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madmadder's review
dark
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
2.75
ryanseay's review
dark
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
3.0
Intersting alternative history written in the midst of the Red Scare/Cold War, but short and relatively boiler plate
chukg's review
2.0
Very old fashioned and pretty short. A fairly long hot war between the US and the USSR/China ends up with the US occupied, then they fight back. Moves along pretty quickly and I like Kornbluth's language, but I don't think I'd really recommend this to anyone.
markyon's review
3.0
Imagine the unthinkable: in the Cold War of the 1960’s, the United States has surrendered to the joint forces of the USSR and China.
Though Cyril Kornbluth published few solo novels in his sadly short lifetime (he died aged a mere 34 in 1958) this is a surprisingly good, if a tad dated, novel.
I can only imagine the shock value that this book could’ve caused in its time of publication. Published a mere two years after the end of the Korean War, and as the Vietnam War was just beginning, this story tells of the USA invasion mainly from the perspective of Billy Justin, Korean War veteran, once a commercial artist but now a dairy farmer due to the Farm or Fight policy introduced by the US government.
Now, with the hindsight of sixty-plus years after its publication, the idea is nothing really new. As a result, it would be easy and rather tempting to dismiss Not This August as a typical and even predictable product of the time it was written: a story clearly determined to jolt the reader to get its message across, steeped in Cold War paranoia, of eventual victory against impossible odds. I’m thinking something like Robert A Heinlein’s Sixth Column by comparison, for example. And so the book can be seen as such.
Personally though, I was surprised at how much within that premise Cyril messes with our expectations. What surprised me most of all is that despite the rather typical plot on the surface, there are many things that Cyril does here that are not what is expected.
Billy Justin appears to be a reluctant hero, at least at first. He is the type that will deal with difficult things when they happen, though won’t go looking for them. It also is a shock to find that in many ways Billy’s own views are rather unpleasant, as are many of the characters in this small-town America. Billy’s opinion of a British ref (refugee), a vicar, given with some scorn is quite a surprise:
“Justin was sick of refs, and so was everybody. The refs from the Baltic, the Balkans, Germany, France, England, Latin America – he vaguely felt that they ought to have stayed in their countries and been exterminated rather than bothering Americans.” (page 16)
Similarly the local grocer, Mr Croley, is far from the genial archetype we expect of our typical merchant. He quickly adapts to the new situation, making money on the Black Market at the expense of the good people of Norton. There is one pleasing change to the template though in the form of a young postwoman, Betsy Cardew, who is initially presented as the typical bright and cheery archetype of the age, yet soon is discovered to have a much more dangerous and subversive occupation.
What also blurs the lines between ‘friend’ and ‘foe’ is when Billy’s first encounter with the invading Russian soldiers is fairly pleasant and not threatening at all.
“You see, this is the first of the readjustments you will have to make. You think a Communist must necessarily be a fiend, a savage, a foreigner. You couldn’t conceive of a Communist being a soft-spoken, reasonable, mannerly person.”
However, things soon change. The so-called sleeper agents of the Russian Fifth Column, some of whom are Billy’s neighbours, are not hailed as vanguards of the new order but rather eliminated as soon as possible – “They knew, from long experience, that you don’t want trained revolutionaries kicking around in a country you’ve just whipped, revolutionaries who know how to hide and subvert and betray, because all of a sudden you are stability and order, and trained revolutionaries are a menace.” (page 30)
Quotas for farm production are set, initially low, but become increasingly and progressively higher. People like Billy begin to starve themselves to meet them. When the Russian elite soldiers, the MVD, arrive, the soldiers Billy saw earlier are taken to the nearby football pitch and shot, for being traitors to international socialism, with the locals forced to watch. The new regime is noticeably much harsher on the town, and the middle part of the book is on more familiar territory, showing the hardship and tyranny of being governed by a socialist state.
When, on the urging of Betsy, Billy takes on Mr Gribble as a boarder to work on the farm and help meet the quotas. There is a twist here when Billy then finds that his co-worker is a former Pentagon official, suffering from a nervous breakdown. Gribble is actually a mass murderer, who has killed in order to keep a secret safe, that in near-completion just a few dozen miles from Billy’s house lies underground a weaponised satellite that could be used in a counter-offensive against the Russians and Chinese.
As religious views are allowed to be given, as part of the simulacrum of free speech, Billy travels with the vicar Reverend Larkspur across America ‘spreading the word’, though often attacked, beaten up and tortured. At the same time, of course, this also allows Billy to contact the Resistance and explain what he has found.
Again, Billy shows some reluctance to be a hero. Hoping that the resistance movement would take this satellite off his shoulders, nevertheless Billy in the end finds himself to be a means for the North American People’s Democratic Republic to free itself from Communist rule. The term ‘Christmas Eve’ becomes a greeting and a rallying point for the subversives as they make plans to remove the threat and become independent again.
Again, this is perhaps what we would expect of a typical book of the age – the Resistance win and remove the oppressive rule of the invaders. Indeed for much of the last part of the book this is what seems to be happening, up to the fateful Christmas Eve (the UK title of the book). However, just when things look like they are going to end as we expect, the ending is not. The actual close of the book is different, with Billy taking an alternative solution.
This was a surprise and it has been noted by other readers that it is a bit of a misfire as a result, though it does reflect the view that there may be alternative solutions to the use of weapons. It also wrong-foots the reader again, repeating my thought that the book is, in part, about surprises.
Not This August is a what-if story designed to shock, to make the reader think, even when it doesn’t always go where you expect it to. Despite its age and occasional moment of clunkiness, it still holds up pretty well as a mirror to the paranoid feelings and troubling times of the Cold War.
What potential Cyril had!
Though Cyril Kornbluth published few solo novels in his sadly short lifetime (he died aged a mere 34 in 1958) this is a surprisingly good, if a tad dated, novel.
I can only imagine the shock value that this book could’ve caused in its time of publication. Published a mere two years after the end of the Korean War, and as the Vietnam War was just beginning, this story tells of the USA invasion mainly from the perspective of Billy Justin, Korean War veteran, once a commercial artist but now a dairy farmer due to the Farm or Fight policy introduced by the US government.
Now, with the hindsight of sixty-plus years after its publication, the idea is nothing really new. As a result, it would be easy and rather tempting to dismiss Not This August as a typical and even predictable product of the time it was written: a story clearly determined to jolt the reader to get its message across, steeped in Cold War paranoia, of eventual victory against impossible odds. I’m thinking something like Robert A Heinlein’s Sixth Column by comparison, for example. And so the book can be seen as such.
Personally though, I was surprised at how much within that premise Cyril messes with our expectations. What surprised me most of all is that despite the rather typical plot on the surface, there are many things that Cyril does here that are not what is expected.
Billy Justin appears to be a reluctant hero, at least at first. He is the type that will deal with difficult things when they happen, though won’t go looking for them. It also is a shock to find that in many ways Billy’s own views are rather unpleasant, as are many of the characters in this small-town America. Billy’s opinion of a British ref (refugee), a vicar, given with some scorn is quite a surprise:
“Justin was sick of refs, and so was everybody. The refs from the Baltic, the Balkans, Germany, France, England, Latin America – he vaguely felt that they ought to have stayed in their countries and been exterminated rather than bothering Americans.” (page 16)
Similarly the local grocer, Mr Croley, is far from the genial archetype we expect of our typical merchant. He quickly adapts to the new situation, making money on the Black Market at the expense of the good people of Norton. There is one pleasing change to the template though in the form of a young postwoman, Betsy Cardew, who is initially presented as the typical bright and cheery archetype of the age, yet soon is discovered to have a much more dangerous and subversive occupation.
What also blurs the lines between ‘friend’ and ‘foe’ is when Billy’s first encounter with the invading Russian soldiers is fairly pleasant and not threatening at all.
“You see, this is the first of the readjustments you will have to make. You think a Communist must necessarily be a fiend, a savage, a foreigner. You couldn’t conceive of a Communist being a soft-spoken, reasonable, mannerly person.”
However, things soon change. The so-called sleeper agents of the Russian Fifth Column, some of whom are Billy’s neighbours, are not hailed as vanguards of the new order but rather eliminated as soon as possible – “They knew, from long experience, that you don’t want trained revolutionaries kicking around in a country you’ve just whipped, revolutionaries who know how to hide and subvert and betray, because all of a sudden you are stability and order, and trained revolutionaries are a menace.” (page 30)
Quotas for farm production are set, initially low, but become increasingly and progressively higher. People like Billy begin to starve themselves to meet them. When the Russian elite soldiers, the MVD, arrive, the soldiers Billy saw earlier are taken to the nearby football pitch and shot, for being traitors to international socialism, with the locals forced to watch. The new regime is noticeably much harsher on the town, and the middle part of the book is on more familiar territory, showing the hardship and tyranny of being governed by a socialist state.
When, on the urging of Betsy, Billy takes on Mr Gribble as a boarder to work on the farm and help meet the quotas. There is a twist here when Billy then finds that his co-worker is a former Pentagon official, suffering from a nervous breakdown. Gribble is actually a mass murderer, who has killed in order to keep a secret safe, that in near-completion just a few dozen miles from Billy’s house lies underground a weaponised satellite that could be used in a counter-offensive against the Russians and Chinese.
As religious views are allowed to be given, as part of the simulacrum of free speech, Billy travels with the vicar Reverend Larkspur across America ‘spreading the word’, though often attacked, beaten up and tortured. At the same time, of course, this also allows Billy to contact the Resistance and explain what he has found.
Again, Billy shows some reluctance to be a hero. Hoping that the resistance movement would take this satellite off his shoulders, nevertheless Billy in the end finds himself to be a means for the North American People’s Democratic Republic to free itself from Communist rule. The term ‘Christmas Eve’ becomes a greeting and a rallying point for the subversives as they make plans to remove the threat and become independent again.
Again, this is perhaps what we would expect of a typical book of the age – the Resistance win and remove the oppressive rule of the invaders. Indeed for much of the last part of the book this is what seems to be happening, up to the fateful Christmas Eve (the UK title of the book). However, just when things look like they are going to end as we expect, the ending is not. The actual close of the book is different, with Billy taking an alternative solution.
This was a surprise and it has been noted by other readers that it is a bit of a misfire as a result, though it does reflect the view that there may be alternative solutions to the use of weapons. It also wrong-foots the reader again, repeating my thought that the book is, in part, about surprises.
Not This August is a what-if story designed to shock, to make the reader think, even when it doesn’t always go where you expect it to. Despite its age and occasional moment of clunkiness, it still holds up pretty well as a mirror to the paranoid feelings and troubling times of the Cold War.
What potential Cyril had!
peterseanesq's review
5.0
My Amazon Review -
http://www.amazon.com/review/R2JC5T5LN8EGH8/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm
http://www.amazon.com/review/R2JC5T5LN8EGH8/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm
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