Retro Review - The Island of Unreason (1933) by Edmond Hamilton up at Fantastic Worlds

[jordan179]

Synopsis:  This is the tale of Allan Mann (serial number 2473R6), a young man who is a bit too passionate to fell well into the rigidly-Technocratic society of the early 4th Millennium A.D.  When he refuses to let the atomic-motor project he's been working on for the past two years be simply turned over to another engineer, he is arrested for a "

Comments

[baron_waste]

I'd say you put just about as much physical effort and ten times as much thought into this review, as Hamilton put into the story. “Hey, it's a paycheck, awright?” I've read a good number of such pulp efforts, and they're pretty much of a pattern - a dashed-off idea, dashed-off characters, somewhat interesting results, and hey-ho and away we go to the next one!

With that said, this truly was a VERY thoughtful review, and made very good points. The notion that a collectivist oligarchy of self-appointed priest-kings knows better than you how your life should be run, was all the rage in the 1930s and formed the basis of the (ironically named, as they all were) Democratic Party to this very day - see Hillarycare. That, as van Mises and Hayek pointed out, this is simply WRONG, doesn't matter… to those priest-kings. If at first you don't succeed, try try again…

[jordan179]

Actually, while Hamilton did write quickly for the pulps (and we in our word-processor-fuelled arrogance should reflect on how difficult it was to do edits and rewrites in the 1930's, with manual typewriters and only the most cumbersome methods of error-correction), his writing was exceptionally good -- which is why his stories have been repeatedly anthologized and are still read. And Hamilton would certainly have been following the intellectual currents of his day -- according to Leigh Brackett (his wife) he was a voracious reader, especially on scientific and fantastic subjects. During the Great Depression, one of the obvious topics of intellectual discourse related to how society might be better organized so as to end the Depression and prevent the occurence of future ones: science-fiction writers were very much aware of the apparent paradox of increasingly-advanced technology with general unemployment and hence rampant poverty. One solution popular in science-fictional circles was Technocracy -- which they perceived as the

[baron_waste]

[Now that LJ has decided to start working again...]

writing was exceptionally good…repeatedly anthologized… still read

No argument there. Every so often the environment produces unexpected and literally exceptional quality. One of the fifty-two films Warner Bros cranked out in 1942 - that's one complete movie every week, all year long, and that's just one studio; when they speak of the “film industry” that's what's meant - was a somewhat slap-dash production called Casablanca.

It happens. But now, name any of the fifty-one others! For every Gary Larsen's The Far Side, there are dozens of “Larry Garsons.” Sometimes the stuff in these old pulps is halfway decent; other times it keeps the pages from being blank. A lot of Ace Double novels are the same: For every Andre Norton or Murray Leinster there are dozens of authors unknown today - save to collectors of Ace Double novels!

[And as for Edgar Rice Burroughs imitators, hoo, I should hope to tell you!]

I'm fascinated by Technocracy, Utilitarianism, &c., because I'm working on and