Ideas and vulgarities
Peter Nicholls
The Embedding lan Watson (Gollancz, e2.20) To Your Scattered Bodies Go Philip Jose Farmer (Rapp and Whiting, £2.25) The hero of The Embedding, as with most ot the best science fiction, is an idea. Embedding is something to do with language — to do with the fact that language is not something randomly connected with the way we think, but absolutely a part of it. Syntax is not just something dull we learn at school. It is an accurate metaphor for the neutral rights of way our brains can walk down, and it implies also those tracks marked 'trespassers will be prosecuted ', from which the mind, with its self-conditioned reflexes, turns away in apathy or fear of madness.
An embedded language would argue an evolutionary step upwards — or at least in a different direction. It would be the outward and audible sign of a mind of possibly awesome powers — powers that would seem alien to those of us with minds of the old tried and true variety, just as the language would probably seem to us an incomprehensible garble. To write about such a language in English, the very point of the novel being how incompetent English is for expressing certain modes of thought, is an ambitious and rather paradoxical thing to do, and indeed my own neurons feel distinctly frayed at the ends after finishing the book. It is a complex and difficult piece of work. Three societies, each with a form of embedded language, are dramatically presented in the novel. The least satisfying if most science-fictional is the alien group that arrives unannounced by starship. The most frightening is the group of children whose embedded language results from a totally irresponsible scientific experiment involving living in a totally cut off environment, and being taught by a computer that seems to have been programmed by one of Wittgenstein's brighter pupils, with some help from the French symbolist poets. The third group are primitive Amazonian Indians, created with extraordinary anthropological flair and conviction, They are the most truly alien creatures in the novel, and show how unnecessary the standard alien from space is as a metaphor for the intellectual ' outsider.'
The plot is intelligently done, full of contemporary political allusion, notably to the Frelimo guerillas of Mozambique, which is so amazingly up-to-date as to make one wonder whether Mr Watson began writing only last week, or whether he had a crystal ball.
The melodramatic catastrophe, in which each of the three societies is explosively put to the test, literally in two cases, is almost too downbeat and depressing, though realistic I daresay, It seems cruel to invent three societies from which the world might instantly benefit, only to use them as a demonstration of human cynicism and limitation.
Intellectually The Embedding is the most spectacular thing in science fiction, since the astounding Solaris by Stanislaw Lem. The style, however, is somehow disappointing. The language, precise and workaday, is only occasionally moving — a deficiency all the more notable in a tale whose subject is language itself. One somehow expects the prose to be denser and tougher — more embedded let us say.
If The Embedding represents the classical end of the science fictional spectrum, we find in Philip Jose Farmer's novel, To Your Scattered Bodies Go, a splendidly baroque ex ample of what happens at the romantic end. This is the end most readers seem to prefer, taking inexhaustible delight in alien landscapes, fast action, wonder piled on wonder, and a soupcon of gothic mystery flavouring the whole.
This novel gives evidence of such a preference, for it won the 1972 Hugo Award. That is, it was voted the best science fiction novel of the year by the approximately one thousand fans assembled at the 1972 World Science Fiction Convention in Los Angeles. And who can resent a choice which is such. great fun? Farmer is a " pulp writer." This is not meant to be derogatory — only descriptive. Many exotic blossoms have sprung from the rank soil of the sf pulp magazines, and Farmer's talent — one might say his stock ill trade — is to be exotic.
The novel is set in the Riverworld — a world on which the entire population Of earth, from prehistoric times to somewhere around the year 2100— has been inexplicably resurrected, sound in wind and limb, restored to youth, hairless, and in the case of the men, circumcised. All live by an enormous river, lined by unscalable mountains, that winds in a tight spiral over the entire surface of the planet. They are fed by a sort of heavenly manna that materialises every day in the form of steaks, cheese, butter, bourbon, cigar, ettes and marijuana. This blend of the me! taphysical and the commonplace, utterly amazing, I should imagine, to non-initiates, is taken for granted by the sf fans of today: The novel's hero is (and why not?) Richard Burton — the explorer and womaniser, not Elizabeth Taylor's husband. He is haunted by the manic Hermann Goring, who seems to be some sort of dark alter ego. Other prominent characters include a very up-tight lady called Alice Pleasance Liddell (of Lewis Carroll fame), a neolithic hulk called Kazz, and a modern intellectual called Peter Frigate. All Farmer's novels seem to contain at least one character whose initials are P.J.F,, the same as his own. I take this to be a sort of Alfred Hitchcock personal appearance, but its significance eludes me.
Clearly a book that defies description. But among the astounding vulgarities are to be
found witty historical insights and a feeling for the marvellous diversity of creation that has genuine emotional reverbrations. Cer tainly it is Farmer's best book for years, and representative of the sort of zaniness and willingness to accept any sort of grist for the mill that so attracts the aficionados of sf, among whom I number myself.
The mystery element is well done but frustrating. The book finishes with so many deli berate loose ends as to make a sequel abso lutely necessary. It is probably planned as the first of a series. The hero of the next one is to be Mark Twain (who better to explore the river?), and I await it with the same feeling as the mouse hypnotised against his will by the snake.
Peter Nicholls is the administrator of the Science Fiction Foundation at North East London Polytechnic.
Previous page
