ecl@hocsj.UUCP (09/11/84)
WEB by John Wyndham
A book review by Mark R. Leeper
A peculiar practice that seems to be becoming common is when a popular
(or even a not-so-popular) author dies, you stash his last novel in a vault
somewhere for a decade or more, wait for the author to become legend, then
publish the book. The reading public is supposed to see the book for sale
and say something like "A new book by Mort D. Ceased?!? Why, he's been dead
for years! I gotta have this book to complete my collection." More often
than not you find out that this may not have actually been his last novel,
but is an earlier work that the author--perhaps inspired by the parent in a
Lovecraft story about a monstrous child--could not disown, but could not
release on the world either, so hid in an attic. I guess what started that
trend was Tolkien's SILMARILLION. More recently there was a new "Fuzzy"
novel by H. Beam Piper. There are whole series of Doc Smith and Robert E.
Howard books published after the author's death with the help of a co-author
that the poor dead author never chose. But this is a slightly different but
related trend. It all comes down to the fact that when an author dies his
name may become more popular and he totally loses the right to say that one
of his works turned out wrong and should not be published.
WEB is a new novel by John Wyndham. These days if you ask me who my
favorite science fiction authors are, you will probably get an evasive
answer like "I don't have favorite authors, only favorite books." That's an
easy out but it avoids claiming I like everything by a given author.
Nonetheless, if you'd asked that question when I was in high school, you'd
probably get Wyndham as one of the top three. Wyndham never published WEB,
and the reasons are clear from the novel. It's not that WEB is not an
enjoyable book to read, but when it comes right down to it, WEB simply
failed to become a whole lot better than a nature disaster novel like any
number of writers like James Herbert or Arthur Herzog write--perhaps not
even that good.
The plot of WEB involves an attempt to start a Utopian community on an
isolated South Pacific atoll. One major problem, however, is that this
particular island has been taken over by a new mutated breed of spider.
They are no different than any other spiders except that they have learned
to co-operate like ants and bees do. The result, reminiscient of PHASE IV,
is that they have become rulers of their environment and when they are
invaded they battle for dominance of the island. There is also a subplot of
a native curse of the island that seems borrowed from a grade-B movie. Not
that that in itself is bad. THE DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS is superficially about
giant walking man-eating plants. If that isn't a B-film concept, nothing
is. Wyndham can take an unpromising idea and make a good book out of it.
Well, WEB isn't a *bad* book. It is well-written with a sense of wonder
at the natural history of spiders. After reading WEB, I find spiders much
more interesting creatures. And there are some interesting discussions of
nature and the naivete' of looking at nature as benevolent or as anything
but a vicious game in which humans are temporarily the best players. WEB is
a book written with vision which simply failed to be sufficiently different
from a hack novel. So Wyndham never published it. And Penguin Books did
when Wyndham could not say no. It's okay fare overall. Completists won't
have too bad a time with it.
(Evelyn C. Leeper for)
Mark R. Leeper
...ihnp4!lznv!mrl