James Nicoll Reviews

John Wyndham’s 1959 The Outward Urge is a collection of short stories detailing the exciting and often fatal adventures of the Troon family… IN SPACE!

Although the collection was originally billed at being by both Lucas Parkes and John Wyndham, I have decided Parkes does not warrant a byline because…

Lucas Parkes is one of Wyndham’s many, many pen-names, along with John Beynon, John Beynon Harris, John B. Harris, Johnson Harris, J. W. B. Harris, Lucas Parkes, Wyndham Parkes, and of course John Wyndham. The author’s actual name was John Wyndham Parkes Lucas Beynon Harris. Apparently, the inclusion of the Parkes byline was to distinguish this collection from Wyndham’s cozy catastrophes.

Speaking of odd marketing decisions, the edition I kept encountering online proclaims 

A hard science fiction masterpiece, perfect for fans of Kim Stanley Robinson, by one of the twentieth century’s most brilliant — and neglected — writers, whom Stephen King called ​“the best writer of science fiction that England has ever produced.” 

I will grant this is hard SF. Not sure it warrants the phrase ​“masterpiece,” although the collection has points of interest I will get to. I really can’t see why they think fans of Robinson’s reheated CoEvolution Quarterly ecotopian SF would be interested in this collection, as the two authors share only the very broad umbrella of hard SF. ​“Most brilliant” seems open to debate. ​“Most neglected” is an extremely bold claim, given that Wyndham’s books are for the most part still in print, long after his 1969 death. Mr. King is welcome to his opinions.

I decided to reread The Outward Urge entirely because I came across a BBC radio play adaptation and was curious how closely the radio play stuck to the text. Very closely, as it turns out. The lesson here is that aspiring SF authors desiring a review here can do worse than to arrange an adaptation of their work on the BBC, preferably years ago to give me more time to encounter it.

If there is one moral to these five stories, it is that one should under no circumstances assign a Troon to a space-related task. In two of them, the protagonist perishes. One Troon survives, only to suffer a soul-crushing calamity in the interval between his first appearance and his second. Finally, a single Troon survives his adventure unscathed… however, Earth’s northern hemisphere is almost entirely depopulated by a nuclear war in which his rocket base plays a role.

The series is very much a product of the late 1950s. For example, this is very much a pre-space probe solar system. Also, the stories share with Arthur C. Clarke’s 1956 Venture to the Moon series a hope that the UK might still play a significant role in developing space, if not as significant a role as that played by the US or the USSR¹.

Wyndham’s Day of the Triffids, The Kraken Wakes, and The Chrysalids all feature women in significant roles. For the most part, with one significant exception, these stories do not. It may be that the need to produce Troon boys faster than they got themselves killed off in space precluded more active participation by the Troon wives.

The Outward Urge is available here (Amazon US), here (Amazon Canada), here (Amazon UK), here (Apple Books), here (Barnes & Noble), and here (Chapters-Indigo). I did not find The Outward Urge at Words Worth Books.

The Space-Station: A.D. 1994

George Montgomery Troon — Ticker to his friends — is pleased to be selected as part of the crew assembling Britain’s very first, very secret space station. The station proves insufficiently secret. A certain unnamed nation dispatches a missile to eliminate it. It is up to Ticker to disable the rocket… at great personal cost.

One of the consistent world-building details established in this entry is that not only is stealth in space easily accomplished, it appears to be hard to avoid. Nobody on Earth is aware of the space stations; shipments that go slightly off course are never seen again.

The Moon: A.D. 2044

Michael Troon parlays being the son of space-martyr Ticker into a position as Station-Commander of Britain’s first and, as it turns out, only lunar missile base. This provides Michael the position of luckiest Troon ever, as it means he and his staff sit out the nuclear exchange that depopulates the northern hemisphere.

Orders to deliver a full salvo of atomic doom never arrive — or so Michael claims — thus sparing the British facility the deadly reprisal that would certainly follow. With his staff unhappy that they are not doing their part to make North America and Eurasia uninhabitable, Michael finds himself in an increasingly untenable position. Is the unexpected arrival of a Russian party a sign of impending doom or salvation from a most unexpected source?

Michael is oddly unconcerned about his family down on Earth, whom he had cautiously relocated to Jamaica before war broke out. His subordinates also do not have to worry about their families, but for a different reason. Their families are almost certainly dead. Thus their communal death-wish.

Michael has a good reason why the base has not launched more than a handful of rockets, and it’s not that he’s trying to keep the last lunar facility from being destroyed. That’s just a happy side-effect. The British efforts were far more budget constrained than the US or Soviet programs and that forced certain innovative cost-saving measures.

This is the one story that has a significant female character, the doctor with whom Michael has a long conversation about the war situation. Wyndham makes an odd narrative decision: many of the events are only related after the fact.

Mars: A.D. 2094

In the aftermath of the Great Northern War, Brazil emerges as the dominant power, on Earth and (after confiscating all surviving space facilities) in space. The Troons prudently relocate to Brazil², adopting a more Brazilian-sounding version of the family name and attaching themselves to the Brazilian space program.

Capitão Geoffrey Montgomery Trunho, of the Space Division of the Skyforce of Brazil has the honor being in the first mission to Mars. Alas, not only are Martian hazards insufficiently understood, one of Geoffrey’s crewmates is quite mad. Either would be bad. Both together are fatal.

This story features a lot of history, infodumped on hearers that would presumably be familiar with it.

A recurring issue in this series is that although robot spacecraft do exist, nobody ever uses them to poke at alien destinations to see if, for example, the surface will support the weight of a spacecraft. This specific load-bearing issue comes up on Mars and on swampy Venus.

Venus: A.D. 2144

Brazil insists that space is a province of Brazil, although not one they are inclined to develop. Two missions to Venus having vanished into the Venusian clouds, Brazil does not commission a third. This is in keeping with the long stagnation of the development of space under Brazil.

Various branches of the Troon clan, in particular the Australian branch, see an opportunity to break the Brazilian monopoly and possibly make a lot of money. George Troon leads the unauthorized third expedition to Venus. An outraged Brazil dispatches a punitive force under the command of Capitão Camarello to rebuke the trespassers… but Camarello’s second-in-command is one Jorge Trunho. How prudent is it to send a Trunho to catch a Troon?

The evidence that there’s money to be made in space and on Venus in particular is weak, although not absent. The Troons suffer from a peculiar obsession with space, so profit and sovereignty and all that jazz are probably just excuses.

Interestingly, space propulsion does not seem to have advanced significantly in the century after the Northern War. This could be because Brazil sees no point. It could also be because rocket science is difficult and the path to atomic rockets longer than most people supposed back in the 20^th century.

The Emptiness of Space: The Asteroids A.D. 2194

Having rather improbably survived Venusian swamps and Brazilian space patrol reprisal, George Troon foolishly ventures into space again. Result: he is left a broken man, marooned in the future.

1: France does not play a role in space at all. Serves them right for the Norman invasion.

2: The branch of the family based in South Africa was obliterated in the African Rising of 2045, about which almost nothing is said but for the name and a mention of the enormous numbers of dead. It’s possible that this was a genocide aimed at Europeans — the Second African Rising targeted Indians — but this is never explicitly stated.