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

[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 scientific application of technology to the problem of production; another was various forms of Socialism (the more so because H. G. Wells, one of the fathers of science-fiction, was a Fabian Socialist).

So even if Hamilton didn't extensively research and carefully-craft out this particular story, his mind would have been orbiting around Socialist and Technocratic, and anti-Socialist and anti-Technocratic, themes in general. And I'm pretty sure that this informed the tale because the society depicted has numerous obvious features of a Technocratic society: particularly, that it is very high-tech and ruled absolutely by a bureaucracy; and it is also clearly socialistic in that there are no secure property rights and everyone is provided for by the State.

The business with Eugenic Boards dictating the choice of mates is not only the radical version of an American early-20th-century Progressive idea, but is also a variant of a proposal Plato made in the Republic. This is a very old, and very bad, idea: that the wisdom of a self-proclaimed intellectual elite should be allowed to supersede self-interested and emotional choice on the part of the commoners. That some people, like Lita, would rebel against this, is the least of the flaws with this notion (I'll go into it if you like).

I'm glad you liked the review, and I agree that the ideas are still alive in slightly-different forms. It's been pointed out by other writers in other venues that Obama's policies show clear signs of derivation not only from socialism but also from fascism and technocracy, though often at second or thir hand, or maybe by convergent intellectual evolution.

[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 within an alternate history setting where the “Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic” lasted no longer than did the “Confederate States of America,” and the 20th century unfolded with no Communist Party shaping the result. Yet the Party hooked “useful fools” in the West for a reason - because they believed, as you say, that society could be ordered rationally - that things would genuinely be better if the trains were forced to run on time. That sentiment would persist in some weakened form, and I find the possible outcomes interesting.