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By Ashley R. Pollard
I like to think I keep my finger on the pulse of society. For instance, despite being in my advanced youth, I've kept up on the popular music trends.
A new four piece beat combo calling themselves The Beatles, broke out onto the music scene late last year, and they've been making musical waves ever since. Their latest song, From Me To You, reached number one on the BBCs official singles chart in May.
A first for this new band, which seems to be a sign that they'll have legs. Whether they're significant in the greater scheme of things is hard for me to assess. If time travel were possible, I could no doubt confidently answer that question.
In real life, The Beatles are a reflection of the way society is changing and that previous standards of what's considered moral are being challenged. Now, just for a moment, imagine the members of this band as protagonists in a fiction novel. Their music might well be the center of a deliberate plot to undermine society and loosen its moral underpinnings.
It makes for an interesting thriller; however, I believe the real challenge will come not from those who seek to entertain, but from those who hold Western values in contempt.
It came as a shock when Kim Philby was revealed to be the third man of the notorious Burgess and Maclean spy ring, the group that passed state secrets from the UK to the USSR throughout World War 2 and into the early 1950s.
How many more spies are yet to be uncovered? I suspect at least a couple more. Hence the theme of spies for this month's column.
From the post war peace we have seen rumbles of cloak and dagger espionage develop into scandals that are rocking the assumptions of British society. Which is probably why I prefer reading science fiction. It feeds my imagination, rather than destroying my faith in my fellow human beings.
The latest revelations that began in March, of what's being called the Profumo affair, all center around a young woman called Christine Keeler. Her relationship with Yevgeny Ivanov, a Soviet naval attaché, and John, 5th Baron Profumo lie at the center of the scandal.
As a result, Profumo resigned from his post as the Secretary of State for War over allegations of the impropriety being a risk to national security. Then as I said, at the beginning of July, Kim Philby was revealed to be a Soviet spy.
The web of deceit that surrounds these events is unbelievable, as in you couldn't make this up in a story and have the reader believe you. It seems to me to that the world has become a much more complicated place to be alive in.
I marvel at how quickly SF concepts have gone mainstream. With so many SF ideas transitioning into mainstream fiction, one of the current trends I see is the fascination with the Cold War and spies. Who as I've alluded to earlier, are it seems to be found everywhere.
The result is the creation of a new genre that blend SF with contemporary thriller to create what is being called a "techno-thriller." A techno-thriller will use many of the ideas that were once purely science fictional, but set them within a conventional world that's recognizable as our own.
A new novel by Allister MacLean called Ice Station Zebra has caught the public's imagination. Whether this is as a result of all the stories of spies in the news I don't know. MacLean is well known as a writer of action-adventure stories, but this new novel sees him move into a new genre.
Maclean is not the first author to do so. Fellow Scottish writer Ian Stuart wrote a similar techno-thriller, which came out last year called, The Satan Bug.
Having read both books, I can say they share a lot stylistically. One would almost think that the authors know or corresponded with each other while they were writing their books.
Both pile on exciting incidents one after the other. Both have at their core a premise that would've been seen twenty-years ago as unbelievable science fictional nonsense. In The Satan Bug it's germ warfare and spies. In Ice Station Zebra it's reconnaissance footage from a space satellite, and spies.
Apart from the SF trappings ofThe Satan Bug, the story itself is a heady mix of action leading to a heist, and in and of itself not very science fictional. Ice Station Zebra on the other hand, manages to not only exploit its SF trappings, but do what all memorable SF stories do – open the reader's mind to the effects of technological change.
On this basis, I'd say MacLean is ahead of Stuart in exploiting what the new genre has to offer. For example, all of the key events in Ice Station Zebra have real world analogues:
The United States Navy's use of nuclear power submarines and their ability to travel under the Polar ice, and in particular the voyage under the ice by USS Skate to visit Ice Station Alpha in 1958.
The United States loss of the Corona satellite, Discoverer II in 1959, when it landed in neutral Spitzbergen. Possibly retrieved by the Soviet agents. Who knows?
Then there's Project Coldfeet, which saw American agents parachuting from a B17 Flying Fortress onto an abandoned Soviet ice station. And finally, MacLean mentions the atomic powered ice-breaker Lenin too. The first nuclear powered surface ship, and civilian vessel to see service.
MacLean uses these technological advances to weave a convincing picture of a world changing from the effects of technology and science. We can do things today that were once purely in the realm. of SF. Whether we like it or not, a lot of SF themes are going to become fodder for mainstream authors.
In fact, I'm going to go out on a limb and predict that techno-thrillers involving SF ideas and spies are going to become a big thing. We saw a hint of it in the film adaptation of Ian Fleming's Dr. No. I predict that the next James Bond film, From Russia With Love, coming this October, will further raise the public's interest in the melange of SF, thrillers, and spies.
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The music group with the odd haircuts seems to be huge in the UK, but is almost unknown here in the USA. Apparently a couple of their singles have been released by a relatively small label on this side of the pond, but have failed to chart in the Top 100.
I quite enjoyed Alistair MacLean's World War Two novels, as well as the fine film made of "The Guns of Navarone."
I'm a little too old to truly appreciate what are being called, "The Fab Four."
I've been trying to get their debut album in the U.S., but, so far, I haven't seen a copy of it!!! I think it's due to the UK rights owner battling over non payment from Vee-Jay.
The world has been focused on the Soviet achievements in space, but the Lenin is probably more impressive than that. Of course, nobody else *needs* a giant atomic-powered icebreaker like the Soviets do, but the Lenin has huge military and economic value for the USSR. Having the "Northern Passage" open across the top of Russia allows civilian and military vessels to make it from the Atlantic to the Pacific without having to use the Suez Canal or go down below South America.
During one of the times the passage was navigable, the Soviets allowed a few German ships (when they were still allies) to use the passage; one of them was the Komet:
https://militaryhistorynow.com/2014/01/24/the-battle-of-nauru-nazi-germanys-forgotten-foray-into-the-pacific/
Most of the "name" East Coast SF writers knew each other socially and had occasional get-togethers. During WWII, L. Ron Hubbard dropped in and spent an entire evening telling progressively more outrageous war stories (he was in the Navy at the time) that nobody took seriously; one of them was how when he was in the Pacific, his ship briefly engaged a German warship. Since everyone knew there were no German ships in the Pacific, they just said, "and what happened next, Ron?" However, it turns out that it would have been at least possible, though you'd have to have access to naval records to show he was actually on one of the ships that encountered the Komet or the others.
I agree that the Lenin is a "thing" to be marvelled. Atomic power looks to be the future power for everything.
Until a few years ago, the Beatles were still playing in the clubs of Hamburg's Reeperbahn, one of many Northern English bands and other artists imported by Hamburg music promoters via the Hamburg Liverpool connection. I never got around to seeing them, something I will undoubtedly regret, should they really turn out to be the next big thing.
I have enjoyed several of Alistair MacLean's was and adventure novels such as South by Java Head and The Guns of Navarone, though I haven't gotten around to his foray into the spy genre yet. Though come to think of it, there are striking similarities between Ian Stuart and Alistair MacLean.
I have also noticed that the spy thriller seems to be making a comeback, often mixed with science fiction elements. This seems to be partly due to the prominent espionage cases in the news and partly due to the popularity of Ian Fleming's James Bond novels, which seems to have inspired both other writers (I have dabbled in the genre myself) and of course the Dr. No film, which is about to turn into a series. There is also the delightful Modesty Blaise comic, featuring a female spy and her platonic male partner, which started up in UK newspapers earlier this year.
We'll see how long this trend lasts and if it sticks to the thriller genre or spills over into science fiction.
Well, next month, I'm going to be looking at Ian Fleming's new James Bond novel. Think of it as an appetizer before the film arrives.