Skip to main content

The Heads of Cerberus (SF) - Francis Stevens ****

This book in the MIT Press 'Radium Age' series somewhat stretches the 'and other stories' label as the title work is a complete novel, followed by a number of stories from Francis Stevens, real name Gertrude Barrows Bennett, written in the first 20 years of the twentieth century. Stevens' writing style is very much of the period at the popular end of the market - think Conan Doyle, for example.

This is a bit of a wolf in sheep's clothing for the series, which is supposed to explore proto-science fiction from the period before the pulp SF magazines, but after pioneers such as Wells and Verne. Although Stevens uses some of the props of science, most of the content would be more accurately described as fantasy (but I'm allowing it to slip in here).

The title novel propels three main characters (two male, one female) into a strange world that acts as a gateway to an alternate future version of Pennsylvania. It's entertainingly done, doubtless with some inspiration from The Time Machine in the socially divided society the travellers experience. However, the mechanism of travel is pure fantasy - no more scientific than the hit on the head used to travel into the past in Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. There might be a brief mention of atoms and frequencies - but used in a meaningless fashion that can't in any way be connected to the magic dust that facilitates their journey. For its age, though, it's very readable still.

Similarly, the first of the short stories, The Curious Experience of Thomas Dunbar, written when Bennett was 17, is an early version of a superhero story - but just as is the case with the comic book superheroes that would follow, a brief mention of a scientific concept is not enough to give any science fiction basis for superpowers. The source of the power here is a new and unknown element that apparently was somehow discovered but can't be again, introduced to the main character in a laboratory accident. But this is no more science than a magical spider bite or the power-giving influence of a yellow sun. This one has less punch than the novel - it doesn't really go anywhere with the super strength, as well as suffering from a touch of period xenophobia.

The rest of the stories are either fantasy or horror, sometimes with a touch of scientific dressing, but based on magic and definitely not SF, even though one has an impressively forward-looking setting of a world where women are in charge. In the end, this arguably isn't too much of a problem given these are still interesting bits of writing of the period from a pioneering female author. But whether the content is a good fit to the series is debatable.

Hardback:   
Kindle:  
Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you
These articles will always be free - but if you'd like to support my online work, consider buying a virtual coffee:
Review by Brian Clegg - See all Brian's online articles or subscribe to a weekly email free here
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

God: the Science, the Evidence - Michel-Yves Bolloré and Olivier Bonnassies ***

This is, to say the least, an oddity, but a fascinating one. A translation of a French bestseller, it aims to put forward an examination of the scientific evidence for the existence of a deity… and various other things, as this is a very oddly structured book (more on that in a moment). In The God Delusion , Richard Dawkins suggested that we should treat the existence of God as a scientific claim, which is exactly what the authors do reasonably well in the main part of the book. They argue that three pieces of scientific evidence in particular are supportive of the existence of a (generic) creator of the universe. These are that the universe had a beginning, the fine tuning of natural constants and the unlikeliness of life.  To support their evidence, Bolloré and Bonnassies give a reasonable introduction to thermodynamics and cosmology. They suggest that the expected heat death of the universe implies a beginning (for good thermodynamic reasons), and rightly give the impression tha...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Infinite Alphabet - Cesar Hidalgo ****

Although taking a very new approach, this book by a physicist working in economics made me nostalgic for the business books of the 1980s. More on why in a moment, but Cesar Hidalgo sets out to explain how it is knowledge - how it is developed, how it is managed and forgotten - that makes the difference between success and failure. When I worked for a corporate in the 1980s I was very taken with Tom Peters' business books such of In Search of Excellence (with Robert Waterman), which described what made it possible for some companies to thrive and become huge while others failed. (It's interesting to look back to see a balance amongst the companies Peters thought were excellent, with successes such as Walmart and Intel, and failures such as Wang and Kodak.) In a similar way, Hidalgo uses case studies of successes and failures for both businesses and countries in making effective use of knowledge to drive economic success. When I read a Tom Peters book I was inspired and fired up...
Post a Comment
Read more

The War on Science - Lawrence Krauss (Ed.) ****

At first glance this might appear to be yet another book on how to deal with climate change deniers and the like, such as How to Talk to a Science Denier.   It is, however, a much more significant book because it addresses the way that universities, government and pressure groups have attempted to undermine the scientific process. Conceptually I would give it five stars, but it's quite heavy going because it's a collection of around 18 essays by different academics, with many going over the same ground, so there is a lot of repetition. Even so, it's an important book. There are a few well-known names here - editor Lawrence Krauss, Richard Dawkins and Steven Pinker - but also a range of scientists (with a few philosophers) explaining how science is being damaged in academia by unscientific ideas. Many of the issues apply to other disciplines as well, but this is specifically about the impact on science, and particularly important there because of the damage it has been doing...
Post a Comment
Read more