A little break from public policy this week as we look at some influential books.
In my late teens and twenties I went through a stage of reading 19th century classics. Some were excellent, most were interesting and a few were like watching paint dry.1
Over the last couple of years I decided to read another sort of ‘classic’ - in this case books that have been incredibly influential, particularly in the fantasy and science fiction genre, and often very widely read, but that for one reason or another, are not normally considered part of the core ‘canon’ today.
Here I review five of the most interesting2:
A Princess of Mars, by Edgar Rice Burroughs (1912)
The Princess and the Goblin, by George MacDonald (1872)
The History of the Kings of Britain, by Geoffrey of Monmouth (1136)3
Dragons of Autumn Twilight, by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman (1984)
Heir to the Empire, by Timothy Zahn (1991)
A Princess of Mars, by Edgar Rice Burroughs (1912)
Burroughs enjoys the unusual distinction of authors who almost no-one reads nowadays of having created not just one, but two, incredibly popular series which have had a disproportionate impact on our culture. Both were first published in 1912, making that year to pulp SF what 1905 is theoretical physics. The most famous, of course, is Tarzan - one of the few figures of modern literature4 to have transcended its author and assumed the sort of legendary status usually associated with, well, actual legends such as Robin Hood or King Arthur.5
The Barsoom series, of which A Princess of Mars is the first, is the other - and, if less famous than Tarzan, is arguably even more influential. Many Golden Age science fiction authors - and many others - cite Barsoom as an inspiration; not only that, they frequently have their heroes devour his works during their teenage years. It’s rightly described as a foundational work of the ‘swords and planet’ or ‘planetary romance’ subgenre: Barsoom is the Mars of Lovell, a dying planet of canals and ancient civilisations, in which science-fiction elements are fused with a more ‘fantasy’ planetary culture.
But is it any good?
I found that a Princess of Mars sits awkwardly between the ‘travelogue’ works of writers such as Jules Verne and H. G. Wells and later SF works from the 1930s onward - the archaeopteryx of science fiction.
The plot is pure sword and planet: full of action, sword fighting, desperate escapes and beautiful maidens.6 The literary style, on the other hand, bears much more similarity to that of the late 19th century authors, than it does to - say - E. E. Doc Smith’s Skylark of Space, written just a few years later. The passage below is fairly typical:
While I was allowing my fancy to run riot in wild conjecture on the possible explanation of the strange anomalies which I had so far met with on Mars, Sola returned bearing both food and drink. These she placed on the floor beside me, and seating herself a short ways off regarded me intently. The food consisted of about a pound of some solid substance of the consistency of cheese and almost tasteless, while the liquid was apparently milk from some animal. It was not unpleasant to the taste, though slightly acid, and I learned in a short time to prize it very highly.
It’s almost as if Burroughs realised he wished to tell a wholly different type of story to Verne and Wells - but hadn’t realised that he could use an entirely different style and language in which to do so.
That said, it’s not a bad book7 and I was able to finish it without much difficulty. The plot is fairly straightforward, but told well enough, and Barsoom is rich and well conjured - though much of what once must have been found bold and vibrant now seems like cliche. At the same time though, there’s not a huge amount to commend it: Burroughs was clearly a pioneer, but others have since done what he did better.
Read if: You want to understand what some of your favourite science-fiction authors were inspired by.
Alternatively, read: Planet of Adventure, by Jack Vance - which takes every element of what Barsoom is trying to do and perfects into the epitome of the planetary romance genre.8
The Princess and the Goblin, by George MacDonald (1872)
The Princess and the Goblin is not a good book.
It is sufficiently ungood of a book that Youngest, then aged six, asked me if we could stop bedtime stories as she ‘didn’t need them anymore’ halfway through reading it.9 And I can’t say that I blame her: it is slow, tedious, pedestrian and almost entirely devoid of wonder or excitement.
This really disappointed me, because C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien - two of my favourite authors, ever - repeatedly rave about how much they admire George MacDonald, describing his books not just as foundational influences, but as glorious works in their own right. G. K. Chesterton, in a curious lapse of judgement, wrote:
“But in a certain rather special sense I for one can really testify to a book that has made a difference to my whole existence, which helped me to see things in a certain way from the start; a vision of things which even so real a revolution as a change of religious allegiance has substantially only crowned and confirmed. Of all the stories I have read, including even all the novels of the same novelist, it remains the most real, the most realistic, in the exact sense of the phrase the most like life. It is called The Princess and the Goblin, and is by George MacDonald, the man who is the subject of this book.”
G. K. Chesterton, introduction to George MacDonald and his Wife
And sure, you can see what the goblins in The Hobbit owe to MacDonald’s goblins, or how Lewis’s embedding of Christian motifs can also be found here. But if Lewis can make bread and butter seem like a fairy-tale feast, MacDonald does the opposite. And if Tolkien can write passages of painful and mythic beauty, MacDonald makes kings and princesses seem as pedestrian as the inhabitants of Drury Lane.10 The moralising is also heavy-handed and the plot drags, with too many elements unexplained and the denouement predictable.
I’m pleased that so many of my favourite authors were inspired by this book, but it doesn’t do it for me.
Read if: You’ve decided to ignore this review.
Alternatively, read: The Hobbit, by J. R. R. Tolkien; The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, by Alan Garner.
The History of the Kings of Britain, by Geoffrey of Monmouth (1136)
For many centuries thought to be history, Geoffrey of Monmouth’s British epic invents and codifies many of the ancient myths about our island, from Brutus and the giants to Hengist and Horsa.11
Shakespeare based King Lear and Cymbeline upon Geoffrey’s work and, while he didn’t invent King Arthur, the version in Historia Regum Britannia was the definitive version until Malory wrote Le Morte d’Arthur 350 years later - and is still frequently drawn on for modern, more ‘authentic’ adaptations. Even Henry VII, in an attempt to shore up his somewhat dubious claim to the English throne by tracing his descent to Geoffrey’s ancient kinds of Britain, via Owain Glyndwr.12
And you know what: it’s actually pretty good!
Brutus, a great-grandson of Aeneas, is banished and wanders around the Mediterranean for a bit fighting people, before being told told by Diana to go and settle in Britain. Geoffrey sometimes forgets whether his heroes are meant to be pagans or Christians, but either way, Brutus ultimately lands in Totnes13 and, after various adventures with giants, conquers the island.
We then have a whole succession of ancient British kings, some of which, such as Lear, are treated at length and others of which are passed over quickly. Now as every good 12th century writer knows, the most important things an English king can do is beat the French, so most of the kings who Geoffrey rates spend a fair bit of time hopping across the Channel and beating up on the Gauls. The very best kings, however, go further and conquer Rome, which is sacked by British kings no fewer than three times during Geoffrey’s chronology.14
At a few points the narrative makes a jarring collision with historical reality, notably in Julius Caesar’s and Claudius’s invasions of Britain. In Geoffrey’s version Caesar recognises the Britons as fellow descendants of Rome and, after a little fighting, the Britons are become honoured tributaries of the Roman Empire. The Romans soon depart and we are now in pre-Arthurian times, with Vortigern, Hengist and Horsa, Constantine and Uther Pendragon - before plunging into the full Arthurian narrative, which concludes the book.
In the middle of all this, Geoffrey breaks the book to include ‘the Prophecies of Merlin’, some of which the internet tells me appear to refer to events in Geoffrey’s life or recent history. This is the least interesting part of the book, though presumably people who thought they were genuine prophecies felt differently.
While Geoffrey is not as good a writer as Virgil or Homer, he makes up for it with pace: the story goes along at a fair clip. The fact that there are three distinct ‘sections’ also helps engagement: Brutus’s adventures, the Ancient Kings of Britain and the post-Roman/Arthurian parts are all fairly different in tone and style. There is a charm, too, in reading about characters that most of us will have heard of that makes it a fairly accessible and entertaining read
Read if: you think you’d enjoy a historical epic about Britain’s fictional history.
Alternatively, read: The Aeneid, by Virgil; King Lear, by Shakespeare; Le Morte d’Arthur, by Thomas Malory15; or The Pendragon Cycle, by Stephen Lawhead, which remains my favourite modern retelling of the Arthurian legend.16
Dragons of Autumn Twilight, by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman (1984)
The Dragonlance fantasy setting is one of the most prolific and popular in the world. There are c. 190 novels which have sold tens of millions of copies, multiple computer games and other spin offs - and, of course, the D&D campaign settings created alongside it. And Dragons of Autumn Twilight was the first - and still one of the most read.
And yet, I’d never read it. I had, as it happens, read other books by Weis and Hickman: the Rose of the Prophet trilogy; the Darksword trilogy, in which the forbidden magic, ‘necromancy’, involves constructing weapons out of inanimate matter such as wood and metal; and half of the Death Gate cycle, before I got tired of the worlds being destroyed.17 But never Dragonlance.
It turns out that was a good decision.
Dragons of Autumn Twilight reads from the very start like the most cliched fantasy you can imagine. It makes you understand why your English teacher18 was so down on fantasy. And it only gets worse from there.
The characters are ciphers, with little of interest to them beyond the stereotypes they represent, the plotting pedestrian and the world and its settings unmemorable. I battled through it, but can remember little of it, and could not bring myself to read the sequels.
I’m not quite sure why this is so bad. D&D settings aren’t inherently a bad place to set stories - and Weis and Hickman can write much better than they show here. However given the fortune they’ve made from it, there are clearly enough people out there who find something in it.
Read if: you think all fantasy is terrible and want to confirm your prejudices.
Alternatively read: Rose of the Prophet, by Weis and Hickman - a much better trilogy, full of bickering immortals and an icosahedral pantheon.19
Heir to the Empire, by Timothy Zahn (1991)
What Dragonlance is to fantasy, the Star Wars Expanded Universe is to science-fiction.20 The internet doesn’t appear to know just how many books, comics, computer games and other spin-offs have been set there, with sales in the millions per year. The Thrawn Trilogy - of which Heir to the Empire was the first - was not the first, but it was one of first to achieve a major breakthrough, selling 15 million copies.
Though a big sci-fi fan, I’d always been a bit snobby about Star Wars spin-offs, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. But while not great literature, Heir to the Empire isn’t a bad story.
To start with, the setting - placeda few years after the end of the Original Trilogy21 - is far more interesting and believable than the one that Disney introduced in The Force Awakes. The New Republic controls about two-thirds of the galaxy and the Empire the remaining third - but the New Republic’s control is fragile, with many planets still independent, and Mon Mothma are others are struggling to establish a stable and legitimate government in the wake of the chaos of the Empire’s downfall.
Heir to the Empire introduces a new villain, Grand Admiral Thrawn: a gifted strategist, without force powers, who studies the art and culture of other species and cultures in order to learn how to crush them in battle. He is presented as both more understandable and less psychotic than the Emperor or Vader - though ultimately no less ambitious or cruel.
The plot is classic Star Wars, and feels written to have a film made out of it. While there are major space battles, much of the action consists of our core heroes - Luke, Leia (pregnant with twins!), Solo and Calrissian, along with R2D2 and C3PO - spend much of their time going from planet to planet in search of information, getting captured, rescuing each other and ultimately saving the day. The characterisation is what I can only call ‘fan-fictionesque’, relying heavily on what we know from the films, and with frequent call-backs to them - but it’s a faithful portrayal, that never feels jarring. The writing is serviceable: not great, but it does its job.
There are a few oddities to those of us who’ve seen subsequent films. The term ‘Sith’ hadn’t been invented yet,22 so dark Jedi are called, well, Dark Jedi. There are special space slugs that can block the Force and on Kashyyyk, the Wookies live entirely in the trees because the ground is so dangerous. But none of this impairs the enjoyment.
Ultimately, I enjoyed Heir to the Empire enough to put the rest of the trilogy on my ‘to read’ list - but not quite enough to have actually bought and read them yet. But I suspect that if I’d read it at 15, I’d have devoured it.
Read if: you like science-fiction, are a Star Wars fan, and/or want a new head-canon to write over your memories of the Sequel Trilogy.
Alternatively, read: E. E. ‘Doc’ Smith’s classic Lensman series (the quintessential Golden Age space opera); the Honor Harrington series, by David Weber (aka ‘Hornblower in Space’).
Just as dishwashers wash dishes so that you don’t have to and electric monks believe things so that you don’t have to, so to do book reviewers read books so that you don’t have to. I can’t wholeheartedly recommend any of these books, but of the five, A History of the Kings of Britain and Heir to the Empire stand up best.
I’m looking at you, Thomas Hardy and George Eliot.
‘Best’ would perhaps be overclaiming.
You can quibble about whether this meets the definition of SF, but what else do you call the King Arthur tale?
I would argue Sherlock Holmes is the only other one I can think of, though unlike Burroughs, people still do read the original Holmes. Though the Cthulhu Mythos would also count, if it were a person.
Though lacking the timeless brilliance of The Jungle Book, the first Tarzan of the Apes is actually quite a fun read, if you don’t take it too seriously. Tarzan’s adventures with the apes are fast-paced and good fun and there are some neat plot elements like the fact that he can read English, but not speak it.
Burroughs is also somewhat obsessed with him being an English Lord, Lord Greystoke, so you get a lot of passages such as, “With swelling breast, he placed a foot upon the body of his powerful enemy, and throwing back his fine young head, roared out the awful challenge of the victorious bull ape…And in London another Lord Greystoke was speaking to his kind in the House of Lords, but none trembled at the sound of his soft voice.”
I have not read the later books, where the series enters full-on superhero territory, with titles such as Tarzan and the Ant Men, and Tarzan at the Earth’s core, and do not intend to.
Who of course fall madly in love with the main character.
Though Tarzan is better.
Though does have the unfortunate feature that Vance, unfamiliar with British slang, decided to call one of his alien races ‘the Wankh’, their human subordinates ‘Wankhmen’, and the second section of his book, ‘Servants of the Wankh’. Many such cases.
Fortunately we quickly established that she still wanted them, so long as we read a different book.
And not in a good or amusing way, as E. Nesbit sometimes does.
In some areas he draws upon older writers, notably Gildas in the 6th century, but most scholars think he just made a bunch of it up.
Thus allowing King Charles to trace his descent back to Zeus, a helpful fact if one is ‘keeping up with the Japanese’.
I love this piece of English banality in what up to this point has resembled a Greek or Roman epic.
There is a wonderful homage to this in David Gemmell’s Rigante tetralogy. The first two books are sent in a version of Fantasy Roman times, where a pseudo-Celtic tribe successfully fends off an invasion from the pseudo-Roman Empire of Stone. The third and fourth books are set in a mash-up of the Suppression of the Clans and the English Civil War, and in these we are told that the main character of the second book sacked Stone - despite the fact, that as we have read the second book, we know perfectly well he did. Clearly the Rigante had their own Geoffrey of Monmouth!
Le Morte d’Arthur is somewhat tedious to slog through in places, so if you’d rather a ‘best bits’ version in the original language, I recommend A Boy’s King Arthur, compiled by Sidney Lanier in 1880.
And Atlantis!
I even created a - very bad - boardgame loosely inspired by the first, Dragon Wing.
At least my English teacher.
Good is the top vertex, the five adjacent vertices 'good’ qualities (Law, Charity, Faith, etc.); Evil is the bottom vertex and the five adjacent vertices ‘bad’ qualities (Greed, Chaos, etc.). Each of the 20 gods corresponds to a facet and has the qualities of the three vertices they touch, giving five good gods, five evil gods and ten that are a mixture of each (e.g. Chaos, Impatience and Faith).
At least until it was rendered non-canonical by Disney.
Bear in mind this was written more than a decade before the Prequel Trilogy, let alone Disney’s Sequel Trilogy.
Or, if it had, George Lucas hadn’t told anyone about it.
Footnote 14: "as we have read the second book we know perfectly well he did" is probably missing a 'not'
"the Britons are become honoured tributaries" could afford to lose an 'are'
placeda would appreciate being given more space.
"Mon Mothma are others" should be 'and'
"so to[o] do book reviewers read books so that you don’t have to."
Really enjoyed the recommendations, especially the sarky ones.
At the time of the original Star Wars film (which I'm old enough to have seen when it first came out) it was known that Darth Vader was a Dark Lord of the Sith. Not sure if it was mentioned in the film, but it certainly was in comics, merchandise etc. But the term was never explained, and there was no hint if there could be others - which annoyed younger me considerably.