Arkady and Boris Strugatsky’s Roadside Picnic

Arkady and Boris Strugatsky’s 1972 novel Roadside Picnic is one of the most important works of Soviet science fiction.

It’s a first contact story, but a very unconventional one.

The Visit only lasted a very short time. Aliens visited six sites on Earth and then departed as mysteriously as they had appeared. Those sites are known as the Zones. There was no communication whatsoever between humans and the aliens. There were casualties among the human populations but it was never clear that the aliens actually had hostile intentions.

The Zones are littered with alien artefacts. Visiting the Zones is very very dangerous. No-one understands the nature of the dangers but they are very real. Governments have successfully suppressed all knowledge of what went on in the Zones and of what the Zones contain. The truth is that scientists do not have the remotest idea of what the Visit meant or why it took place.

Uses have been found for some of the alien artefacts (such as batteries providing limitless energy) but nobody knows the real purposes for which these devices were intended.

Entering the Zones might be incredibly hazardous but where there’s a profit to be made there will be people wiling to take the risks. Such people are known as Stalkers. The scientists do not care to take such risks but they are willing to buy artefacts from Stalkers. And there is a thriving black market.

Redrick Schuhart is a Stalker. Redrick is an ambiguous hero with complex motivations. Money is one of his motivations, but not the most important.

One of his Redrick’s forays into the Zone almost ended in disaster. He managed to save his companion, Burbridge. Burbridge claims to know the location of the Holy Grail of artefacts, the Golden Sphere. Maybe he will tell Redrick how to find it. The rumour is that the Golden Sphere can grant wishes. That might be mere rumour, but some of these artefacts really can do impossible things.

Close contact with the Zones can have unexpected consequences. Children who are not quite normal. Even more frightening and puzzling, when people who were in the vicinity of the Visit movie away to other cities very strange things happen. Strange inexplicable impossible things.

There are some wild, bizarre and very imaginative ideas in this novel. It’s a novel that exists on the fringes of conventional science fiction.

There is also a certain amount of excitement and suspense. Death can come quickly and unexpectedly in the Zone. And maybe worse things.

You find yourself hoping that the authors will be able to come up with an ending worthy of all the cool ideas that they’ve thrown into the story. Sadly they do not do so. I found the ending to be bitterly disappointing.

The authors ran into considerable censorship proems in the Soviet Union even though they had gone to great lengths to avoid taking any ideological positions. There is a rather cynical tone to the novel, which might explain the censors’ hostility. The Visit is after all the subject of government cover-ups throughout the world.

Roadside Picnic was filmed in 1979 by Andrei Tarkovsky, as Stalker.

Roadside Picnic is extremely interesting and imaginative but the feeble ending robs it of true greatness. Still worth a read. Recommended.

Henry James' Daisy Miller

American-born Henry James (1843-1916) was one of the true literary giants.

His 1878 novella Daisy Miller brought him his first taste of commercial success and critical acclaim.

James spent a large part of his life in Europe and in Britain. He was fascinated by the experience of Americans in Europe.

This is the theme of the novella. Daisy Miller is the daughter of a nouveau riche American. Her father has sent her, along with her mother and her kid brother, to Switzerland to absorb some culture and some polish. Daisy is beautiful and charming. Her problem is not that she’s American but that she does not not know any of the rules that govern respectable fashionable society. Even worse, she does not know that she does not know these rules. She has no idea why she is continually snubbed.

She makes the acquaintance of Winterbourne. He is a young American but he has spent most of his life in Europe. He does know the rules. Unfortunately he does not comprehend that he is dealing with a girl who is entirely unaware of her social mistakes. She is entirely unaware that her forwardness will be misinterpreted as an indication of loose morals.

Winterbourne is charmed by her but also shocked.

That’s what will cause the heartache. He is delighted when he first encounters her and is able to engage her in conversation, but shocked that he allows it. It is most improper for a young lady to speak to a young man to whom she has not been formally introduced. He is delighted that she agrees to accompany him to a picturesque nearby chateau but shocked that she does so. Again, it is not proper behaviour for a young lady.

Winterbourne just cannot reconcile his attraction to Daisy’s beauty, vivacity and charm with his growing fear that perhaps she really is not respectable. He is worried about her familiarity with Eugenio the courier. The seeds of mistrust and suspicion have been sown. And Daisy does nothing to allay his concerns because she has no inkling that she has done anything wrong.

Later, in Rome, Daisy’s behaviour becomes increasingly socially reckless but she remains oblivious. She spends a lot of time with an Italian who may be a fortune-hunter. That’s Winterbourne’s assumption. But is Daisy just flirting?

Winterbourne and Daisy just cannot understand each other. It’s not a cultural difference. They’re both Americans. It’s not even quite a class difference. It’s a social difference. The inhabit different mental universes. Daisy does not realise her danger. Winterbourne cannot get through to her.

The communication difficulty has other consequences. Winterbourne genuinely doesn’t know what feelings, if any, Daisy has for him. And increasingly he is unsure about his own feelings.

Daisy is trapped by her inability to comprehend the social rules. Winterbourne is trapped because he understands them too well.

Winterbourne and Daisy are both rather nice young people. We care about them although we share Winterbourne’s exasperation with Daisy and to an extent we share her exasperation with him.

Wonderful book. Read it.

I very much enjoyed Peter Bogdanovich’s film adaptation, Daisy Miller (1974). I recommend it. It follows the novella very closely and I think it captures its spirit.

Sax Rohmer's Moon of Madness

Moon of Madness is a 1927 Sax Rohmer thriller.

Sax Rohmer (1883-1959) is best known as the creator of Dr Fu Manchu but he wrote a lot of other books in a number of genres. He wrote some great gothic horror and some fine occult thrillers. He also wrote straightforward spy thrillers such as Moon of Madness.

I like the spy fiction of the 1920s and 1930s because it has a refreshingly different tone compared to the endless Cold War spy thrillers of the 50s, 60s and 70s.

In Moon of Madness the enemy is the communists, the Bolsheviks, but it still has that interwar period flavour. And like so many of the spy novels of that period it features an amateur spy. In fact there are three spies on the side of the good guys. One is a professional, war hero Major O’Shea. The second is the narrator, George Decies. The third is a cute frivolous high-spirited eighteen-year-old girl, Nanette. But they all, even the professional, have that delightful British “muddling through” spirit.

The setting is Madeira, a suitably exotic and neutral locale for a spy thriller. A smooth Portuguese ladies’ man named de Cunha has been romancing Nanette. She should exercise more caution in these matters but she’s young and she wants to have fun. She’s not in love with de Cunha. She has set her sights on Major O’Shea. O’Shea is attracted to Nanette but he’s a man who agonises over moral dilemmas and points of honour and he’s convinced himself that it would be dishonourable to declare his love for the girl. One also suspects that’s just a little given to indulging in noble self-sacrifice.

What’s at stake is a bundle of letters written by a certain royal personage. If they fall into the hands of the Bolsheviks governments could fall, it might even mean a war.

To be honest I don’t think the straightforward spy thriller was Rohmer’s forte. The plot is rather thin. He was at his best when his plots were enlivened by bizarre backgrounds and outlandish setups, such as ongoing struggles with evil geniuses or weird possibly supernatural elements.

The hero-worship towards Major O’Shea displayed by the narrator can get a mite embarrassing. Especially given that O’Shea really doesn’t come across as such a brilliant splendid chap. O’Shea thinks he’s being terribly noble by not declaring his love for Nanette when in fact he’s causing her totally unnecessary emotional pain. And the only reason for his reticence appears to be an over-developed obsession with being virtuous and self-sacrificing. The reader feels like screaming at him to just take the girl in his arms, kiss her and tell her that he loves her. If he’d done that at the beginning a lot of suffering could have been avoided.

O’Shea also seems far from being a super-spy. He makes some elementary mistakes.

Of course the fact that O’Shea doesn’t live up to the narrator’s inflated estimate of him does add a slightly interesting touch.

This is a competent but fairly routine spy thriller. Worth a look, but he wrote so many much better books. Sax Rohmer was a great writer whose work is very much worth seeking out but Moon of Madness is not the best place to start.

I’ve reviewed a lot of Sax Rohmer’s stuff. The Bride of Fu Manchu and The Mask of Fu Manchu are good mid-period Fu Manchu books. The Dream Detective is an excellent collection of occult detective stories. The Leopard Couch and Brood of the Witch-Queen are typical of his excellent gothic horror fiction/weird fiction. The Sins of Sumuru introduces his final creation, the glamorous female diabolical criminal mastermind Sumuru. Sumuru wants to eliminate violence from the world and she doesn’t care how many people she has to kill to achieve her objective.

Whitley Strieber’s The Hunger

Whitley Strieber’s novel The Hunger was published in 1981. In 1983 there was a celebrated movie adaptation which is one of those love it or hate it movies (I love it).

John Blaylock and Miriam are hunting. John’s target is Faye, a teenaged girl. Miriam’s target is Faye’s boyfriend. If one of these teenagers suddenly disappeared questions might get asked. If they both disappear at the same time it will be assumed that they ran off together. It is important that no questions should get asked. Good clean kills with no traces left, that’s the objective.

John and Miriam are very much in love. They’re a typical couple except that Miriam is a bit older than John. Several thousand years older. John isn’t even 200 years old. John and Miriam are vampires.

John has noticed something recently, something slightly disturbing. He doesn’t know what it means. Miriam knows exactly what it means. She has been dreading this. She loves John. She has loved all of them, and has lost all of them. Like the others John is not a true vampire. Miriam is sure there must be a way to make her lovers immortal like herself. She can’t go on losing those she loves after only a few centuries.

She suspects that Dr Sarah Roberts might have accidentally stumbled upon the key. Sarah is a sleep researcher and has discovered something extraordinary about the links between sleep and ageing. Persuading Sarah to help her will be tricky, but it could be done.

The clever thing here is that even when Sarah becomes totally enmeshed in Miriam’s scheme she has no idea that she is dealing with a vampire. Miriam does something very unexpected. Something that you do not expect a vampire to do. She deliberately puts herself in the hands of scientists (Sarah and her team). She allows them to study her, knowing that they are very quickly going to realise that there are things about her that are wildly outside the normal human parameters. Her blood composition is bizarre. Her sleep patterns are bizarre.

But what’s really clever about Miriam’s scheme is that the scientists are not going to realise that she’s a vampire. That possibility will never occur to them, it could never occur to them, because vampires do not exist. And she has been very careful to ensure that they do not have possession of a single item of knowledge about her that might suggest the possibility that she is non-human. She appears to be a 30-year-old woman so that’s what they assume she is. They do not suspect that she is thousands of years old. They know nothing of her blood-drinking. They have no way of knowing that she has killed thousands of times. And they do not for a second suspect that she might be dangerous.

It’s all part of Miriam’s plan to draw Sarah in.

There are three separate species in this book. There are the humans of course. There’s Miriam. She is a true vampire. She is not human. She belongs to a closely related but distinct species. And there are the transformed vampires, such as John Blaylock. They are hybrids. The transformation has made them vampires of a sort. They have many of the characteristics of vampires. But they are not true vampires. They are both vampire and human.

Strieber uses this fact to explore the moral issues connected to vampirism in interesting ways. Miriam fees no remorse whatsoever about killing humans in order to feed. She likes humans. She is genuinely fond of them and in some ways she admires them. But she regards them the way a farmer regards his livestock. He may be quite fond of his cows but he accepts that the time will come when they have to be eaten. Miriam does not consider herself to be a murderess. To some extent she regards transformed humans such as John Blaylock as much-loved pets. We might love a dog very much but the dog is a pet, not a human lover.

John has never quite come to terms with the need to kill because he is aware that he is still partly human. It feels like cannibalism. It feels like murder. He has become accustomed to it, reconciled to it, he has even come to enjoy the hunt, but he is still not entirely comfortable with it.

The human scientists and doctors have no more respect for Miriam’s rights than she has for her victims. They think of her the way they think of their lab animals. As far as they’re concerned she has no more rights than one of the rhesus monkeys on which they experiment. And they treat her this way even though they have no knowledge of her true nature. They think she’s human. They just think that she is so unusual that they are justified in treating her like a lab rat. The humans in this story are morally no better than the vampires.

The book is very concerned with morality but treats the subject in a very complex and provocative way.

This is also a story about love and loss, but love of an unusual kind.

Strieber creates a very complicated and elaborate and original vampire mythology, but it’s not a mythology as such. This is a science fiction novel. He also gives Miriam and John very detailed backstories. None of these things would have worked in a movie so the 1983 movie very wisely focuses on the emotional implications of the story. The novel and the movie are therefore very very different but I love them both equally.

The Hunger is a fascinating science fiction vampire tale. Highly recommended.

I’ve also reviewed the movie, The Hunger (1983).

Charles Burgess's The Other Woman

The Other Woman is a 1960 crime novel by Charles Burgess. He’s a seriously obscure writer who seems to have written only one other novel. He also wrote some true crime stuff in the late 40s.


The Other Woman was originally published by Beacon so you might be expecting this to be crime with a healthy dash of sleaze. It isn’t really, but there is some moderately steamy sex. This is not a particularly hardboiled story but it does have some noir flavouring.

Early on the set-up seems to be suggesting that we’re in for yet another riff on Double Indemnity but that’s not how it plays out. In Double Indemnity we know the identity of the murderers right from the start. The Other Woman is more of an old-fashioned murder mystery. There is a murder but we don’t know the killer’s identity. The murder method is not as straightforward as it appears to be and alibis are important. There is a puzzle to be unravelled.

It begins in a small town in Florida. John Royal wants real estate agent Neil Cowen to arrange the purchase of a property which will be the site of a major housing development. Royal is an old man and very very rich. Royal’s wife Emmaline is thirty years his junior, blonde and gorgeous. And almost certainly dangerous. The kind of gal who is likely to turn out to be a femme fatale.

Neil has a successful business. He’s a respected member of the community. He’s happily married with a kid. He would be crazy even to think of getting mixed up with Emmaline Royal. But by the next day he and Emmaline are getting it on in the back seat of Neil’s car.

Neil can’t stop himself. He has never met a woman as hot and as gorgeous as Emmaline.

Then something happens that causes Neil to have second thoughts although by now it may be way too late.

Of course there is a murder. There is one odd detail at the murder scene that worries Lieutenant Gainey just a little. It seems somehow wrong but he can’t figure out how it could possibly be significant.

There’s one obvious suspect but Lieutenant Gainey is well aware that there is no real evidence.

A regular guy led astray by an uncontrollable lust for a woman is certainly classic noir stuff. Neil really is a totally decent guy and he never does figure out how he succumbed to temptation. The fact that Emmaline might be the kind of gal who knows exactly how to persuade the most reluctant man to fall for her charms, and that he might just be the latest in a string of men who have danced to her siren song, doesn’t occur to him. He thinks that a smokin’ hot classy rich dame is just waiting for the chance to jump into bed with a second-rate small town real estate agent.

Of course while we know that Emmaline is a temptress that doesn’t mean she’s a murderess. There are other suspects. There are quite a few suspicious characters lurking about. There’s a mystery woman.

As a noir novel it works reasonably well.

As a straightforward murder mystery it’s also reasonably successful.

The Other Woman is routine stuff but it’s enjoyable. A harmless time killer.

Michael Crichton’s The Terminal Man

Michael Crichton’s science fiction techno-thriller The Terminal Man was published in 1972.

Michael Crichton (1942–2008) had broken through as a bestselling author with The Andromeda Strain in 1969. The Terminal Man sees Crichton once again drawing on his medical training (he qualified as a doctor but never practised). The Terminal Man is also the sort of thing Crichton really enjoyed doing - dealing with science and technology that already existed or was very very likely to exist in the near future.

Harry Benson suffers from psychomotor epilepsy. He has seizures but they affect his behaviour rather than having physical manifestations. He has blackouts lasting several hours and during those times he becomes extreme violent. He has already been in trouble with the police and now he has committed a brutal assault that could land him in prison. The University Hospital Neuro-Psychiatric Service (NPS) has offered him experimental brain surgery that will probably prevent these seizures.

The team at NPS believe that it’s the seizures that lead Benson, an otherwise peaceable man, to commit acts of extreme violence.

Benson will be the first human to undergo the procedure. The head surgeon, Dr Ellis, is very confident.

The team’s head psychiatrist, Dr Janet Ross, is not so sure. Benson has other problems. He has delusions. He is a brilliant but unstable computer technician and he believes that the machines are taking over. He is borderline psychotic. Dr Ross fear that as a result the results of the operation will be unpredictable. It might make Benson worse.

The operation involves planting electrodes in the brain, then later monitoring the brain waves to find out which electrodes will prevent seizures. When a seizure is coming on the electrode stimulates the appropriate area of the brain and the seizure is halted in its tracks.

The doctors overlooked a couple of things. These electrical stimulations can be pleasant. Very pleasant. Like an orgasm. And they overlooked the possibility that Benson could learn to provoke those stimulations. Which would mean he could just go on continually giving himself these stimuli. Which would in turn lead to a kind of brain overload which would provoke a seizure. And those seizures cause Benson to become uncontrollably and brutally violent. The NPS computer experts are confident none of these things can actually happen. Then they look at Benson’s brain waves and realise it is already happening.

And then Benson escapes from the hospital. Another thing that was overlooked was that Benson is a very very smart guy.

Now it’s a race against time. The computer predicts that within six hours Benson will reach that tip-over point and have a major seizure. Somebody could get very seriously hurt. The police will almost certainly become involved. There will be a public outcry about irresponsible scientists playing around with mind control. Dr Ellis’s career will be in ruins. The NPS may be shut down.

And Benson is psychotic. He has paranoid delusions about machines taking over the world. It is impossible to predict where he might go and what he might do. And he’s smart enough to cover his tracks.

This is not a mad scientist tale or even a warning about scientists playing God. Crichton was certainly not anti-science. It’s more a warning that the future can be predicted only up to a point. Society is too complex and human beings are too complex to allow accurate predictions. Any complex system is inherently unpredictable. Crichton isn’t suggesting that scientific and technological progress is bad but he is suggesting that a considerable degree of caution is required.

There’s also some fascinating and remarkably prescient speculation about machine intelligence being a dead end. It might turn out that genuine artificial intelligence will have to be biologically based rather than electronic. That’s one of the themes of the book - enhancing or modifying the brain has more potential than mere machines. That’s what Benson has done - he has learnt to modify his own brain function. Unfortunately he’s done in a chaotic manner that may lead to disaster.

This is classic Crichton - lots of fascinating technical stuff presented in an understandable manner, some ethical quandaries and a tense fast-moving thriller plot. Highly recommended.

I’ve also reviewed Crichton's The Andromeda Strain and Scratch One.

John Flagg's Murder in Monaco

Murder in Monaco is a 1957 John Flagg thriller. American writer John Gearon wrote eight espionage/crime thrillers between 1950 and 1961 mostly using the pseudonym John Flagg. All were published as Fawcett Gold Medal editions.

Murder in Monaco is one of several that feature ex-CIA agent Hart Muldoon. The somewhat cynical and slightly embittered Muldoon now works as a freelancer and private detective, mostly in Europe, mostly in glamorous locales. The locales may be glamorous but his cases tend to be sordid. He has a knack for getting mixed up in with very powerful, very ruthless, very corrupt criminals.

This time Muldoon is offered a lot of money for a job but is given no details. That’s how he meets Nancy Trippe, in Monaco. And becomes aware of The National Alert, published by Charles Pless. The National Alert is a scandal sheet and it’s a glossy high-profile very profitable scandal sheet. Some threats have been made but the nature of the threats is obscure.

Of course there’s a murder. Blackmail might be an obvious motive but revenge is a definite possibility as well The National Alert has ruined reputations and destroyed lives. And there are so many emotional and sexual intrigues among the circle of possible suspects. Love and lust must be considered as motives. And one must never forget greed.

There are four women, they’re all suspects and they all have motives and they’re all dangerous in very different ways. Alva is a very successful middle-aged writer with some scandals in her past and a taste for handsome young men. Nancy Trippe is a nymphomaniac and an obvious femme fatale type. Myra is a timid little mouse. They’re always dangerous - all those repressed passions. And Amy is sweet and innocent. Muldoon has been a private eye for a long time. He knows you never trust sweet and innocent.

There are quite a few men with motives as well. Harold is a gigolo and he hasn’t been loyal to the woman who assumes that she owns him. There’s ex-Governor Thorne, a politician whose sister has a scandalous past. There’s Black. He’s a private eye, he’s ex-FBI, and he’s very shady. Plus the crazy unstable American named Cooladge. And Marius, who has wide-ranging business interests, none of then legal.

Nobody wants the cops involved. They all have sound reasons for wanting his whole affair handled discreetly.

Muldoon doesn’t actually have a client yet but he’s confident that if he sticks around he’ll get one, and it’s likely to be a big payday for him.

This is not noir fiction but there is plenty of corruption and plenty of sleaze and decadence. There are ruthless rich people, and ruthless poor people who to become rich people. Almost all the characters have at some stage jumped into bed with someone they should have kept away from.

There’s not much action but there is decent suspense.

Muldoon is a fine hero. He’s at best moderately honest. He’s ethically flexible. He’s mildly interested in seeing justice done but he’s very interested in getting paid. He’s by no means a bad guy. He’s no anti-hero and he’s definitely no thug. But he does have to pay the rent. A man has to prioritise. He likes women and if they’re available he won’t say no. He certainly isn’t going to say no to the cute little Hungarian blonde. She looks very appealing in her scanty bikini. She looks even more appealing out of it.

Murder in Monaco is fine entertaining stuff. Highly recommended.

I’ve read a whole bunch of John Flagg’s thrillers and I’ve enjoyed all of them. I’ve read a whole bunch of John Flagg’s thrillers and I’ve enjoyed all of them. Some are spy thrillers and some, such as Murder in Monaco, are more in the PI thriller mould but the exotic settings will give them appeal for spy fans.  His two earlier Hart Muldoon books, Woman of Cairo and Dear, Deadly Beloved, are both excellent. I also very much liked his non-Hart Muldoon thrillers The Persian Cat, Death and the Naked Lady and The Lady and the Cheetah.