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dan1066's review against another edition
4.0
The Dimensionists were to come in swarms, to materialise, to devour like locusts, to be all the more irresistible because indistinguishable. They were to come like snow in the night: in the morning one would look out and find the world white; they were to come as the gray hairs come, to sap the strength of us as the years sap the strength of the muscles. As to methods, we should be treated as we ourselves treat the inferior races. There would be no fighting, no killing; we--our whole social system--would break as a beam snaps, because we were worm-eaten with altruism and ethics.
In 1901, Joseph Conrad and Ford Madox Ford (still writing as "Ford Madox Hueffer" at the time) decided to collaborate on the writing of a novel which would borrow some of the speculative elements from the recently published novels of H.G. Wells (such as The War of the Worlds (1898)). Essentially, they write a science-fiction novel, The Inheritors. Conrad was the more experienced writer at this point, having published Lord Jim one year earlier and Heart of Darkness two years earlier. Ford had yet to write his famous works. They worked out the main plot; Ford would write a chapter and Conrad would proof and revise. The result is a decent novel on the burgeoning power of the press but a relatively weak work of science fiction.
The authors describe a group of "Fourth Dimensionists" intent on destabilizing modern society in order to come to power in our world without the need for violence or war. A European duke attempts to get rich building a railroad in Greenland to help lift the "Esquimaux" to a civilized status; to garner financial support, the duke relies on an entrenched, liberal politician to sell the importance of this "humanitarian mission" and receive the support of England's government. The Fourth Dimensionists work behind the scenes, derailing the entire enterprise and destroying the careers of the duke and his backers and allowing one of their own members to rise in political power.
The novel is narrated by Etchingham Granger, a writer of "pathetic possiblity, hidden in the heart of the white paper that bore pen-markings of a kind too good to be marketable." He is our liasion with the Dimensionists, falling in love with one. While he believes he possesses free-will, the events of the novel reveal he is delusional in thinking his actions have any influence or effect on the machinations of the Dimensionists.
I am a fan of Joseph Conrad and I had never heard of this novel, which bridges the gap between Heart of Darkness and The Secret Agent. There are elements from both works. The duke's assertion his plan will civilize the Esquimaux echoes Conrad's examinations of the impact of commerce on the Congo. The careful manipulation of a small coterie of conspiricists willing to do whatever it takes to attain power is reworked and far more compelling in The Secret Agent. I enjoyed coming across passages I knew in my heart were penned by Conrad. His prose is inimitable and, when fully unleashed, breath-taking.
Overall, I wouldn't read this novel because it is "science fiction." Though intended to be a quick, popular novel to earn quick cash, it failed to do so and, in my opinion, did not influence later works of science fiction. The novel of a gifted novelist selling out to make a quick buck--and Conrad and Ford are being self-reflective in this endeavor--is the heart of this novel. Granger doesn't always make sense, but his descent down the slippery slope prepared by the Dimensionists is compelling. There was a lot of untilized potential in this novel. I wanted to know more about the Dimensionists, but the authors leave behind more questions than answers regarding their nature.
In 1901, Joseph Conrad and Ford Madox Ford (still writing as "Ford Madox Hueffer" at the time) decided to collaborate on the writing of a novel which would borrow some of the speculative elements from the recently published novels of H.G. Wells (such as The War of the Worlds (1898)). Essentially, they write a science-fiction novel, The Inheritors. Conrad was the more experienced writer at this point, having published Lord Jim one year earlier and Heart of Darkness two years earlier. Ford had yet to write his famous works. They worked out the main plot; Ford would write a chapter and Conrad would proof and revise. The result is a decent novel on the burgeoning power of the press but a relatively weak work of science fiction.
The authors describe a group of "Fourth Dimensionists" intent on destabilizing modern society in order to come to power in our world without the need for violence or war. A European duke attempts to get rich building a railroad in Greenland to help lift the "Esquimaux" to a civilized status; to garner financial support, the duke relies on an entrenched, liberal politician to sell the importance of this "humanitarian mission" and receive the support of England's government. The Fourth Dimensionists work behind the scenes, derailing the entire enterprise and destroying the careers of the duke and his backers and allowing one of their own members to rise in political power.
The novel is narrated by Etchingham Granger, a writer of "pathetic possiblity, hidden in the heart of the white paper that bore pen-markings of a kind too good to be marketable." He is our liasion with the Dimensionists, falling in love with one. While he believes he possesses free-will, the events of the novel reveal he is delusional in thinking his actions have any influence or effect on the machinations of the Dimensionists.
I am a fan of Joseph Conrad and I had never heard of this novel, which bridges the gap between Heart of Darkness and The Secret Agent. There are elements from both works. The duke's assertion his plan will civilize the Esquimaux echoes Conrad's examinations of the impact of commerce on the Congo. The careful manipulation of a small coterie of conspiricists willing to do whatever it takes to attain power is reworked and far more compelling in The Secret Agent. I enjoyed coming across passages I knew in my heart were penned by Conrad. His prose is inimitable and, when fully unleashed, breath-taking.
Overall, I wouldn't read this novel because it is "science fiction." Though intended to be a quick, popular novel to earn quick cash, it failed to do so and, in my opinion, did not influence later works of science fiction. The novel of a gifted novelist selling out to make a quick buck--and Conrad and Ford are being self-reflective in this endeavor--is the heart of this novel. Granger doesn't always make sense, but his descent down the slippery slope prepared by the Dimensionists is compelling. There was a lot of untilized potential in this novel. I wanted to know more about the Dimensionists, but the authors leave behind more questions than answers regarding their nature.
jgkeely's review against another edition
4.0
In 1901 Joseph Conrad and Ford Maddox Ford, two of the greatest literary writers of the 20th Century, pooled their talents to write a novel about interdimensional terrorism. Almost no one has read it, and those who have do not seem to think much of it.
To critics, it is a mere curiosity, only of any possible interest to completists of Ford or Conrad's works--so, to any of you who have been looking for reasons to dismiss my opinions and paint me as incoherent, here is the gift: I found this book perfectly fascinating. But then, I have come at it from a much different direction than any critic I have seen.
In 1936, J.R.R. Tolkien gave a speech on Beowulf that completely changed the way scholarship on the poem was approached. Prior to this, the poem was studied for almost purely historical reasons: as a portrait of a time in history of which we have very little documentation. However, Tolkien argued that the critics were missing much of the meaning and subtext of the work by ignoring the symbolism of the fantastical elements: the monster Grendel, his mother, and the dragon.
The same oversight seems to have taken place in the approach to this book: critics talk about common themes of Ford's and Conrad's, such as the obsolescence of nobility and the class system, or the foul cruelties of colonialism. They talk about how the book represents the politics of the times, how certain events mirror and comment on history. Yet they completely ignore the central symbolic thrust of the work, the extended conceit which ties the whole thing together.
Unlike most critics, I was primed to look for the meaning behind the fantastical elements, coming to this book not from the context of Conrad's and Ford's more famous works, but from the works of Lovecraft, Chambers, Hodgson, and Blackwood--here, once more, is the tale of that sensitive man, the artist plagued by an otherworldliness that draws him on inexorably to the forfeiture of his very humanity--as well as Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, Moorcock, and Griffith, of powerful revolutionaries set to topple the order of the world.
Since magic is the physical representation of an idea, a metaphor sprung to life, it behooves us to ask: what does the magic in this tale represent, and how does it operate within the work? Most intriguing for analyzing the tale is the fact that--unlike what some critics claim--the supernatural element is not merely 'tacked-on', but is a vital part of both Conrad's and Ford's presentation.
To Ford, these alien beings infesting our world--long before the 'Body Snatchers' and 'Pod People' of the 50's Communist scare--are the very spirit of the changing Zeitgeist. It is their arrival (and their insidious effect on society) that will inevitably destroy a thousand years of hereditary rule, plunging the whole world into a war from which it will emerge reborn, a new land of fresh ideas which leaves the old powers amongst the ash.
To Conrad, it represents the subtle treachery of colonial influence, the ability of the ruling power to seduce, use, and abuse its subjects, to make them doubt, to reshape their minds from within, all without their recognizing it, to cause them to betray and subjugate themselves through art, ideal, faith, and symbol. And all of this meaning is wrapped up in a single character, a woman, who with the protagonist creates a rather odd romance: a romance of the colonized mind, a romance of personal obsolescence--but then, perhaps it really isn't so odd, after all.
The subtle turns in the way her alienness is explored would do credit to any of the classic authors of Supernatural Horror. Firstly there is the fact that as we're looking at it, we can't be quite certain if it's even real, or if perhaps the girl is simply mad, or playing a trick on our hero--an idea he clings to desperately.
Additionally, it is implied that somehow, we are descended from these beings, that they are our source, but that we have since forgotten, ceased to see the wonder of other realms, and grown petty (and a bit unhinged)--and that they periodically return to recolonize us. Of course, there is a sort of hint of Dunsany's Elfland in this: the mystical, untouchable realm which fades away from our reality, but which makes us dream, and which we constantly recall through potent images and feelings, without ever realizing what it is these memories represent.
Then there is the impression that, not only are the thoughts of these outsiders infectious and transformational, but that they must be careful not to be changed, themselves, by their interactions with humanity--it is a more delicate way of playing with the notion that 'man himself is the monster'--he is not so in a physical, violent sense, but in the cosmic, Lovecraftian one: that perhaps in this universe, man is the incomprehensible, insane force, not the merely the staid victim--the notion of idea as a disease, of the infection of the meme, recalling the absurd yet seductive theory of Julian Jaynes.
Of course, there is also a colonial commentary here: that even as the colonizer forces her will upon the other, she in turn is changed by their biases and values, no matter how carefully she guards herself against that influence, the natural tendency is for both sides, conqueror and conquered, to draw ever closer together, and even to bind.
In that sense, there is a deep parallel between this story and Kipling's famous representation of a love affair between overseer and vassal: Without Benefit of Clergy--and an even closer similarity to Tagore's less-romanticized reversal, The Postmaster--excepting that in this case, it is the woman who possesses the power of standing and knowledge.
It is also interesting to see Ford and Conrad, not yet successful authors when they collaborated, write about the life of the struggling author: the hopelessness of it, the sense that one is always 'selling one's self' to do work that is little more than propaganda for the state, contrasted with the intense desire to do something worthwhile.
There is also a great deal of clever drawing-room humor, which I expect is Ford's, as Conrad's humor tends to be less that of the wit and more the ironic and morbid cynic. From Conrad, we instead get those utterly characteristic digressions, a sentence here or there where some fundamental aspect of human life is encapsulated in a few profound phrases.
Of course, there are some problems, as well: both authors are young, trying to find their way, and the whole project was, to them, an attempt to make a bit of money--meaning there is some deprecating cleverness to the fact that it is about a writer who gives up his artistry in order to write things that will pay. The most prominent issue is Ford's constant use of the word 'infinite' in his metaphors. Of course, we understand that he is trying to touch on matters of the sublime 'Fourth Dimension', but it could have been done with more variety instead of simple repetition.
The 'Fourth Dimension' itself was coined by H.G. Wells, a friend of both writers, whose success with The Time Machine inspired them to write this fantastical political tale. Wells tried to publish an essay on the topic, exploring the concept that time (like heighth, width, and length), might be seen as traversable, or at least as a coordinate for describing matter, but it went over the head of his editor, who told him to put it in a story, which he did.
In that sense, The Inheritors can also be read as a time-travel story, and that it is not a more perfect place which colonizes us, but a more perfect time. To put it briefly: there are so many fantastical and speculative threads coming together in this story that it would be quite dizzying, if it weren't all performed by subtle implication. Really, we never know just what is going on--all we can do is take in clues and surmise as best we can.
But of course, that's the whole nature of the fantastical: that even when it touches us, we are unable to explain it, to make sense of it, to wrap our minds around it. We tell ourselves that it is an impossibility, we try to ignore it, to concentrate on art or love--on those mad human passions that always draw us away--and yet the fantastical has a way of getting inside of us, no matter how we try to fight it off, of changing us, in such a way that we can never quite go back to the way it was before.
We are left suffused with a feeling of strange nostalgia, and a kind of bitterness--that now we are worldly, we have seen, and cannot be simple again. But then, the true searcher in the dark would never choose simplicity--for if the world has broken one's heart, at least it can be said you loved it--and in the end, that is the true message of Ford's and Conrad's strange little book, too long unknown, ignored, dismissed, but no longer lost to me, or to you.
Lovecraft once said:
And it seems such a shame not to know what he might have made of this book.
Get it for free here at Project Gutenberg
To critics, it is a mere curiosity, only of any possible interest to completists of Ford or Conrad's works--so, to any of you who have been looking for reasons to dismiss my opinions and paint me as incoherent, here is the gift: I found this book perfectly fascinating. But then, I have come at it from a much different direction than any critic I have seen.
In 1936, J.R.R. Tolkien gave a speech on Beowulf that completely changed the way scholarship on the poem was approached. Prior to this, the poem was studied for almost purely historical reasons: as a portrait of a time in history of which we have very little documentation. However, Tolkien argued that the critics were missing much of the meaning and subtext of the work by ignoring the symbolism of the fantastical elements: the monster Grendel, his mother, and the dragon.
The same oversight seems to have taken place in the approach to this book: critics talk about common themes of Ford's and Conrad's, such as the obsolescence of nobility and the class system, or the foul cruelties of colonialism. They talk about how the book represents the politics of the times, how certain events mirror and comment on history. Yet they completely ignore the central symbolic thrust of the work, the extended conceit which ties the whole thing together.
Unlike most critics, I was primed to look for the meaning behind the fantastical elements, coming to this book not from the context of Conrad's and Ford's more famous works, but from the works of Lovecraft, Chambers, Hodgson, and Blackwood--here, once more, is the tale of that sensitive man, the artist plagued by an otherworldliness that draws him on inexorably to the forfeiture of his very humanity--as well as Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, Moorcock, and Griffith, of powerful revolutionaries set to topple the order of the world.
Since magic is the physical representation of an idea, a metaphor sprung to life, it behooves us to ask: what does the magic in this tale represent, and how does it operate within the work? Most intriguing for analyzing the tale is the fact that--unlike what some critics claim--the supernatural element is not merely 'tacked-on', but is a vital part of both Conrad's and Ford's presentation.
To Ford, these alien beings infesting our world--long before the 'Body Snatchers' and 'Pod People' of the 50's Communist scare--are the very spirit of the changing Zeitgeist. It is their arrival (and their insidious effect on society) that will inevitably destroy a thousand years of hereditary rule, plunging the whole world into a war from which it will emerge reborn, a new land of fresh ideas which leaves the old powers amongst the ash.
To Conrad, it represents the subtle treachery of colonial influence, the ability of the ruling power to seduce, use, and abuse its subjects, to make them doubt, to reshape their minds from within, all without their recognizing it, to cause them to betray and subjugate themselves through art, ideal, faith, and symbol. And all of this meaning is wrapped up in a single character, a woman, who with the protagonist creates a rather odd romance: a romance of the colonized mind, a romance of personal obsolescence--but then, perhaps it really isn't so odd, after all.
The subtle turns in the way her alienness is explored would do credit to any of the classic authors of Supernatural Horror. Firstly there is the fact that as we're looking at it, we can't be quite certain if it's even real, or if perhaps the girl is simply mad, or playing a trick on our hero--an idea he clings to desperately.
Additionally, it is implied that somehow, we are descended from these beings, that they are our source, but that we have since forgotten, ceased to see the wonder of other realms, and grown petty (and a bit unhinged)--and that they periodically return to recolonize us. Of course, there is a sort of hint of Dunsany's Elfland in this: the mystical, untouchable realm which fades away from our reality, but which makes us dream, and which we constantly recall through potent images and feelings, without ever realizing what it is these memories represent.
Then there is the impression that, not only are the thoughts of these outsiders infectious and transformational, but that they must be careful not to be changed, themselves, by their interactions with humanity--it is a more delicate way of playing with the notion that 'man himself is the monster'--he is not so in a physical, violent sense, but in the cosmic, Lovecraftian one: that perhaps in this universe, man is the incomprehensible, insane force, not the merely the staid victim--the notion of idea as a disease, of the infection of the meme, recalling the absurd yet seductive theory of Julian Jaynes.
Of course, there is also a colonial commentary here: that even as the colonizer forces her will upon the other, she in turn is changed by their biases and values, no matter how carefully she guards herself against that influence, the natural tendency is for both sides, conqueror and conquered, to draw ever closer together, and even to bind.
In that sense, there is a deep parallel between this story and Kipling's famous representation of a love affair between overseer and vassal: Without Benefit of Clergy--and an even closer similarity to Tagore's less-romanticized reversal, The Postmaster--excepting that in this case, it is the woman who possesses the power of standing and knowledge.
It is also interesting to see Ford and Conrad, not yet successful authors when they collaborated, write about the life of the struggling author: the hopelessness of it, the sense that one is always 'selling one's self' to do work that is little more than propaganda for the state, contrasted with the intense desire to do something worthwhile.
There is also a great deal of clever drawing-room humor, which I expect is Ford's, as Conrad's humor tends to be less that of the wit and more the ironic and morbid cynic. From Conrad, we instead get those utterly characteristic digressions, a sentence here or there where some fundamental aspect of human life is encapsulated in a few profound phrases.
Of course, there are some problems, as well: both authors are young, trying to find their way, and the whole project was, to them, an attempt to make a bit of money--meaning there is some deprecating cleverness to the fact that it is about a writer who gives up his artistry in order to write things that will pay. The most prominent issue is Ford's constant use of the word 'infinite' in his metaphors. Of course, we understand that he is trying to touch on matters of the sublime 'Fourth Dimension', but it could have been done with more variety instead of simple repetition.
The 'Fourth Dimension' itself was coined by H.G. Wells, a friend of both writers, whose success with The Time Machine inspired them to write this fantastical political tale. Wells tried to publish an essay on the topic, exploring the concept that time (like heighth, width, and length), might be seen as traversable, or at least as a coordinate for describing matter, but it went over the head of his editor, who told him to put it in a story, which he did.
In that sense, The Inheritors can also be read as a time-travel story, and that it is not a more perfect place which colonizes us, but a more perfect time. To put it briefly: there are so many fantastical and speculative threads coming together in this story that it would be quite dizzying, if it weren't all performed by subtle implication. Really, we never know just what is going on--all we can do is take in clues and surmise as best we can.
But of course, that's the whole nature of the fantastical: that even when it touches us, we are unable to explain it, to make sense of it, to wrap our minds around it. We tell ourselves that it is an impossibility, we try to ignore it, to concentrate on art or love--on those mad human passions that always draw us away--and yet the fantastical has a way of getting inside of us, no matter how we try to fight it off, of changing us, in such a way that we can never quite go back to the way it was before.
We are left suffused with a feeling of strange nostalgia, and a kind of bitterness--that now we are worldly, we have seen, and cannot be simple again. But then, the true searcher in the dark would never choose simplicity--for if the world has broken one's heart, at least it can be said you loved it--and in the end, that is the true message of Ford's and Conrad's strange little book, too long unknown, ignored, dismissed, but no longer lost to me, or to you.
Lovecraft once said:
"Conrad's reputation is deserved -- he has the sense of ultimate nothingness and the evanescence of illusions which only a master and an aristocrat can have; and he mirrors it forth with that uniqueness and individuality which are genuine art. No other artist I have yet encountered has so keen an appreciation of the essential solitude of the high grade personality -- that solitude whose projected overtones form the mental world of each sensitively organised individual"
And it seems such a shame not to know what he might have made of this book.
Get it for free here at Project Gutenberg
alexandra296's review
mysterious
slow-paced
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
2.5
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