A Quokka Dreeds its Weird

A bunch of John Christopher's books are getting reprinted as ebooks. He's a very uneven writer but his better books are well worth reading if you're okay with male-centricity - The Tripods, obviously, but also the Sword of the Spirits trilogy. His worse books, like Sweeney's Island/Cloud on Silver and Wrinkle in the Skin are some of the most jaw-droppingly misogynistic books I've ever read and that's saying something. (Also racist, but sadly not the most racist books I've ever read.) And some are just plain weird, which is always a plus in my book.

Sadly, Kindle has not yet reprinted the Nazi leprechauns.



Empty World, one of his many apocalypse books, features contagious rapid aging. At first children and younger teenagers are spared, and I thought it would be an "adults die, kids are left to make a new world" book. Then the children start dying too. By the two-thirds mark, there are only five survivors that we know of, and one is insane and one, believing he's all alone, commits suicide the day before the others would have found him. This book is dark.

The last third is very odd. Neil, the protagonist, finds two girls living together. They seem to be doing fine, but he doesn't agree and demands that they leave London and go to the country with him. Things go very, very bad between the three of them, leading to an ending that is weird and abrupt but oddly powerful. (This is a minority opinion. Amazon reviews were mostly "WTF? The book just stopped!)

( Read more... )



Wrinkle in the Skin is another apocalypse book, genre: giant earthquake. I DNF'd/skimmed it as it takes my second-place prize for Most Ridiculously Unrealistically Grimdark Apocalypse Reaction. First place is the book (IIRC Ashfall) in which a giant volcano erupts and people resort to cannibalism the next day. If you can't hunt for canned goods or just fast for one day before roasting babies in the town square, you just really want to roast a baby.

In this one, a giant earthquake kills most of the inhabitants of Guernsey. Literally ONE DAY LATER, when no one has any idea how widespread the earthquake actually was, some random dude has rounded up the women and begun raping them with the intent of quickly impregnating them so he can found a dynasty with himself in charge. The narrator is mildly put off by this, but not enough to do anything about it; he evaluates all women by attractiveness and agrees with the rape dynasty dude that the first one he found and raped is a "slut." The rape dynasty dude discusses forming a rape roster and keeping an eight-year-old girl for later sexual use when she's slightly older; the narrator is mildly put off but doesn't object.

At that point I started skimming. The narrator, accompanied by a young boy who is not considered a rape target because John Christopher cannot conceive of men being sexually victimized, goes on a trek across a former ocean bed in search of his daughter, a student a London. This part is pretty cool though, hilariously, they cannot conceive of eating raw fish so just leave perfectly good fish because they lost their lighter. These dudes are not exactly dynasty-building material is what I'm saying.

They find that England has also been devastated. The narrator meets up with a woman who delivers a "It's a man's man's world now" monologue in which she explains that she needs male protection because she has been raped in like eight separate incidents by different rapists, and was also raped by the men who "protected" her. After rape # 4 or so, I think I would try striking out on my own and avoiding men as much as possible, as there is plenty of canned food around.

At that point I gave up. It's too late now but I would really like to tell John Christopher that 1) you cannot extrapolate the behavior of soldiers in a war zone toward civilians on the enemy side to the behavior of random civilians to each other immediately after a natural disaster, 2) the day after a natural disaster is waaaaaaay too soon to found a rape dynasty, 3) raw fish is delicious and even if it wasn't, when you're starving you eat what's available so so much for your grim realism that allows for rape dynasties but not raw fish, 4) once things have devolved into a rapefest free for all, boys are getting raped too and eventually you, yes you, will land on the rape roster.

I've been trying to thin out my bookcases, which are getting into double rows. Since SWEENEY'S ISLAND was so disappointing, I decided to begin the two other John Christopher disaster novels that had been sitting around, vowing to ditch them if the first chapter didn't really grab me. Instead, I ended up skimming both of them. Really skimming. So these are not real reviews, as I didn't really read either book. But as feminism and feminist readings seem to be the topic du jour, I decided to write a bit on them.

These are both boring, poorly written books. If you want an _enjoyable_ British catastrophe novel in which manly men are congratulated by the author for making hard choices at other people's expense, while women mostly cower in the corners in horrified realization that without civilization, they are utterly helpless in a way that men are not, read John Wyndham's DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS. And know that my characterization of it is slightly unfair. Because compared to John Christopher, Wyndham's moral dilemmas and portrayal of women are sensitive, nuanced, and progressive.

You recall that in Christopher's SWEENEY'S ISLAND, sophisticates are stranded on an island. A strong man with a gun takes over and makes them into a fascist society. Two native servants are bullied, beaten, and enslaved, then drop out of the story with no explanation. The bad woman who likes sex attaches herself to the strong man. The good women who want babies, along with the good but weak men, are utterly helpless and would have been killed if not for the return of outside authority. But before that happens, the rest of them revert to savage murderous cannibalistic pagan orgies.

In THE LONG WINTER (1962), an unconvincingly explained Ice Age suddenly descends. Civilization collapses. Everyone becomes savages. English people move to Africa, where they meet many Negresses and mammies. Bad women who like sex acquire "coal-black boyfriends" in sugar daddy relationships. Forget the racism and sexism. The craft of novel-writing is what really takes a beating here. The book is virtually unreadable.

In NO BLADE OF GRASS (1956), a disease kills all the grass and grain, first in Asia and then in the rest of world, including, most importantly, England. Civilization collapses. Everyone becomes savages. A strong man with a gun falls in with a group of good English people. He leads them in murdering random civilians to get their guns, so they can murder more random civilians, I mean, protect their own children.

In a particularly repulsive scene, they break into a farm house, murder a mother and father, and then give the teenage daughter to the strong man as a sex slave. She cozies up to him, because he is strong and she is female and helpless. This bit is presented as a moral dilemma involving the hard choices men must make in savage times, but it's justified in terms that would do George Bush proud:

"(Olivia) said gently, 'We aren't bad people. We're just trying to save ourselves and our children, and so the men kill now, if they have to. There will be others coming who will be worse-- who will kill just for the sake of killing, and torture too, perhaps.'"

You should be grateful that our torture chambers aren't as bad as Saddam's torture chambers.

"'She's got enough sense to know a woman's helpless on her own now.'

"'Funny creatures, women,' Roger said. 'Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, they do the sensible thing without hesitation. The hundredth time they do the other without hesitation.'"

(Because though the narrative shows that men are also helpless without guns, women are incapable of obtaining or firing one. Or something. Incidentally, they're discussing whether or not the teenage sex slave to her parents' murderers would be dumb enough to try to kill him while he sleeps.)

The conclusion, while disposing of the strong man in a noble death, affirms the overall message that in tough times men have to make tough decisions, which often involve rape and murder.

It seems that the appeal of some disaster novels (like, if I recall correctly, Niven and Pournelle's LUCIFER'S HAMMER, which (also IIRC) involved rampaging black cannibals) is to reassure men that if only those nasty confining laws were to be suspended, women would instantly be shown up for the helpless sexual possessions that they are, non-white people would be shown up as the rampaging savages that they are, and white men would not only be given permission to rape and murder, but would be patted on the back for being tough-minded and realistic and making hard choices wisely.

Which goes to show the value of the feminist reading of a text. If you assume that only feminist theorists notice or draw consclusions from how the gender and race of characters corresponds with their attributes, then these novels are just boring, worthless junk. While if you do notice such things, you will conclude that the world is going to hell in a handbasket just like Christopher predicted... I mean, you will gain some insight into a certain mindset currently being perpetuated at the highest levels of US government.

Which is good to have. All the same, my bookcases are now three books lighter.