Review: The Last War: A World Set Free by H. G. Wells

Trade paperback, 166 pages
Published 2001 (originally 1914)
Acquired October 2013
Read January 2014

The Last War: A World Set Free
by H. G. Wells

This is a kind of retro-future history, giving the great sweep of events leading to the Last World War (a nuclear one), the collapse of society, and the creation of a scientifically-organized utopia. It dips in and out of indviduals' perspectives in a way that's kind of neat: this inventor here, this soldier there, this king somewhere. Bits of it are interesting; the last segment, as the utopia gets put together is not. Wells's earlier novels of apocalypse-becoming-utopia (The War in the Air and The Sleeper Awakes) were much more circumspect about the details of the utopia, and I think that was the better move.

Folks will tell you that Wells was the first to depict nuclear bombs in fiction. He got it wrong (not sure if that's because he was wrong or contemporary science was), using the idea of the half life pretty strongly:

What the earlier twentieth-century chemists called its half period was seventeen days; that is to say, it poured outpouring half of the huge store of energy in its great molecules in the space of seventeen days, the next seventeen days' emission was a half of that first period's outpouring, and so on. As with all radio-active substances this Carolinum, though every seventeen days its power is halved, though constantly it diminishes towards the imperceptible, is never entirely exhausted, and to this day the battle-fields and bomb-fields of that frantic time in human history are sprinkled with radiant matter and so centres of inconvenient rays.... (59-60)

How cool is that (from a fictional perspective)-- bombs that go on forever in ever-diminishing amounts. It's a frightening, but fascinating image.

(For some reason this Bison Frontiers of the Imagination edition retitles The World Set Free to The Last War: A World Set Free. Ugh. Why? Who knows, because there's no editorial matter other than Greg Bear's introduction, which specifically rejects the retitling in a footnote.)

Review: The New Machiavelli by H. G. Wells

Trade paperback, 470 pages
Published 2005 (originally 1910)
Acquired October 2013
Read January 2014

The New Machiavelli
by H. G. Wells

The first section of this book is great. Dick Remington's anecdotes of his childhood veer between humorous and insightful; I loved hearing both about his father's excesses and the first time he realized selfishness existed in the world. Also the tales of him building cities on the floor of his home were fantastic. One suspects that H. G. Wells would have loved Lego.

The book is never quite that interesting again, but it's never bad, either. Dick's political career is all right, and the depiction of him getting married and falling in love (in that order) are pretty insightful depictions of human psychology; you can see why some people thought that Wells was the next Thomas Hardy. Unfortunately, one gets the feeling that Wells was also obsessed with being right, and this book was basically one long "proof" of why he was right and everyone should have listened to him. Still, interesting enough.

(I was very disappointed in John S. Partington's endnotes in my Penguin Classic edition. Partington is long on facts and short on meaning; he'll give you the date of publication of any book mentioned in the text, and the lifespan of its author, but he never gives you any information that would help your understanding of the novel. Who cares when George Henry Lewes was born and died-- tell me why Wells might want to quote The Biographical History of Philsophy as his epigraph!)

Review: The Sleeper Awakes by H. G. Wells

Trade paperback, 252 pages
Published 2005 (originally 1910)
Acquired October 2013
Read December 2013

The Sleeper Awakes
by H. G. Wells

Is there any early sf subgenre where H. G. Wells doesn't wake up one day and think, "Well, I could do that better?" What The War of the Worlds did for the invasion narrative and The War in the Air for the revolution, The Sleeper Awakes does for the utopian sleeper story-- those peculiar stories where a fellow from the fin de siècle falls asleep and wakes up in far future, like Looking Backward or News from Nowhere (or, much less famously, Looking Within). Wells has actually thought about this would actually be like: there's no guided tour that shows the sleeper what the new world is like in precise detail, because people lie to him, people have their own agendas or biases, because people just take aspects of their own society for granted and don't even think to explain them. Also he even explains how the sleeper could sleep so long without, you know, just dying, and why people would want to keep him alive! It's this thinking-through of generic assumptions that makes Wells the first true science fiction writer, not to mention one of the best.

In that hallmark of good sf, much of what Graham (our sleeper) learns isn't through exposition, but through unfamiliar details. Years before Heinlein's door dilated, Graham runs into a collapsible wall! He watches television and deduces aspects of the future from it. And instead of being a utopia he encounters, it's a dystopia-- but when revolution comes, it's not a tidy one that replaces the ugly society with the beautiful. Wells is too good for that, too.

Review: Charles Dickens' Christmas Ghost Stories

Mass market paperback, 293 pages
Published 1994 (contents: 1836-66)
Acquired May 2012
Read January 2014

Charles Dickens' Christmas Ghost Stories
selected by Peter Haining

"But it is perfectly reasonable, we can conceive, to believe in Caesar, and not believe in the ghost of Caesar."

This collection contains all of Charles Dickens's ghost stories with Christmas connections-- they are all set (or at least published) then. The most famous of these is, quite justly, "A Christmas Carol"; though I've seen many adaptations many times (especially the Muppet one), this was first reading of the story in over a decade. Well, it's quite brilliant. I was amused to note that a couple jokes I'd assumed were Muppet additions were in the original, such as the charity man's mistaking Scrooge saying he'd be put down for "Nothing" as him wanting to remain anonymous, or Mrs. Crachit's list of Scrooge's negative attributes during Bob's toast. I was also amused to note that Dickens digresses from the story to have Scrooge uncharacteristically complain about attempts to close public houses on Sunday, one of Dickens's own hobby-horses. That bit did yield a nice quote from the Ghost of Christmas Present, though: "There are some upon this earth of yours... who lay claim to know us, and who do their deeds of passion, pride, ill-will, hatred, envy, bigotry, and selfishness in our name, who are as strange to us and all our kith and kin, as if they had never lived. Remember that, and charge their doings on themselves, not us" (86).

Of the other stories, "The Haunted Man and The Ghost's Bargain" and "The Signal Man" are the best. The former concerns a chemist who spreads a plague of people becoming emotionless, so of course I love it, but it is a creepy look at what a society without sympathy would be like (and it also suggests that we already are one). The latter is a short, creepy ghost story of the best sort.  "The Rapping Spirits" isn't a real ghost story, but it was still hilarious. I found the inclusion of the overlong and unfunny "The Haunted House" somewhat suspect, however (not set at Christmas, and there are no ghosts!).

I think I might try to read this book aloud next Christmas season (if my wife will tolerate it); it seems like the kind of book where that would work well.

Review: Kitty Foyle by Christopher Morley

Hardcover, 340 pages
Published 1939
Acquired October 2008
Read December 2013

Kitty Foyle
by Christopher Morley

Many years ago, I was delighted and charmed by Morley's Parnassus on Wheels, so when I saw another Morley novel, I grabbed it right off. Kitty Foyle tells the tale of its eponymous narrator, a lower-middle-class Philadelphia girl growing up between the wars, especially her love affair with a member of the Philadelphia gentry. It's good fun, though I never quite warmed to the romance to the extent that Morley wanted me to, I think. Still, there's a lot of great lines and insights, especially when Kitty is still growing up-- one of those books where you annoy people around you by constantly reading bits aloud.

It gets surprisingly racy at times, or at least I think it does; I'm not familiar enough with 1930s literature to really be sure. All I know is that if Frances Hodgson Burnett had been writing this a decade earlier, Kitty would have been "secretly married" before she had sex, and Kitty doesn't do that-- but the novel's 1940 film adaptation apparently does, which I guess gives you a barometer of its relative raciness.

Review: Girl Trouble: Panic and Progress in the History of Young Women by Carol Dyhouse

Trade paperback, 314 pages
Published 2013
Acquired May 2013
Read January 2014

Girl Trouble: Panic and Progress in the History of Young Women
by Carol Dyhouse

Dyhouse covers the popular "moral panics" that accompany the shifting roles of young women ("women") in British society, from the "New Woman" up to the present day, discussing how there is always some kinda outrage accompanying new rights or roles, always some kinda ill effect that people claim will come if women are allowed to do what they want. It's a good history, and she highlights great examples of the absurd-- yet common-- things people will say about women who dare to have a job, have consensual sex, or go out drinking, even in the 2000s.

I do wish the book had a stronger argument or narrative; there are times where it feels like a series of anecdotes. There's one bubbling under the surface, I think, that comes out in a couple places, about how moral panic can be used as an excuse to display the activities you're "panicking" about ("Oh, look at all these young women in their skimpy, sexual outfits! Just look at them!"). I wish this (or something else) had been brought out more consistently, so that the book cohered a little bit more and said a little bit more. There were also times I felt that Dyhouse lost herself in retelling the same "scandalous" stories she was decrying people for retelling. And then the last chapter kinda sputters out, ending with "Well, we still need feminism because the earning gap isn't closed yet." Yes, but... why here? Other than being about women, it doesn't really fit with the focus of the rest of the book.

Review: Time & Space Visualiser by Paul Smith

Oversized paperback, 118 pages
Published 2013
Acquired May 2013
Read December 2013

Time & Space Visualiser: The story and history of Doctor Who as data visualisations
by Paul Smith

Paul Smith's third book is his first serious one, a series of "data visualisations" about the making of Doctor Who. Some are too complicated to glean information from (such as a chart of common story endings used in the modern series), but some are really quite informative, such as most commonly visited planets, most commonly visited locations on Earth, or (my favorite) how many weeks prior to transmission each 1960s episode was filmed. I'd known they use to cut it close, but this visualisation really highlighted how much so! It's an interesting way to reconceptualize information you know, or learn something new.

Review: Not-Radio Times Dr Who Special by Paul Smith

Oversized paperback, 35 pages
Published 2013
Acquired March 2013
Read December 2013

Not-Radio Times Dr Who Special
by Paul Smith

Paul Smith's second pastiche recreates the 1973 Radio Times 10th anniversary special for the 50th anniversary-- only it's written as if there never was any Doctor Who prior to 2005, so it's celebrating the "8th anniversary" instead. It mixes genuine tributes to the companions with muddled "facts" and episode synopses. I'm not familiar with the original in this case, but I enjoyed it regardless, particularly some of the brilliant artwork accompanying the companion tributes (especially the one for Rose). Some of the jokes wear thin, but the "make your own Dalek" feature skewering "Asylum of the Daleks" is worth the price of entry alone.

Review: Doctor Who: The Wonderful Book 1965 by Paul Smith

Oversized paperback, 53 pages
Published 2011
Acquired January 2012
Read December 2013

Doctor Who: The Wonderful Book 1965
by Paul Smith

This fan-made book pastiches the Brilliant Books of Doctor Who, positing that such a thing existed for the first series back in 1964. It's good fun, with a guide to every story and the same mix of nonfiction and in-universe content. Only much of the "nonfiction" is made up-- such as every interview! These are good fun, such as William Russell talking about how he gets on with the ladies, or William Hartnell declaring his favorite story was The Keys of Marinus because he got two weeks off in the middle to go to Spain. There's also a worked-out geography for Marinus, which is actually kind of awesome, and the listed facts for each actor include their "first episode off"! I enjoyed "Tlotoxl's Portents!" a lot, which mixes real clues about the second season with fake ones, in a perfect aping of the same feature in the Brilliant Books or the Annuals/Storybooks. It's a brilliant recreation of a brilliant book for a brilliant era.

Review: Demos: A Story of English Socialism by George Gissing

Trade paperback, 480 pages
Published 2011 (originally 1886)
Borrowed from the library
Read December 2013

Demos: A Story of English Socialism
by George Gissing

This book is about a rabble-rousing, working-class socialist who suddenly comes into money and thus gets the opportunity to put his dream socialist utopia into effect. However, money and power corrupt and he begins a slow moral decline. Like a lot of Victorian novels, it starts slowly, but it all turns out to have been necessary-- having established his players, Gissing can then upset them to great effect. As the socialist's marriage disintegrates, it's a very perceptive depiction of the complications of marital discord. Though the husband is very definitely at fault, Gissing shows how each partner's action inform the others, and you remain strangely sympathetic with the main character. It's a potent look at how snobbery can undo all of us. Or rather it would be, if Gissing's classism didn't occasionally rear its head, telling you that the problem isn't money, but when uncultured folks get hold of money. Ugh. As if rich people aren't capable of being vain and cruel.

The riot at the ending is a brutal tour de force (the title gives you some sense of where it is all going, as demos is Greek for "people," but is meant to evoke "demon") and the climax is perfect. This is followed by an utterly implausible and awful marriage match being presented as natural and fitting because of course a good intra-class marriage will fix everything, but I guess not even great writers can escape convention as much as we might like them to.