leeper@mtgzz.UUCP (m.r.leeper) (05/03/85)
TROUBLE WITH LICHEN by John Wyndham
A book review by Mark R. Leeper
Last August I review WEB, supposedly a John Wyndham that had not been
published before. My suspicion was that it was not a John Wyndham novel--it
was only published under that name. No, I'm not suggesting it was ghost-
written. I am sure it was written by the same man who wrote great books
like THE DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS, but I am not sure he intended WEB to by
written by John Wyndham. Huh? Well, John Beynon Harris was a long-time
science fiction writer in Britain. His full name in print is long enough to
wrap around your waist. He wrote a lot of mediocre science fiction under a
number of pennames, all of which were substrings of his real name. His best
material somehow always came out under the name "John Wyndham," and people
began to realize that the John Wyndham novels were pretty good. Harris died
in the late Sixties and WEB was never published until recently, it appears.
Then the publishers picked Harris's most bankable pseudonym.
In any case, as I was reading WEB I was feeling pleased that here was a
John Wyndham that I'd never read. Then it occurred to me that there were a
handful of genuine John Wyndham novels I'd never read; most seemed like
juveniles, but then there was TROUBLE WITH LICHEN. Harris wrote it late in
his career and it is really not too bad. In some ways it is very much like
the Alec Guinness comedy THE MAN IN THE WHITE SUIT.
The plot concerns a strong-willed young woman who gets a job at a
research establishment and through an accident discovers a lichen derivative
that very much slows down the aging process. Users will live varying
amounts depending on dosage and when usage begins, but usually about 200
years. The woman goes into business for herself developing the drug, and
the head of the research establishment independently develops the drug,
neither knowing that the other knows the power of the drug.
The woman, to get around the law, opens a beauty products business and
secretly gives the drug treatments to wives of prominent government
dignitaries. There is an interesting legal problem in that she very openly
tells her customers, "Our products will keep you younger longer." Can she
be blamed for telling the truth when lying hype is expected?
Antigerone cannot be made totally public because there is only enough
lichen in the world to treat a few thousand people. Announcing the drug
would assure that just the wrong people get it. Further, the social impact
of the drug would be incredible. Well, the news does leak out eventually,
and the world goes into chaos. Morticians and socialists, for different,
demand that the drug be banned. So do certain church groups. If all this
seems a little unlikely, think of the real life social uproar a few years
after this was written when a pill to prevent pregnancy was invented.
I cannot claim that this is a particularly well-written novel, or that
I believe the nature of the uproar caused, but the magnitude of the chaos is
more than the reader expects, but probably less than would actually occur.
Reading it, I was thinking it was really lesser Wyndham, but thinking about
it afterwards, that is still pretty good.
Mark R. Leeper
...ihnp4!mtgzz!leeper