I listened for a few minutes as the conversation was basically structured as “When is torture needed?” After listening to one particularly inane scenario fit for the TV Show 24, I had to simply say, “It amazes me that in the United States of America we can talk about when or if torture is needed when one of the basic tenets of our society has always been that we do not sink to such barbaric practices.” That got a few puzzled looks. I tried to explain about studies that show it is of no use. I tried to make a moral case. But there was no one thing I could point to and say, “Here, read this. See what is going on.” Now I do have such an explanation, in novel form.
This novel by Brian Aldiss is reminiscent of many other dystopian novels such as 1984 as well as psychological works such as KISS OF THE SPIDERWOMAN. But HARM stands on its own not just as a novel for our own troubled times but as an experimental literary event that is both accessible and unique.
Paul Fadhil Abbas Ali is a British citizen of Moslem heritage. A writer, he fancies himself as in the line of P.G. Wodeho
use and has written what he hoped would be accepted as a very funny novel. In one small scene in the book his characters joke about killing the Prime Minister. Well, in his post-terrorism society, replete with government-instilled fears that hope is completely misunderstood by H.A.R.M., the Hostile Activities Research Ministry. Arrested by HARM, Paul is thrown into a Gitmo-like jail in an uncertain country where he is beaten, tortured both physically and mentally and generally hated simply for being of Moslem descent let along having, they claim, advocated the assassination of the PM.
use and has written what he hoped would be accepted as a very funny novel. In one small scene in the book his characters joke about killing the Prime Minister. Well, in his post-terrorism society, replete with government-instilled fears that hope is completely misunderstood by H.A.R.M., the Hostile Activities Research Ministry. Arrested by HARM, Paul is thrown into a Gitmo-like jail in an uncertain country where he is beaten, tortured both physically and mentally and generally hated simply for being of Moslem descent let along having, they claim, advocated the assassination of the PM.But Aldiss in this novel wishes to do far more than simply delineate the horrors of torture. Though he does that well. In one scene Paul is told that his wife has also been arrested for his crime, and that she has died under torture. That scene like many others will stay with you long after the book is closed. Still, Aldiss’ exploration here is not to show how awful torture is to endure but rather to try to find out the basis for torture and why it has been a force throughout human history.
This is done by utilizing Paul’s strange, fragmentary, perhaps multiple personalities. Under the horrible tortures imposed on him, Paul’s mind splits off and he begins to live the life of a man named Fremant on a remote setting of a different planet named Stygia. The world of Stygia is being colonized by a group of people from Earth. But the colonists have traveled to Stygia as a mixed-together soup of molecular life and only reconstituted as individuals upon landing. This reconstitution has not gone all that well.
Most of them have lost many memories of their past lives, have problems with language and other such defects. But most telling is that the colonists have compartmentalized themselves into subsidiary groups, each group united by a belief in Religion, or in Science, or in Power. These archetypical belief systems are primitive in some ways and yet well showcase the various beliefs that more advanced societies turn upon.
I was reminded of SciFi Master Philip K. Dick’s novel CLANS OF THE ALPHANE MOON where residents of an offworld insane asylum develop their own society with various tribes based on the mental illnesses that put them in the asylum originally. But unlike the protagonists
and antagonists in the Philip K. Dick novel, Aldsis’ characters are scrupulously sane, well, as sane as many of the leaders and followers in our own world.
and antagonists in the Philip K. Dick novel, Aldsis’ characters are scrupulously sane, well, as sane as many of the leaders and followers in our own world.Fremant’s problems in Stygia begin to mirror Paul’s in the HARM facility. Indeed as the book begins to shift back and forth between the two facets of the character the parallels between their lives, their fortunes and their misfortunes begin to gel. As these mirrors reflect each into the other, the reader sees the reflections as a long, winding corridor of thought-experiments which begin to show our own world in a new and uncanny light.
The book ends with a revealing interview with the author, done as a Q&A. In the interview Aldiss is able to make a few more points about the way his book is meant to be viewed, about the times we find ourselves in, about totalitarianism.
Here’s an important book. Let me place it in your hands. Now read it and better understand where we are.
HARM by Brian Aldis is published by Ballantine Books, $21.95 hardcover.
