Book Review: The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu, by Sax Rohmer

The first of Sax Rohmer’s classic Fu Manchu series, it was originally published in novel form in Great Britain in 1913 as The Mystery of Dr. Fu-Manchu, collecting a series of short stories published in 1912. As a novel, the work contains thirty chapters, but, like others in the series, is more or less a series of semi-related, episodic story arcs of roughly a half-dozen chapters each. It is firmly in the “Yellow Peril” genre of literature, and indeed, encapsulates – if not originates – most of the tropes we associate with this kind of work. The Oriental mastermind Fu Manchu has spawned countless imitators and representations in films, books, radio shows, comics, and art. From our perspective in the twenty-first century, you may find the anxiety-ridden Orientalism present in the novels deplorable, but you should at least take a look and see why this literature has resonated so strongly for decades. This first in the series is a good place to begin those explorations.

Spoilers ahead – continue onward at your own peril.

The book begins with a fateful meeting between the narrator, Dr. John Petrie, a seemingly ordinary British physician, and his old friend, Denis Nayland Smith, another British gentleman who has served for years as a roving special police commissioner in Burma and elsewhere in Asia. This meeting, and the threats and perils our protagonists encounter, set the stage for the rest of the series. The pair are very much in the Holmes and Watson tradition, save that instead of Holmes’ special powers of observation and deduction, Nayland Smith enjoys an encyclopedic knowledge of all things Oriental and the ability to command the aid and support of pretty much all British government officials. Petrie brings his knowledge of medicine, chemistry, forensics, and he’s a crack shot with his revolver as well. In some of the later adventures in this novel, they are assisted by the doughty Inspector Weymouth of New Scotland Yard. The novel begins with Nayland Smith and Petrie’s investigation into the mysterious (locked-room style) death of Sir Crichton Davey who, as it turns out has been killed by the enigmatic “Zayat Kiss,” feared throughout the Orient. We learn that Nayland Smith is hot on the trail of the inscrutable Chinese mastermind, Dr. Fu Manchu (sometimes spelled with a hyphen, sometimes not), who is also behind Davey’s death, among many other crimes. Who is Fu Manchu? I will let Nayland Smith provide his iconic answer:

“Imagine a person, tall, lean and feline, high-shouldered, with a brow like Shakespeare and a face like Satan, a close-shaven skull, and long, magnetic eyes of the true cat-green. Invest him with all the cruel cunning of an entire Eastern race, accumulated in one giant intellect, with all the resources of science past and present, with all the resources, if you will, of a wealthy government—which, however, already has denied all knowledge of his existence. Imagine that awful being, and you have a mental picture of Dr. Fu-Manchu, the yellow peril incarnate in one man.” (Chapter Two)

In their first outing, there is undercover work in an opium den, a death trap, unexpected aid from Karamaneh (a reluctant female servant of Fu Manchu’s who will come to play a much larger role in the series), and the escape of Fu Manchu. Our protagonists next become involved in the minor affair of saving the life of an Episcopal clergyman, who was involved tangentially in the Boxer Rebellion but is now threatened by Fu Manchu for his actions in China. Then they are brought in to investigate the attempted murder of explorer and naturalist Sir Lionel Barton (these British noblemen don’t seem to have a very high life expectancy, do they?) Nayland Smith and Petrie also face Fu Manchu’s use of the dread Call of Siva, seemingly a kind of compulsion to suicide that Fu Manchu has mastered, among other outré threats.

I don’t want to provide too many spoilers so will forego running through the rest of the novel’s plot bit-by-bit, but the constant dueling with Fu Manchu as his various plots are discovered and narrowly thwarted continues. Time after time, Fu Manchu acts through agents (human and exotic animal alike) or, when forced to act himself, manages to narrowly escape, usually by gaining the upper hand over Nayland Smith or Petrie at the last second. One ally of the pair suffers a truly horrific fate, but again, no horrendous plot spoilers here.

In addition to Fu Manchu’s virtual menagerie of hideous and deadly animal and human assassins, he is also a master of chemistry who uses poison gas and, as we will see as the series advances, a variety of other fantastical elixirs unknown to modern science. He is also a cruel master of torture, to include the “wire jacket,” which I will not describe here except to say that the book contains passages with real menace and true horror. To be sure, the language is at times stilted, but it’s still capable of evoking feelings of atmospheric dread and so I found it effective as both thriller and horror novel.

I give this book a strong 4 stars out of 5. Yes, of course, it contains sentiments we now deride as racist. You knew that going into the book. Allow yourself to look past those flaws to see what all the fuss is about and why almost everyone has an idea of who Fu Manchu is. It’s a darn good adventure novel that’s well-plotted and with plenty of twists and turns, frights and horrors. Highly recommended.

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Review copyright 2011 J. Andrew Byers

Book Review: The Generation Starship in Science Fiction, A Critical History, 1934-2001 by Simone Caroti

It is a poor review that criticizes a book for doing something other than what it sets out to do, rather than discussing the book on its own merits. However, I would really have liked to have seen the works discussed in this book placed into a larger context. The author has set out to analyze a truly narrow subset of science fiction works, and that’s generally fine, as works focusing on life aboard generation starships certainly do share many common traits and tropes, but they also share a number of characteristics with other science fiction works that focus on life and societies in both space stations as well as those works looking at human colonies on other worlds, among many other sub-genres. This book sets out to provide a literary criticism of representative works of science fiction written from 1934-2001 detailing life aboard generation starships, and it certainly achieves that objective. In some ways, the book also functions as a kind of literary history of science fiction literature as a genre, adding to its appeal.

Caroti originally wrote this work as his doctoral dissertation (which is available electronically in the ProQuest dissertations and theses database). The book is organized around an introduction, which provides a brief overview of the genre, and six substantive chapters, plus a short conclusion. The first chapter briefly examines the influences of three men who might be termed “godfathers” of generation starship fiction: the scientists Robert Goddard, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, and J. D. Bernal. While there potted biographies are interesting in their own right, at times I would actually like to seen these men connected a little more closely with the concept of the generation starship. The remaining chapters take a chronological approach, examining roughly a decade or two worth of relevant fiction per chapter it also lives a chronological bibliography of, essentially, all the major short stories and novels concerning generation starships.

The second chapter covers the 1920s and 30s, initially focusing on editor Hugo Gernsback, who, for better or for worse, more or less created science fiction as a coherent genre. Gernsback’s vision of what “proper” science fiction stories would be influenced the genre for decades. Literature-wise, Caroti focuses on two short stories: Laurence Manning’s “The Living Galaxy” (1934) and John Wilcox’s “The Voyage That Lasted 600 Years” (1940).

The third chapter covers the late 1930s and 1940s, characterizing this as the “Campbell Era,” after renowned editor John W. Campbell, who is largely credited with popularizing science fiction as a genre, emphasizing “hard” science fiction. Literature-wise, Caroti primarily discusses two linked generation ship short stories by Robert Heinlein: “Universe” and “Common Sense.”

The fourth chapter covers the “birth of the space age,” which Caroti describes as the second half of the 1940s and most of the 1950s. This is a short chapter and, to be honest, doesn’t really say much about new generation starship fiction, mainly adding to the discussion about Heinlein and a few other authors.

The fifth chapter covers the “New Wave and Beyond,” 1957-79, seemingly a long, disparate period of time to squeeze into a single chapter. The generation starship stories discussed in detail include John Brunner’s “Lungfish,” Chad Oliver’s “The Wind Blows Free,” J. G. Ballard’s “Thirteen to Centaurus,” and Brian Aldiss’ Non-Stop (published in the U.S. as Starship).

Caroti’s final chapter covers the Information Age from 1980 to 2001, emphasizing Frank M. Robinson’s The Dark Beyond the Stars, Bruce Sterling’s Taklamakan, and Gene Wolfe’s Book of the Long Sun.

While I had read, or was otherwise familiar with, some of the stories and novels discussed in this book, there were still many I hadn’t read. That wasn’t a problem though, as Caroti describes each of the works that he discussed in detail well enough that a reader’s lack of familiarity with the work in question isn’t a problem, as long as one doesn’t mind being spoilered.

I give this book 3.5 stars out of five. At times I would’ve liked to seen Caroti place generation starship fiction into a broader context, and at other times, the text was a bit dry and I wanted to see him talk more specifically about individual works and do a deeper analysis of them. The book does exactly what it says it will, and no more. I’d also have liked to see Caroti include one final chapter that discusses the generation ship literature of the last decade – as he says in his brief conclusion, the first decade of the twenty-first century has produced a large number of new, relevant works. So why not tell us about those? I would recommend it for those interested in serious, literary criticism of science fiction works, as well as those science fiction fans who find themselves fascinated by the concept of a generation starship. If you just happen to be a science fiction fan who’s looking for some fun, interesting commentary on one type of science fiction, I’d probably recommend a different work, as this will tends toward the academic and lit crit side of things.

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Review copyright 2011 J. Andrew Byers