Reviews and Comments

Having now read this, I can see why it’s not listed as one of Wyndham’s classics, especially mere days after reading The Midwich Cuckoos.

However, there’s good stuff here. It’s a generational, in the same way that Cixin Liu would much later do much better. From 1959, it’s limited by an understanding of certain technical aspects, but those don’t really matter, because Wyndham doesn’t really care about the different kinds of Venusian life.

Most of the focus is on the relentless drive the characters have—the eponymous “outward urge.” That’s what makes it both grounded “hard” SF and also space opera: these are what test pilots are like, but also the numinous sense of the grander scale of the universe is indeed operatic.

If I were Wyndham’s editor, though, I’d say, “John, great stuff here, but it needs to be more than a fix-up book. And I don’t mean ‘just put frames around things’ like Asimov does. You need to weave these stories together more. That gives not only a greater scope and mission, but also a greater unity—a purpose.”

Seriously, Macpherson/Ossian’s Fingal is terrible. It’s finally giving me ideas about the psyche of 18th century Scotland, but it is not good. At any given point if I fall asleep in the middle and try to pick it back up, I would not be able to find where I left off. If a computer would randomly shuffle names and give me an infinitely scrolling page I would not notice.

So what am I getting from it? Well, there’s the beginning stages of medievalism—recovering a fake past—as well as the beginnings of folklore collection. There’s a wistful longing for days gone by, as blind Ossian is telling the story of his father, a far greater man. In 1760s Scotland, yearning for a past warrior-king from the PoV of a son now blind and aged except for his voice—it is something. But it’s simultaneously lapsarian and millenarian. The golden age is past, never to return.

But also the characterization is bad. In Book V Orla dies—seconds after being introduced. And it’s so terrible it’s all anyone can talk about. That’s not how stories work! ALL stories set up characters if we’re supposed to feel something about them! I just wish people would stop rolling their red eyes.

I mean people. I’ve read the “Eye of Argon.” This is worse than that.

In Fingal: - People declare more than do. They full-on speechify. Things are done, and will be done, but things never happen in the moment: speeches about what’s going to happen chased by speeches about what just happened. The deed is an infinitesimal point. - Every woman is “white bosomed.” Every one. Almost no other anatomical feature is mentioned. Long hair, I guess.

To quote Beverly Cleary’s Ramona Quimby, Age 8 (an enduringly lovely series): “I can’t believe I read the whole thing.”