Stowaway to Mars
This is early, early John Wyndham - he wrote this under another name, early on, in order to make some money. It's not brilliant as a piece of writing, but it's pretty amazing when you think it was written in 1935. It's about a guy who builds a rocket and goes to Mars and then after that things don't exactly go to plan.
This book works far better than the previous one I reviewed. He got a lot more right, maybe that's why - it's the 1980's and the cold war is still on (yep); people have landed on the moon already (yep); and people are now heading towards Mars (ok, not quite, but anyway). The media is a pain, and there are big fat famous entrepeneuers doing crazy stunts and inventing amazing things. Oh - and the Martians actually have developed Artificial Intelligence, with machines that think and reproduce. It's pretty clever stuff when you think that this was all before WW2.
Again, the main thing he gets wrong is the social stuff, especially the women stuff. He is such a misogynist - and yet on wikipedia someone has said he's pro-feminist, which is just mind-boggling. He has a massive rant in this book about how women won't tackle machines, how they're jealous of them because of their creative mothering instincts or something. AND when the stowaway to Mars turns out to be a woman, she endures several rape attempts quite calmly, with everyone accepting that as she's the only woman on board it's to be expected. I really wonder whether men were such horrors eighty years ago? The worst of it is when she falls in love with a Martian (not the machine one, a native) - takes her two minutes, she sleeps with him, falls in love, has flowery language, it's all revolting and all a deus ex machina so she can go back to earth and have a half-martian baby. John Wyndham did get married later in life and did write tougher women later in life, too, so maybe he learnt something like C.S. Lewis did after he got married. I really wish sometimes I could go back in time and tell men like that how things turned out for women. It really makes me realise how lucky we are.
This was written for pure entertainment, and he put a bit more work into his later stuff, so it's not great, but you can see the seeds of his other books (esp Triffids) in this one. It's interesting as a historical document, definitely, but not as a literary one - and that's ok.
This book works far better than the previous one I reviewed. He got a lot more right, maybe that's why - it's the 1980's and the cold war is still on (yep); people have landed on the moon already (yep); and people are now heading towards Mars (ok, not quite, but anyway). The media is a pain, and there are big fat famous entrepeneuers doing crazy stunts and inventing amazing things. Oh - and the Martians actually have developed Artificial Intelligence, with machines that think and reproduce. It's pretty clever stuff when you think that this was all before WW2.
Again, the main thing he gets wrong is the social stuff, especially the women stuff. He is such a misogynist - and yet on wikipedia someone has said he's pro-feminist, which is just mind-boggling. He has a massive rant in this book about how women won't tackle machines, how they're jealous of them because of their creative mothering instincts or something. AND when the stowaway to Mars turns out to be a woman, she endures several rape attempts quite calmly, with everyone accepting that as she's the only woman on board it's to be expected. I really wonder whether men were such horrors eighty years ago? The worst of it is when she falls in love with a Martian (not the machine one, a native) - takes her two minutes, she sleeps with him, falls in love, has flowery language, it's all revolting and all a deus ex machina so she can go back to earth and have a half-martian baby. John Wyndham did get married later in life and did write tougher women later in life, too, so maybe he learnt something like C.S. Lewis did after he got married. I really wish sometimes I could go back in time and tell men like that how things turned out for women. It really makes me realise how lucky we are.
This was written for pure entertainment, and he put a bit more work into his later stuff, so it's not great, but you can see the seeds of his other books (esp Triffids) in this one. It's interesting as a historical document, definitely, but not as a literary one - and that's ok.
posted by Carly at 6:55 am
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