Cracken at Critical (SF) - Brian Aldiss ****

When I first read what might be broadly called new wave SF, back in the 70s, I assumed a lot of it was difficult to understand because it was very deep. Now I'm a writer myself, it's now pretty obvious that a lot of this impenetrability was down to sloppy writing. While there is some of Brian Aldiss's 1987 Cracken at Critical that seems to have suffered from being written quickly without much editing, the overall book is, nonetheless, impressive.

Part of the reason I think it's clever is the way that Aldiss has succeeded in re-using old material to good effect, a boon for the jobbing writer who has to earn a living from his words. What we have here is apparently alternative history science fiction story set in Finland, where Churchill was killed in the 1930s and the Germans won the Second World War. The central character is a classical composer: on the way home from a not-entirely successful symphony premier, he discovers a dead girl's body, which precipitates a dark and mysterious series of events.

So far, so normal. However, what makes this book really interesting is that the protagonist discovers in the girl's bag a pair of old science fiction novellas. He reads these at points in the plot, and we get to read them too. In one sense, what we've got is a collection of three novellas, but the way this is done makes the whole far more effective than the parts.

What's particularly interesting is the nature of these novellas. In a Guardian review printed on the back of my copy, the reviewer comments there are 'two meticulous parodies of the kind of SF story written in days long gone...' This entirely misses the point: these are not parodies, but actual stories written (and published) by Aldiss in 1958 and 1965. For me, the main point being made here is that the protagonist enjoys these straightforward stories while reflecting that his wife, who is into heavy literary fiction, would hate them. This seems like Aldiss taking on the pretentious avant garde of SF (despite sometimes being part of it). To make the joke even better, in the story the novellas were written by the dead girl's father, Jael Cracken, which was the pseudonym Aldiss used for many of his early stories, including one of these.

The book is by no means perfect. As was often the case in stories from this period, the ending is weak. And there is a degree of casual sexism. However, the approach is so clever, especially in challenging the SF literati in this undercover way, that this remains, for me, a largely forgotten little masterpiece.

The book is out of print, but available second hand.

Paperback:

Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you

Review by Brian Clegg

Comments

Target Earth – Govert Schilling *****

I was biased in favour of this great little book even before I started to read it, simply because it’s so short. I’m sure that a lot of people who buy popular science books just want an overview and taster of a subject that’s brand new to them – and that’s likely to work best if the author keeps it short and to the point. Of course, you may want to dig deeper in areas that really interest you, but that’s what Google is for. That basic principle aside, I’m still in awe at how much substance Govert Schilling has managed to cram into this tiny book. It’s essentially about all the things (natural things, I mean, not UFOs or space junk) that can end up on Earth after coming down from outer space. That ranges from the microscopically small particles of cosmic dust that accumulate in our gutters, all the way up to the ten kilometre wide asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs. Between these extremes are two topics that we’ve reviewed entire books about recently: meteorites ( The Meteorite Hunt...

The Decline and Fall of the Human Empire - Henry Gee ****

In his last book, Henry Gee impressed with his A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth - this time he zooms in on one very specific aspect of life on Earth - humans - and gives us not just a history, but a prediction of the future - our extinction. The book starts with an entertaining prologue, to an extent bemoaning our obsession with dinosaurs, a story that leads, inexorably towards extinction. This is a fate, Gee points out, that will occur for every species, including our own. We then cover three potential stages of the rise and fall of humanity (the book's title is purposely modelled on Gibbon) - Rise, Fall and Escape. Gee's speciality is palaeontology and in the first section he takes us back to explore as much as we can know from the extremely patchy fossil record of the origins of the human family, the genus Homo and the eventual dominance of Homo sapiens , pushing out any remaining members of other closely related species. As we move onto the Fall section, Gee gives ...

The New Lunar Society - David Mindell *****

David Mindell's take on learning lessons for the present from the eighteenth century Lunar Society could easily have been a dull academic tome, but instead it was a delight to read. Mindell splits the book into a series of short essay-like chapters which includes details of the characters involved in and impact of the Lunar Society, which effectively kick-started the Industrial Revolution, interwoven with an analysis of the decline of industry in modern twentieth and twenty-first century America, plus the potential for taking a Lunar Society approach to revitalise industry for the future. We see how a group of men (they were all men back then) based in the English Midlands (though with a strong Scottish contingent) brought together science, engineering and artisan skills in a way that made the Industrial Revolution and its (eventual) impact on improving the lot of the masses possible. Interlaced with this, Mindell shows us how 'industrial' has become something of a dirty wo...

Search This Blog