Note: My read but “waiting to be reviewed pile” is growing. Short rumination/tangents are a way to get through the stack before my memory and will fades. My website partially serves as a record of what I have read and a memory apparatus for future projects. Stay tuned for more detailed and analytical reviews.
1. Mind of My Mind, Octavia E. Butler (1977)
John Jude Palencar’s cover for the 1994 edition
4/5 (Good)
Octavia E. Butler’s Mind of My Mind (1977) is the second-published and second chronological installment of her Patternist series of novels (1976-1984), that chart the dystopic and hyper-violent development (and destruction) of a telepathic society. The series also contains her disowned (and hard-to-afford without selling a child) novel Survivor (1978). I wish I had read Wild Seed (1980) first!
The immortal Doro, able to hone into those with telepathic talent and shift his essence into new human bodies at will, oversees a generations-old telepathic breeding project. The harrowing story follows one his many daughters, Mary, a rare active telepath (vs. latent), as she comes of age and begins to understand the role that she is designed to play. Doro preys on the downtrodden and abandons the majority of latent telepaths to live miserable lives, unable to filter out the emotions they sponge up. Doro pairs Mary with another active telepath named Karl in order to guide her through her transition. But something new appears in her mind, she seems to have created a pattern that compulsively draws in actives from across the country. And Doro begins to feel threatened by his own creation.
I found the collision of Butler’s brutal view of power–and its interplay with relationships, gender roles, and race–and telepathy a heady mixture. It’s hard not to feel for Mary and the horror she has to experience. But soon telepathy becomes a way for Mary to create new–and disturbing–power relationships. I bounce off rosy views of telepathy in science fiction. I imagine Butler’s gut-punch is a bit closer to the truth.
As with Dawn (1987) and Kindred (1979), I struggled mightily with Butler’s stark, clipped, and direct prose that refuses—page after page–to use even the simplest metaphor. I acknowledge these are deliberate stylistic choices designed to highlight the overwhelming drive to survive and the brutal new power relationships that emerge as a result of telepathic awakening. That said, I have always been a connoisseur of a beautiful sentence and I found my artistic sensibilities clashed.
Track down Garry Canavan’s Octavia E. Butler (2016) for a brilliant analysis of the childhood genesis of the Patternist stories, her comic book inspirations, and relentless rewrites (in one draft Kindred fit into the Patternist sequence).
Recommended for fans of Butler and sparse, brutal, and intense 70s SF.
1. Mandrake, Susan Cooper (1964)
Michael Busselle’s cover for the 1966 edition
3/5 (Average)
Before Susan Cooper (1935-) published Over Sea, Under Stone (1965) (the first in The Dark is Rising Sequence), her only SF novel for adults Mandrake (1964) hit the shelves. Both novels were started in her free time while she worked as a reporter for The Sunday Times under Ian Fleming, of James Bond fame. In 1963, the year before Mandrake was published, she left for the United States. I emphasize the final point as Mandrake is all about the almost magical anchor that home pulls on one’s being. Cooper channels the most disturbing elements of nostalgia for place.
In her near-future dystopia, Cooper traces the slow collapse of all vestiges of UK democracy and the shadowy forces, harnessed by the titular Mandrake, that compel people to return to their place of birth. The story follows David Queston, an anthropologist studying cave dwellers in Brazil, after he returns to the UK. A man tied to no place, Queston is an oddity. He observes unusual changes at Oxford when he visits his mentor–there’s disquieting silence and restricted movements in and out. His mentor proclaims: “We’re an ancient country, David. I’ve always thought the old kingdoms still existed under the skin. Mercia, Wessex, Northumbria, and so on” (14). With the UK’s shrinking global position, the rhetoric espoused by the figure of Mandrake emphasize the worship of the original land. The Ministry of Planning begins enact policies that exclude foreigners and return people to their places of birth: “Real London families, born and bred. You’re not a Londoner, now, are you?” (33). Queston, tied to no place, avoids serving Mandrake and retreats to write his magnum opus about his Brazilian cave-dwellers–their fate echoes the fate of the UK. But when he emerges he finds a world beyond recognition.
Fascinating ideas. Some intriguing moments. Too insubstantial in its final interweaving. Somewhat recommended for fans of British dystopias or those curious about Susan Cooper’s earliest work.
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I loved Cooper’s fantasies (I remember having to wait for Silver on the Tree to be published- quite impatiently ) but had no idea that she had written SF
I remember reading and adoring the Dark is Rising sequence in my mid-teens. I think my parents still have my copies somewhere in a box. I was definitely a fantasy fan before moving to SF in my late teens and early 20s.
I too liked THE DARK IS RISING books as a child. Probably they are due a reread. I never heard of MANDRAKE.
I have a PDF copy of Mandrake if you want it. Unfortunately, I spent a bit too much tracking down a physical copy considering how average it ended up being…. I struggle to read longer texts online.
As for the Patternist books — I think they are excellent — on balance my favorite Butler novels. (Her short fiction may be even better.) I even read SURVIVOR out of the library back in the ’80s sometime, and I remember thinking it pretty good. But I don’t remember any details.
I’ve been meaning to read her short fiction but I’m glad I at least got around to this one. I still think Kindred is my favorite of the three novels of hers I’ve read so far. I plan on completing over the next few years the rest of the Patternists books. Even Survivor (I’ll have to resort to an online copy)… That said, I struggle to write about them so they might always receive short reviews.
Re Cooper: there seem to have been quite a few similarly themed UK books around at that time (if mostly in YA) – I particularly remember Futuretrack 5 by Robert Westall and Peter Dickinson’s Changes trilogy (everybody in England is filled with a sudden, inexplicable loathing of machinery, with the result that England reverts to a second Dark Ages). In both cases, there’s master puppeteer, pulling the strings…..
This reminds me of a lot of those “folk horror” style British movies like The Wicker Man (1973). That said, the affliction of place infects everyone and isn’t particular to the rural people… While overtly SF due to the near future local, the explanation verges on fantasy.
There must have been a lot of it going round! Changes – while being very realistic in how it follows through on its premise – has an explanation that owes more to fantasy than SF (whereas Futuretrack 5 is essentially a variation on 1984).
Yeah, I was far more compelled by the idea of a politician using a “return to the land” narrative to compensate for a diminished global post-WWII empire. But she takes a different tact after a bit that diverges even from its secondary anthropological explanation. It transforms simply into an Earth horror type of story — albeit enflamed by the titular Mandrake (with the obvious metaphoric implications of the name).
I remain intrigued by all of these 60s British dystopias though as a response to a radically different position of the British on the global stage with decolonization — including the ones you mention — despite their often average quality.
Re British Dystopias. They tend to have certain tropes in common but I find it hard to pinpoint the fear which inspired them, only the contributing factors. WWII was still a recent memory, the UK was going through huge societal change and I think there was a very new-age fascination with old traditions, specifically old rural traditions. Not sure any of these things really explain Folk Horror or The Midwich Cuckoos.
It’s worth a loo kat Rob Young’s massive “Electric Eden” — primarily focused on the 60s/70s British “folk revival”, the first 100 pages or so is devoted to outlining the century-long context of a cultural longing for “the Old, Real England” — in Wm. Morris, to Cecil Sharp, to Vaughan Williams and Delius, to Arthur Machen, travel books like “In Search of England” … heck, to Tolkien, and Orwell (thinking of the return to Lower Binfield in “Coming Up for Air”).
Yeah, that would definitely be helpful. Unfortunately, I couldn’t really convince myself to write extensively about this novel so I’ll leave analysis of Cooper’s angle on “folk revival” to someone else.
Like the sound of the Cooper. I have a soft spot for British dystopias – have read a couple of John Christopher’s novels recently.
Alas ‘Mandrake’ seems very scarce and pricey at the moment, but may fluke a copy secondhand at some point.
Thanks as ever for the posts and hope the semester is becoming bearable!
I’m thankfully on fall break at the moment. When I finalize my midterm grades in a few hours I’ll feel much better!
Do you want a PDF? But yeah, I spent too much on my copy.
I’ve covered three of Christopher’s dystopias on the site a few years back.
Thank you for the very kind offer but I’m fine for now. Hopefully a copy will materialise at some point so I’ll leave it in serendipity’s hands. I’m lucky enough to live in a town that has a couple fo decent secondhand bookshops. In one of the shops this weekend I picked up, to my great delight, a Penguin copy of the Malzberg and Ferman edited ‘Final Stage’, which opens the door to a couple of auhors I haven’t got round to yet.
Enjoy the break.