In which there is Vanguard to Venus, 1957, by Jeffery Lloyd Castle, aka Mr Margery Sharp
I'm posting this out of order, a dozen books early, because I'm so proud of actually finishing it and I want it to go away now.
- Reading, books 2016, 177
177. Vanguard to Venus, by Jeffery Lloyd Castle is a terrible science fiction novel but not in an Eye of Argon or Vogon poetry way. This is a terrible novel because the author hasn't successfully thought any of it through either before, during, or after writing. Almost nothing makes any sense. The world-building is pitiful. The characters don't so much jump to conclusions as enter an Olympic conclusion-hurdling race. Much of the characterisation and "action" is driven by knee-jerk racism. I suppose the comparatively mild sexism was inevitable, but there's even a smidgeon of surprisingly overt homophobia (although the computer scientist it's directed towards subsequently saves the entire expedition and doesn't die so Go Team In Memoriam Alan Turing). Oh, and it probably goes without saying that some of the science in the science fiction is painful. (0/5 I'll feel guilty dumping this book on a charity shop when its only useful future life is probably as the booby prize in a sfnal fundraising raffle or with a collector seeking "the worst science fiction novel")
The Best Bits to certain values of "best"
• Blurb: There are an accuracy and integrity about the writing of Jeffery Castle which distinguish his work from the freakish imaginings of lesser writers. [/lol]
• Dedication: To my dear wife Margery [Sharp, obv]
• Chapter headings: Chapter 1 ... [/not kidding about the italics and the ...]
• There's a major character who goes by the appellation "the Boy Dingle".
• The antagonist is named Akh'nt. I might never get over this.
• The Egyptologist plans to greet the descendants of Ancient Egyptians with the Arabic (ish) words "Sala'am aleikum". Yeah, greeting ancient Assyrians in Coptic would ttly work too... not.
• Context is for the weak: I wanted to know what possible connection there might be between the Doctor and the Venutian saucer. [/the Doctor who wears a long scarf and a tweed suit]
• Wow, a description of working coleopters. There are passenger rockets with nuclear-ramjets (as second stages that then fall back to Earth) which is an idea that has come around again as of 2012 (sort of, obv). Later: "Three space tugs detached themselves from the Satellite and puffed towards us, the exhausts of their reactors streaming like mares' tails behind them." Also, nuclear-powered out-of-atmosphere jetpacks doing "reactorbatics", heh. The non-coleopter VTOL seems to have similar speed and altitude capabilities to those the US Army is intending to fly from 2017, although presumably a different design.
• The briefest possible acknowledgement of women's work as astronomical computers on pg75.
• Department of anachronistic tech - the administrator responsible for "comestics", i.e. the tech that turns sunlight into food suitable for humans, has a solid fuel fire in a grate in his functionary's office. Honestly, in the futuristic year of 2009!
• Context is for the weak: "Everything went according to Hoyle." [/lol]
The Worst Bits
• The racist "oriental" Egyptian/"Venutian" baddies: The four people involved were so ... human. The man who climbed back into the saucer was wearing a rough tweed suit, trousers held in at the ankles like ski-trousers. I could see, when he looked at me from the turret, even from that distance, that his eyes were large, plumlike, dark and savage - even as the woman's were too. His skin, and hers, too, was the colour of old gold. They might have been Persians - or Egyptians - had it not been for the saucer. The saucer was not of this Earth. [/protag immediately jumps to paranoid conclusions, based on no evidence, about the aliens having nefarious intentions towards Earth, which is never ever demonstrated in even the slightest way]
• Sexism and orientalism directed at an Egyptian/"Venutian" woman who the English white male protagonist later kills with no apparent remorse: She was smiling too, very beautiful in an oriental way, like one of the dark-eyed, honey-skinned creatures that get married to Eastern rulers. [/as opposed to the in-bred horse-faces who marry Western rulers, presumably]
• Descriptions of the Egyptians/Venutians, who in this 'verse developed FTL drives* over 6,000 years before Europeans developed any interplanetary travel: "Arabian-night beauty", "jungle-beast", "wild beast", "dangerous animal". And that list excludes the descriptions of a group of devolved Venutians.
• Apart from Akh'nt, which I admit I found an amusing name for a member of a security service, the other main Venutian character is a man called Phu'men Ra. Try saying it aloud... and substituting Chu for Ra. His parents are No and Sumi, and he's descended from the original settlers Efnon and Kha'khumen (I'll let you work those two out for yourselves).
• NO, JUST NO: "We gave the Thibetans new miracles in exchange for old. Along with wireless, and electrical power stations and atomic energy (which were all miracles to them) we brought them prosperity, and banished poverty and disease. They are grateful."
• Science metaphors for creepers 1: Our planet is not lit from within. It receives its light from without - as it were from the sunlit street where Peeping Tom is standing. No one outside our planet can penetrate the mystery behind our cloud-curtains, [...]
• Science metaphors for creepers 2: Earth and Venus are both similarly enshrouded, wrapt in impenetrable blankets, too coy, like adolescent virgins, to exchange peeps beneath the bedclothes.
• The repeated mentions of "centrifugal force". At one point I might have shouted, "Velocity! Velocity, you bastard! Velocity!" at the book.
*NOTE* The FTL drive
I know you're wondering so... they use mesons collected from space as they travel, in an "electronic valve", in some sort of fusion reaction, and then energy directed out via a "lens" as exhaust. IDEK.
This entry was originally posted at http://spiralsheep.dreamwidth.org/601623.html and has
comments Please comment there using OpenID.
- Reading, books 2016, 177
177. Vanguard to Venus, by Jeffery Lloyd Castle is a terrible science fiction novel but not in an Eye of Argon or Vogon poetry way. This is a terrible novel because the author hasn't successfully thought any of it through either before, during, or after writing. Almost nothing makes any sense. The world-building is pitiful. The characters don't so much jump to conclusions as enter an Olympic conclusion-hurdling race. Much of the characterisation and "action" is driven by knee-jerk racism. I suppose the comparatively mild sexism was inevitable, but there's even a smidgeon of surprisingly overt homophobia (although the computer scientist it's directed towards subsequently saves the entire expedition and doesn't die so Go Team In Memoriam Alan Turing). Oh, and it probably goes without saying that some of the science in the science fiction is painful. (0/5 I'll feel guilty dumping this book on a charity shop when its only useful future life is probably as the booby prize in a sfnal fundraising raffle or with a collector seeking "the worst science fiction novel")
The Best Bits to certain values of "best"
• Blurb: There are an accuracy and integrity about the writing of Jeffery Castle which distinguish his work from the freakish imaginings of lesser writers. [/lol]
• Dedication: To my dear wife Margery [Sharp, obv]
• Chapter headings: Chapter 1 ... [/not kidding about the italics and the ...]
• There's a major character who goes by the appellation "the Boy Dingle".
• The antagonist is named Akh'nt. I might never get over this.
• The Egyptologist plans to greet the descendants of Ancient Egyptians with the Arabic (ish) words "Sala'am aleikum". Yeah, greeting ancient Assyrians in Coptic would ttly work too... not.
• Context is for the weak: I wanted to know what possible connection there might be between the Doctor and the Venutian saucer. [/the Doctor who wears a long scarf and a tweed suit]
• Wow, a description of working coleopters. There are passenger rockets with nuclear-ramjets (as second stages that then fall back to Earth) which is an idea that has come around again as of 2012 (sort of, obv). Later: "Three space tugs detached themselves from the Satellite and puffed towards us, the exhausts of their reactors streaming like mares' tails behind them." Also, nuclear-powered out-of-atmosphere jetpacks doing "reactorbatics", heh. The non-coleopter VTOL seems to have similar speed and altitude capabilities to those the US Army is intending to fly from 2017, although presumably a different design.
• The briefest possible acknowledgement of women's work as astronomical computers on pg75.
• Department of anachronistic tech - the administrator responsible for "comestics", i.e. the tech that turns sunlight into food suitable for humans, has a solid fuel fire in a grate in his functionary's office. Honestly, in the futuristic year of 2009!
• Context is for the weak: "Everything went according to Hoyle." [/lol]
The Worst Bits
• The racist "oriental" Egyptian/"Venutian" baddies: The four people involved were so ... human. The man who climbed back into the saucer was wearing a rough tweed suit, trousers held in at the ankles like ski-trousers. I could see, when he looked at me from the turret, even from that distance, that his eyes were large, plumlike, dark and savage - even as the woman's were too. His skin, and hers, too, was the colour of old gold. They might have been Persians - or Egyptians - had it not been for the saucer. The saucer was not of this Earth. [/protag immediately jumps to paranoid conclusions, based on no evidence, about the aliens having nefarious intentions towards Earth, which is never ever demonstrated in even the slightest way]
• Sexism and orientalism directed at an Egyptian/"Venutian" woman who the English white male protagonist later kills with no apparent remorse: She was smiling too, very beautiful in an oriental way, like one of the dark-eyed, honey-skinned creatures that get married to Eastern rulers. [/as opposed to the in-bred horse-faces who marry Western rulers, presumably]
• Descriptions of the Egyptians/Venutians, who in this 'verse developed FTL drives* over 6,000 years before Europeans developed any interplanetary travel: "Arabian-night beauty", "jungle-beast", "wild beast", "dangerous animal". And that list excludes the descriptions of a group of devolved Venutians.
• Apart from Akh'nt, which I admit I found an amusing name for a member of a security service, the other main Venutian character is a man called Phu'men Ra. Try saying it aloud... and substituting Chu for Ra. His parents are No and Sumi, and he's descended from the original settlers Efnon and Kha'khumen (I'll let you work those two out for yourselves).
• NO, JUST NO: "We gave the Thibetans new miracles in exchange for old. Along with wireless, and electrical power stations and atomic energy (which were all miracles to them) we brought them prosperity, and banished poverty and disease. They are grateful."
• Science metaphors for creepers 1: Our planet is not lit from within. It receives its light from without - as it were from the sunlit street where Peeping Tom is standing. No one outside our planet can penetrate the mystery behind our cloud-curtains, [...]
• Science metaphors for creepers 2: Earth and Venus are both similarly enshrouded, wrapt in impenetrable blankets, too coy, like adolescent virgins, to exchange peeps beneath the bedclothes.
• The repeated mentions of "centrifugal force". At one point I might have shouted, "Velocity! Velocity, you bastard! Velocity!" at the book.
*NOTE* The FTL drive
I know you're wondering so... they use mesons collected from space as they travel, in an "electronic valve", in some sort of fusion reaction, and then energy directed out via a "lens" as exhaust. IDEK.
This entry was originally posted at http://spiralsheep.dreamwidth.org/601623.html and has
comments Please comment there using OpenID.