Brian Aldiss - Moreau’s Other Island

Contents

Title Page BRIAN ALDISS Moreau’s Other Island

Introduction

To sink below …

1. Alone in the Pacific

2. Some Company Ashore

3. In the Hands of the Master

4. A Quick Swim in the Lagoon

5. A Chance to Think Things Over

6. A Little Striptease

7. The Funeral Was Well Attended

8. An Independent Point of View

9. Revels by Night

10. After the Fall

11. Another Visitor for the Big Master

12. The Frankenstein Process

The light died …

About the Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

Even if an author writes something as far-fetched as possible, still something of his family influence will remain.

And in the case of this novel, what remains is deliberate.

I am fortunate in having two sons and two daughters. My eldest daughter is very close to me (and indeed lives nearby). When she was still in utero, a drug called thalidomide was being touted, said to alleviate the suffering of morning sickness in pregnant women. Thalidomide was available between 1957 and 1962, after which it was banned.

Fortunately, our doctor did not prescribe the drug for my wife. It emerged that Thalidomide was in fact a teratogen – a substance causing terrible birth defects in children. Had it been prescribed, then my dear daughter would likely have been malformed from birth. All these years later, I rejoice still that she was spared any such deformities.

The dictator in this story is not so lucky. Mortimer Dart, who has inherited the island invented by Mr H.G. Wells, has to wear metal prostheses; he has suffered from the malevolent effects of Thalidomide. And Dart himself behaves much like a teratogen upon the creatures he rules over on his island – the Beast People.

It has always been a struggle to have any novel in the fantasy or science-fiction genres reviewed in newspapers or journals. This novel proved more fortunate than most. The elegant American hardback, which was first published by Simon & Schuster, quotes from four British reviews. Those reviews between them convey much of the kind reception of the book:

‘For a good yarn in an old style - and I do intend a compliment - no need to go further than Brian Aldiss’s descendant of Dr Moreau, the wicked man in the H.G. Wells story who first brought the concept of genetic engineering to the horrified eyes of middle-class Edwardians... But this creaky stuff isn’t really the point of the book: its pleasures are to enjoy the old-fashioned virtue of pace and narration, to be let up and let down by the pulling of the strings, to smell the heat and the rank vegetation of a Pacific island.’

Manchester Guardian

‘A sprightly homage to H.G. Wells’s fable about scientific irresponsibility, first published in 1896 … Aldiss has glossed ‘Frankenstein’ similarly and though he touches nothing he does not adorn, he’s onto an easy winner here, for simply restating this nineties theme in the eighties says a lot about the progress of notions and the notions of progress.’

Sunday Times

What the factual Brian Aldiss would add to these comments is that throughout this story a global war is in progress, emphasising the ready militarism of the West. The Beast People are among its victims.

Brian Aldiss

Oxford, 2013

To sink below the surface of the ocean was to enter a world of sound. Much of the sound originated from organic beings, for ever transmitting their signals and necessities in harmonics which ranged through a scale commensurate with their environment, from shrillest, fastest squeak to deepest grunt. No one ear in that great element could encompass the span of frequencies involved.

Near the surface of the ocean, the sounds were light and many, and the organisms transmitting them similarly multitudinous and small. Lower, where larger fish swam, a deeper note prevailed. Lower still, deeper yet. As the light faded, as pressure increased towards the submerged valleys and hills of the ocean bed, the sounds became infrequent and acquired a lugubrious note in keeping with their surroundings.

Another range of sounds also persisted. It issued from another order of existence entirely: from the inorganic, from the mantle of water which moved ceaselessly over the drowned landscapes of its domain. These throatless cadences had been audible almost since the beginning of time, certainly long before any stirrings of life. Currents, waves, tides, sunken rivers, sunken lakes and seas, all served as restless atmosphere to a world remote from the sentient creatures whose existences were confined to exposed territories outcropping above the planetary waters.

This ocean was of considerable depth. Its dimensions extended for thousands of miles in all directions. It occupied one-third of the surface of the planet, covering an area greater than that of all the exposed lands. A philosophical observer might regard it as the subconscious of the world, contrasting it to the exposed land area, which might – in the light of this rather whimsical notion – be considered as the seat of a fitful conscious.

In the aqueous subconscious of the planet all was as usual, all as it had been for millions of years. On land, away in another element, the teeming individual awarenesses of the dominant species were in more than normal ferment. Their actions were full of sound and fury. They had just launched themselves into a global war which threatened to lay waste much of the land area, besides bringing about their own extinction.

Such military clamour scarcely penetrated the surface of the great ocean. Yet even there – even there, one could search and find contra-indications, symptoms of pain.

Meteors flashing through the night sky from space were once regarded as portents of solemn events. The ocean also had its portents from an alien element. Like a shower of meteoric debris, metal from a disintegrating craft scattered across miles of sea. Slowly the parts sank, turning through the water, reflecting less and less light from above as they fell. They drifted down towards areas of enormous pressure and permanent twilight.

Finally all that remained of the Leda came to rest upon a barren plain near the equator, bedding down in primordial oozes under six thousand metres of ocean.

In times of peace, the crashing of the space-shuttle Leda into the Pacific Ocean would have provided drama enough for most of the world to have heard about it by lunchtime. During the early months of war in 1996 the incident was little noticed, beyond the announcement that an Under-Secretary of State was missing.

It is not my intention to detail that crash here. It forms no part of the dreadful story I have to relate. Suffice it to say that my secretary and I were the only passengers, and that the crew numbered two, James Fan Toy and José Galveston. The shuttle splashed down into the Pacific close to the equator, latitude 2˚ South, longitude 178˚ East. My secretary was killed on impact; in a moment of panic he jumped up just before we struck, and his neck was broken.

The craft floated long enough for Fan Toy, Galveston and me to climb free and jump into an inflatable life raft.

To escape drowning was one thing, to escape the ocean another. The war was far away to the north of us, and we were in a little-frequented sector of ocean. We saw no planes, no ships, no land. Day succeeded day, the awful power of the sun making itself continually felt. We had little shelter and less water, rationing ourselves to a mouthful twice a day. As our life-energies were burned from us, we took to lying under an inflatable plastic canopy, no longer paddling or even keeping watch on the unvarying horizon about us.