Book Review: Prison Ship (M. Caidin)

Book Review: 'Prison Ship' by Martin Caidin

3 / 5 Stars

 

Martin Caidin (1927 – 1997) was a prolific author of nonfiction books (mainly about military aviation) and fiction (mainly SF, thrillers, and aviation-related topics). Growing up in the 60s and 70s I read several of his military history books, as well as his novel ‘Cyborg’, which became the basis for the TV series The Six Million Dollar Man. Caidin’s fiction was serviceable, if not considered by the sci-fi literati to be noteworthy (he never was invited to contribute to the major anthologies of the 60s and 70s). But his books sold well enough for him to release them on a continuous basis from the late 50s to the mid 90s. 

‘Prison Ship’ (596 pp.) is a thick chunk of a paperback, and features cover art by David Mattingly. It was published by Tor Books in April 1989. 

 

This novel is a very clear effort by Caidin to be provocative, to shock bourgeoisie sensibilities, to offend blacks, Hispanics, Moslems, Hindus, and most of all, people who liked their aliens lovable and cuddly, like ‘E.T.’ and the Ewoks. 

 

It’s difficult to see what Caidin hoped to gain career-wise by assembling a 596-page SF ‘splatterpunk’ novel, other than the ability to direct an upraised literary middle finger to the SF publishing community. Or perhaps he simply wanted to show just how ‘macho’ a writer he could be.

‘Prison Ship’ features three main characters; two human, and one alien. The main human character is Jake Marden, a sort of secular Jewish version of Doc Savage, but with a fondness for committing crimes, not deterring them. The other character is a Bad Azz Mofo black man named Jube Bailey. Jake and Jube meet up in Old Millford Prison, a state penitentiary located in Florida. Jake and Jube, by virtue of their physical size, ferociousness, and intelligence, take command of the prison and turn it into their own unique criminal enterprise.

The third character is an alien named Arbok; once a hotshot interstellar pilot, Arbok has been convicted of murder and is sentenced, along with five other aliens, to certain death as a slave laborer on a prison planet in a galaxy far, far away. Arbok leads an insurrection aboard the Frarsk, the prison ship of the book’s title, and commandeers the vessel to a distant galaxy and one of its few habitable planets: Earth.

Arbok and Jake establish a quasi-telepathic link and soon the Frarsk touches down on the grounds of Old Millford. What happens when six homicidal aliens team up with a small army of homicidal earthmen ? Nothing good, that’s clear. There will be VERY little singing of ‘Kumbaya’ around the fire and heartfelt messages about Peace, Love, and Multicultural Understanding. There WILL be plenty of violence and atrocities.

As an action novel, ‘Prison Ship’ starts off with plenty of velocity; the first 38 pages contain more mayhem and intrigue than entire novels by other thriller writers. But after that, the book begins to lose steam. It’s too long by at least 200 pages (if not more) and suffers from uneven pacing, too many filler passages, utterly contrived plotting, and pulp-worthy dialogue. I finished the book wondering if the Baen editor assigned to handle it actually did anything more than simply sign off on the publishing contract.

‘Prison Ship’’s splatterpunk content is liberal. These semi-pornographic passages are offset by star / asterisk symbols so that squeamish readers can skip them. In my mind these passages could have been deleted without harming the novel all that much. But again, Caidin seems to have been adamant about being Transgressive, so the splatterpunk stuff crops up at regular intervals. 

 

One section towards the book’s end, supposedly representing a ‘shock’ revelation about the aliens, is so contrived, and so clumsily enthusiastic about piling on the gore, that it’s hard to come away from ‘Prison Ship’ with any attitude other than one that recognizes that Caidin knew he was putting out some major schlock. 

If you’re a fan of splatterpunk, and you can tolerate a meandering, plodding narrative if it delivers plenty of sarcastic, gruesome humor, then ‘Prison Ship’ will be your cup of tea. 

 

If you’re expecting a carefully crafted novel that uses SF tropes and graphic violence to say something unpleasant (but true) about the Human Condition (like Norman Spinrad does in ‘The Men in the Jungle’), I don’t think 'Prison Ship' will appeal to you. 

Heavy Metal Spring 1988

Heavy Metal

Spring 1988

Spring, 1988. Atop the Billboard 200 LP chart is the soundtrack to the film Dirty Dancing. To add insult to injury, a second collection - titled More Dirty Dancing - of tunes from the movie, sits at the number 5 spot - !

At the offices of the National Lampoon, Inc. (formerly Twenty-First Century Communications), the home of the National Lampoon and Heavy Metal magazines, there is uncertainty in the air. 

 

As he relates in his 1994 book 'If You Don't Buy this Book, We'll Kill this Dog,' circulation and advertising in the Lampoon had taken a steep dive in 1984, but Matty Simmons, the publisher, had implemented a hands-on decision making policy, dismissing staff and instituting what he called 'austerity.' Simmons brought the magazine back into the black by 1988. 

 

Simmons was less heartened to learnt that John Hughes, the writer and director of the  Vacation movies, was insisting on producing the latest installment of the franchise, National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. Simmons, who had produced the previous films in the franchise, was given the choice of letting Hughes have his way and being relegated to the role of 'executive producer,' or not having the film made at all. Simmons acquiesced, but remembers:

I have never quite been able to figure out the reason for Hughes's animosity to me. This was surely a slap in the face. I had brought him into the film business by the hand.....I had never been an executive producer before. Usually that title goes to the guy who puts the money together or the star's manager or the director's girlfriend......Now we were discussing my 'visiting' for the second sequel to a picture that I had nurtured from the beginning, brought to the studio, and produced in every conceivable way.

 

Twenty-First Century Communications co-founder Leonard Mogel had retired in 1986, but Heavy Metal, which had been his main assignment, continued, albeit as a quarterly, rather than monthly, publication. Simmons' daughter Julie remained as editor, but gone were the columns dedicated to reviewing books, comics, and 'rok' music.

 

The main entrant in this Spring issue is a complete presentation of Paolo Eleuteri Serpieri's comic 'Druuna: Morbus Gravis.' First issued in 1985 as a bande dessinee (Franco-Belgian comic book), Morbus Gravis was followed by 11 additional installments, many of these also published as English-language translations in Heavy Metal. 

 

The plots of the Druuna stories involve science fiction, and have a loose, contrived quality. They mainly are vehicles through which Druuna can be shown in various stages of undress, undergoing erotic activities, some involving use and abuse. Whatever happens to Druuna, she always bounces back up and goes on her jiggling way......you can argue that these comics are exploitative, but there is no arguing that Serpieri's artwork is impeccable.

 

 

Other pieces in this issue are less impressive. There is a black and white comic, titled 'Hector,' from Spanish artist Daniel Torres. 'Hector' is another entrant in the so-called 'Atom Style' of comic art that Heavy Metal was particularly fond of during the 80s. I never was that big a fan of Torres and the Atom Style.

Also underwhelming is 'The Bullfighter,' by Heriberto Muela, aka 'Herikberto,' another Spanish artist.

We do get some Moebius in this Spring issue, a four-pager called 'To See Naples.' It's a neat little comic.

Also among the better comics featured in this issue is another four-pager, by Argentinian artist Fernando Rubio, titled 'All Too Human.' I've posted it in its entirety below. 

 

 

 

If you can find a copy of this Spring 1988 issue for $10 or less, I recommend getting it. 

 

And that's how Heavy Metal was, 37 years ago...........

Book Review: Berserker Man

Book Review: 'Berserker Man' by Fred Saberhagen

4 / 5 Stars

 

'Berserker Man' (220 pp.) was published by Ace Books in January, 1980, and features cover art by Boris Vallejo. 

 

For those unfamiliar with the 'Berserker' franchise, it started in 1963 with the publication of the short story 'Fortress Ship' in If magazine. Saberhagen (1930 - 2007) eventually published some 15 books in the franchise well into the mid-2000s, making it one of the more successful such properties in the genre of science fiction. 

 

The Berserkers are robotic intelligences, created eons ago as weapons in some long-forgotten interstellar war. They since have abandoned their initial programming and now seek to eliminate all life from the universe, life being regarded as something of a disease deserving eradication.

 

'Berserker Man' is set some hundreds of years after the events in the 1975 installation in the series, 'Berserker's Planet.' As 'Man' opens, we learn that (inevitably) the Federation has grown complacent, and the Berserker menace has been renewed, and this time, a victory by the robots seems more likely than ever.

 

Rather than trying to put together an enormous battle fleet for a final, catastrophic showdown with the Berserkers, Secretary Tupolev, the leader of the Federation military, has elected for a more cerebral strategy. An eleven year-old boy named Michel Geulincx (pr. Joo-links), residing on the idyllic planet Alpine, is to be drafted into Federation service. At a secret facility at Moonbase, he is to be trained in the use of a new weapon dubbed Lancelot, a weapon that has the power to transform a receptive human being into a superpowered entity, capable of defeating the Berserkers.

 

But the time available to Michel and his trainers is running short, for the human allies of the Berserkers are searching for Michel, to hand him over to the robots. The fate of all life in the galaxy rests on the thin shoulders of a boy who only is beginning to learn what he can do with the power vested in him.........

 

With 'Berserker Man,' Saberhagen clearly is trying to craft a space opera with a wider scope and intellectual heft than detailing recitations of space battles between opposing fleets (although there are some of these in the novel).

 

Central to the plot of 'Man' is the existence of that classic sci-fi archetype, the Mystical Space Object (MSO), which is (simultaneously) enormous, yet tiny; sentient, yet inscrutable; beyond human ken, but also familiar; omnipotent, but frail; etc., etc., etc. The reader learns that the fates of Michel and the MSO are intertwined, and this serves as a conduit through which Saberhagen provides considerable discourse, in the second half of the novel, about 'cosmic' events. 

 

Without disclosing spoilers, I'll simply say that these events culminate in an 'Omega Point' meeting with a vast and impersonal artifact, one capable of deciding the winner in any contest between man and machine.
 

'Berserker Man' features an Afterward essay, by Sandra Meisel, on the themes of the novel and its place in the Berserker franchise. As such things go it's a decent enough essay, although at times it is very earnest in imputing a literary and philosophical significance to Saberhagen's writings (there are illusions to Joseph Campbell, Carl Jung, the heroes of classical mythology, etc.).

 

I was at ease with giving 'Berserker Man' a Four Star Rating. It is a successful effort to bring something a little more imaginative to the franchise, and Saberhagen deserves credit for using a clear and intelligible prose style to relate his cosmic encounters. Many sci-fi novels of the New Wave era that also dealt with this theme relied, almost by rote, on overly figurative language that taxed the patience of the reader. Accordingly, fans of space opera and the Berserker stories will find this novel rewarding.

At the Green Valley Book Fair

At the Green Valley Book Fair

Every other year or so I visit the Green Valley Book Fair, located in rural Mount Crawford, Virginia, a short distance from Interstate 81. The nearest large city or town is Harrisonburg, Virginia.

 

Amid the rolling countryside (if you don't tolerate the smell of manure very well, you will find your visit gets complicated), the Book Fair is housed in a rambling warehouse on the grounds of the greater Green Valley Auctions and Moving complex.

The Book Fair is essentially a retail outlet for remainders and overstock. Most titles are under $10. 

 

On a recent brisk March day I stopped in to see what I could see. They had aisle displays for books from Stephen King, and 'Witcher' novels from Andrzej Sapkowski.

At prices of $4.59 to $6.99, why not pick up a few copies ?!

The Fair has shelving for sci-fi, paranormal romance, manga, and Marvel graphic novels:
 

 

 

Along with 'adult' books, the Book Fair has lots of tables and shelving devoted to crafts, puzzles, activity books and kits, lots and lots of books for kids of all ages.

 

The basement of the Fair is a sizeable area, and here is where the nonfiction is displayed.

 

The thing about remainders is, a lot of what winds up remaindered is rather underwhelming. The Memoirs of Giselle Bundchen ? How about the friendship (so they say) between Barack and Joe ?

 

I came away with an 8-book set of fiction and nonfiction that should provide some informative and engaging reading.

 

So, if you find yourself on Interstate 81 near the vicinity of Harrisonburg, Virginia, you may want to stop in at the Green Valley Book Fair (note that they are closed Sunday and Monday).

Playboy March 1975

Playboy

March 1975

Let's take a stroll down memory lane to March, 1975. Frankie Valli is atop the Billboard Hot 100 chart with his single 'My Eyes Adored You.' Minnie Riperton, the mother of Saturday Night Live actress Maya Rudolph, sits at number 3 with 'Lovin' You,' while Olivia Newton-John is enjoying success with 'Have You Never Been Mellow,' a quintessential 70s 'Me Decade' song.

The latest issue of Playboy magazine is out on the stands. Its lead pictorial features the 27 year-old, up-and-coming actress Margot Kidder, who Baby Boomers will remember as portraying Lois Lane in the Superman films of the late 1970s and early 1980s.

 

In posing for the magazine, Margot is adamant that it is an act of regaining control of the discourse on the female body and its presentation to the make gaze. Or something like that.........

 

Hopefully. these pictures are of a real honest-to-God in-the-flesh fucked-up-like-everybody-else human being. At first I said no to Playboy, pleading male chauvinism. Finally I said yes in a fit of missionary zeal. I'll show them what a real body looks like, I thought to myself. I'll be brave and outrageous and get the photographer to show me in all my imperfect glory.

 

 

Later in life, Kidder struggled with addictions and mental illness. She died in 2018 (by suicide), at age 69.

During the seventies Playboy editors idolized Kris Kristofferson, seeing him as the sort of rugged individualist, 'man's man' type who could fit comfortably into the counterculture and yet also credibly represent country music, with its reactionary sensibilities. 'Just A Good Ole Rhodes Scholar,' by Jack McClintok, treats Kristofferson with veneration.

 

John Hughes contributes 'Chariots of the Clods,' a satirical treatment of Erich von Daniken and the Ancient Astronauts franchise. It's a piece that would have been more at home in the National Lampoon. Later in the decade, Hughes would indeed be a major contributor to the Lampoon, and in the 80s, a very successful feature film director (National Lampoon's Vacation, The Breakfast Club).

There are three good fiction pieces in this March issue, all of them featuring outstanding illustrations.

 

'Up Out of Zoar,' by Ben Maddow (the pen name of author and playwright David Wolffe), illustrated by Doug Gervasi, is science fiction, and provides an offbeat examination of the Last Man on Earth theme. It is superior to many of the New Wave era treatments of this theme.

Sci-fi author Norman Spinrad contributes 'Holy War on 34th Street,' which is not sci-fi, but instead, a satire about what happens on a New York City street corner when the Scientologists and Hare Krishnas decide to get confrontational. Spinrad gets the craziness of 1970s New York down pat. The illustration is by John Youssi.

 

In 'The Jail,' by Jesse Hill Ford, an abrasive, affluent, New York City Jew finds himself caught up in Southern Fried Weirdness, Tennessee-style. The illustration is by Christian Piper.

I'm glad I have this issue. Some good stuff, from the golden age of men's magazines, an era we are unlikely to see again......

Book Review: Nameless Places

Book Review: 'Nameless Places' edited by Gerald W. Page

 4 / 5 Stars

'Nameless Places' (280 pp.) was published in hardback by Arkham House in 1975. Copies of these Arkham House books are rare and costly items nowadays, but I was able to procure this one for about $20.

Gerald W. Page was active in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s as an author and editor. In the mid-70s he edited four volumes of DAW's 'The Year's Best Horror Stories,' and unsurprisingly, some of the entries in 'Nameless Places' were featured in both DAW horror and fantasy anthologies of that decade. 

In his Introduction, Page states that 'Nameless' was a showcase for newer, younger authors in the fantasy and horror genres, as such things stood in the mid-1970s. In this, it served a worthy cause, as back in those days outlets for short stories of genre fiction were few and far between. In keeping with the ethos of Arkham House, the entries all deal with either the 'macabre,' or Lovecraftian topics, or, sometimes, both.

My summaries of the contents of 'Nameless':

Glimpses, by A. A. Attanasio: an Eldritch Artifact does strange things with time and space, including bringing the unwelcome attention of an Older Deity. This novelette has an interesting premise, but is ruined by the author's stilted prose (which seems to have been inspired by the New Wave movement then in high fashion in science fiction).

 

There are a number of short (i.e., under 5 pages) stories. 'The Gods of Earth,' by Gary Myers, and 'In 'Ygiroth,' by Walter C. DeBill, Jr., are Clark Ashton Smith / Randolph Carter pastiches. 'The Night of the Unicorn,' by Thomas Burnett Swann, is a fable about the mythology of rural Mexico. 'The Warlord of Kul Satu,' by Brian Ball, is a horror story centered on an archeological expedition. 'More Things,' by G. N. Gabbard, is a clever tale about what nowadays is referred to as 'Dark Academia.'

Fables and allegories are represented by 'Businessman's Lament' and 'Botch,' by Scott Edelstein, and 'Worldsong,' by editor Page, which is mawkish and sentimental and reads as a Ray Bradbury pastiche.

 

David Drake, who in '75 was beginning to emerge as a significant contributor to the horror and fantasy short fiction markets, gets two entries: 'Awakening' features urban witchcraft, while 'Black Iron' is sword-and-sorcery.

A short tale with an emphasis on humor is 'The Stuff of Heroes,' by Bob Maurus. A grimmer entry is 'Before the Event,' by Denys Val Baker. Carl Jacobi's 'Chameleon Town' has the flavoring of a Twilight Zone episode.

Lin Carter gets to contribute two tales. 'In the Vale of Pnath' is a Clark Ashton Smith pastiche, one of the better ones that Carter has penned. A longer piece, 'Out of the Ages,' is a Mythos entry and serves as an introduction to the gods and monsters of that franchise.

I consider Robert Aickman to be a very over-rated author, and 'The Real Road to the Church' does little to change my mind. Underneath its stilted, overwritten prose is something to do with a middle-aged woman living on a vaguely Mediterranean island; the locals consider her home to be a mystical place.

One of the best entries in the anthology is the Brian Lumley tale, 'What Dark God ?' about a sinister encounter in the berth of a UK train. Also standing out is Joseph Payne Brennan's 'Forringer's Fortune,' which takes place in the sorts of dank caverns where unpleasantries abound.

 

'Walls of Yellow Clay,' by Robert E. Gilbert, mingles humor with the unworldly in a tale that could have appeared in an issue of an EC comic from the 1950s.

Ramsey Campbell, then an up-and-comer in horror fiction, gets two entries. 'The Last Hand' is about a poker game, played by a creepy group of card sharks, in a train car on the line from Liverpool to London. 'The Christmas Present' is set in Liverpool, where the first-person narrator allows an argumentative young man to join a holiday houseparty…..with unforeseen consequences. 

'In the Land of Angra Mainyu,' by Stephen Goldin, features the recurring character 'The Black Angel.' Goldin utilizes Zoroastrian mythology in this story, giving it an offbeat, imaginative character that in my opinion makes it one of the standouts in the anthology.

'Lifeguard,' by Arthur Byron Cover, is a modern ghost story.

The worst story in the anthology is 'Selene,' by pulp veteran E. Hoffman Price. Having something to do with modern-day California witches, and efforts by an unscrupulous wife to poison her husband, this story has profoundly stilted prose: at one point, Price deploys the noun (?) 'quadrupedalian.' 

 

Also failing to impress is 'Simaitha,' by David A. English, which features the sentence: The moon, for example, now moved Thestyllis like the sight of an animal vomiting, which is (possibly) the most fatuous simile I've ever read.

The verdict ? I'm OK with awarding Four of Five Stars to 'Nameless Places.' Some of that might be due to the fact that it evokes nostalgia in me, recalling a time (i.e., the 1970s) when fantasy and horror fiction still were very much in the pop culture basement, consigned to the category of 'fringe' literature. Anthologies such as this one were written to appeal to a small but devoted following, and among the baby boomers, there was a sense of community for those who pursued this stuff.

The Last Frontier

'The Last Frontier'

Interview with Beau L'Amour on Men and Reading 

'Fictional Influence' (Substack)

I periodically post here at the PorPor Books Blog on topics related to genre fiction, the state of publishing nowadays, and the dwindling participation of men as fiction readers.

Via Castalia House > the Worlds Between Wasteland and Sky blog, I've learned that over at the 'Fictional Influence' Substack, which is maintained by Kristin McTiernan, there is a lengthy interview between McTiernan and Beau L'Amour, the son of the western writer Louis L'Amour.

The interview touches on L'Amour's efforts to maintain his father's legacy by issuing new editions of selected titles, as well as unpublished novels. L'Amour must contend with perceptions by people in the publishing industry that 'men don't read.' 

Beau L'Amour has some interesting observations about how boys learn to read, and what sort of content appeals to them:

I really started reading compulsively with Lester Dent’s amazing (though today probably dated) Doc Savage series. This was considered adventure fiction for a general audience, adults and kids, in the 1930s. I read the Bantam reprints in the 1960s and 70s.

If you crossed a down-to-earth “superhero” like Ironman’s Tony Stark and injected him into the mystery, political thriller and science fiction genres, that’s pretty much who Clark Savage Jr. was. It was very male oriented, with lots of action, exploration and gadgets (Dent, along with writing hundreds of short stories and magazine novels invented telephone answering machines, garage door openers and mine detectors for the US navy). I also devoured Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert Heinlein, and later Larry Niven. A lot of kids of my generation read Ray Bradbury, a real poet. He might be kind of underappreciated these days … certainly he was under appreciated by us when we were youngsters.

All of this was hard hitting, fast moving, and relatively short fiction. Great stuff! Today the material for kids and young people is too careful … or too transgressive! It’s too inward looking, too slow paced, and not technical enough to really activate a boy. 

Personally, I don't have high hopes that the industry is going to make any concerted effort to engage with men. All I have to do is walk through my nearest Target store and see the shelving for books, either in the dedicated book section, or in the 'impulse buy' racks at the checkout line: titles by, and for, women. Like the novels of Sarah Maas and Rebecca Yarrow. That's where the money is.

The sci-fi novels I review here at my blog are artifacts of the popular culture as it was forty to sixty years ago, when there was no internet, no smartphones, no podcasting, and no social media. TV had maybe 15 - 30 channels, if you paid extra for 'cable.' And a video game console meant an Atari system, with 8-bit graphics rendered on your 25-inch, picture tube color TV. Nowadays, there's simply so much more content that is available at the press of a button, or a swipe across a screen...............

'So It Goes' by Nick Lowe

Stiff Records, 1976

'So It Goes' is a single, released by Nick Lowe in 1976 on the punk label Stiff Records. It later was recorded in a li be one of the tracks on Lowe's 1978 LP, Jesus of Cool (retitled Pure Pop for Now People in the USA).

 

You can listen to the Stiff Records version here. Barely 2 1/2 minutes long, but a classic of the New Wave, Punk era !

Music from the 21st Century

Music from the 21st Century

LP, GNP / Crescendo Records, 1982

 

This vinyl LP was released in 1982 by GNP Records, which was prominent at that time for issuing sci-fi related albums (such as 'Greatest Science Fiction Hits,' by Neal Norman). 

 

The album cover features a memorable illustration by Michael Whelan; they don't make 'em like that anymore.

 

You can listen to the entire LP here.

 

Intended as a "...collection of daring electronic music experiments," Music from the 21st Century "....features the most gifted futurists of the audio spectrum." In all honesty, when I sat down with the album, the only participants that I recognized were Neil Norman, and Tangerine Dream. But the liner notes on the back of the album cover provide bio sketches of all contributors.

 

As far as the music goes, the first side is a letdown. After a brief (1:50) intro track by Richard Burmer, we have a > 19 minute track from Tangerine Dream. While it starts out reasonably listenable, as the track progresses, it displays a failing common to a lot of the 'electronic' music of the early 1980s: too much rambling doodling, for a track of such length. Given the chance to contribute to this LP, Tangerine needed to deliver better material.....

 

Luckily, side two is an improvement. All the artists present music that is coherent, well-composed, and fulfills the sci-fi, futuristic vibe indicated by the LP's title. Too, it helps that these tracks are short.

Who will like Music from the 21st Century ? I'm not sure modern-day fans of electronica and techno will find all that much to get excited about; let's face it, the technology for this genre of music has advanced considerably in the past 40+ years. Nowadays, the sounds featured on 21st Century easily can be surpassed with PC software by artists who are not reliant on studio and label resources.

 

The LP best will appeal to Boomers, who remember their college years and how, if you wanted to hear electronic music on the radio, you had to tune in to the college station late on a Sunday night, when the DJ had leave to play this genre for several hours. That's how it was done, back in the early 1980s.......... 

Book Review: The Second Sleep

Book Review: 'The Second Sleep' by Robert Harris

 

4 / 5 Stars

 

'The Second Sleep' first was published in the UK in 2019 by Hutchinson. This trade paperback edition (432 pp.) was issued by Arrow Books in July, 2020. 

I usually don't post reviews of sci-fi or fantasy novels published after the early 1990s, as there are quite a few websites and blogs that cover such novels and I prefer to focus this blog on works published during the interval from the middle Sixties to the Early Nineties.

However, I was motivated to post a review of 'The Second Sleep' because it uses the theme of a technologically deracinated England struggling to emerge into a new era of enlightenment, a theme used to good advantage in some novels from the Seventies and Eighties.  I thought it interesting to see how author Harris (who has had considerable success with writing mystery novels set in ancient Rome) would handle the theme.

 

The eponymous 'second sleep' refers to the practice, by people living in the eras before artificial lighting, of briefly walking during the middle of the night, before returning once more to slumber.

 
‘The Second Sleep’ takes place in the UK, some 1,500 years after a vaguely described cataclysm that occurred in the 2020s propelled the country to a quasi-medieval level of civilization. Life is nasty, brutal, and short, and the church the sole arbiter of learning. The upper echelons of the clergy are intent on prohibiting any revivals of ancient technologies, as these are seen as challenges to the supremacy of the church. The violators of church edicts are eligible for summary prosecution, and execution, for ‘heresy.’

As the novel opens a young priest, Christopher Fairfax, is traveling to the village of Addicott, in Wessex, there to see to the funeral of the village parson, one Father Thomas Lacy. Fairfax learns that Lacy tread dangerously close to heresy, possessing forbidden books about the ancients, and prone to digging for artifacts in the middens scattered around Wessex.

 
While Fairfax is callow, he also is curious, and his inquiries into the manner of father Lacy’s passing, and the information presented in the deceased man’s collections of texts and artifacts, lead him into attitudes and beliefs that will contradict all he has been taught by the church. Fairfax makes a fateful decision to extend his stay in Addicott, and in so doing, joins a clandestine project to learn more about the ancients. A project that could earn all its participants the scaffold……

As I mentioned earlier, ‘The Second Sleep’ certainly is not the first novel to take as its topic a post-apocalyptic Britain, where the awareness of the destroyed past keeps percolating up into the consciousness of the present-day population. Edmund Cooper visited this trope in his excellent novel ‘The Cloud Walker’ (1973), Richard Cowper with his 'Road to Corlay' trilogy (1978), and Keith Roberts in his novel ‘Kiteworld’ (1985). Like those novels, ‘The Second Sleep’ focuses on the conflict between humanism and religion, and between orthodoxy and innovation.

However, while ‘The Second Sleep’ is a well-written novel, with smoothly flowing prose, it lacks the imaginative power of the novels from Cooper, Corlay, and Roberts. The plot of ‘Second Sleep’ takes its time unfolding, and is subordinate to characterization, setting, and atmosphere. And the denouement has a desultory quality. 

While I certainly wasn’t expecting Fairfax to discover a Vault, access its armory, grab some Power Armor and a Gatling Laser, and lay waste to Wessex, I was anticipating something more impactful than what occupies the last 15 pages of ‘The Second Sleep.’   

If you have the patience for a small-scale novel that unfolds at a very slow pace towards a rather underwhelming ending, then you might like ‘The Second Sleep.’ But if you want something a little livelier, you’ll want to look elsewhere.