Review by Simon Elson of "Gigantic" by Ashley Stokes

There’s a genre of book that has come to the fore recently: humorous sci-fi / fantasy. Perhaps the late Douglas Adams might be considered the father of this genre, but in recent years more and more authors have taken up the challenge, which is great news as I love a good sci-fi book and if it's a funny one then all the better.

Gigantic by Ashley Stokes fits nicely into this genre. Kevin Stubbs is convinced a Yeti / Bigfoot-type creature is living in woods just off the A127 near Sutton in Surrey. He spends his life searching for it. The narrative takes the form of letters and reports of an organisation called G.I.T. They are written in the first person by two different authors, with Kevin’s being the lion’s (or perhaps Bigfoot’s) share of the text.

This book had me from the prologue, when Kevin tells the reader that as a child he watched Arthur C. Clarke’s Mysterious World and read a weekly encyclopedia magazine entitled The Unexplained. As a twelve year old, I also did both. I have only recently lost the ESP cards that were given away with issue 1 of The Unexplained and I’ve still got the hardback book that accompanied the Mysterious World T.V. programme. At the risk of sounding a little strange, myself and a couple of friends were also convinced that a Bigfoot and an alien landing site were both situated in a nearby wood in Staffordshire, probably because we all watched Arthur C. Clarke and read weird magazines. Add the fact that my wife’s family hails from Surrey and I know the A127 and Sutton very well, the coincidences stacked up and I just had to keep reading. 

The book takes place over just a few days and you can’t second guess the ending. If I could read it again for the first time, I would just stop trying and enjoy the twists and turns. If this genre is your thing, then you should let this book share space on your bookshelf (or virtual bookshelf) alongside the classics of this style.

About the reviewer
Simon Elson is a Freelance Features Writer. His articles  have appeared in numerous national magazines including Best of British, Derbyshire Life and Writing Magazine. He also writes for the popular cycling website Veloballs.com and has been a guest blogger on The Huffington Post. 

Review by Simon Elson of "The Day of the Triffids" by John Wyndham

If you haven’t read The Day of the Triffids, then firstly I envy you as you can read it for the first time, but secondly, I bet you know what a Triffid is. The book turns seventy this year and is the perfect example of the sci-fi sub-genre Post-Apocalyptic. You may have seen one of the two BBC adaptations, the first made in 1981 starring John Duttine was great, the second made in 2009 starring Eddie Izzard was mediocre at best. The 1962 film starring Howard Keel has the same name but it didn’t seem to be based on the book I’ve read!   

I digress, back to the book. It takes the form of a first-person memoir by Bill Masen and you only know what he knows; any further information is told to Bill and recounted by him. It starts with him in hospital with his eyes bandaged after a Triffid sting nearly killed him. During the previous night what was described by the news as a comet storm lit up the night sky and was a worldwide phenomenon. Bill, however, later suggests a different cause for the lights. Everyone who watched the display is now blind. You quickly learn that he has no dependents or relatives alive and is in a unique position to tell us about the origin of the strange plant.

The novel follows his adventure through London where he meets his future partner Josella Playton, an infamous novelist who had written a Fifty Shades style of book. He battles with both the Triffids and the fact that most other people are now blind. An interesting minor character is Coker, an Orator – a voice for hire, who starts off as an enemy of Bill.     

The author John Wyndham is almost prophetic in this work. The Cold War was only a few years old when he wrote it, yet he has it escalating to what it became in the sixties. The space race, satellites (Sputnik was launched seven years after it was written), a weapons defence system that sounded very much like the STAR WARS system proposed by Reagan in the eighties and genetically modified crops are all described perfectly.

A lot of classic sci-fi novels (Jules Verne and H. G. Wells etc) whilst still excellent have noticeably aged, whereas The Day of The Triffids with the exception of a couple of paragraphs (mainly describing News-reels at the cinema) could have been written yesterday 

I’ve read most of Wyndham’s other novels. The Kraken Wakes runs this book a very close second. In 2009 a ‘lost’ novel of his, Plan For Chaos, was published posthumously. It was, for me as a lifetime Wyndham fan, a disappointment. Some critics described it as almost unreadable. I’ll remember him for the almost perfect novel The Day Of the Triffids.      

   

About the reviewer
Simon Elson is a Freelance Features Writer. His articles  have appeared in numerous national magazines including Best of British, Derbyshire Life and Writing Magazine. He also writes for the popular cycling website Veloballs.com and has been a guest blogger on The Huffington Post.   

Review by Simon Elson of "The Separation" by Christopher Priest

My favourite novel genre is sci-fi (preferably earth-based and near-future). I’ve read most of Jules Verne, a lot of H. G. Wells and pretty much all John Wyndham, although recently I’ve been reading World War Two fiction – Ben Elton and Jack Higgins. The other day on a recommended books list a title I’d not heard of popped up - The Separation by Christopher Priest (published 2001) that straddled both genres. It’s already making ‘classic sci-fi’ lists after just a couple of decades. 

Its subject matter of Nazi Germany alternative history has been done a lot: Fatherland by Robert Harris, The Man in The High Castle by Phillip K Dick, SS-GB by Len Deighton, 48 by James Herbert to name just a few of them.  Because of this I nearly passed on it. I’m glad I didn’t. It was different to all the books I mentioned; it was a novel with a real ‘Oh!’ moment at the end and then a sleepless night trying to make sense of the whole book.

I hope my last comment and the sci-fi label won’t put you off. It’s not a Hitler-wins-war scenario where England lives in fear. It starts in the present day and tells its narrative through several people’s first-person memories and historical documents.

The style of it, rather than being like alternative history, was more like normal historical fiction. it reminded me a little of Robert Harris’s book Munich rather than his Fatherland. I’d also say in places there was also a touch of Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five without (spoiler alert for people who haven’t read S-H-5) the aliens.     

There were plot twists and turns all the way right up to the last full stop. If I’d been reading a physical copy of the book, I’d have been aware of arriving at the last page as I would have run out of paper to turn but reading an electronic copy it was less obvious. I tried to read the next page to find notes about the author. ‘WHAT…’ was my thought, so I turned back and re-read the last couple of pages, savouring them more the second time, then finally understanding the end (I think) after an hour or so of not sleeping, even though it was late. 

If when I’ve finished a book, I think ‘Oh no, I’ll never read that book again for the first time’ then that’s how I judge how good it was. This was one of those books.

  

About the reviewer
Simon Elson is a Freelance Features Writer. His articles  have appeared in numerous national magazines including Best of British, Derbyshire Life and Writing Magazine. He also writes for the popular cycling website Veloballs.com and has been a guest blogger on The Huffington Post.