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HOLY FIRE by Bruce Sterling

Science fiction writers can’t predict the future but some aim to speculate on times to come by extrapolating current trends. One of the most famous SF novels to do this was Stand on Zanzibar by John Brunner, his 1968 novel that anticipated the world of 2010. Bruce Sterling’s 1996 novel Holy Fire tries to imagine life in 2096 via speculation and extrapolation. Do I recommend it? That’s hard to say, even at the current Kindle price of $1.99.

How self-aware are you regarding the selection of the science fiction you read? Does your mind crave a tightly plotted story? If so, Holy Fire by Bruce Sterling might not be for you. Or do you love reading novels with characters you care about, even identify with, and want to vicariously live their fictional adventures? Again, Holy Fire might not be your cup of tea. If you are the kind of science fiction reader who resonates with dense science fiction speculation, reading Holy Fire should definitely be for you.

We judge such speculative fiction in two ways. Does it jive with our own efforts to imagine the future, and now that the novel is almost thirty years old, how well has it done so far? Evidently, back in 1996, Sterling saw that medical technology, changing trends in family size, and population demographics would lead to a world where there were far more old people than young people. The exact opposite of the Baby Boom generation I grew up with. All the current 2024 demographics point to such a future.

Sterling solved the overpopulation problem that many science fiction writers before him saw by having a great pandemic in the 2020s. And he imagined that networks, artificial reality, and artificial intelligence would reshape society. Instead of predicting gloom and doom like so many science fiction novels from the late 20th century, Sterling imagines a near-liberal utopia and a post-scarcity society. The problems faced by the characters in this novel divide between the old and young. The old strive to find purpose with an ever-lengthening lifespan, while the young feel crushed under the weight of a gerontocracy that advises the youth to learn from their experience and live longer.

Because humans have been trying out medical life-extension procedures for decades, a growing percentage of the population is old. These elders have the wealth and power and dominate politics with their gerontocracy. Mia Ziemann, Holy Fire’s protagonist, is 94 at the start. Because she has led such a cautious life and is in such good shape, the medical establishment offers her the latest life extension treatment, one that goes way beyond any previous effort. The procedure is so arduous, that it can be fatal. Mia comes through the process and now looks 20, although some of her memories are gone.

Mia’s doctors consider her an expensive experiment and legally bind her to them for years of research. Mia runs away to Europe and hides as an illegal alien, living among a youthful bohemian crowd of revolutionaries. She changes her name to Maya. On nearly every page of Holy Fire, Sterling speculates about the future evolution of society, technology, and politics. Strangely, climate change is never brought up. But then, Holy Fire came out a decade before An Inconvenient Truth.

Sterling doesn’t focus on space flight, but it happened. The focus of the story is finding meaning in everyday living on Earth. Dogs and other animals have been uplifted, and talk with computer-aided voices. Governments take care of the needy. People use public transportation. People engineer their minds with designer hormones and neural transmitters. And the net and virtual reality is everywhere. Holy Fire makes me think that Bruce Sterling had abundant optimism for the future in the 1990s. I used to have such liberal optimism but it was crushed in 2016.

Sterling’s future is not quite a utopia, because segments of the population are discontented, especially the young who are too brilliant for their own good. That’s the crowd Mia/Maya, embraces. They want the freedom to fail.

Sterling calls Mia/Maya and others in this book posthumans, and that’s where this story shines. His posthumans aren’t silly comic-book superheroes like in many 21st-century SF books. Virtual reality is toned down too from 21st-century SF stories of people downloading themselves into virtual realities. Sterling tries to stay reasonably realistic and scientific. Holy Fire reminds me of the dense speculation in John Brunner’s Stand on Zanzibar. Sterling doesn’t take it to narrative gonzo extremes like Brunner.

Holy Fire is a somewhat picaresque novel, with one reviewer comparing it to Candide. Of course, Candide is considered a broad satire, and I’m not sure that’s true of Holy Fire. I didn’t read it that way, but I could see how a filmmaker could present Holy Fire as a satire. The novel attempts to be transcendental, you might have guessed that from the title. The youth rebellion in Sterling’s 2090s is like the 1960s involving art, music, drugs, and mind-expansion — adding networking, AI, and AR.

The problem with picaresque novels is they are episodic. The hero is exposed to a series of people and subcultures, and that’s what happens to Mia/Maya. There are so many different characters it’s hard to keep up with them or even care about them. Most of the story is about how they impact Mia/Maya, whereas I believe a novel about a 94-year-old woman becoming 20 again should be about her inner transformations.

Mia is an uptight old lady who protects herself by hiding from life, and Maya is a free-spirit young woman giving everything a try and throwing all caution to the wind. We are told that Mia lost some of her memories, but would she lose all wisdom from living to 94?

Response to Holy Fire is all over the place. Hundreds at Goodreads gave it five stars, a few more hundred gave it four stars, but plenty of folks just didn’t care for the story.

Reviews were also mixed. Tom Easton in “The Reference Library” for the March 1997 issue of Analog has this to say:

Norman Spinrad’s “On Books” from the August 1997 issue of Asimov’s Science Fiction also compares Holy Fire to William Gibson’s Idoru but comes to a different conclusion. Both novels are later cyberpunk works from the two leading founders of the cyberpunk movement, so it was logical to review them together. Spinrad is the more insightful of the two reviewers.

Damien Broderick and Paul Di Filippo in Science Fiction: The 101 Best Novels 1985-2010 had this to say about Holy Fire.

That Damien Broderick and Paul Di Filippo would recommend Holy Fire as one of the best SF novels from 1985-2010 is high praise. But why don’t I hear more about this novel after all these years? My assumption, is most science fiction readers don’t particularly care for serious speculation about the future and would prefer to read stories that compel you to turn the pages because of tight plots and characters they care about.

This is my second reading of Holy Fire. I first read it when it came out from the Science Fiction Book Club. I bought it then because its plot sounded similar to a 1926 novel I was trying to find, Phoenix by Lady Dorothy Mills. That book was also about an old woman undergoing a rejuvenation process and then running off to Europe to join a bohemian crowd. I finally found Phoenix several years ago and it’s more of a love story than science fiction. I need to reread it and compare the two.

For my second reading, I listened to it on audio. I’ve started rereading it again with my eyes. I never developed an emotional bond with Holy Fire like I have with the novels I consider my favorites. However, I admire it intellectually. It could have had the emotional impact of Flowers for Algernon because Mia/Maya goes through a similar arc of intellectual development. We just don’t see her experiences as tragic.

I think Sterling tried though. Throughout the novel, Mia/Maya experiences epiphanies that should have had a deep emotional impact. To me, they were just intellectually interesting. The ending should have been profoundly spiritual, like something from Hermann Hesse. Instead, it just seemed like a logical way to end the story. The choices Mia/Maya and her former husband, Daniel made in the end are vivid, even dramatic in concept. That just didn’t make an emotional impact on me. I assume Bruce Sterling wanted the ending to be an emotional epiphany. The ending does say a lot about how a posthuman would react to becoming posthuman.

Please leave a comment if you’ve read Holy Fire. I’m curious if you had an emotional response to the story. I found it intellectually exciting. I would recommend it on that level. However, it didn’t touch me, so I’m hesitant to say it’s good. I gave it four stars on Goodreads.

James Wallace Harris, 12/18/24

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A MIRROR FOR OBSERVERS by Edgar Pangborn

Why is A Mirror for Observers by Edgar Pangborn out of print at Amazon? There is no Kindle or Audible edition either. This 1954 novel won the International Fantasy Award back in 1955. Being out-of-print is especially puzzling when you consider the other winners of that short-lived award: Earth Abides by George R. Stewart (1951), Fancies and Goodnight by John Collier (1952), City by Clifford Simak (1953), More Than Human by Theodore Sturgeon (1954), and The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien (1957). A Mirror for Observers has been reprinted several times since 1954, but it’s mostly forgotten.

Two weeks ago, I listed A Mirror for Observers as one of my top ten favorite science fiction novels for a YouTuber survey. I first read the novel back in 2018 and was so impressed with Pangborn that I bought several of his other novels. But that was a first impression. I reread A Mirror for Observers this week and felt it was seriously flawed. Not one I’d still list in my top ten. However, it’s an impressive effort. The main reason I admired the story in 2018 because I was an older reader. I’m not sure younger readers today will care for the novel.

Let’s face it, most science fiction is aimed at our adolescent selves. Science fiction appeals to our fantasies about reality. When I read science fiction at age seventy-three and like a story, it’s generally because that story nostalgically recalls the science fiction I read when I was young, unearthing buried adolescent emotions of hope for the future.

Science fiction readers spend their lives in quiet desperation waiting for their favorite sense of wonders to come true. When you get old and realize you’re never going to trek across Mars or rocket across the galaxy at faster-than-light speeds, you start thinking about reality differently, certain science fiction works take on a new light.

Rereading A Mirror for Observers makes me think it could have been a science fiction novel that Robert M. Pirsig might have written in an alternate reality. In case you’re too young to remember, Pirsig wrote the 1974 bestseller, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values. Edgar Pangborn also used his story to express his philosophical views about society, quoting Greek philosophers, dealing with ethics and aesthetics. Another parallel, both stories involve an older man mentoring a teenage boy.

A Mirror for Observers is a story about two groups of Martians who live among us and have been for thirty thousand years. Mars and Martians, Salvay and Salvayans in their language. The Martians abandoned a dying planet to come to Earth. Think about that word Salvayans. It’s awful close to the world salvation. The two groups of Martians are called the Observers and the Abdicators. The observers watch us hoping to help us without us knowing or interfering with our own development, they are like guardian angels. The Martian renegades, the abdicators, gave up on humanity, deciding we were too stupid to survive the evolutionary challenge, figuring it would be best if we became extinct. The one abdicator we meet, Namir, takes on a role like the devil.

Pangborn throws out a lot of science fictional speculation in the story, but it ultimately feels like a morality tale. Pangborn is spiritual, if not Christian. He’s also very influenced by philosophy and classical music. The story is fun where Pangborn guesses what his near future would be like, now fifty years in our past.

Pangborn was born in 1909, so he was in his forties when he wrote A Mirror for Observers, but the voice of the novel feels much older. Pangborn’s voice comes through as Elmis, the Martian observer who goes by the names Benedict Miles and Will Meisel. Elmis is competing with the abdicator named Namir for the soul of the 12-year-old boy, Angelo Petrovecchio. Elmis also discovers another brilliant child, Sharon, a friend of Angelo who is a few years younger.

As I reread A Mirror for Observers I wanted to love this novel. I wanted it to be great. Unfortunately, this time I discovered too many flaws. The plot has three main disjointed acts. Elmis is sent to the small town, Latimer, Massachusetts to guard Angelo from Namir. We were told that Angelo is very special, an exceptional human that has great potential and needs protection. We do get some hints of that in the conversations between Elmis and Angelo. Martians live for hundreds of years. Elmis is well over three hundred, so he has a great deal of experience with human history, but so has Namir, who is even older.

I do praise Pangborn for imagining Angelo a superior human without giving him superpowers or ESP. Robert Heinlein and John W. Campbell, Jr. often did that to designate a sign of future human evolution. The best part of the story is the Latimer setting, when Angelo and Sharon are young. Sharon is better developed as a character than Angelo, especially with her creative dialog. She even seems more aware than Angelo.

The story eventually jumps a few years, leaving Latimer for New York City, and that’s when the story lost its charm for me. The plot shifts to fighting an emerging fascist organization run by Namir, who wants to take over America, and eventually destroy the world. I thought this section was poorly done, and it reminded me of Heinlein’s early novels about secret societies wanting to overthrow the U.S. Angelo, under a new name, Abraham Brown, does not stand out in this section. He’s rather passive. And the proxy war that Elmis and Namir are fighting is vague and fictionally lame.

The final section of the novel involves a pandemic. (That could elevate the story with readers this decade because of our recent pandemic.) Angelo becomes more active, but he doesn’t do anything exceptional. Strangely, the exceptional human in this story, is Sharon. She has become a musical prodigy through arduous work, practicing up to twelve hours a day. She has always been in love with Angelo and wants to be reunited with him.

I like Elmis and Sharon as characters. Angelo just never gels to what Pangborn promised. We needed him to stand out, like Charlie Gordon in Flowers for Algernon, or Valentine Michael Smith in A Stranger in a Strange Land. He never does. That’s the major fault of this novel.

Pangborn focuses on juvenile delinquency and gangs in the first section of the novel, a worry considered a national threat in the 1950s. Pangborn is also concerned with the cold war, and other elements underming society. You sense that Pangborn is anxious about the world and uses this novel to explore his fears. That’s why I compare it to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. The heart of this story is very strong, which is why I wanted to love A Mirror for Observers. I admire it for its intent, but I can see why its flaws make it a forgotten novel.

Pangborn made a huge writing mistake by having the Martians go through three sets of names. Angelo is needlessly renamed Abraham Brown in the second section. This was very confusing. Drastically shifting the plot twice also hurt the story. The subplot with the fascists was just poorly developed, although it resonates with our present, making it feel more relevant than it really is. The pandemic section is well done, and moving, being the emotional peak of the story, but the emotions are melodramtically generated.

We are promised a spirtual novel. The Martian observers see potential in us, but that potential is never revealed. Pangborn gives us more evidence to support Namir’s position that we don’t deserve survival.

A Mirror for Observers reminds me of another novel I picked for my top ten list, The Man Who Fell to Earth by Walter Tevis. That 1963 novel is about a Martian coming to Earth hoping to find the technology to secretly build a spaceship that could bring 300 surviving Martians to Earth from their dying planet. Tevis also uses his story to comment on the evils of current day society. His Martian, whom we know as Thomas Jerome Newton, is a much better developed character. Like Pangborn, Tevis takes his character through several jarring plot twists, but I remember it working better. I need to reread it too, to know for sure.

At seventy-three I’m going back in time looking for science fiction works originally aimed at mature readers. The trouble is I’m concurrently reading the literary classics of the 20th and 21st century, and the contrast reveals how poorly written science fiction has always been. There are exceptions, but they are few. I just finished Attonement by Ian McEwan, and the character development is light-years beyond Pangborn’s efforts.

Still, I want to like A Mirror for Observers. Jo Walton, in her review says she rereads Mirror every decade. I will probably reread A Mirror for Observers again someday too. Quite often flaws I see in a second reading are overcome in a third or fourth reading.

JWH

Other Reviews:

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HOTHOUSE by Brian W. Aldiss

Science fiction is best when it’s full of wonder. When I first read The Time Machine by H. G. Wells, I was awed by the idea of time travel, but two other ideas wowed me even more. Wells got me to imagine future human evolution and posthumans, and he introduced me to the idea that the Earth would someday end. It was easier to imagine the Earth being created, but it was overwhelming to think about it dying.

Hothouse by Brian W. Aldiss is one of the great works of the Dying Earth subgenre of science fiction. There are various ideas about what constitutes a dying Earth setting. Some people consider it to happen when humanity dies off. I like to think it’s when the Earth is about to be destroyed. That’s the approach Aldiss takes in Hothouse. He tells us the Sun will go nova in a few generations, but Aldiss doesn’t quite take us to Earth’s death

Jack Vance’s famous novel The Dying Earth (1950) is set in the far future, too. The sun is nearing the end of its life, and the Earth and humanity have drastically changed. In The Time Machine, the Time Traveler visits the far future just before the sun, as a red giant destroys the Earth. In The Night Land (1912) by William Hope Hodgson, the Sun Is going dark, and humanity is almost gone.

Only Wells and Aldiss imagined the final productions of evolution. Olaf Stapledon pictures eighteen more species of humans coming after us in Last and First Men (1930). Aldiss imagines a variety of descendants for humanity in Hothouse, all exceedingly small. He also imagines the plant kingdom going bonkers, which reminded me of The Forgotten Planet (1954) by Murray Leinster. That novel was based on three stories, first published in 1920, 1921, and 1953. It was about a world we had colonized. Those explorers eventually evolved becoming tiny beings, competing with giant plants and insects for survival.

I reread Hothouse by Brian W. Aldiss because it was recently released in an audiobook edition on October 15, 2024. It’s a novel I’ve been waiting years to hear. I first read Hothouse in 1996 and thought it was an amazing story full of colorful imagery and adventure. I wanted to see it as a movie because of Aldiss’ powerful visual imagination. After I got into audiobooks in 2002, I wanted to reread all my favorite science fiction books by listening to them. I finally got my wish with Hothouse, with excellent narration by Nick Boulton.

In this fix-up novel, the sun is swollen, and Earth’s rotation is locked so only one side faces the Sun. The Moon trails the Earth’s orbit in a Trojan orbit that keeps it stationary in the sky. Earth is a riot of vegetation that has supplanted most of the animal kingdom. Humans have evolved into tiny beings one-fifth our size, while insects have grown monstrously large. Plants have mutated into countless strange configurations, including those that traverse between the Earth and the Moon on giant webs.

Hothouse is a fixup novel composed of five stories that appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction in 1961.

  • “Hothouse” (novelette)
  • “Nomansland” (novelette)
  • “Undergrowth” (novella)
  • “Timberline” (novelette)
  • “Evergreen” (novella)

Hothouse was originally published in the United States as The Long Afternoon of Earth in a slightly abridged format. At the 1962 Worldcon, the five stories as a series won the Hugo Award for best short story. I prefer the forgotten American title, it’s more poetic.

I thoroughly enjoyed listening to this novel, but it didn’t have the impact it had on first reading. (Imagine watching The Sixth Sense for a second time.) Aldiss produces some wonderful science fictional ideas in this story, ones I won’t mention because that might spoil the story. This is one of those tales you should experience without knowing too much. The story feels like a children’s fantasy with all the funny names for evolution’s new creations, but I believe Aldiss was serious in trying to make it science fiction.

Think of the writing challenge of describing an impossible-to-imagine far future. Jack Vance pictured humans with magical powers as if evolution would eventually create them. Magic makes his Dying Earth stories fun, but not realistic. William Hope Hodgson imagined Earth in darkness where humanity clings to one giant city. I guess Clarke did that too. Aldiss imagines species descendants from us living in another kind of Garden of Eden, a very violent one. We could call it Darwin’s Eden, rather than God’s.

Hothouse is mostly a forgotten classic. I seldom meet people who have read it. Brian W. Aldiss’s reputation and back catalog aren’t well-remembered in today’s popular culture. Now that several of his books have been republished in audio, I’m giving him another chance. I hope other SF fans do too.

My favorite work by Aldiss is “An Appearance of Life” which I’ve reviewed three times. I keep hoping to find more Aldiss stories that impress me as much. Hothouse comes close. So does “The Saliva Tree.” Greybeard isn’t on the same level as those tales, but it’s still thought-provoking.

James Wallace Harris, 11/8/24

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THE TWILIGHT ZONE – “Judgment Night”

“What was the first time-loop story?” my friend Mike asked me after watching “Judgment Night.”

“The first one I remember was Replay by Ken Grimwood.” But his question got me thinking.

Time looping became famous with the film Groundhog Day. Later, I learned that there were earlier examples and the theme has become somewhat popular.

“Judgment Night” is about a ship crossing the Atlantic Ocean in 1942, when Nazi submarines were hunting them. I can see how Mike could think this show is an early example of a time loop story but I didn’t think it was one exactly. However, “Judgment Night” suggests how the time loop story evolved.

If you haven’t seen “Judgment Night” you might want to stop reading here and go watch it. Several streaming sources offer The Twilight Zone. Try PlutoTV or freevee on Amazon Prime if you don’t mind commercials for free viewing. (Amazon has the complete series on DVD for under $30.)

“Judgment Night” opens with Nehemiah Persoff on the deck of a cargo ship on a foggy night. He looks scared. As he meets the other passengers and crew he acts very strange. They wonder if he has amnesia since he can only recall his name, Carl Lanser. When he eventually recalls that he was born in Frankfurt the others get worried that he might be a Nazi, especially since he also seems to know all about U-boat wolfpacks. Eventually, the ship is attacked, and we’re then shown a scene from a submarine. The captain is Carl Lanser. His first officer is Lt. Mueller (James Franciscus) tells him he feels remorse for sinking a ship with civilians, especially since they gave no warning. Captain Lanser shows no remorse, and Mueller suggests they will be condemned by God. Then we’re shown Nehemiah Persoff back on the ship again, and Rod Serling says:

The SS Queen of Glasgow, heading for New York, and the time is 1942. For one man it is always 1942—and this man will ride the ghost ship every night for eternity. This is what is meant by paying the fiddler. This is the comeuppance awaiting every man when the ledger of his life is opened and examined, the tally made, and then the reward or the penalty paid. And in the case of Carl Lanser, former Kapitan Lieutenant, Navy of the Third Reich, this is the penalty. This is the justice meted out. This is judgment night in the Twilight Zone.

I can see why Mike asked about time loops. Wikipedia reveals that the concept has been around for a while. I think “Judgment Night” is proto time loop for one reason, because Captain Lanser doesn’t know he’s in a time loop, and doesn’t discover it. It’s just his version of hell, a punishment like not unlike Sisyphus having to roll a rock up a hill forever.

Reoccurring dreams might be the inspiration for time loop stories. Also the wish to have a do over in life is common enough to inspire writers. However, I think the essence of a time loop story is a character discovering they are looping and then trying to get out of the loop.

My first encounter with the idea of a time loop was when I read Replay by Ken Grimwood in 1986. I saw a review in Time Magazine and went immediately to the bookstore and bought it new in hardback. The idea of living my life over totally intrigued me, and it’s a great novel. My next encounter with the theme was in an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation called “Cause and Effect” from 1992. Of course, Groundhog Day from 1993 was dazzling. I’ve seen many movies, TV shows, and read plenty of books and short stories that use the theme since. So far, none have been as philosophically effective as Replay.

It’s a shame that Rod Serling, who wrote “Judgment Night” didn’t have Carl Lanser know he was in a time loop. Wouldn’t that have made the punishment more enlightening to Lanser? And more hellish? The episode was good, but not great.

Lanser only suffers eternally, and maybe that’s all Serling thought he deserved. The theme of time looping offers redemption, and even resurrection.

Maybe it wasn’t practical to tell such a tale in a 25 minute show. We have to learn the character is repeating, and that involves showing us the character going through the loop more than once. But if Serling could have pulled that off, I think “Judgment Night” would have been one of the great Twilight Zone episodes.

Time looping is very philosophical, even spiritual. It’s easy to see why it’s a punishment used by gods, but in Replay and Groundhog Day, we can see that it’s a tool for enlightenment. Time looping has a certain Zen quality to it.

Unfortunately, Serling just used part of the concept to allow his audience to hate Nazis. And to be an anti-war story. The Twilight Zone featured a number of those.

James Wallace Harris, 10/30/24

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GREYBEARD by Brian W. Aldiss

Greybeard is a 1964 post-apocalyptic novel by Brian W. Aldiss. It was reprinted as an audiobook by Trantor Media on October 15, 2024, read by Dan Calley. The ebook version is currently available for the Kindle for $1.99 in the U.S. Greybeard has an extensive reprint history. I heard about this novel back in the 1960s, but I’ve only become an Aldiss fan in the last few years, so I was excited when the audiobook edition showed up on Audible.com. Greybeard was one of the novels David Pringle admired in his Science Fiction: The 100 Best Novels (1985). That book is available for $1.99 for the Kindle too.

Greybeard is set in the 2020s, and is about the aftermath of atomic bomb testing in space in 1981, when the explosions altered the Van Allen radiation belt. Eventually, people learned “the accident” caused the human race to become sterile, along with certain other animals. In the story, everyone is old, waiting to die, and wondering what will happen after humanity is gone. This is a different premise for a post-apocalyptic novel, but Aldiss uses his tale mostly to toss out a ideas. The story lacks a compelling plot.

The characters are never developed to the point where you care about them. That’s a common problem of older science fiction, where characters were created mainly to present far-out science fictional thoughts.

The story’s main focus is on Algy and Martha Timberlane as they travel around England after the collapse, along with flashbacks of how they got together. Algy, short for Algernon, is called Greybeard because of his long beard. After the accident, during a period when kids were born with genetic defects, but before they stopped coming altogether, the world economies collapsed, which led to wars. As Aldiss points out, a lot of consumerism is targetted to babies, children, and young people, so certain businesses quickly went bust. But also, as people realized they had no future, many gave up on their ambitions, or even committed suicide.

The book is divided into seven chapter, each a different time and setting:

  • Chapter 1 – The River – Sparcot
  • Chapter 2 – Cowley (flashback)
  • Chapter 3 – The River Swifford Fair
  • Chapter 4 – Washington (flashback)
  • Chapter 5 – The River – Oxford
  • Chapter 6 – London (flashback)
  • Chapter 7 – The River – The End

The novel begins with rampaging stoats (ermine, short-tail weasel). This setting of England being taken over by nature reminded me of After London by Richard Jefferies, but Jefferies did a much better job describing how nature would overrun decaying cities, towns, and roads. After London is a superior post-apocalyptic novel, and one of the earliest

We first meet Greybeard and Martha who have been living for years in a tiny village, Sparcot, ecking out an existing through fishing and gardening. They live near a river surrounded by a barrier of brambles. When two boats arrive with refuges from another village, they hear about how the stoats are attacking everything including people. This reminded me of the stobors in Heinlein’s Tunnel in the Sky. Algy, Martha, and a few friends, flee in a boat Algy had hidden. They plan to float down the river to the sea.

The novel is about what they see along the way. It might be called a picaresque novel. Algy/Greybeard is a bit of a rogue, and we follow his episodic travels. At each stopping place along the river they meet folks living under different conditions. Swifford Fair seemed like something out of the Middle Ages. When they get to Oxford, they find a certain level of civilization has maintained itself around the old university. But in every location, there are wild beliefs about how things are, including lots of charlatans, thieves, and con artists preying on ignorant people. Rumors abound about children still being born, strange mutant beings living in the woods, or even fairy creatures of old returning.

Algy and crew meet a crazy old man on the river who tells them to find Bunny Jingadangelow in Swifford Fair because he can make them immortal. Bunny Jingadangelow shows up several times during this novel running different scams, including one as a messiah.

Greybeard isn’t a bad science fiction novel, but it’s not that great either. If I had read it back in 1968 when I first heard about it, I would have been impressed. But over the decades I’ve read a lot of post-apocalyptic fiction, and Greybeard just isn’t up to the standard of Earth Abides by George R. Stewart or The Road by Cormac McCarthy. I’d say The Hopkins Manuscript by R. C. Sherriff as one of the great post-apocalyptic novels about England to read first. In other words, there are a lot of post-apocalyptic novels you should read before spending time on Greybeard.

It’s a shame that Aldiss didn’t spend more time writing Greybeard because his premise is so good. I just finished the four-volume novel series by Elena Ferrante that begin with My Brilliant Friend. This is a true masterpiece, and future classic. Greybeard and most science fiction feel like starvation rations compared to that novel. Of course, Ferrante used 1,965 pages to tell her story, and Aldiss only used 237 on his story. Aldiss tried to develop the characters with flashbacks, but those flashbacks were mainly used to describe the world during the initial stages of collapse.

Ferrante created a compelling novel by showing how two girls evolve psychological and intellectually over a lifetime. That anchored the novel and gave it a page-turning plot. Aldiss never moors us in the story with anything we can anchor our attention. Richard Jefferies handled his post-apocalyptic London by using the first part of the book to explore ideas around the collapse, and then used the second half with a well-plotted adventure story. I enjoyed Greybeard enough to read it, but just barely.

I wish Aldiss had expanded his story to 400-500 pages and developed Algy and Martha, and found something to give the book a clear purpose. I can only recommend Greybeard to folks who read a lot of post-apocalyptic novels and enjoy studying them.

Aldiss imagines radiation causing a world of only old people. But we’re currently facing a depopulation crisis because most countries around the world aren’t producing enough babies. A country needs every woman to have 2.1 children to grow. Many women don’t want to have any, and one child is common. Theoretically, countries like South Korea can become like the world of Greybeard by the end of this centry. I wonder if any current writers are exploring that idea?

Ron Goulart didn’t like the story in his F&SF (Dec. 1964) review.

P. Schuyler Miller liked it a bit better, but not much, in his Analog (Feb. 1965) review.

Judith Merril in 1966, pointed out to F&SF readers that the original American hardback lacked some of the flashback scenes, and might like the story better in the Signet paperback, which included the full British edition.

James Wallace Harris, 10/26/24