Give Me That Old Time Science Fiction

I mean the old stuff -- science fiction before anyone called it science fiction. Novels that need an introduction to explain that the reader is about to read something different. Give it a little touch of the weird. Tinge it with a slight feeling of decadence. Make it Victorian or even Edwardian. That's the stuff.

M.P. Sheil's The Purple Cloud is, in fact, just the stuff. Published in 1901 it is the classic "last man on earth" story. The basic plot is straightforward enough. Adam Jeffson is on an expedition that is attempting to be the first to reach the North Pole. It is a very dangerous expedition and several of them die on the trip. Jeffson is separated from the others, reaches the pole, and on the way back notices a purple cloud to the distant south. He is sickened by it but struggles on. When he finally reaches the edge of civilization he finds ships with dead crews. After a while he begins to figure out what you already know -- that there's not going to be a whole lot of dialog in this novel.

After a while our protagonist begins to go a bit mad. Since the novel is presented in the form of a journal the madness begins to color the prose style. Long rambling sentences and paragraphs, weird thoughts and fancies, and speculation upon supernatural conspiracies are all part of it. Jeffson begins to dress, act, and think in bizarre ways. For most of the book you just want to sit back and enjoy Shiel's style. The prose is often dreamlike. The reader should wonder if this is a fantasy story of if this is insanity. Reflecting on the early part of the book one can see that Shiel was foreshadowing Jeffson's mental decline by suggesting that he might have been a bit unstable to begin with. Or was that simply the diarist trying to honestly depict his earlier life from the perspective of one who does not know that he is losing his mind?

I like a book that leaves the reader with questions and uncertainty. It requires a bit of thought.

I also, as I said, like old science fiction. I like to see how people predicted how things would come out and how those notions reflect upon the time of the writing. The story is set sometime in the near future. A lot of it takes place on various ships as Jeffson travels with the polar expedition and then wanders around the globe. A ship can be controlled easily by one man because it is moved by engines and propellers. The engines run on something called "liquid air," which sounds pretty cool. Yet with reliable engines every ship is still rigged for sails. Interesting, isn't it? Man has travelled the waters of the world for thousands of years and in all those millennia every vessel has had sails or oars (or both). Our current age of mechanically driven ships is but a jot on the timeline of history. Few people in 1901 could imagine a fleet without sails. That sort of thing fascinates me.

But I digress. The Purple Cloud may not be a quick read, but it is a thought provoking one. It's the good stuff.