1972: The Fifth Head of Cerberus (Wolfe, Gene)

Flips your paradigm's polarity; follow closely (4/5)

I have a love/hate relationship with the works of Gene Wolfe... I'm sure this isn't uncommon among science fiction readers. I love linear and elegant plots, but I'm also fond of florid prose, plot backtracking, and red herrings. Gene Wolfe provides much of this and for that I'm thankful, but some of the passages (much like some of his short stories) are unfathomable, needlessly laden with mythological allegory and context. I've never been a reader of mythology; this one point turns me off to some of his work and parts of this novel. And if you know anything about Gene Wolfe, while his writing is beautiful, he's rarely ever straight to the point (allowing the reader to draw their own conclusions - clever at times, annoying on other occasions).

Written in 1972, Gene Wolfe expanded the novella "The Fifth Head of Cerberus" into a novel by including the last two novellas. Each novella has its own characters, one straight story with tiers of complexity, another story saturated in impenetrable allegories, and the last story structured around the scaffolding of "found-footage."

(1) The Fifth Head of Cerberus - 5/5 - A nameless narrator reflects on his childhood upon the French colonized planet of Sainte Croix, which shares a solar orbit with its sister-planet Sainte Anne. Reclusively living in his father's mansion/bordello, the narrator/to-be-named Number Five learns from an "unbound simulator" with his brother David. As Number Five ages and meets his love interest, the pair begin to stage plays for public viewing, but soon find themselves short of cash. Reflecting on the borderline torture Number Five is receiving by his father, the two concoct a plan. (71 pages) ----- Such an excellent novella for its portrait of a decaying colony, the rich yet mysterious history regarding the settlers, and the ballet of emotion between the characters. What impressed me most, however, was the way Wolfe challenged my cognitive grasp of the plot, forcing me to reverse the polarity of my viewpoint, by allowing me to sink through layers of chaotic deception and yanking me straight back to the calm surface of awe. Very impressed!

(2) "A Story," by John V. Marsch - 3/5 - John Sandwalker is traveling on foot in search for the high priest, a hermit in the hills of Thunder Always. Befriending the natives of the planet, John Sandwalker is allowed into the communal circles of the Shadow children, hearing their songs and their tales. John's twin brother Eastwind captures John and the Shadow's and throws them into a sand prison where others are indentured, awaiting execution in the river for Eastwind's clan's feast. (57 pages) ----- I wasn't following the logic or allegory of the first half of the novella at all. It felt too much like Delany's The Einstein Intersection, with felt lost in its own plane of existence; nothing felt connected, nothing felt relevant, nothing felt tactile. Only in the last half do hypotheses come to light, suggestions are delicately put forward, and good amount of guesswork leaves the reader their own paradigm of truth behind the planet, its people, and its lost inhabitants.

(3) V.R.T. - 4/5 - An interrogator on Sainte Anne fingers through material collected in regards to the incident involving the earth-born anthropologist, John Marsch. Transcripts of interrogation, excerpts from John's scribomania, journal entries from John's trek on Sainte Croix... all interspersed with interrogator's thoughts about his review. (108 pages) ----- I'm a huge fan of "found-footage" type stories with peripheral yet relevant data, like in John Brunner's The Sheep Look Up or Filbrun's Gemini Rising. The history of the case is detailed and adds a distinct flavor to the end of the novel, which leaves the reader with one of two paradigms regarding WHO Number Five is, who John Marsch is, and what ever happened to those reportedly transmogrifying native inhabitants.

1967: The Mind Parasites (Wilson, Colin)

Intellectual manifesto in sci-fi disguise (3/5)

Colin Wilson is largely a non-fiction writer, penning books about mysticism, philosophy, and crime. Some elements of the uninspired, dry academic-type, non-fiction writing finds itself in the science fiction piece, The Mind Parasites. The sheer amount of pseudo-science, wild logic ending at wild conclusions, and very dated science makes some of the book hard to read. The reader has to suspend not only belief, but also suspend knowledge that Wilson wrote this book on reflection of his own believes on the matter... so it's a fictional book enshrouded by Wilson's pedantic tenacity.

Rear cover synopsis (Bantam, 1968):
"Power... that took one man to track its direction from the signs left by history... that has enslaved mankind from the beginning... that holds humanity from its birthright of total consciousness... that keeps each of us penned in a private prison of fear... that demands our extinction rather than surrender. What human dares defy the terrible power of The Mind Parasites."

Gilbert Austin is on-site at an excavation of some ruins which lay buried two miles under the Turkish soil. Prior to this, his fellow intellectual friend Karel had committed an unsuspecting suicide and left a seemingly rambling document about aliens plaguing the minds of humankind. Austin begins to find a truth in this and senses the malevolent forces of the mind-dwelling aliens himself. He then confides in another archaeologist/historian, Reich, who also experiences the demons in the depth. Together, they combine psycho-kinetic forces to battle with the beings while recruiting only the most intelligent, open-minded people on earth to train. Steadily amounting to nearly thirty people, who have trained to descend into their cerebral nebula, the Mind Parasites attack the weakest of the newly trained and kill them off one by one. It becomes obvious to Austin and Reich that an more subtle, reclusive, and thoughtful approach to the defeat of the Mind Parasites must be taken.

It's an excellent premise which is bolstered by the unique format of having no chapters at all in the 181 pages of the nearly pure narrative. The first ten pages is a solid transcription of a fictional tape recorded by the same Gilbert Austin and the remaining 170 pages are supplements from his autobiographical notes. This sort of "found footage" documentation in a novel is an interesting way to present a story, but it's typically laden with idiosyncratic spieling and impertinent details... much as the case of the first sixth of this novel: it's a pompously narrative, lengthy history of Egyptian, Hittian, Mayan, and Greek civilizations.

Beyond this first sixth, lays the remaining five-sixths, which is rich (in one sense) with detail, speculation, and extrapolation. As mentioned above, this novel is infused with Wilson's own speculation upon why mankind has morally declined and artistically failed since the year 1780 (when the Mind Parasites first clutched at humanity's collective cranium). It's nearly a diatribe because Wilson seems to be scolding humanity for being lazy minded, as if Wilson sees himself as an intellectual elite (this is further confirmed towards the end of the novel when it seems like Wilson is aiming for his "superiorly intellectual characters to government the world in a sort of technocracy). And it's also nearly a manifesto, although not political, calling on people to "awaken" to their internal senses.

Gilbert Wilson, amid the rambling passages and more-than-I-care-for details, actually does has a gift for constructing sentences which are imbued with his sense of greatness he's trying to write about: "The body is a mere wall between two infinities. Space extends to infinity outwards; the mind stretches to infinity inwards." (38) Some passages read like meditative epiphanies, others like quantitative analysis. Keep in mind that The Mind Parasites is a science fiction novel by a non-fiction author... whereby I whinge.

By 1967, a large collection of excellent science fiction had already existed (Brunner, van Vogt, James White, Alidss, and Anderson among my favorites); The Mind Parasite had to compete with other 1967 sci-fi novels including John Brunner's Born under Mars, Brian Alidss' Cryptozoic!, and Kenneth Bulmer's Behold the Stars. While the speculation in The Mind Parasites was the main draw, the speculative science portions of the book are irksome: rocket plane, neutron dater, electro-comparison machine, moon rocket, and cosmic ray gun. Then there are the words which must have been inspired by Asmimov's atomic-heavy Foundation: atomic blaster, atom gun, atomic missile, atomic war, and atomic pistol (no peaceful uses of the atomic washing machine are to be found).

There are scientific errors abound regrading the moon, Venus, and Mercury but the trespasses are forgivable given the publication date. If you suspend your knowledge of science and stomach a hearty portion of an author's diatribe/manifesto in a science fiction context, then you'll find The Mind Parasites to be a unique read. As for more fictional Colin Wilson novels, I'll be taking my chances with other authors lining my bookshelves. The Mind Parasites is a keeper, but with much reservation about reading it again any time soon.

1982: Gemini Rising (Filbrun, J.S.)

"Found footage" review of an underground disaster (3/5)
From May 3, 2011

The single edition of the single novel produced by the author J.S. Filbrun... it was destined to become lost among the bookshelves, forgotten about mere weeks after printing, perhaps best used to prop up a slightly lean-to table or to keep a pesky door ajar. I was suckered into buying it for one dollar as the rear cover synopsis was pretty good:

"THE TIME: Tomorrow. THE PLACE: Project Gemini, a top-secret, ultra-sophisticated scientific base a thousand feet below the Texas earth. THE MENACE: An unknown terror rampaging through Gemini, blasting a path of destruction through level after level of computers and crew. THE THREAT: In four hours, unless a daring man-and-woman team of counter-saboteurs can stem the tide of death, Project Gemini will self-destruct, [underlined] and the whole Earth will perish..."

Sounds pretty epic, eh? Though the 179 pages did imbue a rather mundane suspense, it failed to really grab my attention as it started off entirely on the wrong foot. Page one contains a rather overdone eleven-line quote from the Book of Revelations, proceeded by two pages of factual material about the underground base and the next nineteen pages contain one grisly death, two forceful sex scenes and one boob grope.

Thereafter, all which was semi-calm in the underground base comes to a halt as an explosion rocks the ground level, electrify goes on the fritz, communications are non-existent and some heinous facts come to light about the secret project 1,196 feet below the Texas earth. A team of six people back their way to the sub-basement in order to deactivate a binary bomb which threatens to destroy the base in six hours, twenty-seven minutes and four point seven seconds. For a super-classified, super-secure and super-sophisticated base like this, there seems to be an awful lot of air ducts which render the base as porous as a sponge. Predictably, like a bad thrasher film, the team gets knocked off one-by-one in one grisly manner or another. Admittedly, it was a nice change of pace to see something unfold so predictably.

As bad as the beginning was, it was a bittersweet delight to reach the conclusion just two hours after starting the book. You could just throw your brain away when reading this one. The suspense that occurs in the plot is tamed by the reader's knowledge that the heroes comprise of a frail-bodied man and a busty vixen. Picturing the two against the shadowy threat lurking in the darkened corridors put a smile on my face rather than an ounce of adrenaline in my veins. Suspenseful? Hmph.

The one redeeming quality of this book was the computer BRUCE, which had a witty intelligence when conversing with the short-tempered human operators. It didn't play a important role in the end, or even in the middle, but it was a nice addition of comic relief when, otherwise, the book would've been a total stinker. Edit Another redeeming factor, which actually made me put it back onto my bookshelf, was that the book was written in a sort of "found footage" montage where a computer was reconstructing through it's sensors' data what took place. Interesting.

I would recommend buying this novel in a second-hand bookstore if you can find the correct spare change in the lend-a-penny jar... or if you just really love a cheap, cheesy one-off pseudo-suspense novel... or the unique "found footage" aspect of the book, which makes it a keeper.