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thecommonswings's review
4.0
The 1953 film Robot Monster is on one hand a goofy, zero budget SF film where a man in a gorilla costume and a diver’s helmet pursues several people around a California ravine for an hour and a bit. It’s cheap and silly and daft. But if you watch it in receptive enough mood then it’s really not hard to read a bizarre psychosexual take on the film. The monster is mostly pursuing a twenty something woman in the film because it is attracted to her and kills all that opposes him. The weird thing is that this is explicitly explained to be the dream of a ten year old boy and said woman is in fact his sister. It’s obviously not a deliberate take but it’s one of those happy accidents that you often get with some pulp fiction: they’re written with such haste that often something from the creator’s psyche just peels off and sticks to the final product. It’s there in Ed Wood, it’s there in Harry Stephen Keeler, it’s there in Fletcher Hanks. And by god is it here in Beachhead Planet.
On one level this is a cheap and cheerful low grade SF potboiler. The plot - aliens try and create a “beachhead” (as in a position for all out invasion) in an isolated mining town and replace humans with (sort of) robots - is nothing new. However there’s some weird throwaway stuff about psychics and some Shaver like/ Von Daniken ideas about subterranean creatures and humanity being from another planet that are sort of weirdly scattered throughout to make it distinct. It’s those ideas that are indicative of how strange a book this really is
It feels in many ways like a pitch for a TV series: impossibly rugged and brilliant John Valthor runs some sort of experimental electronics lab in an incredibly lazily described 2051. We get a weird sort of plot dump where we see all the people who work for him, which all feel like dangling plot threads Williams would want to explore at a later date (he seems to have stopped writing in 1972 so we’ll never know if this was the case). We also get this every odd focus on how Valthor (already a better name than the hilariously named aliens the Narks get. Every time they’re mentioned by names I hear it spoken by someone from EastEnders) uses psychics and the art of “pwylling”. This latter idea is very indicative of how odd the book is, as about twenty to thirty pages before the book ends Williams finally remembers to explain what on earth this concept actually is. Anyway, Valthor and mismatched but loveable employees Mishi and Keth are called away to the town of Golden Fleece to do some investigating
The book almost literally starts like a TV episode. A helicopter of tourists (again, very lazy idea of what 2051 will be like) witnesses a man running out of a mine and being attacked by what appears to be a two headed robotic monster that constantly argues with itself and has mismatched arms. There’s some business with hornet weapons and the helicopter explodes. This would then be when TONIGHT’S EPISODE would come on screen and the credits would roll. It’s very strange, and the book often feels like Williams has imagined his story on screen and is writing a novelisation of that: it feels like it’s full of budget limitations and clunky sets which is very weird but kind of fascinating to read. The effect would be like writing a Doctor Who or Star Trek novel which is self aware about the lack of budget, but this book is absolutely never self aware
Anyway, the plot boils down to these two headed monster things (which in my mind look a bit like Trogdor the Burninator) and some tiny robot miners and the villainous, light based Narks. Why the Narks decide to invade Earth by getting a scientist to design all these robots for them isn’t explained because the Narks never get to have any dialogue themselves, but said scientist tries to sabotage their efforts by making the monsters all wrong. As plans go it makes very little sense and at times reminds me of being told the plot of a book or film by a small child who has either forgotten various elements of plot, and just skims past them. It’s a very strange way of plotting your book but it also makes it really striking because somewhere in all this dense confusion of ideas and bad writing, there’s a sort of clammy nightmare trying to get through
Another example: when Mishi and Keth are captured with other humans, they are all named after distinguishing features - Cowboy, Slack Suit, Prospector etc. There’s a moment where a terrified teenage girl is being comforted by a slightly older man which is described explicitly as being like “the protective arm of a father or big brother”. A touching vignette in an otherwise weird section of stilted dialogue and nightmarish killings by the two headed monster. Except the girl is also described as wearing “the shortest of short skirts” by Mishi and Keth a few pages earlier. And the man - Sideburns if you’re interested - is clearly described as “caressing” her. Was this slightly dizzying combination of pathos and sexuality deliberate? Somehow I really doubt it. But it also makes for a weirdly compelling read
It’s in no way a great book - the plot isn’t so much muddled as falling apart around you and the whole collapse of the Narks is very sudden and peculiar - but there’s a really strange sense of something “other” about it. Because it’s sometimes very funny in how badly written it is - a continuing description of a round faced man with a “square jaw” made me roll my eyes continuously - you’re occasionally tempted to making fun of it. But there’s a real earnestness to it, a real sense of Williams trying to write something very particular and peculiar that I think effectively kicks any accusations of irony into the long grass. This is his vision of the world and it may well be weird and strange and confusing and occasionally very, very funny, but it still absolutely his vision. And I kind of cherish that.
One final point: the cover has absolutely nothing to do with the book. It’s a great cover but feels like the artist had the plot described to him but they weren’t paying attention. I mean the book literally has as a central villain an argumentative two headed robot with mismatched arms, which I would absolutely *kill* to see as the cover. I guess the artist has their own wayward vision in much the same way Williams has. It’s kind of fitting that way.
On one level this is a cheap and cheerful low grade SF potboiler. The plot - aliens try and create a “beachhead” (as in a position for all out invasion) in an isolated mining town and replace humans with (sort of) robots - is nothing new. However there’s some weird throwaway stuff about psychics and some Shaver like/ Von Daniken ideas about subterranean creatures and humanity being from another planet that are sort of weirdly scattered throughout to make it distinct. It’s those ideas that are indicative of how strange a book this really is
It feels in many ways like a pitch for a TV series: impossibly rugged and brilliant John Valthor runs some sort of experimental electronics lab in an incredibly lazily described 2051. We get a weird sort of plot dump where we see all the people who work for him, which all feel like dangling plot threads Williams would want to explore at a later date (he seems to have stopped writing in 1972 so we’ll never know if this was the case). We also get this every odd focus on how Valthor (already a better name than the hilariously named aliens the Narks get. Every time they’re mentioned by names I hear it spoken by someone from EastEnders) uses psychics and the art of “pwylling”. This latter idea is very indicative of how odd the book is, as about twenty to thirty pages before the book ends Williams finally remembers to explain what on earth this concept actually is. Anyway, Valthor and mismatched but loveable employees Mishi and Keth are called away to the town of Golden Fleece to do some investigating
The book almost literally starts like a TV episode. A helicopter of tourists (again, very lazy idea of what 2051 will be like) witnesses a man running out of a mine and being attacked by what appears to be a two headed robotic monster that constantly argues with itself and has mismatched arms. There’s some business with hornet weapons and the helicopter explodes. This would then be when TONIGHT’S EPISODE would come on screen and the credits would roll. It’s very strange, and the book often feels like Williams has imagined his story on screen and is writing a novelisation of that: it feels like it’s full of budget limitations and clunky sets which is very weird but kind of fascinating to read. The effect would be like writing a Doctor Who or Star Trek novel which is self aware about the lack of budget, but this book is absolutely never self aware
Anyway, the plot boils down to these two headed monster things (which in my mind look a bit like Trogdor the Burninator) and some tiny robot miners and the villainous, light based Narks. Why the Narks decide to invade Earth by getting a scientist to design all these robots for them isn’t explained because the Narks never get to have any dialogue themselves, but said scientist tries to sabotage their efforts by making the monsters all wrong. As plans go it makes very little sense and at times reminds me of being told the plot of a book or film by a small child who has either forgotten various elements of plot, and just skims past them. It’s a very strange way of plotting your book but it also makes it really striking because somewhere in all this dense confusion of ideas and bad writing, there’s a sort of clammy nightmare trying to get through
Another example: when Mishi and Keth are captured with other humans, they are all named after distinguishing features - Cowboy, Slack Suit, Prospector etc. There’s a moment where a terrified teenage girl is being comforted by a slightly older man which is described explicitly as being like “the protective arm of a father or big brother”. A touching vignette in an otherwise weird section of stilted dialogue and nightmarish killings by the two headed monster. Except the girl is also described as wearing “the shortest of short skirts” by Mishi and Keth a few pages earlier. And the man - Sideburns if you’re interested - is clearly described as “caressing” her. Was this slightly dizzying combination of pathos and sexuality deliberate? Somehow I really doubt it. But it also makes for a weirdly compelling read
It’s in no way a great book - the plot isn’t so much muddled as falling apart around you and the whole collapse of the Narks is very sudden and peculiar - but there’s a really strange sense of something “other” about it. Because it’s sometimes very funny in how badly written it is - a continuing description of a round faced man with a “square jaw” made me roll my eyes continuously - you’re occasionally tempted to making fun of it. But there’s a real earnestness to it, a real sense of Williams trying to write something very particular and peculiar that I think effectively kicks any accusations of irony into the long grass. This is his vision of the world and it may well be weird and strange and confusing and occasionally very, very funny, but it still absolutely his vision. And I kind of cherish that.
One final point: the cover has absolutely nothing to do with the book. It’s a great cover but feels like the artist had the plot described to him but they weren’t paying attention. I mean the book literally has as a central villain an argumentative two headed robot with mismatched arms, which I would absolutely *kill* to see as the cover. I guess the artist has their own wayward vision in much the same way Williams has. It’s kind of fitting that way.
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