Gene Wolfe, The Fifth Head Of Cerberus (1972) SFMW 8

Gene Wolfe's 1972 sequence of three linked novellas ('The Fifth Head of Cerberus', '"A Story," by John V. Marsch', and 'V.R.T.') is simultaneously a murder/mystery story, post-colonial allegory, and a cautionary tale concerning cloning and the impact such technologies could have on a theoretical human intergalactic diaspora.

The first and third tales are presented sequentially, although not in temporal succession, and both feature the character Dr. John V. Marsch, an anthropologist supposedly from Earth. The title of the intervening tale suggests that its author is also Dr. Marsch, but its subject matter (the tribulations of a group of aboriginals from the plant Sainte Anne, twin planet to Sainte Croix) offers an adjacent look at the work's thematic interests.

At the core of the mysterious mediations that occur between characters (who may be clones), versions of characters (who may be aboriginals), and their clones (recessing, near-infinitely), lies the hypothesis that Marsch is interrogating, posited by Dr. Aubrey Veil who is, as the reader discovers, a suitably shady individual herself:

“Veil’s Hypothesis supposes the abos to have possessed the ability to mimic mankind perfectly. Veil thought that when the ships came from Earth the abos killed everyone and took their places and the ships, so they’re not dead at all, we are.” (Loc. 385-87)

She believed, though she pretended not to, that the Annese have devoured and replaced homo sapiens—Veil’s Hypothesis, and she is Veil; it has been used for years to discredit other heterodox theories about the original population of Sainte Anne. But who, then, Tante Jeannine, are the Free People? Conservatives who would not desert the old ways? The question is not, as I once thought, how much the thoughts of the Shadow children influence reality; but how much our own do. (Loc. 3282-85)

Despite its relative brevity, the text possesses an exceptional semantic density which invites, but also purposefully challenges, interpretation through its panoply of narrators, indeterminate chronology, and textual filters. 'V.R.T.,' for example, is presented as a series of textual fragments, diary entries, and interrogation reports.

Collectively, these devices can enrich the text's enjoyment for those who take pleasure from such equivocal and enigmatic writing, but equally it could frustrate readers who seek a simple tale, well told. The observation 'Let me see if I can cure my habit of skipping back and forth and give everything of interest in the order in which it occurred' (Loc. 2237-38) broadly describes how Wolfe stands in relation to his text.

To be fair, Wolfe (who's narrative voice is a (G)ene-splice away from that of the narrator 'Number Five') does offer the reader fair warning that The Fifth Head Of Cerberus is going to offer more in the way of spirals of indeterminacy than it will provide in deductively-reasoned facts:

You wish to find what is true, and I’m afraid you’re going to find damned little; I want what is false, and I’ve found plenty. (Loc. 2083)

Among his many other authorial accomplishments, Wolfe is technically commanding, a builder of compelling worlds, and a master-craftsman of plotting. For this reader, The Fifth Head Of Cerberus stands as a high-water mark of speculative fiction, and is a obvious and worthy candidate for inclusion in the SF Masterworks list.

“We wish to discover why we fail, why others rise and change and we remain here.” (Loc. 1007-08)

Note: the second, alternate cover to the numbered (I think) sequence of SF Masterworks only came to my attention when seeking images for this post. I do not own a copy of the alternate cover version, but if anyone who does has any more details that I can add in this regard, please feel free to forward them on, and I will amend this entry accordingly with a credit.

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Arthur C. Clarke, Rendezvous with Rama (1972) SFMW 65

'On a billion television screens, there appeared a tiny, featureless cylinder, growing rapidly second by second. By the time it had doubled its size, no one could pretend any longer that Rama was a natural object. Its body was a cylinder so geometrically perfect that it might have been turned on a lathe - one with centres fifty kilometres apart. The two ends were quite flat, apart from some small structures at the centre of one face, and were twenty kilometres across; from a distance, when there was no sense of scale, Rama looked almost comically like an ordinary domestic boiler.' (Loc. 191-95)

In this manner, Arthur C. Clarke introduces the titular Big Dumb Object  (BDO) of his Hugo and Nebula award winning 1972 novel Rendezvous with Rama.

One of the features of Clarke's fiction is his re-orientation of aspects of human arrangements that tradition has sanctified, and the interpolation of plausible extrapolations from current research. Rendezvous with Rama is no different, with its representation of polygamy (in all combinations; Loc. 586-88) and appealing, but effectively enslaved, superchimps or 'Simps':

Their rearing and education had probably cost as much as that of the average spaceman, and they were worth it. Each weighed less than thirty kilos and consumed only half the food and oxygen of a human being, but each could replace 2.75 men for housekeeping, elementary cooking, tool-carrying and dozens of other routine jobs (Loc. 776-78)

For all this, and as its title suggests, the main interest of the work resides in Clarke's description of the BDO itself. His description of the crew of the survey vessel Endeavour's exploration of Rama's interior is striking, and often suspenseful:

And now he understood the purpose of those mysterious trenches, the Straight Valley and its five companions; they were nothing less than gigantic strip-lights. Rama had six linear suns, symmetrically ranged around its interior. From each, a broad fan of light was aimed across the central axis, to shine upon the far side of the world. (Loc. 1279-81)

However, subsequent to the appearance of the organic automata that cleanse and maintain the BDO during its journey, the text loses much of its mystery, although it retains a good deal of interest:

'What we failed to take into account was the possibility of non-biological survival. If we accept Dr Perera's very plausible theory, which certainly fits all the facts, the creatures who have been observed inside Rama did not exist until a short time ago. Their patterns, or templates, were stored in some central information bank, and when the time was ripe they were manufactured from available raw materials - presumably the metallo-organic soup of the Cylindrical Sea. Such a feat is still somewhat beyond our own ability, but does not present any theoretical problems. We know that solid state circuits, unlike living matter, can store information without loss, for indefinite periods of time. 'So Rama is now in full operating condition, serving the purpose of its builders - whoever they may be.' (Loc. 2762-68)

Ultimately, readers may be disappointed to glean little from the work that can provide them with satisfactory answers to the two questions that exercise the minds of the crew of the Endeavour: 'Who were [the Ramans] -- and what went wrong?' (Loc. 501). This may be asking the wrong questions of Rendezvous with Rama, as one senses that Clarke's purpose was to invite the reader to capture and reflect on the sense of wonder developed within his description of the BDO's geography in this excellent addition to the SF Masterworks series, and take it with them beyond their reading of the novel, and into their own lives:

The nature and the purpose of the Ramans was still utterly unknown. They had used the solar system as a refuelling stop - as a booster station - call it what you will, and had then spurned it completely, on their way to more important business. They would probably never even know that the human race existed; such monumental indifference was worse than any deliberate insult. (Loc. 3294-96)

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Michael Moorcock, Corum (1972) FMW 30

Despite being spread over three slim novels, the plot that drives this trilogy of novels featuring Corum, a maimed incarnation of Michael Moorcock's enduring Multiverse protagonist, the Eternal Champion, is relatively straightforward.

Prince Corum Jhaelen Irsei of the Vadhagh leaves the Castle Erorn at the bidding of his father, Prince Khlonskey in search of news of the welfare of the rest of his race in order that the latter may pass into the Chamber of Vapours and die by his own hand in the full knowledge of the fate of his race.

Corum has travelled but a little way on his quest before encountering a Mabden horde making haste towards his hereditary home, little knowing that they have already destroyed the majority of his race and are set upon razing his family pile and the inhabitants thereof in a similar manner.

Corum is captured byone of the Pony Tribes' leaders, Glandyth-a-Krae and tortured and maimed (losing his left hand and right eye) prior to being saved by an aspect of Lord Arkyn, Lord of Law. At this point, the focus of the narrative broadens and the motive force behind the Mabden's destructive campaign is revealed as being the manifestation of a realignment of the balance of Law and Chaos within the Fifteen Planes as the latter begins to best the former.

Furnished with the arcane powers of the Hand of Kwll and Eye of Rhynn allowing him to summon emissaries from other planes, Corum is tasked with overthrowing Arioch, the Prince of the Swords, Xiombard, the Queen of the Swords, and finally Mabelode, the King of the Swords.

For this reader, however, the Corum trilogy's core is philosophical rather than narrative. In a very real sense, Corum - and by extension, the figure of the Eternal Champion of which he is but a single facet - are bit players in a much larger narrative that takes place outside of the contexts of the novel as the universe's gods struggle with oneanother 'offstage', an enduring contest in which they are little more than pawns, or as Xiombard puts it "we must use mortals for ends we cannot ourselves achieve". (p. 266)

The purity of Corum's quest to avenge his family and race - seldom a pure motive - is debased in his own mind by the acts that he is compelled to undertake, and the innocents slain by the godly appendages that have been grafted on to him by his patron: "Too many crimes have been committed so that that vengeance might be won! Too many unfortunates have suffered frightful fates! Will the Vadhagh name be recalled with love - or muttered in hatred?" (p. 128).

Furthermore, the agents of Chaos seem less demonic, and their motives less abhorrent, When Corum encounters them in person. He is struck by the fact that Arioch, for example, appears to bear "no malice towards the Vadhagh. He cared for them no more no less than he cared for the Mabden parasites feeding off his body. He was merely wiping his palette clean of old colours as a painter will before he begins a fresh canvas. All the agony and misery he and his had suffered was on behalf of the whim of a careless god who only occasionally turned his attentions to the world that he had been given to rule". (p. 133). This is a perception that the Chaos gods themselves are only too quick to support: 'Arioch spoke reasonably to Corum in a low, hypnotic voice. "You see, friend Corum, these Fifteen Planes were stagnating. What did you Vadhagh and the rest do? Nothing. You hardly moved from your cities and your castles. Nature gave birth to poppies and daisies. The Lords of Law made sure that all was properly ordered. Nothing was happening at all. We have brought so much more to your world, my brother Mabelode and my sister Xiombarg."' (p. 134)

Standing apart from the forces of both Law and Chaos is the Nameless Force (p. 265), possibly a supreme being of some order who has set the forces of a Cosmic Balance in sway, and yet who seems to have no control over it - or perhaps no desire to control it. It is a moot point whether the contemplation of balance and the consquences of its disruption denude the series of suspense, or augment it. I tend to favour the latter as a function of the struggle of the protagonists rather than the mechanical pre-ordained destinies of the elect, but it is far from taxing to construct a reading wherein the former is encapsulated by the latter.

One of the irresistable charms of Moorcock's Multiverse is the pleasure that the reader may take from encoutering aspects of the Eternal Champion and his Companion in novel in new settings and combinations. The metrosexual dandy Jerry Cornelius, for example, plays a major role in the sequence as the equally fastidious Jhary-a-Conel, first appearing in the second work in the trilogy, The Queen of the Swords. As Jhary explains to a bemused Corum, who has no knowledge of his other aspects in this incarnation, "sometimes we are the same creature - or, at least, aspects of the same creature[...] I have been called Timeras and Shalenak. Sometimes I am the hero, but more often than not I am the companion to a hero". (p. 160). Elric and Erekosë also appear in the work, ultimately combining with Corum to form a fascinating gestalt entity, although through their shared histories Corum is forced to acknowledge the possibility that 'it was his fate to experience an eternity of battle, of death, of misery' (p. 312), 'the fate of the Eternal Champion' (p. 331). In conference with Elric, Corum concludes near the end of the work that "we are both doomed to play a role in constant struggle between the Lords of the Higher Worlds - and we shall never understand why that struggle takes place, why it is eternal. We fight, we suffer agonies of mind and soul, but we are never sure that our suffering is worthwhile" (p. 356)

Such revelations can, perhaps unsurprisingly, provoke somewhat morose outbursts within the sequence's protagonists. Lady Jane Pentallyon, appearing late in the trilogy in a decidely Earth-like setting (contemporary crusading is mentioned at one point, p. 334) declaims "the more one discovers the less point there seems in life at all" (p. 338)

However, the conclusion of the trilogy is more redemptive than that which precedes it may have led the reader to predict it would be. Reclaiming his hand, the god Kwll tosses off the observation "do you know that you dream of these gods - that you are stronger than they - that when you are fearful, why then you bring fearsome gods upon yourselves? Is this not evident to you?" (p. 379). It may also be more realistic that we might have expected; Jhary observes: "there are many legends which say the past was perfect or that the future will be perfect. I have seen many pasts and may futures. None of them were perfect" (p. 386)

"Do not despair entirely of this world... New gods can always be created" (p. 393)

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Robert Silverberg, Dying Inside (1972) SFMW 59

‘Living we fret, dying we live. I’ll keep that in mind[…] until I die again’ (p. 199)

David Sellig is a fractious, self-indulgent, emotionally needy middle aged man who has squandered such talent as he has and exists by writing term papers for NYU undergraduates.

He can also read minds.

His gift, however, is abandoning him in incipient middle age, and the novel focuses on the sense of desolation, loss and missed opportunity that will be familiar to all those who have left the first flush of youthful optimism behind them and reflect in their quieter moments on what they could have achieved, if only: ‘I am able to pick up isolated blurts and squeaks of discrete selfhood: a fierce jab of desire, a squawk of hatred, a pang of regret, a sudden purposeful inner mumbling, rising from the murky orchestral smear of a Mahler symphony[…] When one knows that something is dying inside one, one learns not to put much trust in the random vitalities of the fleeting moment. Today the power is strong yet tomorrow I may hear nothing but distant tantalizing murmurs’ (pp. 3-4).

‘There are people with doctorates who are fifteen years younger than I am. Isn’t that a killer?’ (p. 54)

The novel is arresting in several regards, but perhaps its most unusual element is Silverberg’s insistence on reproducing some of Sellig’s term papers in full. The entirety of the fourth chapter, for example, is given over to the recitation of ‘Paul F. Bruno, Comp Lit 18, Prof. Schmitz, October 15, 1976: The Novels of Kafka’ (p. 16). This, together with the novel’s overly-elaborate references to a host of poets, novelist, playwrights, scientists, philosophers, artists and composers in its scant 199 pages speaks perhaps of the neuroses of a novelist uncomfortable with his success as a genre author and attempting to demonstrate the validity of his credentials as a writer with loftier ambitions. I would prefer to read this in the more playful manner that Silverberg’s novels have a tendency to invite, however, and interpret this scholarly overegging as a critical double-bluff on the author’s part which nestles neatly within the purview of his protagonist’s somewhat juvenile obsessions.

Silverberg is never anything but singular and interesting when he focuses on sex, and Dying Inside is no exception. He remembers sex with Toni whom he considers to be archetypal of women in general. As they come, Selling considers, they ‘are islands, alone in the void of space, aware only of their bodies and perhaps of that intrusive rigid rod against which they thrust, When pleasure takes them it is a curiously impersonal phenomenon, no matter how titanic its impact’. (p. 31) The sexual curiosity that forms part of the narrative drive of The Book of Skulls also features in Dying Inside, and Silverberg’s skirting around homosexuality in this novel is equally fascinating (pp. 94-95 et al), although I will have more to say on this subject in a forthcoming review of the former title.

Among the more startling insights that Silverberg allows his protagonist to share with the reader within the narrative world he constructs is the assertion that ‘the mind may think in Spanish or Basque or Hungarian or Finnish, but the soul thinks in a languageless language accessible to any prying sneaking freak who comes along to peer at its mysteries’ (p. 15), as well as a journey into the mind of a bee (p. 63) and the revelation that a seemingly dour farmer is an ecstatic mystic (p. 65). Sellig’s insight into the mind of the politician is mercifully veiled, although whatever we may choose to speculate the outcome was, it is evident that it was far from a positive one: ‘why should I vote? I will not vote. I do not vote. I am not plugged in. I am not part of the circuit. Voting is for them[…] I looked into [Richard Nixon’s] mind, and what I found in there I will not tell you, except to say that it was more or less what I should have expected to find. And since that day I have had nothing to do with politics or politicians’ (p. 131)

If Sellig’s situation has a tragic core, it is that he lacks the strength of character to revel in the unique advantages that his gift has endowed him with. As his powers wane, he is left to reflect on what could have been rather than to pick over the treasure house of memory that he should have been accrued from his experiences. He is instead left to rue the missed opportunities and the chances passed over on the basis that he never felt that he either wholly owned nor was in control of his telepathic abilities, which as a consequence became a burden to him rather than a benefit: ‘I always thought of the gift as something apart from myself, something intrusive’ (p. 55)

There were good times, early on: ‘mortals are born into a vale of tears and they get their kicks wherever they can. Some, seeking pleasure, are compelled to turn to sex, drugs, booze, television, movies, pinochle, the stock market, the racetrack, the roulette wheel, whips and chains, collecting first editions, Caribbean cruises, Chinese snuff bottles, Anglo-Saxon poetry, rubber garments, professional football games, whatever. Not him, not the accursed David Selig. All he had to do was sit quietly with his apparatus wide open and drink in the thought-waves drifting on the telepathic breeze. With the greatest of ease he lived a hundred vicarious lives. He heaped his treasurehouse with the plunder of a thousand souls. Ecstasy. Of course, the ecstatic part was all quite some time ago’ (pp. 60-61). ‘It was like that all the time in those early years: an endless trip, a gaudy voyage. But powers decay. Time leaches the colors from the best of visions. The world becomes grayer. Entropy beats us down. Everything fades. Everything goes. Everything dies.’ (p. 67)

As Sellig’s gift begins to fade by degrees, the progressive decline in his abilities is so slight that for years he barely notices their having diminished at all: ‘the power had not begun detectibly to dim until he was well along in his thirties, but it obviously must have been fading by easy stages all through his manhood, dwindling so gradually that he remained unaware of the cumulative loss’ (p. 61).

One of the most enduring and poignant elements of the text, which surely every reader must identify with to some extent, is that once the apogee of potential has been passed (assuming that one believes that this is indeed the case, but in a physiological sense this is of course irrefutable: death is coming for us all) there are only two options: to be paralysed by regret, or to accept that there are opportunities to be enjoyed and rewards to be garnered at every stage in one's life if one can only appreciate the fact. All that one needs to do is to be able to sense their existence, and act upon the felicities of circumstance that either thrust them in our way, or that we are lucky enough to be able to craft for ourselves.

This dichotomy is personified on the one hand by the lugubrious dejection of Sellig, and on the other by the hardy optimism of Tom Nyquist. Sellig is not the only person in this narrative world to be gifted with telepathy: ‘there are others[…] you’re the third, fourth, fifth I’ve met since I came to the States[…] It isn’t important. What’s important is living your own life’ (pp. 90-91). Similarly, not all the telepaths within this narrative appear to be crippled by their powers in the way that the protagonist is. Far from it, in fact: “Nyquist used his gift as simply and naturally as he did his eyes or legs, for his own advantage, without apologies and without guilt.” (p. 88). Equally, Nyquist refuses to engage with Sellig’s assertion that their abilities make them more susceptible to metaphysical angst: for him, it is quite simply a gift to use and enjoy, as by extension are all of faculties. When Sellig asks Nyquist “are you in pain?” he replies “who isn’t in pain?” (p. 74); when Selling insists that ‘the gift tips the spirit[…] It darkens the soul’, Nyquist refutes him by saying ‘yours, maybe, not mine’ (p. 168)

If the reader learns anything from Sellig’s decline, it is that whilst ‘wise men [may] at their end know dark is right,’ there is no cause to stultify what life we have by succumbing to darkness prematurely: ‘You have been present today at an historic event[…] The perishing of a remarkable extrasensory power. Leaving behind this mortal husk of mine. Alas.[…] At any moment, I know, it’s bound to come rushing in on me, crushing me, shattering me; I’ll weep, I’ll scream, I’ll bang my head against walls. But for now I’m surprisingly cool. An oddly posthumous feeling, as of having outlived myself. And a feeling of relief: the suspense is over, the process has completed itself, the dying is done, and I’ve survived it. Of course I don’t expect this mood to last.’ (pp. 146-7)

‘There’s David Selig, they must be thinking. How careless he was! What a poor custodian of his gift! He messed up and let it all slip away from him, the dope. I feel guilt for causing them this disappointment. Yet I don’t feel as guilty as I thought I might. On some ultimate level I just don’t give a damn at all. This is what I am, I tell myself. This is what I now shall be. If you don’t like it, tough crap. Try to accept me. If you can’t do that, just ignore me.’ (p. 189)

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Thomas M. Disch, 334 (1972)

Avon 1974 cover, c/o
HunkyDory aka Jean of Montréal

'The end of the world. Let me tell you about the end of the world. It happened fifty years ago. Maybe a hundred. And since then, it's been lovely. I mean it. Nobody tries to bother you. You can relax. You know what? I like the end of the world' (p. 183).

Thomas M. Disch's 334 is a labyrinthine, perplexing but engrossing work of exceptional quality. Despite my own enthusiasm for it, I can see that its coarser moments (there a number of truly vulgar metaphors and challenging thematic allusions) would distress or dishearten many readers, and almost certainly debarred the work from being honoured with one of the major traditional SF awards within its own historic present in the early 1970s, although it was a Nebula nominee in 1974. It focuses on the lives of a dozen or so individuals who are either residents of, or in some way associated with, 334 East 11th Street, Manhattan (p. 10), at the end of the first quarter of the twenty-first century. Analyses of apartment block fiction invariably defer to Georges Perec's Life: A User's Manual, but Disch's work (which predates Perec's novel by some fourteen years) should rightly oust the latter for this mantle, in my opinion.

A scan of p.168, kindly provided by HunkyDory aka Jean of Montréal

Structurally, 334 is extremely challenging. The work emanates from the first five chapters and coalesces in the eponymous sixth chapter, which consists of forty-three vignettes, envisaged by Disch in the page shot attached as offering intersecting points of view and monologues both fantastical and realistic. It is extraordinarily ambitious and the for the most part successful, but this is not a traditional work with a beginning, middle and end. As a consequence, 334 may be characterized as being as fragmentary, confusing, contradictory and wholly engaging as life itself.

The narrative framework allows Disch's disparate collection of short stories to offer multiple perspectives on the grim near-future of his imagination. An ageing nation, twenty-first century America enforces population control, and the majority of its citizens live in poverty in a decaying urban environment. It is inferred (e.g. p. 159) that the global economy has collapsed, toppling liberal democracy in the process. America is now run by MODICUM, a centrally controlled state bureau. The new society that has arisen from the ashes of the old is stable but anodyne and grey, stripped of vitality and potential. Its citizens look back upon the hope that the past seemed to offer with envy in the midst of the chaotic, atavistic conditions that they now endure. Museums feature simulacra of supermarkets, and allow visitors to walk up and down the aisles with trolleys to recreate the experience of shopping without actually being able to buy anything, as all the goods are fake.

The blank joylessness of life is palliated by the narcotic haze facilitated by morbehanine, which is ingested in several different forms for different purposes: 'modified by narcotising agents, it was marketed as Oraline; with caffeine it became Koffee and Yes; with tranquillisers, Fadeout. In its crude form it was used only by the intellectual elite who practised Historical Analysis' (p. 94), a sort of living historical interaction which presupposes sufficient knowledge to be able to conjure up a useful dream-state within which to test historical hypotheses.

Disch treads a Beckettian line between hope and despair, where baldly stated affirmatives seem to undermine the conditions of their possibility in the act of their enunciation. When Birdie Ludd says 'nothing in the past was worth shit, but the future, Ah! the future was blazing with promise' (p. 28), it is impossible not to think of Beckett's Krapp: 'perhaps my best years are gone. When there was a chance of happiness. But I wouldn't want them back. Not with the fire in me now'

Over thirty-five years on from the date of its composition, 334 is a fascinating text to engage with in our own historical present, as the world economy lists crazily in wild economic waters: 'no one sees his own culture declining till around the age of forty, and then everyone does... But things had been going downhill for two hundred years... or three or four' (p. 99). The implicit argument here is that democracy was never an evolutionary end-point for societal and economic arrangements. Disch's rendering of a possible alternative is hardly an encouraging one, but it is easy to read 334 as a collective plea for humanity to let go of the rising balloon it clings on to with a faltering grasp, acknowledge the impossibility of perpetuating the dream-state that late capitalism engenders in those that fall under its malign, narcotizing influence and have the courage to accept that novel systems of social and economic arrangements are required.

'Heaven. What is heaven? Heaven is a supermarket [...] And I would just go down the aisles with my big cart in a kind of trance, the way they say the housewives did then, without thinking what any of it was going to cost. Without thinking. A.D. Nineteen-fifty-three - you're right, that's heaven [...] That's the trouble with heaven. You say something that sounds nice, but then you think, would you really want it a second time? A third time? Like your highway, it would be great once. And then? What then? (pp. 223-4).

Creativeness is the ability to see relationships where none exist (p. 29).

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