![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pedanther. The Lost World by Arthur Conan Doyle (1912): A scientific expedition has a series of adventures exploring an isolated plateau where prehistoric creatures still roam. Very similar set-up to Journey to the Centre of the Earth, with the younger viewpoint character trailing along behind the short-tempered eccentric scientist with an unlikely theory to prove, though this has more plot structure and isn't just a string of incidents. This is the second time I've read it, which meant I was less impressed by the plot twists and had more time to think about all the racism and imperialism.
. The Scarlet Plague by Jack London (1915): In the distant future year of 2013, a global pandemic wipes out civilisation, leaving isolated pockets of humanity eking out existence without the aid of modern technology. The main part of the narrative is the viewpoint character's experiences during the pandemic and its immediate aftermath, in a similar vein to The War of the Worlds or one of John Wyndham's catastophe novels, only with more nasty incidents and no eleventh-hour rescue for humanity; in the end, the viewpoint character is an old man trying to tell his story to grandchildren who can barely understand, let alone believe in, the world he describes. I found the end of human civilisation curiously uninvolving, even once I got past the "future year of 2013" issue; the plague itself has such dramatic symptoms that I found it hard to take seriously, and the viewpoint character is a huge snob who I found difficult to care about. (I think the author was trying to make some points about the exploitation of the working classes and that sort of thing, but the result is still a story where all the truly reprehensible things are attributed to people of the lower orders.) He's also pretty racist, when he remembers that other races exist; when he talks about humanity rebuilding and taking back control of the world, he's pretty clearly (and sometimes even explicitly) only talking about white humanity.
. Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1915): Three men stumble upon an isolated mountain valley where a society consisting entirely of women has been making its own way for thousands of years and developed into a utopia. This is the first example of utopian fiction I've read with multiple fish-out-of-water characters, and it makes the exposition feel a lot more natural because they ask different kinds of questions (each man represents a different scientific specialisation, not to mention a different attitude toward women) and disagree with each other about the conclusions they draw from the answers. It also avoids the contrived set-up where the representative of the utopia lectures the protagonist for chapters on end about how their society works; there's more give-and-take, with the women of Herland also wanting to know about the world outside the mountains - and frequently asking inconveniently sensible questions about things the men have always taken for granted, which do as much to illuminate how Herland operates as any of their direct statements. The blueprint for utopia loses points for including eugenics, which is particularly nonsensical in the context of a society where everyone is born parthenogenically and there's no mechanism by which selective breeding could even be attempted. Given the set-up, the author inevitably has things to say about gender relations and romance and sex, and though the standards of the time prevent her speaking of sex directly she gets her point across. (This includes a sequence in which one of the men decides to take action to claim the female attention he considers his due; the actual words "attempted rape" aren't used, but it's clear what's happening. It's followed up with a similarly indirect but admirably clear implication that the young lady responded by kicking him in the nadgers.) I found the ending very abrupt, which turns out to be because it's part one of a duology; part two, which isn't included in the collection I'm reading, flips the scenario and has a delegate from Herland visiting and commenting on America.
. "Armageddon 2419 A.D." by Philip Francis Nowlan (1928): Businessman and war veteran Tony Rogers gets trapped in a cave-in and is preserved by mysterious gasses, awakening five hundred years later to find America in the grip of a decadent Asian empire. Famously the seed from which sprang the comic strip Buck Rogers in the 25th Century - which didn't keep much beyond the most basic part of the premise and the names of one and half protagonists - and all its various adaptations, homages and parodies ("Duck! Dodgers! in the 24-and-a-halfth Century!"). This seems to have been a case of being in the right place at the right time; the novella itself doesn't have much to distinguish it from any number of other similar bits of pulp sci-fi.
. "The Dunwich Horror" by H.P. Lovecraft (1928): A trio of scientists from Miskatonic University investigate mysterious and horrifying goings-on in a remote farm. I'd been looking forward to this, as I remember it as one of Lovecraft's better-written stories - conceivably I'm biased in favour of the ones that have an actual conclusion that isn't just the narrator being reduced to gibbering incoherence - and the prospect of being able to finish with a story I was confident of enjoying helped get me through some of the earlier works in the collection. It holds up pretty well, though it has many of Lovecraft's usual weaknesses.
Overall, I'm glad to be done with this collection. Most of the selected stories are of historical interest, but there aren't many I would actually recommend anybody to read.
. The Scarlet Plague by Jack London (1915): In the distant future year of 2013, a global pandemic wipes out civilisation, leaving isolated pockets of humanity eking out existence without the aid of modern technology. The main part of the narrative is the viewpoint character's experiences during the pandemic and its immediate aftermath, in a similar vein to The War of the Worlds or one of John Wyndham's catastophe novels, only with more nasty incidents and no eleventh-hour rescue for humanity; in the end, the viewpoint character is an old man trying to tell his story to grandchildren who can barely understand, let alone believe in, the world he describes. I found the end of human civilisation curiously uninvolving, even once I got past the "future year of 2013" issue; the plague itself has such dramatic symptoms that I found it hard to take seriously, and the viewpoint character is a huge snob who I found difficult to care about. (I think the author was trying to make some points about the exploitation of the working classes and that sort of thing, but the result is still a story where all the truly reprehensible things are attributed to people of the lower orders.) He's also pretty racist, when he remembers that other races exist; when he talks about humanity rebuilding and taking back control of the world, he's pretty clearly (and sometimes even explicitly) only talking about white humanity.
. Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1915): Three men stumble upon an isolated mountain valley where a society consisting entirely of women has been making its own way for thousands of years and developed into a utopia. This is the first example of utopian fiction I've read with multiple fish-out-of-water characters, and it makes the exposition feel a lot more natural because they ask different kinds of questions (each man represents a different scientific specialisation, not to mention a different attitude toward women) and disagree with each other about the conclusions they draw from the answers. It also avoids the contrived set-up where the representative of the utopia lectures the protagonist for chapters on end about how their society works; there's more give-and-take, with the women of Herland also wanting to know about the world outside the mountains - and frequently asking inconveniently sensible questions about things the men have always taken for granted, which do as much to illuminate how Herland operates as any of their direct statements. The blueprint for utopia loses points for including eugenics, which is particularly nonsensical in the context of a society where everyone is born parthenogenically and there's no mechanism by which selective breeding could even be attempted. Given the set-up, the author inevitably has things to say about gender relations and romance and sex, and though the standards of the time prevent her speaking of sex directly she gets her point across. (This includes a sequence in which one of the men decides to take action to claim the female attention he considers his due; the actual words "attempted rape" aren't used, but it's clear what's happening. It's followed up with a similarly indirect but admirably clear implication that the young lady responded by kicking him in the nadgers.) I found the ending very abrupt, which turns out to be because it's part one of a duology; part two, which isn't included in the collection I'm reading, flips the scenario and has a delegate from Herland visiting and commenting on America.
. "Armageddon 2419 A.D." by Philip Francis Nowlan (1928): Businessman and war veteran Tony Rogers gets trapped in a cave-in and is preserved by mysterious gasses, awakening five hundred years later to find America in the grip of a decadent Asian empire. Famously the seed from which sprang the comic strip Buck Rogers in the 25th Century - which didn't keep much beyond the most basic part of the premise and the names of one and half protagonists - and all its various adaptations, homages and parodies ("Duck! Dodgers! in the 24-and-a-halfth Century!"). This seems to have been a case of being in the right place at the right time; the novella itself doesn't have much to distinguish it from any number of other similar bits of pulp sci-fi.
. "The Dunwich Horror" by H.P. Lovecraft (1928): A trio of scientists from Miskatonic University investigate mysterious and horrifying goings-on in a remote farm. I'd been looking forward to this, as I remember it as one of Lovecraft's better-written stories - conceivably I'm biased in favour of the ones that have an actual conclusion that isn't just the narrator being reduced to gibbering incoherence - and the prospect of being able to finish with a story I was confident of enjoying helped get me through some of the earlier works in the collection. It holds up pretty well, though it has many of Lovecraft's usual weaknesses.
Overall, I'm glad to be done with this collection. Most of the selected stories are of historical interest, but there aren't many I would actually recommend anybody to read.
