things that go bump in the norm

This is an Earth-page, for only planet Earth can harbour the Norm, and, therefore, provide the scene for the tales I aim to discuss here.

Stid:  Are you seeking to focus on an sf equivalent of the "cosy murder mystery", Agatha-Christie style?

Zendexor:  Quite a perceptive comment, Stid, assuming that there's nothing negative lurking behind it.  Agatha Christie is like a world-builder, or world-preserver, in that she gives her readers access to the "redemptive Norm".

Stid:  By "redemptive" you mean "escapist", I suspect.

Zendexor:  No - though it certainly does provide an escape, thank Heavens.  But so would a mainstream story set in normal times.  Mainstream, however, risks being stuffy.  The redemptive Norm is saved from that stuffiness by the fresh air coming through its window open to adventure.  In the case of Agatha Christie and others of that ilk, that opening consists of a crime-mystery and the challenge of solving it.

In her day, I suppose, the likelihood was greater that such tales were read for their face value as mysteries, while the Norm was taken for granted.  Nowadays, the situation is different.  Their value has soared because the Norm has gone, and we therefore read them for the fascination and the lost marvel of that vanished setting - while nonetheless the mystery-window remains an essential plot-driver.

Now, back to sf...

jostling the grounded norm

SF, like golden-age detective tales, can act as a wick for the golden candle-wax of the Norm.

Stid:  The wick being...?

Zendexor:  A thread of inspiration which allows the ensemble to glow... 

Stid:  What you called a plot-driver when you were talking about murder mysteries.

Zendexor:  But more than that in the case of sf.  For murder mysteries I used the term "plot-driver" because I'm never much interested in the crime itself; I merely appreciate its role in furnishing excuses for exploring the social setting.  In sf on the other hand the idea is usually interesting in itself, and so in my opinion it's more than a mere plot-driver.  Nevertheless the setting surrounding it remains vital, and so here I resort to the wick-and-wax metaphor.  The wick is the idea; the wax is the setting.

Stid:  Maybe, but doesn't it all boil down to nostalgia: that's to say, the fact that what you wish to praise is no more nor less than the type of sf tale set on Earth and published in the good old days of your boyhood or before.

Zendexor: No - you're omitting one important point.  It's true that what I might call the Tales of the Jostled Norm had to be written and published before the Norm itself was abolished by the yuckocracy.  On this page, however, I'm not concerned with all the good stories set on Earth before that curtain went down at the end of the pre-yuck age.  Some excellent works do not belong in the class to which I'm dedicating this piece.  This is because I must exclude from the Jostled Norm (JN) those tales of widespread disaster, devastation, and/or catastrophic invasion, in which perils not only threaten the order of things but actually overturn them. 

Stid:  I see.  The Jostled Norm is by definition jostled, not shattered.  Invasions are too much for it. 

Zendexor:  Oh, well, we can allow some invasions.  They can be counted within the JN category so long as they are defeated before they get too far - as for example in Three To Conquer.  Or we may not be vouchsafed the full story, as in Binary Z.

Stid:  Presumably, then, you would exclude The War of the Worlds, despite the splendidly normal introductory scenes. 

Zendexor:  Ah, that wonderful, suspenseful beginning at Woking, with its poignant last-few-hours-of-peace feel!  Yes, the book starts with a jostled "everyday", but soon goes far beyond and into full-blown disaster mode.  Therefore although it's a work of genius, it's not what I'm focusing on here.  Nor is The Day of the Triffids, which slides into disaster even quicker; whereas the same author's The Midwich Cuckoos and Trouble with Lichen allow (to use my candle-metaphor) the flame of normal culture to burn calmly on, the  wick surrounded by the wax.

Stid:  You know what, Zendexor, I'm starting to get metaphor-fatigue. 

Zendexor:  Then it's time we zoomed in and had a good close look at a specific tale.  Step forth, Binary Z.

school building-work uncovers lethal alien robot

What a day the headmaster is having at the start of the tale.  Hal Hartley's crisis-management skills are in constant use as a building-works-digger manages to cut the main power line during a visit by the pompous Schools Inspector "Growing-Point" Tobin.

    Tobin settled himself in a spare armchair, leaned back and half closed his eyes.  It was a habitual pose with him and likely to deceive the unwary into too much ease.  He had never taught in a school, but years of trekking round them had finally given him a shrewd knowledge of what it was all about and his mild manner was deceptive... 

Tobin drones on and on about how the building-work could be used for educational purposes.

    "This could make a number of very vigorous growing points for your school, Hartley.  Subjects you have not considered before could be brought in...  My rating for a school is to tot up the number of growing points I can find."
    Hartley suddenly felt restless.  He had heard it all before and could not honestly dispute the general truths.  But carrying it through, day in and day out was another matter.  It was not at all as straightforward as it seemed in the office armchair.  Down on the factory floor, theory had to take a few setbacks.  The senior girls, for instance, who had to be bludgeoned away from the site at four o'clock, were not primarily interested in building techniques...  

Hartley's quietly sardonic personality is expertly drawn.  Under no illusions about his staff, his pupils or his superiors, the Head is capable of a wry sympathy which comes to the fore in expressions such as:

...the division bell sounded again, to tell those under sentence of education... that exercise time was at an end.    

And in attempting to divert the attention of Inspector Tobin to one of the better teachers:

   Hartley edged towards the door.  It was hard luck on Gregory; but in every life some rain must fall.  If he could get away, Tobin was off his hands at least until morning break.  That would give him time to sound the alarm and get everybody looking madly busy...               

Stid:  I get the message you're trying to give from the above examples.  You're displaying a "grounded Norm" served up as expertly as in any work of sf.  I agree, of course, but let me ask: could it be, in a sense, too good?  Might it overbalance the nature of the book so that it is liable to be seen as a mainstream tale with the sf part merely tacked on?  Like The Isotope Man, for example. 

Zendexor:  If that were true, it would not necessarily be a black mark against the book.  After all, there's no rule that says what the ratio of normality to beyondness should be.  But the alien robot dug up in Binary Z is much more of a distinctive phenomenon than the minor "time-slip" theme in The Isotope Man.  And its beyondness-note is sounded quite early, at the end of Chapter One.

The foreman's message was short and definite.  "The digger's uncovered a black dome.  Could be a bomb.  I've sent for the disposal unit.  But we gave it a bloody great welt with the bucket.  Might be activated.  Police are coming along right away.  You'll have to evacuate the area until we clear it up."

Stid:  Yes but we never learn any detail about the origin or the purpose of the alien robot.  It disturbs the routine of the school, and no more; just a bit of irrelevant sf seasoning to what is essential a mainstream novel about life from a headmaster's point of view.  An excellent novel, to be sure, but the more you emphasize its excellence the more you, Zendexor, are painting yourself into a corner, where you have no choice but to admit that the story can't really be counted the way you want it...

Zendexor:  I absolutely disagree with your conclusion, Stid, though you're right about the alien mystery remaining unsolved.  You're also right, in a sense, about me "painting myself into a corner".  Watch me do it - by heaping praise on the "normal" aspects of this novel - in particular as regards the gradual progress of the pensive Hal Hartley's relations with the self-possessed Mrs Gleave, the beautiful widow who is a member of his staff. 

Hartley accepts a lift into town on this woman's motorcycle when the school unexpectedly has to close for the day.  In the shopping centre he is about to take his leave of her:

....He had almost talked himself into saying, "Well, good-bye then.  Thank you for the lift.  See you, whenever we re-start the mill," when he found that he was meeting a brown, deliberative look from eyes which were intimidatingly well made up.
    He said, "Would you postpone your shopping for a time and join me for a coffee?  We were interrupted at break time."
    "Surely.  That would be a good start to an unexpected holiday.  Thank you."
    She shoved the hat in a pannier and locked it.   Here, she was not as tall as she always appeared in school.  With the infinite range of possible things to talk about, he found that he had started to talk shop as the simplest and least loaded conversational gambit.  He went on at length about Tobin's visit and whether the new building would be a school like their present one or something new.
    It was all right.  It was a social noise, as useful as the weather or the price of gin; but it sounded cliché ridden and dust dry in his own ears.  But what else could he say?  Tell her that she looked splendid, that he would like to touch her skin, know what went on in her head?  Probably most conversation was fill-in material anyway.  When you weighed it all up, the people you liked were the people you could be silent with...                   [p.32]

The author conducts us faultlessly through the incipient love-story which becomes by far the most serious of Hartley's concerns, far eclipsing the issue of the alien robot.  Yet - here I escape with a bound out of the painted-in corner - the alien, Binary Z, can be felt as a kind of rhyme, an assonance which operates on a level where relevance is unnecessary.  Rhymes, you know, are like that.  And the alien provides the thematic rhyme of bigness, of "there's more to life than a school career", of "free yourself to pursue what is really important".

Stid:  What you're suggesting, I suppose, is that without the alien disruptor, Hartley might have stayed in a rut?

Zendexor:  Maybe.  Nowhere does it say so, and it's impossible to be sure.  But the suggestion lurks.  And if not this explanation, then some other must be brought forward, because one way or another the book succeeds, and its success has to be admitted.

Stid:  You're the boss, Zendexor.  But allow me to wonder - while bowing to your authority, of course - will you be relying as much on sheer assertion in your discussions of other works lined up for consideration on this page?

Zendexor:  By and large, no, and this is significant: that Binary Z, besides being one of the very best novels of the Jostled Norm, is also one of the most problematic if one insists upon Relevance.  I reckon the problem is unreal, but even so, it just goes to show the trickiness of lit.crit.  Time now to list a host of other works, all of which, in my view, are less "tricky".

rick pickings in the jostled norm

Will we ever have time or space to talk about them all?  Here's a sample:

A For Andromeda  -  Chocky  -  The Midwich Cuckoos  -  The Mind of Mr Soames  - 
The Minds tetralogy (The New Minds, The Several Minds, The Mind Trap and The Country of the Mind)  -  Odd John  -  One Against Time  -  Psychogeist  -  Sirius  - 
That Hideous Strength  -  Three To Conquer  -  Time for a Change  -  Trouble With Lichen  -  What Did I Do Tomorrow  -  With a Strange Device...

Charles Eric Maine, The Isotope Man (1957); John Rankine, Binary Z (1969); Eric Frank Russell, Three to Conquer (1956); John Wyndham, The Midwich Cuckoos (1957), Trouble with Lichen (1960).

TO BE CONTINUED