by David Lindsay

Interesting Freudian take on the haunted house

Scottish author David Lindsay is best known for his 1920 debut novel A Voyage to Arcturus, a trippy work of science fiction that was years ahead of its time and influenced many later sci-fi writers. Lindsay published a half a dozen novels in his lifetime, none of which brought him any success, but over time Arcturus has developed somewhat of a cult following. Lindsay’s second novel, The Haunted Woman, was published in 1922. This story is more down to Earth, taking place in recognizable present-day England. As the title suggests, however, this novel belongs in the horror genre, and it also dabbles in a bit of science fiction as well.

Marshall Stokes and Isbel Loment are engaged to be married. Isbel, an adult orphan, lives with her wealthy aunt Mrs. Moor. Although all three are Londoners, Isbel and Mrs. Moor are temporarily residing in Brighton, Sussex, where Marshall frequently visits them. Mrs. Moor is in the market for a new home, and the trio decide to look at a country estate named Runhill Court in nearby Worthing. Marshall is acquainted with the owner of the house, a widower named Mr. Judge. Judge had previously consulted Marshall for his opinon regarding some strange occurrences that took place within the house. Marshall has yet to see the house, however, so he decides to kill two birds with one stone and turn his visit into a family outing. Judge is absent from the house at the time, but the visitors are granted entrance by the caretaker.

For years, rumors have circulated about strange happenings at Runhill, not necessarily ghost stories but tales of inexplicable sightings, such as a phantom staircase that appears on occasion. Such unusual phenomena, if any, seem to revolve around a certain upper chamber called the East Room. When visiting the house, Marshall and Mrs. Moor encounter nothing unusual, but Isbel hears a faint and persistent music that the others do not detect. Later, when left alone in a corridor, Isbel finds a mysterious staircase and feels compelled to ascend.

The Haunted Woman is a horror story more eerie than terrifying. It won’t scare the pants off of you, but it definitely delivers a creepy feeling. The story deals in psychological horror, and in fact, one of the things I like best about this book is the psychological authenticity with which Lindsay draws his characters. Unlike most British fiction of this time period, these characters aren’t the impeccable betrothed lovers with their stereotypical spinster aunt. They have flaws, quirks, and ulterior motives, just like real people, and their relationships are far from perfect. There is an undercurrent of sexual infidelity throughout the book, which is unusual for prim and proper English lit. Many of the characters, though in committed relationships, seem to have wandering eyes.

The horror elements of the story are more unexpected than typical haunted house fare. Lindsay’s story is quite original, I cared about his characters, and he kept me anticipating what would happen next. I was firmly gripped and involved for most of the book’s length. I wish it had more of an ending, however. The build-up of tension deserves a better payoff, and it almost feels as if a chapter were missing at the end of the book. I don’t demand total resolution, but I was not satisfied with the outstanding ambiguities of the conclusion. That’s a shame, because for the most part, this was quite an enjoyable read.

The Man Who Sold the Moon by Robert A. Heinlein

Surprisingly preoccupied with business matters

The Man Who Sold the Moon is a science-fiction novella by American author Robert A. Heinlein that was published in 1950. It is also the title of a collection of short fiction published that same year, in which that novella is included. It is this latter collection to which this review pertains. In addition to its title selection, the collection entitled The Man Who Sold the Moon also contains five short stories originally published from 1939 to 1940. All six pieces are works in Heinlein’s Future History series, a large assemblage of novels, novellas, and stories that all take place in the same fictional future. The works collected in this volume represent the beginning of that series; that is to say, they are the earliest narratives in the fictional chronology.

The Man Who Sold the Moon (the novella) is an extended prequel to the much shorter story entitled “Requiem.” With the exception of that pair, the stories in this volume are only loosely related to one another. Although all united by the Future History scheme, they feature different characters and are set in different decades. Occasionally a character or his technological achievements may be mentioned in a later story. The half dozen stories in The Man Who Sold the Moon don’t seem to be presented in any logical order—neither in order of publication nor in order of Heinlein’s fictional timeline. This book includes a chart, put together by Heinlein, outlining the chronological order of the series. These being the earliest stories in the timeline, they take place roughly from the present day (the time of publication being late 1930s) to the fictional 1980s.

Heinlein’s first published story, “Life-Line,” is about an inventor who creates a device that can predict the future by “reading” timelines. It has the fanciful and thought-provoking qualities of a good Twilight Zone episode. “Let There Be Light” is about two scientists who pursue a more efficient form of lighting, and it’s about as exciting as that sounds. In “The Roads Must Roll,” America’s highways have been replaced by a cockamamie system of conveyer belts—not Heinlein’s brightest idea. “Blowups Happen” is a speculative story about nuclear power, written before nuclear reactors were a reality.

The centerpiece of this collection, The Man Who Sold the Moon, chronicles the endeavours of D. D. Harriman, a successful businessman, high-dollar huckster, and big-time negotiator who takes it upon himself to spearhead mankind’s first trip to the moon. In order to bring this dream to reality, Harriman must employ some questionable ethics, navigate legal loopholes, and exercise much financial chicanery. The plot is a chronicle of all this wheeling and dealing and not so much about the actual space travel. Harriman has elements of P. T. Barnum, Donald Trump, and Elon Musk, but more likeable and sympathetic than the latter two. “Requiem,” the sequel, catches up with Harriman later in life.

Given Heinlein’s reputation as the greatest science fiction writer of the 20th century, or at least one of the big three (along with Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke), I expected more from this volume. Heinlein’s Future History series is highly acclaimed, but this is still very early in that history. Space travel is just getting started, and we haven’t yet gotten anywhere near the colonization of other worlds. The result is a book full of surprisingly down-to-earth stories that have more to do with prosaic matters of business and industry than with astrophysics or space exploration. I’m surprised that the readers of Astounding Science Fiction magazine would have found fascinating these stories about government regulation and bureaucratic red tape. In just about every story here, Heinlein pushes some kind of libertarian agenda. This is most evident in the title selection, in which space travel and exploration are best left to private interests, preferably unregulated. Governments are merely obstacles in Heinlein’s vision of the future.

Despite my tepid review, there is enough here to build a reasonably satisfying foundation for a fictional universe, and I’m sure as Heinlein ventures farther from Earth, his narratives will become more deserving of the adjective “astounding.” I’m intrigued enough to follow this future timeline into the next volume of collected stories.

Stories in this collection

“Let There Be Light”

The Roads Must Roll

The Man Who Sold the Moon

Requiem

Life-Line

Blowups Happen