“look at those cavemen go…”: Three Go Back by J Leslie Mitchell (Lewis Grassic Gibbon), 1932

 

Lewis Grassic Gibbon, (the pseudonym of J Leslie Mitchell (1901-1935))  is best known for his   trilogy of  Scottish novels,  A Scots Quair,  the  story of Chris Guthrie, a young woman growing in Scotland in the early twentieth century.  He wrote a number of other novels though,  including  two science  fiction novels, which are  often overlooked : Three Go Back (1932)   and  Gay Hunter (1934). In this post I will discuss  Three Go Back.

The novel opens in mid-air, on an airship in fact, Magellan’s Cloud, beating steadily towards New York  from Paris with twenty  or so passengers,  three of whom  are central to  the story:

• Clair Stranlay, a  novelist, successful though  controversial, still  haunted by the loss of her lover, killed  in the First World War,  who is described by  Mitchell thus : She was taller than most men  liked, with that short-cut, straight brown hair which  has strands and islets of red in it. And indeed, that red spread to her eyelashes  , which were very long…and to her eyes, which had once been blue before the gold-red came into them.
• Dr. Keith Sinclair, an American  political activist with The League of Militant Pacifists,  who served on the Western Front as a doctor, and has been deported from Germany for attacking arms manufacturers  such as the Krupps:  Nearly six feet three inches , too long in the leg and too short in the body. All his life, indeed, there had been something of the impatient colt in his appearance. He had a square head and grey eyes set very squarely in it: high cheek-bones , black hair, and the bleached white hands of his craft”.
• Sir John Mullaghan, an arms manufacturer and therefore at odds with Sinclair

After an uneventful  voyage a series of   disturbing events occurs: the Atlantic ocean below the airship  starting to boiling with  “maelstroms rising from the depths”; the air  becomes  very cold;  the  airship’s  wireless operator  is unable to  receive or send any messages;  a full moon appears, five days before it is due;  a mysterious island appears where no island should be in the Mid Atlantic; finally, as dawn breaks, the Magellan slams into a mountain which  should not be there,  falls into the ocean in flames and then explodes.

By a miracle Clair and Keith survive after falling into the sea, dressed only in their  pyjamas. 

The pebbles underfoot were slimily warm.  From the sea a breath of of fog was rising, like a thin cigarette-smoke. Not a ship or boat was in sight, nothing upon or above the spaces of the Atlantic but a solitary cirrus low down in  the north Eastern sky, Clair’s heels  smarted.  The American limped. ..She bent and scooped a double handful of water.  She gasped. It was icily cold. 

The pair  meet Sir John,  who has also survived and  who tells them that he has seen no inhabitants, except a  very large lion,  but has also seen volcanoes on the horizon.  At a loss to understand where they are,  they  set off in the hope of finding a village but after three days have not come across anyone.  Half-starved, they manage to  kill a deer,  which  they cook on a fire, and continue to tramp southwards, but become increasingly despairing of finding other people.

Taking refuge in a cave they encounter a  tiger,  not a tiger from their own  time, a but sabre-tooth tiger :

And then the fire took  hand. It spiralled upwards a long trail of smoke, red-glowing gas  which  bursts into crackling flame. There came a violent sneeze, a snarl, the thump of a heavy body crashing against the side of the cave in backwards leap. And then the three survivors of the Magellan’s Cloud saw – saw for a moment a bunched, barred, gigantic body, a coughing, snarling, malignant face. Then a rushing patter filled the cave. The fire died down. Beyond its light no eyes now glowed in the darkness.

Near the cave Keith finds a crude flint  stone-axe and some human bones, including a skull, which Sir John identifies as that of a Neanderthal Man: “By rights  it belongs to a race of humans that died out twenty thousand years.” Travelling along across a plain towards a lake  they encounter a mammoth. 

There the brute stood , real enough,  feeding and watching them , with the brown night closing down behind him…The firelight went out across the gloaming shadows, splashing gently on the re-brown coat and bare, creased skull of the mammoth. it paused  for a little on its eating, turning its trunk toward them.  Then resumed. 

And then the trio finally meet other people,  a group  of men chasing horses.

They ran in silence, tall and naked, the sunshine glistening on golden bodies, theur hair flying like the horses’ manes. Golden and wonderful against the hill-crest they ran, and the staring Sinclair drew a long breath

“Good God, they are running as fast as the horses!”

It was unbelievable. It was true. And while Sinclair and Sir John stared as now one hunter, now another, overtake his prey and spear it with whirling weapon, Clair  Stranlay put her hands to her lips and whistle  up through the evening that piercing blast learned long before in the streets of Battersea.

The score of naked hunters, all tall,   surround  them but do  not threaten them, in fact they are amused at their tattered clothes. Curiously,  Keith can understand  some of their language.  The hunter take them to the cave where they live.

There were perhaps two hundred or less human beings in that immense abandoned channel of the underground river. More than half were women and children. Some were grouped round the innumerable small fires, some lay flat and apparently asleep  by those fires, some stood in groups – surely in gossip!.. Men and women were entirely naked…The golden-skinned nudes  were as friendly as they were unreticent.

After having hit one of the women who was touching her,  Clair  apologises by   kissing her on her mouth. “For answer the brown-haired woman  put up her arms , held her head in a curious way and kissed her in return.”

Mitchell shows a sex difference in the way that the  two men and Clair respond to the community they  now find themselves part of. Keith is angry, almost hysterical;  Sir John anxious for Clair’s   safety and “honour” while Clair  herself quickly adapts, already casting eyes at one of the hunters. 

And now the three  face reality; that they are not  in Portugal or Patagonia or some other part of the world  but have somehow  been thrown at least   twenty thousand  years  back  into the past and are on a continent that  was once  situated in the Atlantic. Keith says that  the cave people are speaking a version of Basque, the language spoken by his  mother and are the ancestors  of the Cro-Magnards . 

Sir John suggests that two time loops  touched at the moment of the submarine-earthquake and propelled the airship into the distant past:  Clair finds  the reality of their  situation hard to grasp… or accept:

It’s a devil of a thing. I don’t think I can  think about it much…if I can. At least not deliberately try to go mad…All this stuff about the time-spirals and retro-cognitive memory – maths has always given me a headache The world used always, I thought, to roll along a straight line called Time, instead of looping the loop with a thousand ghosts of itself. before  and after it. And none of them ghosts, and none the reality. 

Keith tries to reassure her: “At least we have all our lives to live – now, as in that time is not yet, that time is thousands of years ago. And they are our lives…And those people among whom we;ve come – if we can live their life , they’re livable companions, aren’t they?

But Claire becomes angry  at her companions at the lies  spread abroad in the C20th about humanity’s  distant ancestors:

And I knew it – women  always knew it. But  you two and the thousands of others who led the world swore that men  were natural murderers; you killed five million in France to prove your theories. All through history you’ve been doing it…The boy who died on the wire outside Mametz – he was one of these hunters. I saw his own face last night.  and you and the world  told him he was murderous beast by nature and ancestry!

Keith is forced to concede the truth of her  of accusation: “You are right, Miss Stranlay. You are woman, for that matter, of fifty  tortured centuries accusing us..”

Clair walks by the river where the children are paying  and sees smoke  rising from the cave and realises she’s  hungry.  She makes  a decision. “Do it. Sometime you’ll be forced to  to do it, Goodness, why wait til then.” She takes off her tattered pyjamas and goes naked like the cave people. It’s an acceptance by her that this is now her world, that there will be no   escape or rescue. (Nakedness  is a theme in Mitchell’s  other science fiction novel, Gay Hunter) 

She goes into the cave where for the first time the women  rose “like a flight of birds and settled around her. Unreasonably , abruptly , Clair felt not afraid. Standing smiling and nude, pearl and rose, under the touch of their friendly golden hands, she thought: ‘…as though i were freed from a horrible skin disease  – free for the first time in my life. Oh, winter,  don’t come too soon. I want to live!'”

On of the custom of the cave people  is to choose mates for a season, with  the women having  the right to say no;

They mated as they chose; those golden women@ they bore children, many and  quickly, unless they tired of mating;they died in great numbers  in childbirth, they and their children.And they lived free  from the moment  they were born  till the moment  when that early death might overtake  them… The veil, the priest , the wedding ring, the pornographic novel, and all the unclean drama of two beasts enchained by sex and law and custom were things beyond comprehension  of the childlike minds in those golden heads or the vivid desires of those golden bodies…Golden children in the dawn of time, they paired in the afternoon and in pairs melted into the east.

Then Clair is chosen  by a grey-eyed hunter, Aerte, and does not reject him, to the shock of her two companions. She  goes off with him, partly with the intention of having a child, explaining  to Keith: “I want one. We’re here for life – however long our live may last..and we can change things–change things so that babies won’t die so readily…Oh, I’ll hate the bother of it. but I”ll have one – next spring.”

After getting lost Clair meets another kind of human being;

It was a male, with the bigness of a gorilla and something of its form. It was hung with dun-red hair; crouched forward, its shoulders were an immense stretch of arching muscle and bone. its gnarled hand almost touched the ground. it smelt. it stared at her filmily,  and a panting breath of excitement came from its open jaws.  A Neanderthaler!

She manages to scare it off, but she and Keith discover that he is part of a group. They  attack them but  are rescued by the hunters and   Clair spends another night with Aerte. “She has been lost and she was found and he had gone to her and taken her with a simplicity that had wrung from Clair no protest or repulsion. Only pity.”

With the weather getting steadily colder and game growing scarce, the cavemen set off through a valley to find a new hunting ground although it means passing close to the Neanderthals. Too close,  for they are seen… To save their friends Clair and Keith  stay  behind as the  rear guard and come under fierce attack.

Twice they had come, and twice broken  and shambled away downwards in screaming flight. Cla’r s spear was gone, the head embedded in a beast man’s chest. Sinclair leant against the canyon wall, his right arm hannging by a pinch of skin, blood pouring from a dreadful stomach wound. ..She felt suddenly serene and assured. “Oh, my dears, it isn’t long now!. They are coming again…”

They die. But  then awake , unharmed,  back in C20th in the Azores and try to make sense of it all. 

You can read the novel online here   

Out of the Unknown, series 1, episode 12. The Midas Plague by Frederick Pohl, December 1965.

“The Midas Plague” was broadcast by the BBC on 20th December 1965.

Cast: Morrey Anderson – Graham Stark, Edwina – Anne Lawson, Fred – Sam Kydd, Sir John – John Barron, Wainwright – Victor Brooks, Judge  – A J Brown, Analyst- David Nettheim,  Henry- Anthony Dawes, Gideon – Graham Lines and Revolution leader – David Blake Kelly.

Script: Troy Kennedy Martin. Director: Peter Sasdy.  Producer and Story Editor: Irene Shubik

Special Sound: BBC Radiophonic Workshop.  Incidental music: Max Harris.

This episode  is a comic  satire on the consumer society.  Based on a short story written by  Frederick Pohl in 1954,   it follows  in the vein of his most well-known novel The Space Merchants (1952), also  a satire on consumerism, which was set  in a  future in which advertising  relentlessly sells pointless products  to the public, including the idea of a colony on Venus.  

Pohl was clearly  extrapolating  from the post-war consumer society he saw developing in the USA, particularly  through the advertising on television of  the new consumer products pouring off the production lines and the creation of brand loyalty though the relentless repetition of  slogans and images.  (Vance Packard analysed this phenemenon in his influential book The Hidden Persuaders (1957).

The episode opens with shots of robots, very crudely made,  accompanied by jaunty, humorous music,  thus  setting the tone of the episode. Our hero Morrey,, a radio economist by trade,  has been summoned for a reprimand by his superior  Wainwright  after a report from the Ration Office. Morrey is Class 7  citizen and on his way up. “ It is your duty as a Class 7 consumer to consume the  rations of consumer goods allocated by the state as befits your status.” Morrey pleads that he is  doing his best and trying to consume everything he has been told to.

Wainwright  explains that society is  undergoing a severe   economic crisis and that  the public  needs to “let out their belts, take their shoulders  off the wheel,  they have to  eat more, drink more,  drive more cars, wear out  more clothes, and work less. This country is over producing,  our automatic factories, our  robots are making much too much of everything and  it has  to be consumed.” Morrey suggests that they  should cut down  production. “Then underprivileged  citizens like myself wouldn’t have to eat and drink so much and live in such big houses and drive big cars and wear themeslves out enjoying themselves.” 

Wainwright riposts:   “How do you cut down production without destroying the whole system?” “By programming the robots to use up the good themselves,” counters Morrey, but Wainwrights is aghast: “This is heresy, the robots are made to work,  not to have a good time.” Morrey suggests that they build  the satisfaction circuits he is been working on into the robots, but this idea  is not well received At the end of the interview  he is told to work less and consume more and reminded:  “Robots are here to serve you.”

Morrey and his robots

We accompany  Morrey to his home  where  on arrival the robots do everything for him. The house  is packed  full of furniture with  more being delivered. “But we haven’t  worn out the other two yet,” he protests futilely. His  wife Edwina is fed up  and loses her her temper. Morrey admonishes her:  “Not in front of the robots.”  Things seem to be  frosty in the bedroom as Edwina pleads:  “Consume me, consume me little” but he says he does not have time.

 A row ensues and  Morrey escapes to the pub, complete with robot barman, gets drunk and burns his ration book. He is arrested by the robot police and appears in court  before a judge (human, for once)  who turns out to be his father-i-n law. He is reduced to class 10 which means working less and consuming more. Edwina leaves him with mountains of junk carted away in her cars,  while to remedy  his anti-social behaviour Morrey  is sent to an analyst. who  administers a truth drug. He  decides that the root of  Morrey problem is that he  got a robot intead a puppy when he was a child and that  subconsciously he hates robots.  “You should love robots, they are there to please you, they do what you tell them to do and yet you hate them.” Angrily Morrey  says that   all his  consumption is making  him “more a machine than they are” and marches out to  get drunk again

Fred, Morrey and Edwina

In a turning point in the story, when fleeing from the robot police after he tells the barman  to pour some  whiskey   down the drain, Morrey is helped to escape by Fred  who reveals himself to be be a member of  a  group of revolutionaries dedicated to overthrowing society.  They ask Morrey to assassinate the Pime Minister, Sir John,  tempting him with a vision of the future.  “Once he is dead we will come to power, you will have mnay privileges. You will never have to consume again. Except a lightly boiled egg for breakfast, a grilled sole for lunch with salad, a litlle roast beef   in the evening with half bottle of wine…And we let you work all week.” But he rejects their offer.

Back in court again before his father-in-law Morrey is now reduced to Class 12, backdated one year,  and ordered to consume seven dozen cases of whisky in a fortnight.  Edwina  is deposited back home  with all her luggage while more goods pour in to their house.  Fred the revolutionary turns up again   and reveals that he  is a burglar, but a burglar with a difference, in this society  he breaks into people’s houses and leaves more goods.

The robots having a great time

Together they break into the Ministry building and steal the “satisfaction circuits” and  then implant them into Morrey’s robots. They  now display  very human characteristics ;  over-eating, getting drunk  and generally enjoying themselves smashing things up. Herded  into the basement they rapidly  consume or wear out all the goods allocated to Morrey in a comic filmed sequence.

Morrey is  now hailed  in the press for his outsranding consumer record.  Wainwright pays him  an unexpected visit  but they manage to hide  the robots in time. He  tells Morrey:  “You are going to be the biggest hero in the whole country. You are going to be given every honour. Sir John himself is very interested in you and I  want you to come back and work for my department.” Morrey says he will consider it when he is less busy.  As he leaves Wainwright offers him three days work if he returns.

 Robot George consumes so hard  that he  blows up and is mourned by the other robots. When Morrey and Fred try to fix him they  discover that is a special  Mark 4 roobt opereated from a central control room  in the Prime Minister’s office. They realise that Mark 4 robots  are spying on the population. 

Morrey is summoned to see the Prime Minister. who  tells him , “All the world knows Mr Anderson  that robots are our servants. They exist to serve us and  make our life easy. They exist so that men  do not have to work. This is the time of the Millenium. Man has only to consume and  what has been his wildest dreams has come true.  But a few men have  become dissatisfied with this state of affairs. Jealous intefering rebels  who have the cheek to say that man has become the slave  of automation.”

Sir John

Sir John has a truth gun trained on him and Morrey is forced confesss to having met the rebels and agreeing  with them.  Suddenly he twigs that  Sir John is a robot as well.  He burst through a secret door and, pursued by police robots,  he heads for the Master Switch (helpfully  marked “Master Switch in large  letters).  When he throws this all the robots freeze, including Sir John and Wainwright.  Edwina and her father  arrive and so Fred and the revolutionaries  having formed a provisional goverment  (Fred is the Minister for Justice). The leader  declares that Morrey is “the hero of the Revolution”  and will be in charge of seeing that everyone gets less in the future.  He also  declare a national holiday “so that everyone can go and work“. Finnaly he  declares  that all robots will be done away with. But then the implications of this  begin to sink in  and they decide they need to keep Morrey’s robot Henry, as well bar tenders, policemen, street cleaners and a growing list of others. “Here we go again, ” says Morrey  ruefully to camera.

With a good script, excellent cast and direction which supports the humour, this is a very enjoyable episode.

 

 

 

 

 

Out of the Unknown, Series 1, episode 11: “Thirteen to Centaurus” by J G Ballard,

“Thirteen to Centarus” was broadcast on 13th December 1965

Cast: Dr Francis – Donald Houston, Abel Granger – James Hunter, Colonel Chalmers – John Abineri, General Short – Noel Johnson, Dr Kersh – Robert James, Zenna Peters – Carla Challoner.

Script: Stanley Miller

Director:  Peter Potter

Designer: Trevor Williams

Producer and Story Edtor: Irene Shubik, 

Associate Producer: George Spenton-Foster.

J G  Ballard was one of the most influential  post-war British writers. His work includes novel such as The Drowned  World, The Crystal World, Crash, High Rise and Concrete Island.  Whether or not he was a science fiction writer in the classic sense is open to debate –  his  preoccupations are often inner space, rather than outer space –  coupled with dystopian tales  of modernity in Britain:   Ballard’s manor  is  the world of supermarkets, motorways and high rises.

“Thirteen  to Centaurus” is a short story  which was first published in Amazing Stories in  April 1962. This  adaptation follows the story closely with some  minor alterations.

The station crew

Set in a station whose purpose is yet to be revealed,  it begins with the  funeral of the captain with those present heartily singing “Onward Christian  Soldiers” as the coffin is dispatched into, well, where exactly?

In this community,  numbering just a dozen, Dr Francis wields  much authority,  constantly monitoring the behaviour and thoughts of the crew. He orders a young woman  Zenna to report for conditioning which he says is weakening in her: we  see the inhabitants working out in the gym to the accompaniment of a recorded voice, endlessly repeating:  “This is the world and the whole world. There is no other  world but this. There are no other  creatures but the chosen, and their children shall  the universe. This is the world and the whole world…”

But a young man called Abel  (who suffers from a recurring  dream of a burning disk) is asking pointed  questions of Francis.  Abel  is the Einstein of this tiny world. In his essay about the station he called  it “The Closed Community” and  worked out that  the station appeared to be revolving at about two  feet per second.   Francis  decides  is now  time to tell Abel the truth  and puts him  under the  conditioning to bring back his memories.

“When  you wake up you you will know  the truth:  that this station is in fact a spaceship. We are travelling from our home planet  Earth to another planet million of miles away. Our grandfathers  always lived on Earth. We are the first people to  attempt  such a journey. We were chosen from all people.  You can be proud of that Abel.. You were chosen before  you were born.  Your grandfather was a great man,  he volunteered to come – and so  you are here too. Never forget …The station must be kept running properly…this is a multi-generation space vehicle. Only your children will land  and they will be old when they do.”

Dr Francis and Abel

He explains to Abel that the ship set out 50 years ago and is heading for a planet that revolves around  the Alpha  Centauri.“The social  engineering that went into the building of this ship was more intricate than  the mechanical side….One day the project will be you responsibility.”

So now we and Abel  know the truth. Except we don’t know.  For on one of  Francis’s screens showing the starfields a shadow of a man  appears,  prompting  him to go through a hatch  to find himself…not in outer space,  but  firmly on the ground on Earth.

The station is in fact a  scientific project to test the ability of humans to endure centuries of travel to the stars. They have been conditioned not to question why Dr Francis is not an old man.  But the mood of the government and  public has changed since the project began  50 years before.  One of his colleagues tells Francis. “Even the public is beginning to feel that there is something obscene about this human zoo.  What began as a grand adventure has dwindled into a grisly joke.”

The new commander General Short  tells  Francis that a decision  has been taken to shut down the project.  “What we propose is a phased withdrawal, a gradual re-adjustment  of the world around the crew, that will bring them down to Earth as gently as a parachute. Some of you may have other suggestions. But however we do  it, Project Alpha Centari will be discontinued…The returned   crew will have to be given every freedom and every tv station and  newspaper network in the world  will want to interview  each of them a hundred times.”

General Short

Francis  vehemently objects; “It’s crazy. They will be bound to find out the truth… I don’t think you know what you are  saying General.  Bring them back? How can you bring back the dead?  How can you restore  the lost hundred years?… The task of the original project was to get them to Alpha Centauri. Nothing was said about bringing them back. ..I/m thinking about the crew. If it takes 50 years to get them there, it should take the same time  to bring them back. ..What I don’t know is how each individual is going to react. The people inside that dome hav veen taught to believe since they were children that they are living in a world of their own..and that they would never meet anyone else in the whole of their lives. …The people inside that dome do not want to come out. “

Francis suggest  a chilling  alternative solution:  that the project continues but with  no further children being born until the crew  are all dead as the life span within the dome is only 40 years on average.

Back inside the station the balance of power  begins to shift from Francis to Abel who has started an experiment, conditioning  Francis every day for hours on end and unsettling him  by changing the meal times.   Francis stops leaving the station, which worries the controllers of the project.  They prepare to send in a recovery crew,  but Francis threatens to reveal the nature of the project to the station  crew and the raid is called off. Finally he cuts  off all communication  with the outside world  with the words, “I’m going to Alpha Centauri.” Short wonders, “Whose really in control?”

We discover that Abel in fact   knows  there are people outside the station, something he seems to have known for some time.  When Francis discovers he tells him he should leave and  be free Abel responds, “Free?  What does that mean? Neither of us is free. This is our whole world and these are our people. The burning disk is the eye of God and Abel is his servant,chosen of the Lord.”

Abel  continues his experiment on Francis,   conditioning him to lose  his memories of the outside world. and to make him believe that he  is flying to Alpha Centauri but will never live to get there.  At the end of the episode  Abel plays  a recording he has made himself: “This is the voice of the chosen of the Lord. This is a spaceship.  We are the first people to undertake such a journey Doctor Francis.  This life is your only life. This ship is your only world. You will never see another. You are flying to Alpha Centauri. You can be proud of that, Doctor Francis.”

In  his epic poem Paradise  Lost Milton gave a now famous line to Satan: “Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.” Is that the choice that Abel has made?

This is a successful  production, creating  a  distinct claustrophic intensity and makes good use of  the array of   solid acting talent eg Noel Johnson and Robert James  available to the director. James Hunter is particularly  good as Abel, moving convincingly  from gaucheness to  authority in the course of the episode.

 

Where Have I Seen Them Before?

John Abineri appeared in Doctor Who in  “Fury from the Deep” (1968)  as Van Lutynes, in “The Ambassadors of Death” (1970) as General Carrington, in “Death to the Daleks” (1974)  as Richard Railton and in   “”The Power of Kroll” (1979)  as Ranquin

Robert James appeared in Doctor Who in “The Power of the Daleks” (1966)  as Lesterson  and in “The Mask of Mandragora”  (1976) as the High Priest.

Noel Johnson played the effortlessly  suave civil servant  J M  Osborne in A for Andromeda  (1961) and The Andromeda Breakthrough  (1962)

Out of the Unknown, Series 1: episode 10, “Some Lapse of Time” by John Brunner.

Cast: Max Harrow – Ronald Lewis, Diana  Harrow – Jane Downs, Smiffershon – John Gabriel,  Gordon Faulkner – Richard Gale, Laura Danville – Delena Kidd, Professor Leach – Moultrie Kelsall,

Script:  Leon Griffiths

Director: Roger Jenkins

Designer: Ridley Scott.

Producer and Story Edtor: Irene Shubik, 

Associate Producer: George Spenton-Foster.

“Some Lapse of Time” was first broadcast on  8 December 1965.

It is based on a short story by  John Brunner, published in February 1963 in Fantasy magazine. Brunner began writing science  fiction in the late 1950s and went on to write such influential novels as Stand on Zanzibar (1968) about overpopulation,  The Sheep Look Up (1972) about pollution,   and The Shockwave Rider (1975) about the threat to liberty posed by computers.

Like many young people in the late 1950s  Brunner was a member of Campaign  for Nuclear Disarmament,   founded  in 1958 to campaign   against the H- Bombs posssessed by  Britain the USA and Soviet Union,  which many  feared would end civilisation if  they were ever used in a war. For a time CND attracted tens of  thousands on its “Ban the bomb” marches.  Brunner organised CND caravans into Europe,  and wrote several songs for the movement, including the CND Marching Song,  which was sung on the first London to  Aldermaston March in 1958. His non-SF novel The Days of March (1988) is set in the early  days of the movement.

Leon Griffiths wrote for the Communist party newsaper  the Daily Worker for a time before going on to write for television, most famously creating Minder.

The opening  shows us  Max Harrow having a nightmare in which what look like cavemen are gathered around a fire,  performing  a ritual,  chanting and  waving what seems to be a bone of some kind. Then he dreams that he is being hunted.  When Harrow  finally awakes we learn that this is a recurring nightmare; his wife Diana  urges him to see someone at the hospital where he works.

As they talk  a policeman  rings the doorbell asking Harrow to see  a tramp they have found collapsed near his car. When he is brought in Harrow   diagnoses that the tramp is suffering from “heterocardia”,  a disease caused by radiation  from which his son Jimmy  has  died. Tests at the hosptial convince his sceptical colleagues that his diagnosis was correct, even though sufferers invariably die when young.  The tramp is clutching  something which, when they persuade him to let it go,  they realise  is a fingerbone.

Harrow and Smiffershon

When Harrow meets his wife for lunch, she is reading a newspaper whose  main headline is about an accident  at an atomic weapens base. He tells her about the tramp. He’s a very sick man…nobody knows where he came from or how he managed to stay alive until now…the police think that he came round to my place  to ask for help, but why? Harrow becomes angry when his wife presses him to see somebody about his dreams.

When the tramp regains consciousness Harrow recognises him from his dream, while the tramp recognises him. They are able to glean that his  name is Smiffershon but cannot comprehend  anything else he says.  Smiffershon   bursts into laughter when he sees Harrow’s finger.

At home Harrow again rows with his wife about the tramp. If we know what he knows about heterocardia Jimmy wouldn’t have died. Doesn’t that matter?…  It’s hard to understand but this tramp means something more. It wasn’t just chance that brought him here,  carrying that fingerbone. It’s as  if  he’s if slipped out of one of my nightmares….I just know that tramp means something special to me. ..Where does he come from?.

Laura and Smiffershon

Harrow calls in a philologist Laura Denville, an attractive blonde,  in an effort to identify his language which sounds Scandanavian.  She  comes to an unsettling conclusion, namely,  that he is speaking a form of English. He’s speaking our language as if it’s undergone a series of extreme changes. It’s the sort of difference between the English of  Langlands’  day and our own…These changes take place over hundreds of years. 

His fixation with Smiffershon leads to Harrow having another  argument  with his wife,  who  is suspicious  of  Denville.  Diana accidentally  catches his fingers in the  car door,  resulting in the end  of  one of them having  to be amputated. The dream is starting to come true, the pieces of the puzzle are falling into place.

When Smiffershon is given a routine X-ray they discover that  he is  full of Strontium 90 and should be dead. He is immediately placed in isolation. Harorw calls in  archaeolgist who discovers that  the fingerbone  which they took from Smiffershon  is also full of radiation.

Both Jane and his friends are increasingly concerned for Harrow’s mental health. His colleagues try to assure  him that there is a rational explanation,  but he is now convinced that Smiffershon has come back through time after a nuclear war  to warn them of the dangers of what they are doing.

I know all about our friend the tramp now…I even recognise his face from my dreams…That old tramp hasn’t just been dusted with radioactive particles, it’s inside him, in his muscles, in his glands. He’s lived through something pretty terrible, a world we can hardly even imagine…Seven, eight, nine generations after the bombs..I am talking about an island  when the cities have gone, when fires, a hundred miles wide,  consume the fields and forest, when there’s nothing left. That’s when people stop using words like “blankets”, “shoes”, “pints  of beer”, “cigarette”. And, of course,  there’s still be people, people saturated with radioactivity like Smiffershon. 

Harrow is drugged  and is given therapy, but it does not help. Despairing, he tries to attack Smiffershon. When he is restrained he  suffers a  complete collapse and begins speaking in the same language as Smiffershon. He is taken to a psychiatric hospital with little hope of recovery. In the final minutes of the drama Laura  is able to converse with Smiffershon who confirms that everything that Harrow  suspected is true.

In my view this is the best  in the series  so far,   with real tension and disquiet created.  Ronald Lewis and John Gabriel,  in particular,  give superb  performances.

At the time of transmission the viewing public would have been familar with the idea of a nuclear war that would destroy humanity. This theme was explored in numerous novels,  television plays  and films. I have already written in an earlier post on The Chrysalids by John Wnyndham,

In addition there were the following:

Novels

The Spurious Sun, by George Borodin (1948) begins  with an H-bomb-like explosion in Scotland which ignites the upper atmosphere; savage wars ensue worldwide, the UK is eliminated by nuclear weapons, and both Leningrad and San Francisco are obliterated. 

Ape and Essence by Aldous Huxley (1948) is a  satire on the potential for the destruction of humanity.

 On the Beach by Neville Shute (1957) is   set in Australia in the aftermath of a nuclear  war,  and follows the fate of  group of  people awaiting the arrival of  the fallout from the northern hemisphere. The government  issues suicide pills to the population. The novel was a worldwide bestseller and  was filmed in 1959 and again in 2000.

On the Last Day by Mervyn Jones (1958)  features  a Russian/Chinese invasion of Britain, during a non-nuclear Third World War , and of the successful attempt of the British government in exile (in Canada) to build a new intercontinental missile. Jones was  an activist  in CND.

 British television

Number Three, broadcast by the BBC on 1st  February 1953. This was dramatised from a novel by Charles Irving by Nigel Neale and  others.  Scientists at an atom research station  working on a new form of nuclear power discover  the project leader plans to  use it as a weapon.

Doomsday for Dyson  by J B Priestley, broadcast on ITV on 10th March 1958. An anti-war fantasy about a man standing trial in the afterlife for killing his family in the wake of a nuclear holocaust. It was followed by a short studio discussion on the issues raised.

Underground, broadcast  by ATV on 30th  November 1958 in the “Armchair Theatre” series.  It was written by James Forsyth, adapted from novel by Harold Rein Few Were Left, and directed by William Kotcheff.  The survivors of a nuclear holocaust are trapped in the London Underground.

The Offshore Island, broadcast by the BBC on 14th  April 1959. It was written by Michael Voysey, based on a play by  Marganita Laski, an activist in CND.  A  drama about a family whose farm remains unaffected, eight years after a nuclear war. Their peace is disturbed by a force of American soldiers and then a Russsian one.

The Poisoned Earth, broadcast by  ITV on 28th  February 1961 in the “Play of the Week” series. It was written by Arden Winch. Moral problems are raised when a new type of nuclear bomb, with limited fallout range, is developed.

The Road, broadcast by the BBC on 29 September 1963.  It was written by Nigel Kneale,  and was  part of  the “First Night” drama series.  A  scientist and a philosopher  in C18th investigate  “ghosts” that appear on Michaelmass Eve each year. In the end we realise  that they are actually visions from  the future of  people fleeing down a road from a nuclear war.  This drama   was wiped by the BBC,  but an excellent  radio radio dramatisation was broadcast in 2018, adapted by Toby Hadoke.

The War Game (1965) . Devised by Peter Watkins, this is a drama-documentary, depicting a nuclear attack  on Britain, and showing us the aftermath. The Labour government forced the BBC to cancel the screening which had been due to take place on 5 October 1965. Instead it was shown around the country by CND groups. It  was finally shown on television in July 1985.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Out of the Unknown Series 1; episode 7 “Sucker Bait” by Isaac Asimov

“Sucker Bait”  was broadcast on 15th November 1965.

Cast:  Mark Annuncio_ Clive Endersby, Doctor Sheffield – John Meillon,   Fawkes – Roger Croucher,  Novee – Burt Kwouk.  Captain Follenbee- Bill Nagy

Script: Meade Roberts

Director: Naomi Capon.

Producer and Story Edtor: Irene Shubik,  Associate Producer: George Spenton-Foster.

“Sucker Bait” was a novella  first serialised in the February and March 1954 issues of Astounding Science Fiction, and reprinted in the 1955 collection The Martian Way and Other Stories.

The story begins on  the bridge of a spaceship in flight with countless stars visible.  (All stories like this seem to begin on  the bridge). We are in some undated future where there is a Confederation of 83,000 worlds.  Men still wear polo-necks, though, but  at least they  have the escaped the uniform blond hair of previous episodes.  The crew is multi-racial, but there are no women  on board.

Captain  Follenbee summons a crew member,  Mark Annuncio, to see him. Whilst the rest of the crew are scientists, laughing and joking   as they go about their various tasks,  Annuncio in these opening scenes  is  established as  an outsider,  who is regarded with  suspicion by the other men.   Novee comments, You’ve got to remember he’s a mnemonic, a weird and special lot.

Mark Annuncio (Clive Endersby)

Annuncio gets into an argument with the Captain when he refuses to let him see the ship’s log.  He  is rescued by  Doctor Sheffield who explains  who he   is, ostensibly  for the Captain’s benefit , but really  for our benefit what  a mnemonic does (mnemonic derives from the Greek word meaning memory).

…Computers are limited, they have to be asked questions. Sometimes it never occurs to people to ask them the right questions. Therefore mankind needs a  computer that is non-mechanical, that has some imagination. There is such a computer… in each and every one of us…Somewhere inside the human  brain is a record of every fact that’s ever been impinged upon. Very little is consciously remembered,, but it’s all there. A slight association can bring it back to us without knowing where it came from or why. Now that is called “a hunch”  or “a feeling”… Now some people  are better at it than other. Others are almost perfect,  like Mark Annuncio.

So we train them to read, look, listen and do it better and more efficiently. It doesn’t really matter what data they collect. Any data may be useful, and every in  no machine could possibly make.once in a while a mnemonic makes a correlation…You see Mark is different from us… mnemonics are taken into the service about the the age of five. In a sens etheya re force-grown. We allow them no contact  with normal people in case they develop normal  mental habits.  They are highly strung, easily upset, and  easily ruined. I am here to see that does not happen. mark is an instrumnet, the most valuable instrument on this ship. There are only a hundred like him in the universe.

When he  is annoyed (which happens quite often)  Annuncio   refers to the other crew members  as “Non Compos” which Doctor Sheffield explains means “Non Compos Mentis” ie “not of sound mind.”

The ship is heading for a planet  called Troas  which Mark has identifiied as a planet  where a colony was established, but then the colonists all died. Their mission is to find out why.  When the ship arives an expedition  – which includes Mark and Doctor Sheffield _  is sent to the  rocky surface. They find no sign of the colonists, just burial  mounds.   Increasingly the crew feel uneasy. Fawkes   wakes  from a dream believing that there was someone in the tent: They’re  all around us. Intelligent beings out there now. I’m telling you, I saw  in the tent and out here. Novee tries to convince him that it was just a nightmare.  but Fawkes is convinced that there is intelligent life on the planet.

However it is Annunncio who  realises  the real  truth of why the colonists died and takes drastic action that saves their lives. He pieces together  a number of  different   facts to reveal that  they were poisoned by beryllium, an element  that humanity has forgotten about,    but about which  he once read an obscure paper. Data matters, it seems .

My view is that  not a  great deal of drama in this story,  while the issue as to whether it is  morally right to create mnemonics is not touched on.

Naomi Capon (1921-1987), who directed the story, was one of only two women  directors working at the BBC in 1965. The other  was Paddy Russell.

 

Out of the Unknown, series 1 episode 6, “Come Buttercup, Come Daisy, Come…?” by Mike Watts (1965)

“Come Buttercup, Come Daisy, Come…” was broadcast on 8th November 1965.

Cast;  Henry Wilkes – Milo O’Shea; Monica Wilkes – Christine Hargreaves; Anne Lovejoy – Patsy Rowlands; Dr Chambers – Desmond Jordan; Norman – Eric Thompson; Det Sergeant Crouch – Bernard Kay; Det Constable Fraser – Alan Haywood.

Script: Mike Watts

Director: Paddy Russell

Producer and Story Edtor: Irene Shubik,  Associate Producer: George Spenton-Foster.

Henry and Monica

 

An original script by Mike Watts, this is a domestic  story which takes place mainly in a house and garden.  The first scene introduces us  to the jovial Mr Wilkes whom we find in his garden talking to his large plants which surround him like pets. He is telling them about a new arrival –  a plant  sent to him by his friend  Mr Pringle – whom he names “Josie” and  puts into a bed between “George” and “Francis”.

His wife Monica  suffers from  what used to be called “nerves”. She is angry at not going away on holiday, and tells Henry that the  doctor will be calling around in the evening. Henry sets off to work at his  fishmonger. When he arrives  he gets very  angry when he discovers  his assistant   Miss Lovejoy putting out parsley between the fish and tells her off. He says;

Man, animals, even fish are preying on the vegetable world. We have got to do everything we can to stop it. Look at its delicate formation. She how curly and crinkly and soft it is. ..a thing of living beauty. Now it’s all brown and dead and decayed.

 

Back at home Henry feeds the plants, talking to them as he does so,  and they respond, moving and making sounds. When Dr Chambers calls Monica  tells him that she is afraid of the garden,  It dominates the whole house. She says that it started when Henry responded to an advert in a newspaper and began  receiving plants in the post. Then disturbing things started  to happen:  the fish disappeared from the pond and the greenhouse was smashed  to pieces one night.  Henry, she says,  has become  obsessed with the plants, feeding them rabbits and  cockels and injecting them with chemicals.

Those flowers are wrong, Doctor. They don’t belong in this country yet they survive the climate. They live all through the winter and  never die. He talks to  them, he has names for them, and sometimes I think they talk to him.

Henry and his plants

Henry assuages Monica by promising that they will go on holiday but his obsession grows. He steals a drug  from his friend, the chemist Norman,  and injects one of the plants.  Monica’s dog on whom she dotes gets into garden and vanishes (snapped up as a  juicy morsel by one of the plants we presume). Monica collapses in shock  and the doctor is summoned again. Speaking to Henry in the garden he realises what disturbed him on his earlier visit, There are no birds.

No birds every come here, explains Henry. The flowers won’t let them. They’ve got minds of their own. They think. You might say I’ve educated them.

Having set the scene, the last ten minutes of the story  are quite dark with loss and tragedy and a revelation about the mysterious  Mr Pringle.

This is really a horror story rather  than a science fiction story. The acting is perfectly  fine, especially from  Milo O’Shea  and Christine Hargreaves, and the director achieves a real sense of claustropobia. Having said that  any story involving sentient unfriendly  plants struggles to escape from the shadow of The Day of the Triffids which I write about in a previous post.

Where Else  Have  I Seen Them?

Christine Hargreaves (1939-1984) (who was from Salford)  appeared in many  televison plays from the 1960s to the 1980s. Her most celebrated  role was as Pauline,  a single mother fighting the benefit system, in  “The Spongers” by Jim Allen, broadcast in 1978 in the Play  for Today series.  Like much of Allen’s work it is not available on DVD.

Bernard Kay (1928-2014)  appeared  in four Doctor Who serials: “The Dalek Invasion of Earth (1964),” “The Crusades (1965),” “The Faceless Ones (1967)” and “Colony in Space (1971)”.

Paddy  Russell  (1928-2017) was one of the first women  directors at the BBC. She began as an actress and was then the first female floor manager to work at the BBC. Her credits as a director were extensive. She directed four  Doctor Who serials:  “The Massacre of St Bartholomew’s Eve” (1966). “Invasion of the Dinosaurs” (1974), “Pyramids of Mars” (1975), and “Horror of Fang Rock” (1977). She also  directed the supernatural thriller “The Omega Factor” (1980).

Eric  Thompson (1929-1982) wrote and performing the English narration for The Magic Roundabout, which he adapted from the original French.

 

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Out of the Unknown, series 1 episode 5, “Time in Advance” by William Tenn

“Time In Advance” was broadcast on 1 November 1965.

Cast: Nicholas Crandall -, Edward Judd;  Otto Henck – Mike Pratt;   Polly – Wendy Gifford;  Marcus Henson – Dyson Lovell,  Marie –Judy Parfitt ;  Paul Ryman – Jerome Willis;   and Dan- Michael Danvers Walker.

Script by  Paul Erickson

Producer and Story Edtor: Irene Shubik. Associate Producer: George Spenton-Foster.

Director ;  Peter Sasdy.

“Time in Advance” is based on  a short story  by William Tenn (the pseudonym of Philip Klass) published in 1956

The story is set in a future society where you can opt to serve your sentence before committing the crime.  It  begins with  Nicholas Crandall  (525509) and Otto Henck (5245514) returning  to earth after seven year hard labour on the colony planets. The two prisoners   have survived the rigours of their hard labour by looking after each other, although Crandall has lost his hand in a lava  accident. (They arrive  aboard a  convict spaceship called  the  Jean Valjean, incidentally, please note Victor Hugo fans.)

The “pre-criminals” as they are known  leave through the “Liberty corridor” and are  now free to commit the murders that they have confessed in advance that they intend to commit.  The media are there as they emerge, eager to know the names of their victims.  After checking whether  they still want them,   the Examiner hands Crandall and  Henck  their licences which allow them “To go forth from this place and kill one man or one woman of your own choosing.”

Crandall and Henck

They lodge at the Hotel Capricorn Ritz, where you check in with a handprint and the  drinks are served by a machine. Whilst in the bar  they see their arrival announced  on television, “It might be you they are after,”  teases the newsreader. Henck intends to kill his  unfaithful wife, Elsa: Crandall has not  publicly revealed his victim,  but we learn that it   is  man called Stephensen, who  stole his work  for a unlimited power source and has  made a fortune whilst Crandall has been in prison.

In the bar Crandall meets Paul  Ryman, a former work colleague, who cannot get away from  him quick enough. (We later find out  that he betrayed Crandall by assisting Stephensen).  It’s the first in a series of encounters with people who fear him., including his ex-wife Polly who believes that she is the victim because she was unfaithful to him, unknown to Crandall. ” I made a mistake. I thought he loved me. I would never have divorced  you if I had known what he was really like… Please don’t  kill me,” she begs.   When his brother Dan  tries to kill him with a weapon, we learn that it was he that had the affair with Polly. Crandall lies to the police to save his brother from prison.

Henck has failed to locate his  wife. She has moved, her  flat been demolished and the area is now a  huge nature park . He tells Crandall, “It’s the last thing I expected, I  just stood in the middle of the park not knowing what to do.. You don’t understand Nick. .All the time we were away , all the while I keep thinking of how it was going to be when I finally caught up with her. The times I dreamed of it  and it always happened in that  place. It just isn’t there any more.”

Marcus Henson from  a media company  offers Crandall  50,000 credits for an exclusive story. “The public is excited by it. They have been lapping  up the details  ever since you landed… But the biggest thing they want to know about, and that’s why we are prepared to pay so much, is that special piece of information that just clinches your story…What do you think they are all excited about? What do you really think they are guessing at? …They are trying to figure out who your victim is going to be. You tell us. We follow your story. We’ll be there when it happens,  and you can retire a rich man, while at the same time completing what you set out to do.” Crandall turns down the offer.

Crandall

Henck  finally discovers  that his wife has been  dead for two years, and  is now bitter about   his decision. “Seven years of my life gone for nothing and now no future,  nothing to show for it, not even the satisfaction.”  Crandall responds,  “I’ve spent those last seven years hating one man, wanting my revenge, only to find  the others, the ones I  loved and trusted,   meant  no more to me in my life than Stephensen. I don’t know what it’s about anymore,  I don’y know love and hate mean . I only know thatI iam tired. All that effort trying to keep alive on the colonies. I am beginning to think there was point in it, no point at all. “

Crandall makes an appointment to see Stephensen at his laboratory, while  Marie, a  betrayed  ex-lover of Stephensen’s,  gives him a weapon. But the meeting does not go the way Crandall expects.

Strip away the futuristic  gloss from this story (the  shiny sets look like  the future as imagined by Tomorrow’s World)  and it boils down to an old-fashioned moraility tale:  that dreams of revenge can destroy you.  Despite the premise, there is hardly any tension in the story. Rather than  racing to complete their tasks, the two men spend much of their  sitting around in the hotel bar drinking (two credits for a drink, by the way). By the end you are not sure whether  care very much  about what you have just seen.

Most of the cast  wear blond wigs, remarkably similar to the ones we saw in a previous episode, “The Counterfeit Man”. Perhaps they were recycled?

The background electronic music is very good.

Mary Crozier reviewed the episode for the Guardian on 2 November

There is no doubt that when science fiction is bad it is very bad indeed and last night’s play illustrated  this ecellently . “Time in Advance” by William Tenn  was based on the quaint notion that on the earth of the future those with a criminal tendency can apply for lience to commit a crime – but first they have to serve a penal term in Outer Space. 

The opening of the story was about the best bit where the convict ship was nearing earth and the ex-convicts were shuddering, trapped in their bunks in the orbital countdown. This was horrid, of course, and in the fashion of science fiction, some of them had hideous growths or wounds on face, chest or hand. But at this stage you could not tell  quite how dull it was going to be on earth when the two would-be murderers started their grim work. The action took place in a singularly hideous hotel called the Hotel Capricorn Ritz where all the gimmicks of the future were singualrly scientific and unhomely.

The precriminals as they were called got  mixed up in many complications and the story was so stupid that it seemed only natutral that the transmission broke down altogether as if in despair. It is amusing to make fashion note on science fiction; all the men and  women  in this programme had the regulalion fair, shaggy hair combed forward and the regulation tunics so that they looked like a cross between pupils of a progressive school and pre-Revolution Russian peasants.

The great difference between this play and the recent  “The Counterfeit Man” was that the characters were totally uninteresting and the plot incredible. But the sound effects by the radiophonic workshop were very clever indeed.

 

Where have we seen them before ?

Peter Erickson wrote “The Ark” for Doctor Who, broadcast  in 1964.

Wendy Gifford   played Miss Garrett in “The Ice Warriors” (1967)  in Doctor Who. She played Dr Susan Calvin in “Liar!”, an episode in series 3 of Out of the Unknown.

Jerome Wills appeared in “The Dark Star” (1962), an episode in the series  Out of this World.  He played Stevens in the memorable Doctor Who episode,”The Green Death” (1973).

Edward Judd  had a leading role  in The Day The Earth Caught Fire (1961) , a British  science fiction film in which the earth is threatened with destruction  after two atomic bomb tests blow it out of its orbit. He also appeared in Invasion (1965) , another British science  fiction film in which aliens (who are played by Japanese and Chinese actors)  arrive in pursuit of an escaped prisoner taken into a hospital. The story was thought up by Robert Holmes, although he did not write the script.  (Holmes later  used some elements of his story for an episode of Doctor Who, “Spearhead  from Space” (1970).)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Out of the Unknown; series 1, episode 4 “The Dead Past” 1965.

Written by Jeremy Paul,  based on a story by Isaac Asimov. Producer and Story Edtor: Irene Shubik. Associate Producer: George Spenton-Foster.

Cast: Arnold Potterley – George Benson, Thaddeus Araman – James Langton, Jonas Foster – James Maxwell, Ralph Nimmo – Willougby Goddard, Caroline Potterley – Sylvia Coleridge,  Miss Clements – Shirley Cain.

“The Dead Past” was broadcast on  25 October 1965.

Isaac Asimov (1920-1992) was probably the  most  influential  science fiction writer of the  1950s and 1960s  through works such as the Foundation trilogy and his robot stories. This was not the first of his stories to  be produced on British  television. Irene Shubik had produced “Little Lost Robot” as part of the Out of This World series on ATV in 1962  which was one  of his robot stories. (A copy of this  has survived).  Following her move to the BBC with Sidney Newman,  Irene followed this with a production of The Caves of Steel, one  of Asimov’s robot novels, broadcast on  5 June 1964 as part of the Story Parade series.   I  have a vague recollection of watching this, aged nearly 9. Sadly only a fragment has survived which  you can watch here.

“The Dead Past”  was first  published in Astounding Science Fiction in April 1956. It  is a time travel story with twist, set in some undated future and  begins  with Caroline Potterley having a nightmare in which she hears an unseen young girl screaming whilst  flames rise. Awakening in distress  she cries  for her husband Arnold,  and then goes into the living room  where she approaches  a small statue of a god or king.

Araman

In the next scene we see Arnold Potterley  having a meeting with Thaddeus  Araman, who  is “the top man in Chronoscopy”.  Chronoscopy,  we learn, is a science that enables the past to be seen through a machine. Potterley is an historian who specialises in the study of Cathage (a powerful city state on  the coast of what is now Tunisia which was destroyed by the Romans in 146 BC after a series of wars). I can’t help thinking that, unintentionally or otherwise,  Potterley looks a great  deal like the historian A J P Taylor, well-known in the 1960s for his history lectures on television.

Potterley has come to Araman because for two years he has been  trying to get permission  to  carry out  research on Carthage,  using  time-viewing to examine the landing of Scopio Africanus  in 202 BC.  Araman fobs him off with series of technical excuses and,  in addition,  says that there is long waiting line. As Potterley leaves disappointed Araman  warns him,  “You won’t try and get help anywhere else will you? The Department of Physics,  for instance? I am sure I don’t have to warn you that if you did, you would be considered guilty of  intellectual  anarchy  and your basic grant would be instantly withdrawn.”

After Potterley has gone Araman confers with  his secretary (and perhaps lover) , Miss Clements, “I am always fascinated  to know what they think when  they leave this office. Do they really believe what they are told?” She replies, “You know what they do, they go home, stamp their feet , say unkind things about  you and wait for their wives to bring them to their senses.”   He ponders further, “Would you say that he is a threat to us? Determined? Cunning?…We are going to have a little fun with Professor Potterley.”

Potterley

Undeterred,  Potterley  approaches Jonas Foster, a  physics lecturer,  and asks for his help with chronoscopy.  Foster initially turns him down, saying that he knows nothing of neutrinics, the science  that led to the discover of chronoscopy by Sterbinski some 50 years earlier.  (Neutrinics was made by Asimov). In this society  it seems, research outside one’s field of study  is discouraged, is in fact  labelled “intellectual anarchy”. Foster says , ” It was different a hundred years ago, some marvellous discoveries were made.by sheer accident. But as we  got more data and more knowledge so we had to specialise…and now every branch of   of science is geared to the public’s  needs.” Potterley responds, “You speak like a computer. Official  propaganda every word…I say the government  is actively suppressing research in neutrinics and chronoscopy.”

 

Foster

Potterley has successfully  lit a the flame of curiousity in Foster. When  he vists the Potterleys for dinner,  Caroline discloses that  their daughte Laurel  died in a fire at the age of 10, while the statue in Arnold’s study is revealed to be that of the  god Moloch to whom the Cartathaginans allegedly  offered human sacrifices. Foster eventually  agrees to build a  chronoscopy machine,  using  research information unearthed by his uncle, Ralph Nimmo,  a science  journalist, played splendidly by Willoughby Goddard with an eye-patch (not part of his character,  but  worn due to an eye infection, apparently). Potterley  tells  his worried  wife,  “It’s Carthage that counts and human knowledge, not you and I.” But their activites have not gone unnoticed. Araman, it seems,  somehow  knows what is going on.  Miss Clements challenges  him,“What happens if they learn the truth? What will we do with them then?”

The Chronoscope is built in the Potterley’s cellar. But there is bitter  disappointment  for Potterley when Foster tells  him, “You will never see Carthage…When the field is interpreted you get random factors, it’s the same with all sub-atomic particles, random factors which  produce a kind  of fuzziness…the further back in time you go, the greater the fuzziness..until finally the picture is drowned.  You can only time view so far back, a century and a quarter at the most…No historian

has ever used the chronoscope, they couldn’t. The government has been having us on, it’s a hoax.”

Caroline Potterley

Caroline  interrupts  the two men in the cellar, having realised what the machine could offer her.  “Listen to me.  Even if it only goes back twenty years, we could see Laurel . What does it matter about Carthage, its’s Laurel Arnold, she’ll be alive for us again..” Distarught,  Potterley begs her, “Caroline, please, what will you see? Do you want to live those years over and over again? Watching a child who will never grow up? You’ll go mad. Is that want you want? Is it?  “I want my child“, she cries in response, “she’s there in that machine. I want  to see her, I want my baby.  In rage or despair  or guilt, Potterley smashes the machine beyond repair.

But this is not the end of the story. Araman has  Potterley, Foster and Nimmo arrested and brought to his laboratory where he reveals  the truth of what is is going on.  The final scene is silent  – and heartbeaking.

 

This  is  a very effective piece  of drama, well-scripted and directed,the cast is uniformly excellent. Tt raises qestions about  whether progress is always a good thing, something that seems very pertinent  in our “brave new world” of   unescapable social   media  and non-stop 24 hour news. Do we really want to know everytning about everybody? And what of the personal?  In the end,  Asimov,  suggests “You and I” do count, count a great deal, in fact.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Out of the Unknown: series 1, episode 3 “Stranger in the Family” (1965)

Written by David Campton. Director – Alan Bridges. Producer and Story Edtor: Irene Shubik. Associare Producer: George Spenton-Foster.

Cast: Boy – Richard O’Callaghan, Paula – Justine Lord, Sonny – Eric Lander,  Charles Wilson – Peter Copley, Margaret Wilson – Daphne Slater, Brown –  John Paul, Evans – Jack May, Hall – Joby Blanshard, Swain –  Brian Vaughan.

This  was broadcast on  18th October 1965.

After the claustrophia and  paranoia of the  previous episode,  “Stranger in the Family” brings us down to earth, specifically  the London of the mid 1960s,  in an original story written by David Campton. Campton (1924-2006)   wrote many  plays for the stage, radio, and cinema for thirty-five years.  The critic Irving Wardle once described  his  work  as “comedies of menace”.  Campton himseself said that “.It seems to me that the chaos affecting everyone today––political, technical, sociological, religious, etc., etc.,––is so all-pervading that it cannot be ignored, yet so shattering that it can only be approached through comedy. Tragedy demands firm foundations; today we are dancing among the ruins.”

The  opening  filmed scenes show us a young man visiting the Science Museum and wandering near  the Thames.  apparently tailed by a man.  There are also some shots of a young blonde woman that the young man seems to be following.  When the  man  approaches thhe young man he  shouts at him: “Go away, leave me alone”. The man  backs away and is  run  over by a lorry. The young men then  flees  back to his parents’ flat.

Boy (Richard O’Callaghan)

Here we  learn that  he is  called “Boy” and that he is being hidden away for some as yet unknown reason. His father is angry that Boy  went out alone: “Do you want us to be forced to move home  again?”.Boy tells his parents that a man was following him: “I made him leave me, I think we was killed, I didn’t mean to hurt him”.

The family is being watched by two men who have moved in next door called  Brown and Evans. Their  interest in Boy becames apparent whenit is revealed  Boy  has the mental  power to influence or even compel other people. He poses the question:

“Why am I different?.. I’m a mutant , I’m an improbability that happened. And I want to know how… I know I make mistakes, I try not to  but it is  natural for me to use my will. And then we have to move again. And so I have to be insulated against the world”.

Paula (Justine Lord)

Boy goes out again this time to a   bar where he sees the young woman in conversation with a man, Sonny.  He makes Sonny go away and  starts a friendship with the young woman, an actress called  Paula,  that deepens over the next few weeks,  much to the dismay of his parents who fear that it is obsession on his side, calculation on  hers. Paula  has become aware of his powers when, during an argument he renders  her unable to speak, an effective chilling sequence. Sonny,  who is her agent,  plots to make money out of Boy. “You never know, Pussy, this might be the start of something really big.”

The two men  in the flat are revealed  to be scientists. Over a fish and chip supper Evans tells Brown that Boy  “…is something rare and wonderful. At present we don’t know how rare or just how wonderful…Every now and then history throws up a man with unusual powers of persuasion. On his account steady willed, strong minded men behave out of character, irrationally…but the ability to infuence another mind must be there in the brain, rather like our powers of reasoning. Imagine that highly developed,  full of extra sense. And then you have him. There is  great deal more to him than that”.

Paula urges  Boy not to trust her: “This is  a hard world.. you have got to be harder, grab what’s going while it lasts. There won’t be any second chances. I learnt the hard way”. Jealous of Sonny’s relationship with Polly , Boy almost  drowns him in a bath, using his powers, before relenting.    Despite this,  Sonny aranges for Boy to star in a television advert for a cigarette, a bizarre sequence which ends with everyone in the studio demanding cigarettes.

Brown reveals  to Boy that there are others with his powers:  “I guess you thought you were the only one. There are others with your capabilities,t hey al llive together in an old  castle with lovely stone walls and towers, just like in a fairy tale. Each one of them thought he was alone until we brought them together. Wouldn’t you like to join them? It must be lonely life on your own”. He  attempts to inject Boy with a drug of some kind,  but is compelled to inject himself with fatal consequences.

Following this  second death  Evans urges Boy’s parents to allow him to take Boy  to his research establishment for the sake of the  survival of the human race. “When  the mutants were first persuaded to live  together I noticed a struggle  for supremacy going on among them but the conflict was entirely in the mind,  there was no physical struggle as we know it. The strongest will is the winner…If this new species survives,  then wars as we know them will end.. Of course we will  be back numbers , you and I, but at least there won’t be the danger of the world being blown up. There will be a future. This new strain must have every chance.  That’s why I need your son.”

His parents reject Evan’s proposition,  but events force their hand  after  Boy goes to Paula’s  flat and finds her with Sonny. In his anger he compels Paula to wound Sonny.   Evans arrives and  speaks  to  Boy, who  admits,  “I am  sorry.. I hadn’t realised, there  are universes between us…the crack in the ice and the gap grows wider…I must be completely what I am… I accept myself  as I am… That way iIcan grow..I am ready to go now.”

The premise that humanity  might one day evolve new chacteristics is not a new one, it was  posed by John  Wyndham in The Chrysalids, for instance, which I have written about here.  But  by rooting the story in contemporary London, Campton makes it seem both  more real and more disturbing. How would humanity react? Evans defies our expectations by welcoming a new kind of human being, that might be both our saviours and repacements. Is this how the Neanderthals felt when home sapiens appeared?

In many ways the production feels in look and tone  likes a  Wednesday Play, particularly the satirical cigaarette advert sequence,  and indeed the director Alan Bridges directed six Wednesday  Plays, five Plays of the Month and  four Plays for Today.

The one real problem I have with “A Stranger in the Family”  is that Richard O’Callaghan is too old for the part.  He is meant to be 18, just out of adolescence,  and still learning how to be an adult, but he looks in his mid 20s, as indeed Callaghan was.

Where have I seen them before?

Jack May played  Adam Adamant’s manservant  William Simms in Adam Adamant  Lives!  who is given to acerbic limericks often aimed at Miss Jones.

Justine Lord played Sonia (aka Death)  in a memorable episide of The Prisoner;  “The Girl who was Death”

John Paul and Joby Blanshard  were both in the eco-thriller series Doomwatch. 

 

 

“the Moon will become the seventh Continent of our Planet…”: life in the twenty-first century, edited by M Vassiliev and S Gouschev (1961)

First  published in the Soviet Union in 1959, the authors compiled accounts from  29 Soviet scientists on what life might be like in 2007.  It is unlikely  that such a volume would have been translated and published in the West ten years previously,  but the Soviet  launch of Sputnik, the first satellite sent into  earth orbit,  stunned the world in October 1957. The Soviets followed this  with further satellite launches,  and then  sending the first man into space, Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, who orbited the world on 12 April 1961. Previously regarded as a country barely emerged from peasantry, the Soviet Union now seemed to  be at the forefront of scientific discovery and development, and hence became the focus of intense interest.

This volume was published by Penguin as number 195  in their Penguin Specials series in 1961.

The book takes the form a gentle meander by the authors  through the studies. lecture halls  and laboratories of Soviet scientists. (Whether this actually happened,  or  whether it is  just a literary conceit and the chapters were written by the scientists themselves,  or indeed  a  Committee we have no way of knowing.)

The first chapter “Learn to Dream”  begins with a vist to the study of Alexander Nikolaievich Nessmayanov. “On a huge desk stood a bronze Atlas bearing on his shoulders a gleaming globe. Portraits of Russian scientists hung on the walls. In one corner a wooden bust of lenin, smiling , the work of the well-known sculptor S. T. Konienkov…”

Nessmayanov (1899 – 1980) was President  of the Academy of Sciences in the USSR from 1951 to 1961.He was twice awarded the title of Hero of Socialist Labour.

He tells the authors, “We do not always care to dream, nor are we always capable of dreaming, but it  is essential to do so. Without dreams prospects do not exist, without dreams man, the scientist included, is inevitably halted in his progress. Creation is not consistent with kicking one’s heels.”

Subsequent chapters encompass a range of  predictions.  In the future it is suggested  that

• electricty production will be vastly increased and transmitted  for huge distances;
•  mining will be carried out without  digging
• bloodless  surgery  will be possible
•  the hours spent in sleep could be greatly shortened
• large scale underwater mining will be possible
• submarines will  be used to carry passengers under the oceans like liners
• trains will have atomic engines;
• private cars will be banned from cities
• moving pavements will transport people around cities (an idea that Isaac  Asimov  had already used in  his novel The Caves of Steel (1953), by the way)

From the viewpoint of this blog the three  chapter on space exploration  are most interesting. Our guide to  the future in chapter 26 “Space Travel” is the scientist  U. S. Hlebsevitch. He suggests that radio controlled unmannned space craft will be  best way of  conducting the space explorations of the future, thereby eliminating the need to send vast stores of food and fuel into space to feed and sustain the Cosmonauts.

In the next few years we shall approach  the Moon, Mars,  and Venus  without waiting for an artificial satellite capable of carrying human occupants. The first guided rockets will soon explore the Moon and in the following five or perhaps ten years there will be a permanent scientific observatory on the Moon.  Return flights to the Moon will become a commonplace  by the end of the century. At the beginning of the twenty-first century the Moon will become the seventh Continent  of our Planet. and, strange though may sound now, we shall be in a position to exploit its natural wealth…

He goes on to posit  that the Moon will  initially be explored by an unmanned rocket carrying an exploratory vehicle which will examine the soil, temperature  and surface and send back the results by television and radio. He does not rule out other life in the solar system:

Today we are planning on the assumption that neither Mars nor Venus are inhabited. But suppose we find this to be untrue? Then we shall try to build space  ships which can enter into radiotelephonic or television contact with the inhabitants of those planets. Only then shall we tackle the most difficult problem of how to land on them.

He envisages using the Moon as a broadcasting platform:

The Moon, for example, will become a radio-telescope for the purpose of retransmission. Transmissions from the Moscow televison centre, for example, will be received on the Moon, reinforced and retransmitted back to the earth. These picturs  will be seen by the inhabitants of half the terrestrial globe.

Hlebsevitch suggests an earth observation station will be established on the Moon toprovide   very accurate weath forecasts for the whole planet, and that satellites will give advance  warning of harmful cosmic radiation and meteors

Finally,  he sums up in true Soviet style:

All I have said , all my forecasts can only be realised provided the peoples of the world remain at peace. The combined forces of science and the human brain must be utilised,  not for an armaments race,  but for the solution of those grandoise problems, the only problems worthy of man. If the endeavour and money spent on missiles with war-heads were used in preparation for interplanetary flight our forecasts would be proved very much sooner.

In Chapter 28 “In The Lunar City” Nicholas Alexandrovitch  Varvarov describes what a Soviet permament  base on the Moon might look like:

The aluminium was mined on the moon, the glass and the plastic materials were made in lunar factories. The water comes from the depths of the satellite and gives the neccessary humidity for the cultivation of the soil. Oxgen and nitrogen are obtained from lunar materials. The lamps  which burn during the long night, which lasts almost a month, are fed from batteries which, at the same time heat the city and supply the power for the factories. All this has been set in motion and the whole work is designed to utilise the energy of local and solar atomic power stations.

The lunar city is not only self-supporting  but is also working, one might say, for export. For example, synthetic fuel for rocket servicing is prepared  for rockets departing for the earth; plans are ready for the construction of a wharf for cosmic ships. Soon rockets, built in lunar factories, will depart on long-distance journeys. The lunar cosmodrome will soon see the launching of an enormous rocket bound for Mercury, having on board the first expedition of earth’s scientists.

Finally, in chapter 29  “Through Interstellar Space” Kiril Petrovich Stayukovitch  imagines photon engines which,  by  combining matter and anti-matter, will propel the rockets to the speed of light:

…, the course of time on it would be much slower than on earth. On the basis of the meaurement of time on earth a hundred years could elapse. In this time the space ship would travel a distance …corresponding to a hundred light years. But in reality, aboard the space ship only two or three years would elapse and the men on board would only age to this extent. They would visit planets and stars at a great distance from our  sun  and the return journey  to the earth, acording to their time, would be in two or three years.  Nevertheless, on their return to earth the astronauts  would not find a single person  they knew still alive. Because on earth, during the same period , two hundred years would have elapsed.

All contributions in life in the twenty-first century display boundless faith in the ability of science to solve all problems. But as we now know the Soviet plans for interplanetary travel, devised by Sergei Korolev, encountered many problems and were cancelled. The Soviet Union itself dissolved on 26 December  1991.

I  have not been able to find  anything about the authors, Mikhail  Vassiliev and Sergei Gouschev. I did discover that a character  called Mikhail Vassiliev appears in Philip Pullman’s short story, Once Upon a Time in the North (2008)

This is a list of all contributors was carried as an appendix in the book.

A.N. Nessmayanov:

President, Soviet Academy of Science. World-renowned authority on organic chemistry in general, and on the metallo-organic aspect of it

in particular.

J.P. Bardin:Vice-President, Academy of Science. Pioneer of Sovietmetallurgy; took the leading part in constructing the Kuznetsk Steelworks in the early years following the Revolution.

I.S. Garkousha and N.A. Fedorov: Two young Russian scientists and engineers who are acknowledged as the country’s leading authorities on the underground  gasification of coal; they work together as one man on research and projects in this sphere.

S.I .Mironov and M.A. Kapelyushnikov: Both belong to the older school of Russian scientists, the first a full member of the Academy of Science and the second an associate member. Both have behind them a lifetime of research and study in  their speciality – oil; despite years, are still ‘young’ enough to look keenly ahead.

A.V. Vinter: Academician; the doyen of Russia’s hydro-electric power schemes; was at Lenin’s elbow when he drew up the general

electrification plan; had main responsibility in the building of the first two Soviet power stations, commenced in 1918.

V.I. Popkov: Associate, Academy of Science; one of the rising generation of Russian technologists; writer of

numerous highly speciali zed works on electric power.

G.I. Pokrovsky: Professor; specialist in the technique of explosives and explosions; paints, writes poetry, and composes music

in his spare time.

V.A. Engelhardt: Principal of the Department of Biology, Academy of Science.

M.G. Ananiev: Bachelor of Medical Science; Principal and Head Surgeon of an ultr-modern Moscow hospital where bloodless, supersonic

surgical methods are practised.

S.I. Volkovitch: Academician; specialist in agronomy.

L.A. Zenkevitch: Associate, Academy of Science; Chair of Invertebrate Zoology, Moscow

University. His speciality is marine life, both animal and vegetable.

A.R. Jebrak: Academy of Science, White Russian Republic; expert on agriculture; views the subject mainly from a biological angle.

V.A. Kotelnikov: Young Academician and Professor of Moscow University; considered to be the country’s greatest authority on radio.

S.A. Lebedyev: Principal of the Institute of Precision Mechanism and Computer   Technology at the Academy of Science, regarded as the leading authority in the electronic computer field.

G.I. Babat: Professor; somewhat of a freelance and an individualist. Specializes in high-frequency current; his inventions in this line include an

artificial ‘sun’. Author of popular scientific works, and fiction with a scientific background.

V.L. Ginzburg: Associate, Academy of Science; astronomer, mainly in the context of radio-astronomy, to which he has contributed considerable literature.

V.V. Zvonkov: Associate Member, Institute of General Transport Affairs and Problems at Academy of Science; an authority on every form of transport.

N.F. Yevstratov: Civil Engineer and Architect; Principal of the Moscow Town Planning Institute.

U.A. Dolmatovsky: Mechanical Engineer; emphasis on motor cars.

G.A. Gradov: Civil Engineer and Architect; Principal of the Institute of Communal Planning and Construction.

E.M. Goldovsky: Professor; expert in the field of photography and the cinema, particular interest being electro- (or ‘dry’) photography.

L.V. Pustovalov: Associate, Academy of Science; Deputy Chairman, Committee for Study and Investigation of Potential Productive Energy; devotes particular attention to Siberian development.

U.S. Hlebsevitch: Bachelor of Technical Science; radio-astronomer, specializes in ‘Sputnik’ and other like projects.

D.I. Scherbakov: Academician; geographer; a much-travelled man in the remoter regions of the world.

N.G. Romanov: Civil Engineer; emphasis on the hydraulic aspect; author of a scheme for bridging the Straits of Tartary by a dam.

N.A. Varvarov: Engineer; Astronautical Consultant to U.S.S.R. Armed Forces; has made a particular study of the Moon.

K.P. Stanyukovitch: Professor; physicist whose particular subject is the harnessing of nuclear science for the conquest of outer space