Rather than pick another book to carry to work (and back) with me, last week, I thought I’d crack on and finish the ‘Sailing to Utopia’ collection instead. I’d had a great time reading ‘The Black Corridor’ so there was a part of me hopefully looking forward to more of the same. Having already read the other three tales in the collection, I was left with the 1969 tale ‘The Distant Suns’ and mention of the iconic character Jerry Cornelius offered promise of an intriguing finale to my reading of this collection. It was a shame then that the story I actually got didn’t entirely work out that way...
It is the 21st century and the only solution to overcrowding on Earth is for humanity to find new homes in the stars. Are there any viable planets out there though? It is the job of Jerry Cornelius, and the crew of the spaceship ‘Hope of Man’, to find out. It’s a big galaxy out there though and who knows what could be waiting for them on the nearest habitable planet? Before they even get there though, the ship will be making its maiden voyage through warp space, something that has never before been tested on the human psyche... The odds are stacked against this voyage being successful but the odds are heavily in favour of the human race descending into madness, and tearing itself apart, if a solution isn’t found. Will Jerry and his crew return from the unknown space around Alpha Centauri? And will there be anything left for them to return to...?
Part of the reason why Moorcock’s back catalogue is so extensive is that a large number of his earlier books were written in a matter of days and sent off without revision. Sometimes you wouldn’t know this when reading his books but at other times it does show. ‘The Distant Suns’ was one of these times...
That’s not to say that there are any glaring typos or anything like that (although some questions that are raised are answered almost as an afterthought without anything to back them up, at least as far as I could see). ‘The Distant Suns’ just felt more than a little rushed to me; a series of cliff-hangers linking the beginning of the tale to its conclusion. The other stories in the collection come across as being a little more thoughtful about their subject matter (to one extent or another, I’m looking at you ‘Flux’...) whereas ‘The Distant Suns’ is more of an action/adventure pulp deal that felt as if it could have done with that extra insight in order to flesh things out a little more.
When you look at ‘The Distant Suns’, judging it for what it is rather than against what’s in the rest of the collection, that feeling of being ‘rushed’ still manages to work against it. ‘The Distant Suns’ has more than its fair share of action and the fast pace really works in the story’s favour when confrontation or combat is on the cards. Moorcock sets up a nice level of tension and uses to this to spur the plot forward in such a way that I wanted to turn those pages and find out what happened next. At the same time though, I found this approach to be overplayed and the ‘rush’ from cliff-hanger to cliff-hanger quickly settled into a pattern verging on the monotonous. By the end of the story the threat to the Earth just didn’t seem that dangerous anymore purely because of the routine prior chapters had settled into...
As much as I enjoyed reading ‘The Distant Suns’, and there is stuff to recommend it, I couldn’t help but think that it could have been a lot more than the eventual sum of it’s parts. As ‘pulp adventure’ it works well enough but a little more time spent thinking about what’s going on, rather than just rushing from A to B, could have made all the difference...
Seven out of Ten
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2 comments:
Something you don't mention - perhaps because it might not be clear in the omnibus - is that The Distant Suns was co-written with Philip James, which is a pseudonym for Moorcock's long-term friend James Cawthorn.
Roughly the first half of the novel is by Moorcock but the second half was written by Cawthorn when Moorcock fell ill and was unable to complete the serial (originally commissioned for The Illustrated Times of India, who wanted a story that would promote technology among its readers).
It might also be of interest to know that originally Moorcock intended to re-hash his earlier novel The Black Corridor (itself co-written with Moorcock's then wife, Hilary Bailey) and in fact the opening chapters of The Distant Suns 'recycle' passages of the opening of The Black Corridor almost verbatim (although some editions of the Sailing to Utopia omnibus exclude the similarities to avoid repetition). However, after starting the serial in this manner Moorcock decided to tell a very different story instead.
It's perhaps unfortunate that he wasn't able to finish the story as intended and, even if Cawthorn completed the serial from any notes Moorcock may have made (and I don't know if he did or not), consequently I'm not sure it can really be regarded as a 'proper' Moorcock novel in its own right.
Good call Prof. Faustaff and a timely reminder that if I'm going to read the introduction I should read the whole thing instead of just the bit that mentioned 'Flux'... (the past week has been a little crazy) That makes things a lot clearer (as does your comment on 'The Black Corridor', thanks! :o)
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