The non-triumph of Philip Wylie's *Triumph*

[polaris93]

I am currently in the process of reading the last few pages of Philip Wylie's Triumph. This is the fifth or sixth time I've read it since the first time I encountered it in 1967. I'm not sure why. Maybe it's due to the same sort of quirk that makes us slow down to take a look at the horrible, multi-vehicle wreck as we pass it by on the freeway

Comments

[ext_531464]

You know, Niven and Heinlein aren't even close to the best the genre has to offer.

[polaris93]

Nonetheless they are excellent writers, their work going down as smoothly in the mental gut as the best sipping whiskey does in one's physical gullet. And there are all their colleagues, as well. compared to their achievements, Wylie's performance in Triumph is like a very badly made boilermaker, half Coors beer and half generic liquor, with a tired few mixed-drink bells and whistles thrown in for good measure. Perhaps a better comparison is that between one's dream job and cleaning out privies at one of those rock concerts that are better left unremembered after the drugs, the shitty sound system, and all the rest of it have done their work on attendees. Or the love of one's life vs. a 10-dollar lady or dude of negotiable virtue. Triumph could have been so very much better than it actually is. Sadly, Tragedy would have been much closer to truth in advertising.

[anonymous]

That comparison would apply if Niven was actually a good writer. Everything that isn't Ringworld was terrible and even Ringworld suffers from bland writing and that utterly ridiculous breeding for luck thing.

Someone said Ringworld would have been much better had Zelazny been the one to do something with the concept, and I think I agree with him.

[polaris93]

Erm, actually, a lot of us love Niven's work. About matters of taste there is no disputing, and all that. And no, Zelazney would not have written it better, not from the point of view of Niven's fans, because he wasn't an engineer, scientist, mathematician, or someone who researches the nuts and bolts of his writing right down to brass tacks, which Zelazney didn't, because he was a poet, historian, and student of the theologies and mythologies of many people. A lot of us love well-researched hard science fiction like Niven's, strange as it may seem. And a lot of us love stuff like Zelazney's, too -- I do, among countless others. But Zelazney ain't Niven, and vice-versa, and neither is good at the sort of thing that the other is. Both, however, are excellentwriters who would never, ever have used the spell-checker to proofread their work, the way that readers in publishing houses today habitually do; both were/are masters of style; and both were/are careful to research their work to the nth degree, which also isn't

[anonymous]

And yet none of that research and meaningless details actually enhances the story or characters or makes the book better in any way.

And are you trying to say that modern writers aren't properly educated about style and Niven and Pournelle, et al, are? And I really don't know what you're trying to say with all that stuff about spell-checkers, unless it's something like "get off my lawn!"

[polaris93]

Excuse me? Maybe it doesn't for you, Mr. "I hate science and engineering," but it sure does for one hell of a lot of us. Who do you think you are to tell anyone what they should like or dislike, and why? That is the height of malignant narcissism?

As for "And are you trying to say that modern writers aren't properly educated about style and Niven and Pournelle, et al, are?", you haven't specified which "modern writers," or what you mean by "modern." And no, I'm not going to do that for you -- that's your job, sweetie, not mine or anyone else's.

And as for "And I really don't know what you're trying to say with all that stuff about spell-checkers, unless it's something like "get off my lawn!"," if you don't know, you're never going to, so why bother explaining? If you don't like my posts, don't fucking read them, idiot! You obviously cannot understand what I'm talking about, so why bother?

[jordan179]

If I remember correctly, Triumph was both too optimistic and too pessimistic. If this is the story I'm remembering, the protagonists were among the last survivors in the Northern Hemisphere, which strikes me as too high a kill rate for fallout even among unprotected survivors of the initial exchange. But, because climatology was far less advanced when Wylie wrote the story, you're quite right that there should have been all sort of horrible secondary effects that in the story were nonexistent. What would be more likely is a lot more survivors, but most of them in terrible shape -- bad and untreated bouts of radiation sickness, cancers beginning to appear, etc.

[polaris93]

Yes. It may be that he reduced the Northern Hemisphere survivors to just those in that deep-buried redoubt (except for those aboard a handful of nuclear submarines and a carrier that carried out the ultimate retaliation against the Soviets, and perished in that attack) in order to make keeping track of everyone and everything a lot easier. Otherwise, how he missed Cheyenne Mountain Operations Center, which could have held a lot of military/government personnel and kept them in good shape for years, is a puzzle. Same thing for those protected inside missile silos, which could have been sealed after the birds flew; today, people are buying decommissioned ones to use as homes, because underground they're enormous, at least compared to the average home, with room for many people, and back then, they were stocked with food, water, and other supplies, and could have kept a number of military personnel in good shape for a long while. Military personnel are also people, last time I looked, so this would have added still more to the

[aerodrome1]

I was just thinking of "Triumph" the other day. I'd found it serialized in the old Saturday Evening Post in library archives long, long ago, and been intrigued enough to read Wylie's 1950s atomic-war novel "Tomorrow!" I do recall--- dimly ---scenes from "Triumph" that scared the very young me: the crew of an orbiting space station seeing the atomic blasts below and realising that they were going to die, trapped in orbit; the last USN submarines destroying themselves and the underground bunker systems created to keep the Soviet elite alive; the sounds of northern radio stations going off one by one as the fallout killed their staffs.

Anyway--- a set of memories from long ago. I'm glad someone else out there remembers the novel.

Cheers!