"One of the Most Impressive Features of the Period Is How Fast the Genre Evolved Over a Comparatively Short Lapse of Time"

"Golden Age(s)."
By Xavier Lechard.
At the Villa Rose, October 13, 2008.
Online HERE.

The term "detective fiction" has a more specialized meaning than most casual readers might realize. Many of us are content to call them "mysteries" or "crime fiction" — and even the majority of publishers couldn't really care less about the difference — but to aficionados the distinctions are real and worth respecting.

Also among these aficionados are uncertainties about what has come to be known as "The Golden Age": What was it? When did it begin? When, if ever, did it end?

French Golden Age enthusiast Xavier Lechard has been mulling over these questions for some time, and his thoughts are worth consideration:

'What then is time?' St. Augustine famously wondered. 'If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to him who asks, I do not know.' This would apply just fine to Golden Age. At first sight it looks a perfectly clear, well-delineated concept; then one tries to define it and trouble begins, for whatever meaning you ascribe it just brings more questions.

If we go by the chronological definition, then we have to agree on when it began and when it ended, none of which is a wholly settled issue. We also have to account for all those authors who, while active and often at the height of their fame and powers during that period, did not fit the standard model — mind you, Georges Simenon, Edgar Wallace and Dashiell Hammett too were Golden-Agers. Not to mention those like Anthony Berkeley or Mary Fitt who progressively shifted away from traditional detective fiction over the years.

One might thus favor an aesthetical definition of Golden Age: a particular brand of mystery fiction, not bound by chronological restraints. But it isn't much more helpful, for it presupposes a consensus on the distinctive characteristics of the form and that consensus — to put it in euphemistic terms — doesn't yet exist. Also, many so-called Golden Age writers have little in common but this label. John Dickson Carr and, say, Cyril Hare may both have written detective novels but their approach, style, even ideology, were completely different, and Gladys Mitchell is definitely not like Agatha Christie.

A third solution is to regard Golden Age as both a period and a form — to define one is to define the other. Contradictions are still there, but at least they are manageable.  . . .

On his weblog, "At the Villa Rose," Lechard has posted several times about this. Go HERE and follow the links thereafter.

Category: Detective fiction criticism

"Reprogrammed to Be a Killing Machine"

THE FOREVER WAR.
By Joe W. Haldeman (born 1943).
Del Rey Books (paperback).
Novel. 218 pages.
1976 (first published 1975). 

Originally serialized in Analog magazine:

  - "Hero," June 1972 (online HERE; go to text page 8)

  - "We Are Very Happy Here," November 1973 (online HERE; go to text page 104)

  - "The Best of All Possible Worlds," November 1974 (online HERE; go to text page 137)

  - "End Game," January 1975 (online HERE; go to text page 66)

  - "You Can Never Go Back," Amazing Stories, November 1975 (online HERE; go to text page 6).

William Mandella, the child of hippie parents, gets caught up in events way beyond his control. Just before a battle he pauses to reflect:

Then what the hell are you, we, am I answered the other side [of my mind]. A peace-loving vacuum-welding specialist cum physics teacher snatched up by the Elite Conscription Act and reprogrammed to be a killing machine. You, I have killed and liked it.

Like all draftees, William didn't ask for this, but now that he's in it he knows it's kill or be killed. Such is the way with all wars. High-flown rhetoric about "why we fight" sells newspapers, but when you get right down to it, you fight for your life and your buddies' lives—and not necessarily in that order.

From all reports, an alien race known as the Taurans (what they call themselves is anybody's guess) have attacked an Earth transport without provocation and a state of war now exists. So it should be a simple matter to track the Taurans to where they live and reduce them to less than nothing with tachyon bombs, right? Not quite. It was recognized centuries ago that infantry is the queen of battle, meaning that no matter how many ships and planes and bombs you throw at them, sooner or later somebody has to occupy and hold the enemy's terrain.

Enter William Mandella, reluctant hero. The Forever War chronicles Mandella's wartime experiences from raw recruit to company commander, his battles (which are never glorious), his love for Marygay (which is marked with pain and keen loss), his injuries (which include mutilation), and his reactions to the changes wrought by time on the culture he left behind—for, while he and Marygay struggle to survive, back on distant Earth, things are getting stranger . . . and stranger . . . and stranger . . . .

The best writers—SF authors among them—are able to transport the reader to a time and place and culture that either once existed or exists only in their imagination. Haldeman succeeds by limiting us to Mandella's perception of events; William's wry and laconic narration convinces us of the plausibility of the advanced technology he dazzles us with even as we realize with our logical faculties how unlikely all of this is.

There's high-tech aplenty in The Forever War: tachyon drives allowing high-speed movement through normal space at velocities nearing the speed of light; interstellar travel through "collapsars" (collapsed stars, which have since been commonly termed "black holes," permitting instantaneous passage through what are now called "wormholes" connecting to other collapsars); battlesuits that recycle everything, making it possible for troopers to stay in them for weeks (not really a pleasant prospect, just ask Mandella); stasis fields that dampen electronic systems, thus necessitating fighting with bows and arrows and swords (!); and acceleration pods that make it possible for the frail human body to withstand upwards of twenty-five gees—of course, you're totally incapacitated and in a near-coma, but at least you won't wind up looking like a bowl of salsa that's been slammed into a wall. And let's not forget Heaven, which William and Marygay get to without dying.

Since the tachyon drive permits near-light-speed travel, Haldeman makes the most of Einstein's relativity theory, hanging two important plot points on it—which we won't reveal. But think about this: As you may recall from that physics class you might also have slept through, Saint Albert tells us that the faster you go, the slower time passes for you, while in the outside universe time passes at its normal rate. The spaceships in The Forever War travel from collapsar to collapsar at relativistic speeds, taking weeks, months, or even years in transit; but once they enter the collapsar they exit at the other end in the smallest fraction of a second—in one instance jumping 140,000 light-years in the blink of an eye. This implies that the folks on the ship seem to age more slowly than the people back on Earth—and that means kids like William Mandella grow older just a few years at a time while centuries are passing back home. Imagine Christopher Columbus returning to Spain this afternoon and you'll get an inkling of what Haldeman is up to.

The Forever War was awarded a Nebula (voted by writers and editors) and a Hugo (voted by fans) back in 1976. We believe it was as much a zeitgeist vote—most Americans were fed up with the conflict in Vietnam, a kind of "forever war" that never seemed to end—as an acknowledgement of the quality of the writing, which is quite high for the usual "hard science fiction" novel.

The Forever War invites comparison with Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers. Many believe Haldeman was writing a rebuttal to Heinlein's book, but Haldeman is reputed to have denied it; so the jury's still out on that.

Joe Haldeman, a Vietnam War draftee and Purple Heart recipient, is still producing fiction. You can find his website HERE.

Parental warning: Strong language and sex scenes.

~~~~~~~~~~

From the text:

In space there are more ways to die than most of us are familiar with:

Ten seconds, but she didn't hear or she wanted to get just a little more distance, and she kept running, careless leaping strides, and at the high point of one leap there was a flash and a rumble and something big hit her below the neck, and her headless body spun off end over end through space, trailing a red-black spiral of flash-frozen blood that settled gracefully to the ground, a path of crystal powder that nobody disturbed while we gathered rocks to cover the juiceless thing at the end of it.

Mandella reflects on the oddities of special relativity:

I'd been in the army ten years, though it felt like less than two. Time dilation, of course. Even with the collapsar jumps, traveling from star to star eats up the calendar.

After this raid, I would probably be eligible for retirement with full pay—if I lived through the raid, and if they didn't change the rules on us. A twenty-year veteran, and only twenty-five years old.

For William time, more than distance, separates him from the culture he once knew. When he tries psychoanalysis with someone born centuries after he left home:

It was impossible. Although he knew all about my problems in an academic kind of way, we didn't speak the same cultural language; his counseling me about love and sex was like me telling a fourteenth-century serf how best to get along with his priest and landlord.

William has lost Marygay and travels to an arid mountain they once climbed together:

I walked to the edge and looked down the sheer rock face to the dim frozen rippling of dunes half a kilometer below. I sat with my feet dangling over the edge, thinking nothing, until the sun's oblique rays illuminated the dunes in a soft, tempting chiaroscuro of low relief. Twice I shifted my weight as if to jump. When I didn't, it was not for fear of pain or loss. The pain would be only a bright spark and the loss would be only the army's. And it would be their ultimate victory over me—having ruled my life for so long, to force an end to it.

That much, I owed to the enemy.

Fear, pain, loss, death, betrayal—after all that, you might get the impression The Forever War is a total downer. But the ending will leave you with a great big smile on your face . . . .

Category: Science fiction

"And the Earth Was Filled with Violence"

THE DAYS OF LAMECH.
By Jon Saboe.
Outskirts Press.
Novel.
2011. 503 pages.
For sale HERE.

In the aftermath of the Family Wars, the Semyaz arrive from unknown lands with a message of peace and hope. Their advanced technology and wisdom helps to rebuild the fallen cities, and their teachings that all people are Children of the Light promises to ensure that such horrific wars are a thing of the past.

But there are those who don’t trust their motives—or their stated promise to improve the human race. Are the Semyaz altruistic benefactors, or do they represent the ultimate enslavement—or even eradication—of humanity as we know it?

The youthful and reckless Laméch is ripped from his comfortable city life and thrust into a centuries-old resistance where he discovers the true nature of the Semyaz and their multi-generational designs on humanity.

Numerous clandestine operations bring him face to face with their secret research facilities, his long-absent grandfather—and a beautiful dark-haired prisoner who teaches him the true meaning of love and sacrifice.

Laméch learns a new kind of warfare that entails trusting the plan established by his grandfather—even though it seems destined to grant the Semyaz certain victory.

— From the cover

Jon Saboe's latest book takes us back to a time before the Great Mass Extinction Event previously covered in The Days of Peleg.

It's pretty obvious Saboe has done his homework — and a lot of thinking — about what that time could have been like: the people, the customs, the politics, and the science and technology. In particular, he adds a new dimension to the phrase "pyramid power."

"And Laméch lived an hundred and eighty and two years and begat a son . . . saying this same shall comfort us concerning our work and toil of our hands . . ."

The result of Saboe's research is a big but compulsively readable novel, as much historical fiction as it is science fiction.

Laméch, the central character, is nicely delineated. His progression from a callow, self-centered individual to a responsible social leader — and, if you will, a "man of destiny" — is interesting to follow, in the grand tradition of the Bildungsroman.

At first, resisting the Semyaz is simply another way for Laméch, the spoiled rich kid, to indulge in daredevil action for its own sake, without any deep convictions; but gradually, through several encounters with his adversaries, he comes to understand that he hasn't just embarked on a grand adventure but is rushing headlong into a confrontation with pure evil. 

In so doing, he will experience emotions he's never had to deal with before: fear of dying, for one, and selfless love not just for his friends but also for people he hardly knows.

". . . and the earth was filled with violence . . . and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth."

As in Peleg, when it comes to depicting "action" Saboe excels. Reading Laméch put me in mind of James Bond, Alistair MacLean, and the Mission: Impossible team as often as it did of Moses or C. S. Lewis.

CONTENTS:

Introduction

A Map of the Antediluvian World

Part I: Escape
Part II: Engagement
Part III: Elucidation
Part IV: Exchange
Part V: Extinction

Afterword: Fact vs. Fiction:
"In attempting to ascertain the technological potentials of antediluvian humanity, I came to the conclusion that the only form of technology that would not have been available to the ancients was anything based upon hydrocarbons or petroleum . . . ."

Appendix A: Danel's Soliloquy:
"Some day I am certain to enter the place that was specially prepared to provide torture and anguish for me and my kindred. I am now also betrayed by my masters, who assigned my corporeal mission, knowing this would be my fate."

Appendix B: Prelude to Aenoch's Third Disappearance:
"Far in the distance, to the east, were two columns of black smoke ascending into the sky. As they watched, the sun began to rise, its face bisected by the two dark lines. They both took a deep breath, contemplating the scope of their final mission."

Appendix C: Infant Prince Constellation:
"Everyone knows the dismay at being unable to actually visualize the characters that are supposedly represented by random grouping of stars [in constellations], and the idea that disparate, unrelated ancient cultures happened upon the same groupings requires vast reserves of credulity."

Appendix D: Catastrophic Plate Tectonics:
". . . we can see that the Earth's history has not been a serene, uniform one of gradual change, but rather one with great upheavals that are consistent with the universal stories of a global flood, found in all ancient and indigenous cultures."

Appendix E: Recommended Reading
Eighteen primary resources.

Appendix F: Glossary
Nineteen terms.

QUOTES:

Chapter 1: Abduction:
“The irony of what brought about the end of the Family Wars was the realization that the abhorrent dehumanization inherent in those wars would be replaced by a surreptitious scheme to redefine humanity itself.”

Chapter 2: Discovery:
“The savaged, broken masses who survived the Family Wars welcomed the civilizing philosophies of the Semyaz as a drowning man welcomes air. It required subsequent generations who had never known the horrors of war to realize that the Semyaz were patiently engineering their own pervasive and furtive agenda.”

Chapter 3: Curse:
“Until the advent of Aenoch’s city design, establishing settlements was always fraught with the difficulties of holding the ever-encroaching growth of the thick forests that blanketed the planet at bay. By laying a marble foundation that rested upon the invariably soft soils and erecting surrounding walls which separated societies from the elements, large cities and centers of commerce were finally able to flourish.”

Chapter 4: Research:
“For centuries, the Librarian class provided the repository of all human knowledge and culture. However, as inscribing became more popular and necessary as an economic tool, the proponents of writing claimed that now mankind need never forget anything—to which the Librarian would reply, ‘Not so. Rather mankind will remember nothing’.”

Chapter 5: Ambush:
“Following the advent of Aenoch’s walled cities, humanity became less and less concerned with the vast forests and jungles that surrounded them. Commerce was conducted by sea and the untamed and forgotten wilds were thought to be uninhabited—save for occasional malcontents and recluses.”

Chapter 6: Destination?
“Although the Semyaz believed in their right to control the world—and its ultimate outcome—they failed, initially, because they simply did not appreciate the vastness of the planet. Their focus on controlling people politically eventually had to be replaced. Their new focus became the control of their minds.”

Chapter 7: Revelation:
“The enigmas surrounding Aenoch are plentiful. His renown as the world’s greatest architect and city planner has since been overshadowed by his two major disappearances. The first was a period of more than eighty years after his completion of Matusalé City. Upon his return, he had transformed from a brilliant engineer into a mad prophet of impending doom.

"His dire warnings were, unfortunately, unheeded.”

Chapter 8: Mission:
“The Haermon Mountains are a great geological oddity. Jutting directly from the northern oceans of the Western Sea, they rise higher than any other on the planet, and are covered with almost no vegetation. They merge with the planet’s bedrock and are comprised of pure granite, but give the appearance of having been split apart by some cosmic catastrophe—as if half of the range had disappeared, falling away into the oceans below.”

Chapter 9: Infiltration:
“Centuries before the Family Wars, the Semyaz were abducting children, using the piracy that always proliferates alongside shipping and commerce. These children were conformed into the isolation and servitude of the Semyaz social structure; and the first Emissaries at the end of the Family Wars were their descendants. After the Family Wars, the descendants of refugees who escaped into the forests provided a new supply of abductees—and test subjects.”

Chapter 10: Atrocities:
“Two inescapable facts slowed and impeded the Semyaz in their research, adding untold decades to the realization of their objectives. First, they shared their acquired knowledge with few outsiders. This led to endless, regimented trial and error experiments which lacked understanding and intuition. Secondly, although the Semyaz had great mental prowess, they lacked a fundamental knowledge of the material world, which those they sought to subvert understood innately.”

Chapter 11: Obsession:
“The location of each of the world’s cities was not determined by random nautical commerce or logistical convenience, but rather by a multitude of geological and geographical requirements that were often contradictory. For example, a modern city had to be coastal for access to the tidal forces needed to energize its Power House, but it also required a solid landscape for its foundation, which was rare (particularly in coastal areas) due to the pervasive subterranean streams and hot springs that carved out constantly changing channels that weakened the ground.

"Seldom were these two requirements met, and as a consequence, distances between cities were much greater than one would expect from colonization and expansion.”

Chapter 12: Rescue:
“Despite the instability of wars, insurgencies, societal collapses, and even the occasional famine, one industry, somehow, managed to persevere through the centuries, surviving—not unscathed—but remaining viable. This was the wine industry, located by necessity in the grasslands between Irad and Jaebal.

"The most famous—and costly—of these was Jaerad Wines, founded long before the Family Wars, and it continued—and even thrived—until the last days.

"Since no one was willing to risk the disruption of its flow, these vineyards—and the surrounding grasslands—remained untouched, and their proprietors allowed to develop great wealth.”

Chapter 13: Survival:
“The floating forests provide the world with several important environmental benefits, including a traveling source of transpiration across the large spans of otherwise arid oceans. Of greater interest, though, are the strange and numerous life forms which exist on these islands which are never found on the fixed continent. In addition, the unusual hollow constructs of the plant stems and roots are perfectly designed for a mobile terrain that must be knit securely together, but which cannot bear great weight.”

Chapter 14: Antiquity:
“In addition to seasonal and annual timekeeping, the earliest generations used the stars as fixed reference points for storytelling and maintaining cultural cohesiveness. Oral traditions and entire epics could be recalled with nothing but a simple finger pointed towards a constellation. The first of these recounted the story of the infant king who would someday come and restore creation to its original perfection.”

Chapter 15: Sacrifice:
“It was commonly assumed that the Semyaz possessed an advanced technology and, perhaps even, a heightened intellect. The truth, however, was quite different. They possessed, only, an advanced evil, which manifested itself with the unprecedented ability to swiftly expand the defining boundaries of human malevolence—all the while maintaining the façade of benefactor. Ultimately, this resulted in an ever-increasing capacity for allowing the unthinkable to become palatable.”

Chapter 16: Beginnings:
“There is no end to speculations and theories concerning the structure and system of the thousands of hot water springs that are found everywhere on the planet. Despite attempts to plumb their depths, the source of their heat, water, and reliability remains a mystery. The occasional underground channel of near boiling water has been found, but this only contributes to the question of their origins.”

Chapter 17: Breakthrough:
“In the decades preceding Aenoch’s final disappearance, the escalation of clandestine resistance against the Semyaz evolved into a most unusual conflict. Although the Semyaz increased their own covert incursions with proselytizing and subterfuge, they allowed no public acknowledgment of any resistance, preferring instead to present a unified, hopeful, and optimistic future to the cities of the world.

"Later centuries would refer to these skirmishes as the Perception Battles—the precursors of the final Replacement War.”

Chapter 18: Extraction:
“The news of the attack on the Matusalé Power House traveled swiftly from city to city and reawakened the horrors of the Family Wars in the minds of those old enough to remember. It provoked an almost panicked determination that the chaos and carnage of those wars should never be repeated, and demands were made to fortify and increase defenses. However, such demands went beyond the resources of local enforcer units—and city treasuries—and it initially appeared that sufficient protection would be impracticable.

"However, Semyaz emissaries soon arrived with their solution.”

Chapter 19: Homecoming:
“Cities were always built with future population growth in mind. Even years after Aenoch’s final disappearance, there were still many uninhabited apartments and places for businesses. In Matusalé, this was because it was the only city to be built after the Family Wars. For the remaining cities, their unused living space was due to the incredible reduction of their populations during those wars.”

Chapter 20: Variance:
“The First Power Houses were simple tidal generators, only providing direct energy at specific times during the day. However, with Aenoch’s creation of energy coils and development of storage methods, continuous power was now able to be broadcast throughout a city. Subsequent improvements in efficiency permitted construction in equatorial regions where tidal changes were less pronounced, allowing the founding of his own city and that of his son’s.”

Chapter 21: Discernment:
“Centuries before the Family Wars, numerous expeditions were undertaken to try and locate the lost Garden of the First Ones by attempting to determine the correct rivers and head upstream. Although most were never heard from again, those who returned reported mass disorientation, navigational anomalies, and differing accounts of massive magnetic disturbances, great barriers of fire, and even stories of fellow crewmen going mad.

"None ever claimed success.”

Chapter 22: Betrayal:
“The apparently random attacks by the Semyaz on the numerous Forest People’s communities were not understood at first. Even decades after they had ceased culling them for their experimentation subjects, the destruction of villages seemed arbitrary and essentially meaningless.

"Only after the realization that the cities had been used as control groups in the Replacement War was the true purpose of these assaults understood. The forest communities were simply unwanted variables—and had to be eliminated.”

Chapter 23: Ascension:
“The governing structure of a typical city rested on the premise that the one who founded it also owned it. Although a Founder did not own the people within, it was often very difficult to separate the laws of the Founder from the free choices of the city’s residents. Generally a city’s wealth and productivity were directly proportional to the contentment and well-being of its citizens, but some Founders discovered this only after decades of failed management. Naturally, the citizen was always free to leave, but the suggestion to ‘go and found your own city’ was never as feasible as it was inviting.”

Chapter 24: Solitudes:
“Prior to the Replacement War, the world was clearly divided into two distinct and separate societies. There was the network of forest communities whose daily lives were one of survival from the onslaught of the Semyaz attempt to eradicate them for no apparent reason. Then there were the cities that grew and prospered under the tutelage—and apparent protection—of the Semyaz. The city inhabitants were completely unaware of the existence of the forest communities; disbelieving any rumors to the contrary. The forest communities, however, were fully aware of the affluence of the cities, and it was difficult for them to not resent what could easily be construed as collusion.”

Chapter 25: Surrender:
“Aenoch’s second and final disappearance created a powerful but short-lived backlash against the Semyaz, who discovered the unexpected surge of resolve that a martyr can bring to a movement. Powerful, in that large numbers of people throughout the cities who had never seriously considered Aenoch’s warnings before, now began to heed them and work towards spreading his message and admonitions. Short-lived, because soon after, arrests and eventually executions of those who spoke out against the Semyaz became common-place.

"If a cultural icon and Founder like Aenoch could be removed for sedition, what hope did the average citizen have?”

Chapter 26: Legacy:
“Common to all family cosmogonies was the view that things were created at a point in time, prior to which, nothing existed. They all credited a ‘Creator’ with this act, but few could agree on the nature of this unknown—and perhaps unknowable—entity. Rarely did one contend that no creator existed, as this either required the emergence of existence of its own accord from nothing, or demanded that the universe had an unchanging and eternal past. Since holding either position rendered the disciplined study of origins futile and absurd, none would do so publicly and thereby demonstrate one’s intellectual laziness.”

Chapter 27: Sabotage:
“In the decades after Aenoch’s final disappearance, there was a shift in the purpose and function for prisons in the cities. Previously, prisons had been final holding cells for repeat offenders awaiting their imminent executions. Now, in response to anti-Semyaz protests, they had greatly increased in number and were used to detain political dissidents—often for many years—for interrogation and deterrence. Soon, all protests ceased as the residents were encouraged to forget about those who were hidden away—and justifications for imprison-ment continued to expand unchecked.”

Chapter 28: Sacrifice:
“Over the years, Replacement Day festivities in the cities grew to become an event that closed businesses, launched lavish parties, and prompted the exchanging of gifts in celebration. The entire city would come to the docks or line the walls to cheer for the transport that brought replacement Semyaz Security Troops. Joyful and thankful crowds applauded their arrival, and although there was often some sadness as relationships with departing troops were severed, the excitement and security that everyone felt was a source of great merriment.

"The possibility that the Semyaz ambitions cared nothing for the protection of the city or its inhabitants never occurred to anyone.”

Chapter 29: Purging:
“The term ‘Replacement War’ was, in actuality, a euphemism created by the victors in an attempt to glorify and exaggerate the enormity of the successful fruition of centuries of planning, and also from the desire to feel victorious.

"In reality, the term ‘war’ can hardly be used to describe such a one-sided conflict that barely covered two days.”

Chapter 30: Imminence:
“There are some anomalies regarding the technological advances that developed in the centuries following the Replacement War. Electromagnetic transmission of information became commonplace, smaller and more efficient engines were developed for transportation, and simple, but weak, anti-gravity lifts were designed for convenience and construction.

"However, in spite of these advancements, the Semyaz never shared their secrets of platform propulsion, nor did they ever knowingly divulge their proprietary process of generating energy.”

Chapter 31: Consummation:
“The agonies and sorrows of losing one’s world are only partially—and unsatisfactorily—allayed by the premise that a greater plan or purpose exists. Although it is a commentary on human nature that the loss of one is often more painful than the loss of thousands, it is also a vestigial reflection of the Creator’s nature within us that we can agonize over the plight of an individual.

"Is it this nature that we crave—and for which we were created? Perhaps it is more needed than arbitrary morality, or more necessary than law, which serves to remind us of our inadequacies, but provides no remedy or resolution.

"One can only hope that this nature will be among the innumerable benefits to accompany the promised Seed, for without this hope, I can see no expectation for humanity, creation, or eternity.”

Resource:
- We previously discussed The Days of Peleg HERE.

Category: Historical fiction shading into SF

Class Warfare in the Works of Agatha Christie

"A Shocker from Agatha Christie."
By John Yeoman.
The Wicked Writing Blog.

In a previous posting Dame Agatha was accused of being unconsciously Freudian; now another critic slams her for being unconsciously xenophobic and racist:

I have just been reading Agatha Christie’s short stories. But to enjoy her fully today, I suspect, you need to be a social historian — or a novelist. In everything she wrote, she employed one deep secret of her craft. But she may not even have been conscious of it.

It took 70 years of cultural change to reveal it.

That secret is, simply, that she shocks the reader with endless social transgressions. Her every story is coded with social prejudice and her characters are class-labelled on arrival. Whenever her characters are in conflict, it’s not simply a case of whodunnit? A little class war is also being played out.

According to Yeoman, the secret of Agatha Christie's success lay in who comprised the bulk of her readership:

Given that Christie’s readers were largely lower middle class, they must have gained great satisfaction in seeing their social betters unmasked as rogues.

Xenophobia and racial prejudice are everywhere in Christie, and provide rich opportunities for social conflict. Nobody born south of the English Channel can be entirely trusted. A rich American or ex-colonial might be admitted cautiously to one’s parlour but only once the ladies have been forewarned about his habits.

Any whiff of the Jew, Negro or Asiatic and that person will be thrust beyond the pale with one stiff lift of the eyebrow. ‘Decent fellow, in his way. But not one of us.’ (To be fair to Christie, these attitudes prevailed in the England of the 1920s and are even more pronounced in G. K. Chesterton.)

It remains to be determined just which was more important to Christie's readers, both then and now: class conflict or a rattling good mystery.

Resources:
- Short story collections by Dame Agatha are on sale HERE, HERE, and HERE, but there's a good chance they've been bowdlerized.

Category: Detective fiction criticism

Was Agatha Christie Unconsciously Using Freud's Theories in Her Mysteries?

" ‘A drop of water from a stagnant pool’: Agatha Christie's Parapractic Murders."
By Dewi Llyr Evans.
Crimeculture.
No longer accessible online.

A subscriber to Freud's narrative thinks that Mrs. Christie was doing a LOT of things unconsciously — and that she wasn't the only one:

Freud’s theory of the unconscious and its implications for the conscious self is, if rarely explicit, absolutely implicit in Christie’s works. It is true that critics who, like Colin McNabb, look only for the rehearsal of ‘nothing but complexes' will come away disappointed. Robert Barnard sees St Mary Mead as ‘a hotbed of burglary, impersonation, adultery and untimely murder’, leading him to wonder: ‘What is it precisely that people find so cosy about such stories?' Ironically, Barnard, who so vehemently denies any intrusion of ‘psychology’ into Christie’s novels, draws our attention here to the very way in which the consequences of Freud’s theories are felt in these works. ‘Cosiness’ is, similarly, a luxury denied to the individual in the wake of the discovery of the unconscious, for the individual psyche can no longer be complacently certain of its own self-awareness. What is thought repressed often returns, uncontrolled, when unbidden.

In Freudian terms post-Victorian England was "up tight and outta sight," struggling to come to terms with their repressed psyches, and Agatha Christie's fiction reflects this situation — at least according to this Freudian:

. . . This disturbance of the conscious by the return of that which it represses has a social equivalent in Barnard’s list of the transgressions at work in the similarly complacent St Mary Mead, a village which, like Christie’s other murder-stricken communities, suffers from a return of a socially repressed. Far from being completely absent or unsophisticatedly presented, psychoanalysis informs Christie’s work in a way that allows for a far more radical view of these texts than has hitherto been posited. Like the conscious mind, Christie’s communities are sites of contested meaning, places where transgressive criminal acts signify the return of hitherto repressed impulses – a body in Colonel Bantry’s library, or the Vicar’s study, or a golf links; a murder on the prestigious Orient Express or a fashionable Nile cruise liner; a hidden secret at Styles, Chimneys, or the Seven Dials region. All are the result of a series of motives that had remained hidden. As in ‘The Tragedy at Marston Manor’, the detective, in the manner of Freud, works backwards from these apparently chance occurrences until an explanation is reached through the recollection of similarly repressed transgressions (‘burglary, impersonation, adultery and untimely murder’), ultimately leading to the rendering of these events as meaningful and effecting a ‘cure’.

Evans concludes:

. . . Agatha Christie’s texts do not unproblematically equate ‘psychology’ with ‘folk wisdom’. It is true that her works almost invariably reassert ‘the values of the English property owning bourgeoisie’, but only on the most superficial levels. In Christie’s narrated world, the process of psychoanalytic interpretation is linked with narrative interpretation to reveal meaning as unfixed, arbitrary and a powerful tool.

For more of this see Evans's full article (WARNING! SPOILERS). Of course, others not as impressed with Freudian theory might be more inclined to agree with Robert Barnard, that Hercule Poirot's "deductive methods represent nothing more than a ‘sort of folk wisdom about human behaviour’."

Category: Detective fiction criticism (Freudian contingent)

The Brilliant Ignoramus: Sherlock Holmes and the Universe at Large

"Sherlock Holmes & The Science Fiction of Deduction."
By Ryan Britt.
Clarkesworld Magazine.
Online HERE.

The worlds of Sherlock Holmes and science fiction are closer than you might think:

One purported purpose of fiction seems to be an attempt to understand the human experience through stories. Science fiction has always been highly equipped to handle this problem by viewing culture and individuals through the lens of technology or fantastical concepts. Explaining life as we know it, or might one day live it, is certainly the task of all good science fiction. Similarly, the stories and enduring character of Sherlock Holmes provide a lens through which the human experience can be explained. Commenting on why Sherlock Holmes speaks to him specifically, Nicholas Meyer notes that, "They [the Doyle stories] constitute a sort of secular bible." For many, growing up with science fiction, the experience is similar. In an unreasonable world, the greatest science fiction can frequently comfort us, while at the same time forcing us to confront our greatest fears. And the ultimate impact of Sherlock Holmes is the same.

Arriving late in a century of breathtaking material advancement, Sherlock Holmes could be said to embody the late Victorians' idea of scientific progress:

Essentially, Holmes believes any mystery can be approached, and a solution deduced, scientifically, by gathering necessary data, and drawing conclusions based on logic and reason. In the Doyle stories, the science of deduction usually always works, and serves as the basic premise for every single Holmes adventure. Like a science fiction writer, Doyle seemed to start with the premise of "what if?" Instead of a detective who arrived at the answers through intuition or moxy, Doyle asserted a different premise with the Holmes stories — what if the detective discovers the answers scientifically? What kind of adventures might he have? Looked at from this semantic angle, the original canon of Sherlock Holmes almost passes for science fiction.

Follow the link to the full article.

Resources:
- The Complete Sherlock Holmes is available in paperback HERE.
- Sherlock Holmes in Orbit is for sale HERE and The Improbable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes is HERE.

Category: Detective fiction criticism (with a science fictional tangent)

A Twenty-third Century Ripper

"Wolf in the Fold."
First aired: December 22, 1967.
An episode of Star Trek (79 episodes, 1966-69).

“I think we bear left,” Kirk said. But the turn they took led them into an alley. They had paused, about to retrace their steps, when a woman’s agonized scream tore the silent darkness before them. “It came from there!” Kirk shouted, and plunged deeper into the foggy alley, McCoy at his heels. They both stopped at the sound of heavy breathing. Kirk took a forward step only to stop again. He had stumbled over a body.

It was sprawled, face down, on the damp paving. The back of the cloak it wore was ripped by venomous slashes.

McCoy, kneeling beside it, lifted the head. After a long moment, he raised a face that was blanched with horror. “It’s Kara,” he said. “Dead. Stabbed a dozen times.”

The heavy breathing sound came again. They ran toward it. Scott was crouched against the alley wall. He stared at them unseeingly, his face twisted into a grimace. In his hands he held a long, sharp knife. It was wet with blood.

— James Blish (1921-75), “Wolf in the Fold” story adaptation of a Star Trek script (1967) by Robert Bloch (1917-94).

Perhaps on the day of judgment the true identity of the Victorian-era serial killer known to history as Jack the Ripper will be revealed, but for now he (or she) will have to remain an enigma lost in the fog-enshrouded back alleys of London.

Robert Bloch wrote two other Star Trek scripts during the original series’ first run; but when he returned to his tried and true theme of Jack the Ripper preying on contemporary society (“Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper,” Weird Tales, 1943) and projected the character four centuries into the future, he succeeded very well.

The Trek production team gave Bloch’s story the proper treatment, with nearly every scene largely drenched in shadows and fog accompanied by an intense, fittingly nerve-jangling musical score—and for the first-time viewer, the attempts at misdirection succeed at diverting suspicion away from the real killer, a definite plus.

If you like science fiction mixed with mystery and horror, you might enjoy “Wolf in the Fold.”

Quotes from the episode:

  “Captain, you mean my neck’s gonna have to depend on some spooky mumbo-jumbo?”
  “The entity would be as a hungry wolf in that fold.”
  “I’ve got some stuff that would tranquilize an active volcano.”
  “This is the first time I’ve heard a malfunction threaten us.”
  “With an armful of this stuff, I wouldn’t be afraid of a supernova.”
  “Computer, this is a Class A compulsory directive. Compute to the last digit, the value of pi.”
  “Well, Mister Spock, for the next five or six hours we’re going to have the happiest crew in space. Of course, we won’t get much work done.”

Resources:
- Robert Bloch still has many admirers; go HERE.
- As most of you know, Bloch was responsible for the source material of Hitchcock’s film Psycho.
- James Blish wrote short story adaptations of Star Trek episodes, available on Amazon.com.
- Blish is most famous for his Cities in Flight tetralogy, also available on Amazon, and a darkly philosophical science fiction novel, A Case of Conscience.
- Amazon has “Wolf in the Fold” on video.
- A detailed summary of “Wolf in the Fold” is available at Memory Alpha HERE; but if you haven’t seen it before, be aware that there are SPOILERS.
- ONTOS previously touched upon some other Star Trek mysteries HERE.

Category: Science fiction mysteries