The Society of Time - John Brunner

This fantastic British Library collection, edited and introduced by Mike Ashley, contains the original three long short stories/novellas, plus two additional time-based stories, 'Father of Lies' and 'The Analysts'.

In John Brunner, I have now found a sci fi writers whose interests sit closely with mine and who can actually write in a highly-acceptable literary style.  The problem with many sci fi authors is that they prioritise ideas over craft-skill.  I can understand this to an extent; describing the challenging in a basic, functional manner might seem an obvious turn to take, however going too far can easily put off the more discerning reader, and has done in my case many times.   You really need to give your writing a bit of character - and fortunately Brunner has it in bucketloads.

For the Scoiety of Time trilogy Brunner envisages a world in which the Spanish Armada succeeded.  England is now - in the twentieth century - a well-integrated part of the Spanish Empire, which divides the world more or less equally with the Confederation, dominated by China and Russia.   Thanks to the victory of the Spanish Hapsburgs in 1588 there has been no Austro-Hungarian Empire, thence no World Wars.   On the negative side, because of the dominance of the Catholic Church there has been very little progress - no industrial revolution, no cars or planes.   People still ride about and defend themselves with swords. 

Science has, however, made one stupendous advance: it has become possible to travel back in time.  The potential benefits and dangers of this are so extreme that the Empire and the Confederacy have come together to lay down rules, adminustered by twin societies in the two jurisdictions.  Time travellers have to be licensed by their society, their expeditions severely restricted.   In all three stories, therefore, the rules are broken and the very existence of the 'contemporary' world is threatened.

In all three cases Brunner's hero is Don Miguel de Navarro, a young licentiate of the Imperial Society.   In 'Spoil of Yesterday' occupt licentiates have been selling time trips to rich diletantes.  Someone has brought back an Aztec mask as a souvenir, not realising how an out-of-time artefact can turn the world on its head.  'The Word Not Written' is set in London on New Year's Eve.  Society members will gather at their HQ for midnight mass but first there is a spectacular party thrown at the Prince Imperial's Palace at Greenwich (the Prince is Head of the Society).  Don Miguel is not one of nature's party-goers but he forces himself to attend and is paired off with the Scandanavian ambassador's daughter.  Scandanavia is naturally a progressive country and Lady Kristina is a liberated ypung woman.  She wants to see how orifinary people celebrate, so Miguel escorts her into central London (Londres, in Brunner's Spanish empire).  There they realise something has gone out-of-time when an Amazonian female warrior first excites the mob, then fights them off.   Meanwhile their is an insurrection.  The Empire is about to be overthrown - until Father Ramon, the Jesuit master-theoretician of the Society, steps back in time and fixes the anomaly.  The third and final story 'The Fullness of Time' is set in America where, in a fun development, the Empire has chosen the Mohawks to bring together the traditional tribes.  The anomaly in this case is a modern drill bit in a mine supposedly sealed in ancient times.  Father Ramon suspects Confederate involvement.

The additional stories are both associated in theme and time of writing (the early Sixties).  In 'Father of Lies' a small corner of rural England appears to have been sealed off from modernity, to the extent that dragons and ogres live there.  'The Analysts' has the advantage of a compelling character, Joel Sackstone, who has turned his unique gift of visualisation into a profession.  He looks at architect's models and visualises them in reality: how people will move about there; the limitations of the plan and the solutions.  He is called in by his main employer who has been asked to design a very odd building for a mysteruous research organisation.  Joel visualises it in practice and realises that all the odd angles and levels are leading visitors in a direction that doesn't really exist.  He tries it out in his main room at home - and walks clean through the solid wall.

As I mentioned, Brunner was writing this stuff in the early Sixties.  He was slightly ahead of his time, albeit he reflects and develops trends that were incipient at the time - women's liberation, mixed marriages, racial prejudice, even plundered treasures.  He wrote lots before his death in 1999, but to my horror yesterday, none of my usual obscure book dealers in London had a single one!   I shall have to delve deeper and venture further afield, because I absolutely want to read more. 

The First Day on the Somme - Martin Middlebrook

 The classic account of perhaps the greatest organised bloodbath in history.   I remember when it came out in 1970, it completely upended all the sentimentalised tosh we had been taught to believe about our heroic grandfathers.   There was heroism, that's for sure - and it was all for nothing.   Something like half a million men died on July 1 1916, for absolutely nothing.

The great breakthrough had been planned for several months but it had to be brought forward in order to releive the French at Verdun.   To be clear, the French withstood hell at Verdun.   We should also remember, which Middlebrook reminds us from time to time, that this was a Franco-German war, a re-run of 1871, and we were only there on a gentleman's agreement, helping out.

The scale of the battle, even on that first day (which was meant to be the only day) was too immense for the modern reader to assimilate.   This is where Middlebrook's stroke of genius, since adopted by many, comes into play.   He has chosen ten men, from all over the UK and of all ranks, whose fortunes he follows.   They range from the outliers - the 68 year old who volunteered along with three sons - to the everyday run-of-the-mill man who wanted something more exciting than drudgery in the aforementioned mill.   They allow us to relate.   The machine of the new style of war is humanised.

Middlebrook also draws on first-person testimony.   Again, he covers the range.   There are the published war diaries of Earl Haig and his commander on the day, General Rawlinson; and there are dozens of privates and lance-corporals whom Middlebrook interviewed during his research.  The interviewees all, of course, survived.

Middebrook is the only war historian I recall reading who explains how armies are built.   He takes the time to point out that the German army on the Somme were all conscripts - Germany and France both had forms of national service which meant that every man under sixty had been trained in weaponry, discipline and basic military tactics.   Britain had a small regular army, recently backed up by Territorials primarily meant for home defence.   Everyone else was a volunteer (conscription did not even begin in mainland UK until 1916 and none of the first conscripts were anywhere near battle-ready in July).   Most of those volunteers, and the vast majority of the Brits on the field on July 1 were New Army, men who had responded to Kitchener's famous (or infamous) "Your Country Needs YOU!" appeal.   Kitchener was their hero; he had died at sea less than a month before the Somme, and now he was mythical, a hero.   For every member of the New Army, this was to be their first action.

Middlebrook takes us carefully through the day, with pauses for review at midday and dusk, the same times the generals at HQ could have used to capitalise on the few successes there had been and do something about the appalling disaster unfolding elsewhere.   He then takes us, commendably briefly, through what happened next.   For the ten men whom he chose as guides, he tells us what became of them. 

The book is, as I say, a classic.   It is sobering, instructive, horrendous in what is described but always compassionate.   The errors of leadership were largely unavoidable.   Some misjudgments, however, were built into the plan from the first.  The real catastrophe, it seems to me, was the failure of the man who was told to arrange eighteen trains to ferry the worst casualties from the field to hospital, who on day only managed three.  How many deaths did he have on his bill?  

The sort of slop I was fed as a child is now forcefed to contemporary children about World War II.   The truth will come out and I'm sure there are historians out there waiting to bring it to light.

Cairo in the War - Artemis Cooper

 Artemis Cooper might be defined as heritage writer.  The books she writes are connected with her heritage as the granddaughter of Duff Cooper, politician, diplomat and military historian, and the aristocrat actress Lady Diana; daughter of aristocrat and writer John Julius Norwich, and wife to military historian Antony Beevor.   Her themes are perfectly encapsulated here, the scandalous story of the cultural broth that made Cairo infamous during World War II.

Cairo was then a British protectorate - not quite part of the Empire but effectively ruled from London.  The British expats, and the first wave of military commanders stationed there, were either Raj, posh or risque, sometimes all three.   This is not really the story of the ordinary infantryman, a long way from home in an alien climate, though they are mentioned.

We have the highly dubious royal family, led by the notorious King Farouk, initially in his youthful pomp, latterly at the start of his long debauched decline.  In public the royals are devout Muslims, behind closed doors they are boozing and copulating with the everyone else.

The war becomes a reality with Rommel's advance through the desert.  Cairo survives.  Then the war-story turns to the Special Operations Executive, with Cairo the base for operations supporting resistance movements in Greece, Crete and the Balkans.

It is incredibly well done.  The characters are expertly summarised and Cooper somehow makes it easy for her reader to keep track of the various cliques and conspiracies.  I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Perversion of Justice - Julie K Brown

 What a fantastic book this is!   The Jeffrey Epstein story, told by an investigative reporter from the Miami Herald, filled with the detail we are not allowed in the UK in case it damages our esteem for Prince Andrew.

The scandal about Epstein is the virtual free ride he got from prosecutors in 2008 when he pleaded guilty to one chatge of sex with a minor and thus officially became a paedophile.   This was a plea deal worked out over several years between local prosecutors in Florida and Epstein's star-studded defence team (which actually included Kenneth Starr, the special prosecutor in the Clinton impeachment).  And it stank.   Epstein was given a cursory prison sentence, most of which he served on community control; while technically incarcerated he was allowed out every day to visit his 'office' where in fact his supervisors turned a collective blind eye while he was in turn visited by teenaged blondes.   Later, he was supposed to follow reporting rules for sex offenders as he jetted about the US but never actually did.

This is the scandal which initially drew Julie K Brown to the case.   Over coming years she prepared a series of articles about the case which ultimately drew the attention of New York prosecutors who charged him with a proper list of offences and successfully opposed bail.   Then we have the suspicious death and the secondary Ghislaine Maxwell, which was ongoing as Brown's book went to press.   I hope there is a follow-up in which Brown gives us her view on why Maxwell remains silent even after conviction and a sentence which could see her spend the rest of her life in prison.   In other words, how high does this highly organised sex-ring for the super-rich actually go?   Already, in this book, Brown does not shy away from telling us who the victims implicate in their depositions.   There is at least one high-profile name here I didn't realise was involved.

The best thing about the book, though, is the writing: American journalese at its finest, crisp, conscise, yet bordering on the poetic in the forensic choice of words.   Julie Brown may have learnt her trade the hard way but she learned it well.   A fine book by a fine writer on a hugely important matter.   I cannot recommend it highly enough.

The Blackbird - Tim Weaver

 Weaver's hero, David Raker, is a private investigator of missing persons.   In this case, CCTV caught the Gascoigne car going over the edge of a steep hill.   When police arrived ten minutes later the car was on its roof and on fire.   When the fire was put out there was no trace of the driver, Aiden, nor his wife and passenger, Cate.   Two women witnesses, both of whom had called 999, had watched the entire time and seen no one crawl or be pulled from the wreckage.  Many months later Cate's parents hire Raker to solve the mystery.

Raker soon discovers that Cate was a promising young photographer who was working on a project about the unsolved Dunes Murders (the remains of three women found on a beach in Northumbria).   By the time of the crash, the project had turned into a book.   So where is the manuscript?   How far had Cate got with her inquiries?

The compelling aspect of Raker's character is the extent to which he is prepared to dig.   This is what justifies the 400+ pages of the book.   It takes a while to get going, and I have to admit I thought about giving up - but the slowness of the start is essential if we are to fully appreciate the full measure of Raker's compulsion.   There are many earlier books in the series and these probably explain the reason behind Raker's almost suicidal determination.  This book might have been easier to engage with had there been some sort of clue.   That said, once it gets going The Blackbird becomes really difficult to put down.

Also from an earlier book in the series comes Raker's involvement with an ex-cop called Healy for whom he has faked a death and arranged a new life.   Again, some sort of explanation would have been nice.   The way Healy is incorporated into the main narrative is cleverly done, though.

Weaver is an excellent builder of plot - excellent bordering on superlative.   He uses several voices to tell his story, all of them credible.  His one fault, and it only emerges towards the end, is some frankly bizarre word coinage.  I won't use them here because perhaps other readers find them acceptable.   New coinages don't usually bother me; in fact, I usually enjoy them.   Not these.   These are naff and I wish Weaver hadn't bothered.  Will they deter from other books by him?   Actually, yes, which is a pity because I was already Googling his other work when I spotted them.