Star, or Psi Cassiopea

Star, or Psi Cassiopea may not be the first science fiction novel (Cyrano de Bergerac’s Journey to the Moon, published in 1657, has the best claim to that honour) but it is surely a strong candidate for the title of the first space opera. C. I. Defontenay wrote this extraordinary book in 1854.

It certainly has an epic sweep to it. It opens with a Himalayan explorer witnessing an asteroid crashing into the mountains, killing his companion. But this is no asteroid. It is part of a spaceship, propelled by a catastrophic explosion to the far side of the galaxy. The explorer finds an amazing manuscript in the wreckage. After much effort he deciphers the document. It is nothing less than the history of an alien civilisation, a civilisation from the star Psi Cassiopea.

These aliens referred to their planet, rather confusingly, as Star. There were actually two intelligent races on this planet, one species very like ours and another inferior species more like an ape but with close to human intelligence.

The civilisation of Star had more than its share of ups and downs. At one point a plague followed by a suicidal mania almost entirely destroyed the superior species. The few survivors took refuge in gigantic spaceship called abares. These were more like artificial asteroids than anything we think of as a spacecraft. The lesser species, the repleu, then dominated the planet for centuries, spending most of their time slaughtering each other and indulging in drunkenness and debauchery. The superior species, the Starians, meanwhile colonised the satellites of Star.

The descriptions of the strange cultures of these strange satellite worlds comprises the most interesting part of the novel. And Defontenay certainly did not lack imagination. One of these satellites is a transparent world, inhabited by transparent creatures.

Science fiction often has more to say about the era in which it was written than about the future and this novel certainly reflects the author’s thoughts on subjects like the rising tide of socialism, colonialism and fears of the decay of civilised values.

While it has to be admitted that Defontenay had remarkable powers of invention and a fund of interesting ideas the sad truth is that this is a rather dull novel. And I say this as someone who is a huge fan of 19th century French science fiction.

There are two main problems with this book. The first is the author’s habit of including large samples on Starian literature. Apart from a wealth of poetry there are several complete short plays! While this is an impressive example of world-building it does not make for easy reading.

The second problem is even more serious. This is more of an imaginary history than a novel. There is no central character with whom we can identify and no narrative drive. While an imaginary history spanning thousands of years is an awesome achievement, the result is more than somewhat turgid.

Of course those readers who value world-building more highly than I do may find all this more entertaining than I did.

Star, or Psi Cassiopea remains an important early step in the development of the science fiction genre but it cannot be recommended as an entertaining read.

Mr Denning Drives North

Mr Denning Drives North is an unjustly forgotten classic of British crime fiction. Written by Alec Coppel in 1951, it can be seen as a variation on the inverted detective story.  We know right from the start who the murderer is. What we don’t know is what his fate will be.

None of what I am about to tell you constitutes a spoiler. This is all just the set-up and it all happens very early in the book. The suspense will come later, and there will be plenty of it, and many many ingenious plot twists.

Tom Denning is a very successful businessman. He is an aircraft designer who owns his own aircraft factory. He is happily married and has a daughter with whom he gets on well. Tom has everything a man could want. So why does he deliberately try to crash his plane into the ground?

The answer to that is that he is haunted by a murder he committed. Not that he feels any regret for the murder itself. He believes the man he killed deserved to die. And it was not even murder, not really. He didn’t mean to actually kill the man, although he’s glad that he did. What haunts Tom Denning is the wait for the knock on the door from the police. What haunts him even more is that the body has not been found, even though he went to elaborate lengths to ensure that it would be found. He put great care into staging a mock accident, believing he had been careful enough to make it look convincing. But what Tom Denning was relying on was that the body would quickly be found, the coroner would bring in a verdict of accidental death, and he could then get on with his life.

It all seemed so easy. But every day he scans the newspapers, and there is no mention of any body being found. Finally he can’t stand it any longer. He returns to the scene of the “accident” but the body has gone. But if the body has gone, how to explain the fact that nobody has discovered it?

Weeks go by, and nothing happens, while Tom goes slowly mad. Of course eventually something does happen but the subsequent course of events is unexpected as Coppel spins a series of clever plot twists that keeps the tension building right up to the very last page. Tom will try to unravel the mystery, so we have an amateur detective who is in fact trying to find the solution to a murder he himself committed. As he tries to solve the puzzle his nightmare just keeps finding new ways to torture him.

There is plenty of irony in this tale. Tom is in fact guilty of nothing more than manslaughter and given his previously unblemished character and various extenuating circumstances the worst he could have expected was a short prison term. But Tom had to act to protect his daughter, and in trying to make the killing look like an accident he has only succeeded in making it look like cold-blooded premeditated murder. Now if he is caught he will hang. Tom is caught in a trap of his own devising. And not knowing if he will eventually be caught  or not adds an exquisite touch of torture to the whole situation.

The plotting is masterful but this novel has more than clever plotting going for it. We have a murderer who is the hero of the book and he’s a sympathetic character. We can’t help hoping he gets away with it, but we won’t know until the final page whether he does or not. It’s a fascinating character study of a man under extreme stress. Coppel’s style is pleasing and this really is a delightfully wicked and clever crime story.

Coppel adapted his own novel for a 1952 film version starring Sir John Mills, and the movie is well worth tracking down as well. The novel and the movie are sufficiently different to make both well worth the effort of finding them.

Lafcadio Hearn’s Some Chinese Ghosts

Some Chinese Ghosts, published in 1887, comprises Lafcadio Hearn’s retellings of a number of Chinese ghost stories. If you’re expecting conventional ghost stories some of these tales will come as a surprise. They’re not really horror stories. Some of these ghosts are not merely benign but actively good and helpful to the living, and some are perhaps not really ghosts at all.

Lafcadio Hearn (1850-1904) was born in Greece and brought up in Ireland. He relocated to the United States at the age of 19 and earned his living as a journalist. In 1890 he visited Japan and he fell in love with the country, remaining there until his death and becoming a naturalised Japanese citizen. He is best known for his writings about Japan, especially his classic volume of Japanese ghost stories, Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things (which was made into a superb movie by Masaki Kobayashi in 1965).

Some Chinese Ghosts shows that Hearn was already fascinated by the Orient even before his move to Japan.

This is a very slim volume and contains six very short tales. They are not translations but stories based in some cases on ancient Chinese tales or in other cases on various snippets of folklore. Hearn’s style is elegant and the stories are like tiny jewels, intricately wrought and beautiful. Hearn was not concerned with linking the stories together but with capturing a particular mood of weird beauty, and he succeeds admirably.

The Chinese concept of a ghost is clearly very different from what we are accustomed to in the west. The existence of ghosts is taken for granted and while ghosts may be malignant they are much more likely to be benign or even benevolent. Mortals can fall in love with ghosts and live to tell the tale. These are not horror stories although they are certainly tales of the supernatural.

The Story of Ming-Y is the closest these stories come to what we in the west would consider a conventional ghost story, and it’s a small treasure of a story, the tale of a young man who thinks he has fallen in love with a woman when he has actually fallen in love with a ghost. Even here the mood is more one of gentle melancholy than of terror.

The Legend of Tchi-Niu is another tale of a mortal in love with a ghost but this ghostly encounter is no punishment for meddling in forbidden things; it is a reward for virtue.

This volume also contains a fanciful tale of the discovery of the tea plant and another tale of the gods who taught men to make porcelain, and of the price one man pays in order to create porcelain of the most exquisite beauty. It is a high price but he will be rewarded for his sacrifice.

An odd but enchanting little collection.

Edmund Crispin’s Buried for Pleasure

Buried for Pleasure, published in 1948, was the sixth of Edmund Crispin’s Gervase Fen mysteries and it’s an absolute delight.

Edmund Crispin was the pen name under which noted composer Bruce Montgomery (1921-1978) wrote crime fiction. His creation, Oxford don Gervase Fen, is one of the most charming of all fictional detectives. Fen is mildly eccentric, erudite without being obnoxious, not exactly scatter-brained but gives the appearance of moving in his own private world, and a gifted amateur detective.

This time around Professor Fen has made the curious decision to enter politics. Having no real interest in politics he stands as an independent candidate in a by-election. His campaign takes him to the village of Sanford Angelorum. The village, indeed the whole district, is in an uproar over the escape of a lunatic from the local asylum. The asylum is located in Sanford Hall. The present Lord Sanford is an enthusiastic socialist so he’s turned the hall over to the state and lives in the dower house on the property.

Fen is lodging in the Fish Inn, and the denizens of this public house are so eccentric that you can’t help wondering how the local police are supposed to identify an escaped lunatic among so many strange and rather crazy people.

One of the other guests at the Fish Inn is an old acquaintance of Fen’s, Detective-Inspector Bussy. Bussy is unofficially investigating a case of blackmail and murder. He persuades Fen to lend him a hand and Fen is soon drawn much more deeply into the case than he expected when a  second murder and then another attempted murder follow hard on the heels of the first slaying.

Crispin takes the opportunity of Fen’s election campaign not only to have a great deal of fun but also to make an impassioned attack on political enthusiasm. Fen becomes more and more convinced that politics is really all about hate and that the great strength of the British political system in the past had been the apathy of the voters. When he makes a bizarre speech putting forth his true views on politics he makes a disturbing discovery. Instead of having the effect he’d hoped for, of ending any chances of his being elected, he has now become the front-runner in the by-election.

The plot is typical of golden age detective fiction - it’s convoluted and somewhat implausible although it has to be admitted that the clue that leads Fen to the solution is a very clever one. What distinguishes Crispin from the true golden age detective writers is his wickedly funny sense of humour. The Gervase Fen books are effective mysteries but they are also among the treasures of English literary humour.

Buried for Pleasure is an immensely entertaining romp and I can’t recommend this book highly enough. It’s an exquisite pleasure from beginning to end.

Belphégor: The Phantom of the Louvre,

Arthur Bernède (1871-1937) was a French author who wrote both prose and poetry as well as libretti for operas. HIs most famous creation was Judex, a popular pulp hero who was immortalised in Louis Feuillade’s 1916 movie serial (Feuillade and Bernède collaborated in the creation of the character). In 1927 he wrote Belphégor: The Phantom of the Louvre, which combines elements of both the mystery and the horror story.

Bernède founded a company in 1919 to produce novels and films simultaneously. Belphégor was also published as part of a movie-book tie-in (something that Bernède seems to have invented half a century or more before Hollywood cottoned on to the idea). The 1927 movie was directed by Henri Desfontaines. 

Belphégor is very much in what was by then the well-established tradition of French pulp fiction, a tradition that was established by Allain and Souvestre’s immensely successful 1911 novel Fantômas. The style of Belphégor is very cinematic, with very short chapters corresponding to scenes in a movie. The pacing is relentless and the style is breathless.

A daring thief has been at work at the Louvre. He disguises himself with a hood and a mask, leading to the popular supposition that this is no man but a ghost. In fact the reader never doubts that the Phantom is merely a particularly bold and clever criminal. The thief has taken the sobriquet Belphégor, from a malevolent demon of the same name (one of several hints of the gothic in this novel).

Inspector Menardier is in charge of the case but he’s not the only one hunting the Phantom. Also on the thief’s trail are a private detective named Chantecoq (popularly known as the King of the Detectives) and a popular journalist named Jacques Bellegarde.

Bellegarde has other problems to deal with. Mlle Simone Desroches, a female poet who is the darling of the aesthetes, is madly in love with him. Bellegarde has tired of her attentions and will soon fall in love with Chantecoq’s daughter Colette. These problems are soon overshadowed by a much bigger one - Bellegarde is regarded by the police as the prime suspect in the Louvre robberies. And a guard was killed, so the unfortunate Bellegarde could find himself facing the guillotine.

What is the criminal Belphégor seeking in the Louvre? Nothing less than the fabled Valois treasure, rumoured to be concealed somewhere in the Louvre. The exact whereabouts of the treasure are revealed in an old manuscript.

Chantecoq is convinced that Bellegarde is innocent but he will need all his skill to prove it and to find the real thief. Luckily Chantecoq, like all good detectives of his era, is a master of disguise.

The novel contains everything you could want in a pulp novel and then some. There’s a mystery to be solved, there’s adventure, there’s a diabolical criminal mastermind with a hunchbacked henchman, there’s a master detective, there’s romance and there are secret passages under the Louvre. Bernède combines all these elements with considerable skill and the novel is undeniably exciting and entertaining.

There was a new French movie version of this novel made in 2001 but I know nothing more about it.

Belphégor: The Phantom of the Louvre is pure pulp fiction fun.

Behind That Curtain

Behind That Curtain, published in 1928, was the third of Earl Derr Biggers’ excellent Charlie Chan mysteries.

The great Chinese detective is in San Francisco, on holiday. He is to return to Hawaii in a few days. At the very same time a distinguished retired policeman from Scotland Yard, Sir Frederic Bruce, is also in San Francisco. A bright newspaperman decides it would make a great story if he could bring these two great detectives together. 

He does so, with momentous consequences. Sir Frederic is still trying to solve two cases that have obsessed him for years, the murder of a solicitor and the disappearance of a young woman from a picnic in Peshawar in India in 1913. He believes he may finally be close to a solution to both mysteries. Both Sir Fredric and Charlie Chan are invited to a dinner in honour of the eminent British explorer Colonel John Beetham. Colonel Beetham is screening moving pictures taken on his expeditions, and while the lights are out Sir Frederic Bruce is murdered.

Charlie Chan is anxious to return to Honolulu but he gets drawn into the case. It is clear that Captain of Detectives Flannery has no chance of solving this puzzle on his own.

Chan suspects (as Sir Frederic had suspected) that there is a link between the two cases that Sir Frederic had still been working on. But what can the link be?

As in all the Charlie Chan novels the highlight of the book is the character of Detective-Sergeant Chan himself. He is one of the most engaging of all fictional detectives. Biggers was clearly very fond of his most famous creation. There is much amusing byplay between Chan and Captain Flannery. There is considerable humour in the book, but it should be emphasised that it is never at the expense of Charlie Chan (indeed much of the humour comes from Charlie’s gentle mocking of the determined but not very bright Captain Flannery).

The mystery itself is an ingenious one, typical of the golden age of detective fiction.

Biggers was a stylish writer and this is an exceptionally entertaining crime novel and is highly recommended.

The Final Count, by Sapper

The Final Count, published in 1926, was the fourth of the ten Bulldog Drummond novels written by H. C. McNeile under the name Sapper during the 1920s and 1930s (although McNeile’s friend Gerard Fairlie would write seven more Bulldog Drummond books after McNeile’s death).

The Final Count also marks the fourth occasion on which Drummond would match wits with the sinister criminal mastermind Carl Peterson.

The novel is narrated by a man named Stockton, whose friend Robin Gaunt is working on some hush-hush project for the British War Office. Gaunt had been working on a secret super-weapon during the Great War and now he believes he has perfected it. He believes it to be a weapon so terrible that it will make any future war impossible - any nation that possesses the secret of this weapon could impose peace on the entire world and no nation would dare to oppose them.

This is of course a slightly eccentric plan, but Gaunt is no madman. Not yet, anyway. Then Stockton receives a strange telephone call from Gaunt. When he hurries round to Gaunt’s flat he  is greeted by a strange scene - there is much blood on the floor, there are the dead bodies of a dog and a guinea pig, and no sign of Robin Gaunt. And in the flat next door a man lies dead.

When strange and sinister events are afoot, events that leave the police baffled, it is never very long before Captain Hugh Drummond manages to get involved. He has an infallible nose for a mystery and for an adventure, and sure enough he is soon in the thick of things. And this is a very great mystery indeed, and even stranger events will soon unfold.

Clearly someone had discovered the existence of Gaunt’s super-weapon and that someone must now be assumed to be in possession of the secret, but what possible connection can this have with the disappearance of a private luxury yacht, the building of a new commercial dirigible and Cornish tin mines? Drummond doesn’t know yet, but he intends to find out. His determination is strengthened when he begins to suspect that his old foe Carl Peterson may be involved. Carl Peterson is Drummond’s Professor Moriarty, an arch-criminal so clever and so vicious that if the public knew of his existence no-one would ever sleep soundly in their beds.

This follows Sapper’s standard formula which by this time he had down to a fine art. There will be high adventure and Drummond will have to make use of both his uncanny instincts when it comes to unusual and spectacular crimes, his wartime experiences that made him such a great leader of men, and his pugnacious and indomitable spirit. And of course his fists.

The Bulldog Drummond novels might not be great literature but they are great fun. Like Sax Rohmer, McNeile had a gift for story-telling and for coming up with outrageous master plans by which his chief villain could not only pull off audacious crimes, but crimes on such a scale that the very existence of European civilisation would be threatened.

Whether you actually like Drummond as a character depends on your tastes. Some modern readers may consider him too patriotic and too faultlessly courageous, qualities that are now out of fashion. But Drummond is a fascinating character as well. He gives the impression of being almost a buffoon but beneath the brash exterior there is a razor sharp mind.

This is an old-fashioned ripping yarn, and thoroughly enjoyable it is too. The Bulldog Drummond novels do need to be read in sequence though, so read the first three before reading this one. Drummond’s four encounters with Carl Peterson have been collected in a splendid and ridiculously cheap omnibus edition by Wordsworth, a volume I highly recommend to all lovers of spy/adventure stories featuring diabolical criminal masterminds.