2010

Frederic Carrel may be known to visitors to this site as the author of the roman à clef John Johns, a malicious portrait of Frank Harris which also steals freely from Maupassant’s Bel-Ami, not then in English translation. Carrel also wrote eleven other novels and one work of philosophy, none of which sold nearly as well as John Johns.

2010 was his last book and his only venture into science fiction, and it must have been even more of a commercial failure than most of his output, as it is now extremely rare: there is only one copy of it available online at the time of writing, and it is priced at an inflationary $1,000. When another copy recently appeared at a much more affordable price I naturally pounced, hence this review.

L W Currey, the bookseller who is asking a grand for it, describes 2010 as a parody of Wells’ futuristic novels, which implies that it is ludicrous on purpose, its preposterousness crafted for humorous effect, which I find improbable. Carrel took himself and his art very, very, seriously. 2010, although it contains much silliness, is not so much a parody as intended to convey ideas that Carrel was utterly sincere about. You may judge for yourself whether those were good ideas or the ravings of a man deranged.

His story is set in the far future, in which many of the problems of humanity have been solved, in large part due to the efforts of great geniuses such as the novel’s protagonist, Caesar Brent. Everyone in Europe wears white woollen onesies, which seems like a terrible idea, but perhaps it is the price they pay for longevity: people are now routinely living well into their second century, thanks to a serum discovered “over a hundred years ago”. This and other references to happenings far in the past make it clear that “2010” is not meant to be the year we know as 2010 CE, rather it is two thousand and ten years after “the New Renascence”, whatever that is. The usual justification for setting a novel in such a remote time would be to allow the imagination of the author to run wild and free: unfortunately, Carrel’s imagination can’t run very far before it has to stop and catch its breath.

Get Your Better Brains from Brent

In the opening scene Brent, “a man with a capacious head and a face expressive of great concentration”, addresses the British Council, the ruling body of the country, to propose a highly controversial measure for the betterment of mankind, to raise the intelligence of future generations by giving every child a brain upgrade through a quick and simple operation:

The six hundred million brain cells were to be acted on by a cytoplasmic bonnet which Caesar Brent described. Also, by other means, the physical condition of the parents was to be affected. The new element, Sardinium, was, by a special process, to be made to reach the blastomeres!

As a first result, a knowledge of much that the ancestors had known and done, was to be acquired. 

Historically, any attempt at mass medicalisation has met stern resistance from reactionary quarters, and so it proves in this case. Brent’s antagonist is one Victor Veitch, who speaks against the proposal using rhetoric that will sound all too familiar. Brent’s procedures are unnatural, unproven, dangerous and likely to be of little benefit:

“What is it that Caesar Brent is asking us to sanction? Nothing less than an interference with the course of nature in the bodies of men and women. Not one of the arguments he has just put forward amounts to anything beyond hypothesis, and yet he would have us grant him leave to commit what I deem would be a series of atrocities. I do not pretend to the knowledge which he is reputed to possess, but of this much I am sure, any interference with the cerebral machinery, such as it was organised by nature, will bring with it a train of miseries such as I fear to contemplate. 

“And even if the experiment were harmless, even if it were possible to burden our brains with the impression of our ancestors, where would be the gain? He speaks of greater powers, but I feel and know that our minds are limited to those we now possess. Do we want our thoughts to be occupied with the topics of centuries ago? Shall we be made to blush for the errors or the misdeeds of our fathers?” 

Veitch moves on to dragging Brent’s character:

Caesar Brent has asked you to grant him leave to operate. Are you sure that he has waited for your permission ? Have you heard that he has, in the Isle of Wight, beneath the sea, a laboratory where all manner of experiments are made? Can you feel certain that he has never had human beings there to act upon? My information by no means tells me that he has not. Brent is reputed to be rich, and although we have, fortunately, passed the age when penury existed in our midst, still there are those to whom the allurement of more means for pleasure is well-nigh irresistible. I do not say that he has done this thing, but if he has not, let him tell us so!” 

Brent is too proud to answer Veitch’s sophistry directly, and so Veitch achieves his intended effect of raising doubts. The council adjourns to allow the members time to study Brent’s proposition at their leisure. Brent leaves the chamber and we are treated to a picture of future life in London.

Gyroscopic cars glided swiftly in the roadway on their alignment wheels. Messengers with arm and foot-wings made of the new air-drinking substance, were flying on the level of the first floor of the houses. Electric carriages were bringing late councillors to Council. Newsboys were distributing their journals gratis to the passers-by, and a band of scavengers armed with pneumatic brooms, were removing from the road every speck of dust. There was activity without noise, for noise had already been prohibited by law. 

In this golden future there is no need for feminism, because women have their own parliament just down the road, where they can talk about womany things. As he passes the Women’s Parliament, Brent bumps into his friend, Constantia Deane, one of the members. Hearing his news, she expresses her astonishment that anyone might question his selfless generosity towards humanity. Like everyone else in the novel, including Brent, she has a stagy, declamatory, way of talking (perhaps a side-effect of the famous anti-ageing serum). Brent tells her how things went and she is filled with indignation:

“Is it possible that a man like you should be opposed by Veitch[?]”

“He showed me to them in an ugly light. I was going to commit atrocities, he said”,

“That is not his true opinion.”

“Likely not. What, Constantia Deane, is yours ? “

“I think that you are going to confer upon the race an everlasting benefit, and I undertake to win the women over to your side.”

[…]

“Have you no fear I may be wrong ?”

“No, none. I know that if you have come out into the open to explain your process, and to ask for leave to experiment, you are convinced that you are right. And even if you erred, an error of Caesar Brent, who has done so much for his fellow men, is an error which it would be their duty to condone.”

Deane asks permission to visit Brent’s workshop in the Isle of Wight and he says she is welcome at any time.

Seaside Fun

We are taken next to the island residence in question, which has its own laboratory and a permanent staff of scientists. There is a machine that controls the weather and many other devices:

Recording machines with huge revolving cylinders stood in rows against the wall, and gas jars of enormous girth occupied shelves above. In a special tank at the end of the room the terrible gas, flammogen, was kept in readiness for use, as also was a machine for storing the gigantic force named argilite. In addition to these, were dynamos and scales, as well as instruments that left the mind in wonderment as to the use to which they were applied.

Can an omniscient author imagine unimaginable things? I suppose he can, if he’s Frederic Carrel.

We are introduced to Caesar Brent’s principal assistant, Alexander Silson, “a success of evolution”. Over six feet tall, “he was muscular and well-proportioned, his face intelligent. Although not more than thirty, he had already mastered science”. Silson is summoned by “a communication through the air from Caesar, bidding him go to the liferoom to inspect the happenings.”

The first thing we meet in the liferoom is a disappointment, since “centuries of research” on the creation of life from embryo have resulted in a three-eyed thing that is barely alive and does not move. Other experiments, using grafting techniques, have been more successful, at least in making animals with a degree of mobility:

There were among the number dogs with the arms and hands of apes, cats with the tails of mice, kangaroos with wings and manes, monkeys with claws and fins. There were also animals to which no names could be ascribed, so composite were they.

Brent also keeps caged “a perfect pithecanthropus—ape-man or man-ape” to which he has given the condescending name “Chimp”. He got it from a Polynesian chief who found it in “a lonely mountain village, where the distinction between men and animals was slight”. (Bit racist? Never fear, this is very mild stuff compared to some of what is to come.)

Chimp, quite reasonably, doesn’t like being caged. And he probably would not like Brent’s plan for him, if he knew it, which is for him to be “racially sent back” to make his progeny more ape and less man. Brent could in fact turn the dial the other way but that would cause “defilement of the human species”. 

Silson enters Brent’s austere study and reports that everything in the liferoom is “normal”:

“Has the decapode developed?”

“No.”

What of the pithecanthropus?”

“Depressed.”

Meanwhile, there is a queue of people waiting to be “acted on”, to have the procedure that Brent proposed to the Council. But they will have to wait until the decision has been reached, which may not be in Brent’s favour. Veitch is agitating against him, even on his beloved Isle of Wight. But these concerns may count for naught, as a body is approaching the Earth from space “which may cause a sudden change”. Never mind, though, enter the love interest, Constantia Deane for her guided tour of the facility.

Brent, Deane and Silson descend in a lift “for what seemed several minutes”. (To whom exactly? Did it in fact take several minutes or not? Is the lift slow or it is a very deep descent? Think, boy, and express yourself clearly!) At the bottom they find themselves in a tunnel which goes far out beneath the sea, through which they drive on some undescribed vehicle until they reach - more vivid word-painting here - “a chamber which had the appearance of an anteroom”. Before they enter, Brent has a few words of caution for Deane:

“I must ask you to leave behind all prejudice and preconceived ideas. What you are about to see is not what I have organised to satisfy whim or fancy. It’s the outcome of the thought which has preceded it. Nothing is done here which ought to be left undone. And remember that you have asked to come, that you do so of your own free will.”

“I came prepared,” Constantia said, “to accept whatever I shall see as necessary and right.” 

Isn’t that a preconception? Anyhow, they enter and Brent introduces her to a dog who has been subjected to his treatment. The dog, Wolf, “knows more than two hundred words”. Astonishing, but think of what this technology could do for humanity! And in the next room there is a crowd of people with their infants waiting in anticipation. The “outcome of the thought that preceded it” was in this case to open the lab door to anyone who wants the operation and let them live on the premises indefinitely.

All very humdrum, you may say, but then Brent reveals: The Octoponus! On the other side of the window, outside in the sea, one of Brent’s men dressed in diver’s gear brings forth:

[…] an octopus-like animal, which strode along on its eight tentacles, exhibiting its green round back, six feet in circumference.

It stopped a moment in the full rays of the lamp and then, without a sign of warning, it sprang upon the window, fixing its inner side upon the pane, and extending its tentacles till it covered the whole of the glass and obscured the sea. Constantia involuntarily recoiled, She saw before her a huge object, quivering and jelly-like, which resembled an enormous limpet, save that it had eight limbs and that in the centre was a hideous head with gaping mouth and rolling eyes.

“Do not be alarmed,” said Caesar laughing, “that is only an amalgamation which our submarine laboratory has made. It’s an ugly monster certainly, and I only showed it to you as an illustration of the capabilities.. But for to-day you have seen enough. Come, let us get back to the house.”

Like a small boy trying to impress a girl with his pet spider, don’t you think? 

They return upstairs and Deane asks him a question heavy with meaning: “why have you never married?” Although he and Silson live together, that isn’t the reason: he’s too busy for such fripperies. There’s that threat from outer space for a start and “a spirit is abroad throughout the East which bodes no good for us.”, he says, darkly. Deane is sceptical, since wars have been abolished, but Brent insists that Inscrutable Orientals are planning to take advantage of the complacency of the West. Deane promises to warn the Women’s Parliament.

Constantia Deane leaves, and Brent goes to his beach hut for a bit of alone time, only to be surprised to find someone already there. It is Agnes Law, a former childhood friend, but now wife of the dreaded Victor Veitch. He accuses her of inciting her husband to oppose his scheme, then, as she prevaricates, takes unusual measures to find out the truth:

Caesar drew from his pocket an apparatus somewhat resembling a trumpet, to the mouth-piece of which a stiff tube was attached, which divided itself into two smaller tubes fastened to a crescent-shaped spring support and ending, each of them in a silver disc. One of the latter he fixed in the middle of his forehead, the other he placed at the back of his head, at the base of the cerebellum. Then, holding the orifice of the instrument towards Agnes, upon whose face an expression of astonishment was visible, he looked at her intently for some moments. 

The instrument is a “psychoscope”, which allows the user to read another’s thoughts. A few tweaks might need to be made to the design before it is brought to market, but in this case it serves its purpose. Brent now sees that Agnes is “anachronistic in this age”, she is “a woman of the ancient type, a passion-woman”. She is so eaten up with desire for Brent that if she cannot have him, she would rather destroy him.

Brent leaves her and heads to an adjoining village, where he finds himself surrounded by journalists “wheeling their cinema-phone-photographic camera[s]”. The pressmen vie with one another to get his attention, each in turn boasting about how much more space they give to Brent’s views than their rivals. The reason for their presence is that a demonstration against Brent (inspired by Veitch, of course) is about to take place.

Brent is undaunted, and addresses the villagers with a speech that amounts to “trust me, I know what I’m talking about” which goes down a treat. The pliable mob immediately switch to his side and erupt in a chant of “Long life for Caesar Brent”.

Wacky Race Wars

Brent is back in London, in his second home, dealing with important affairs of state as well as continuing his scientific research. The latter is largely being carried out by another of his underlings, Graves, who throughout this passage keeps popping in and out of the scene bearing “a tube filled with a whitish liquid”. Graves would like to use Brent’s procedure on his own son, but Brent warns him that it would be illegal, and even if he did it in secret the mentally-enhanced child would likely snitch on him.

Enter President Horatio Stern, who has a warning about “the negroes in America, who have become the major race”:

They now outnumber and outvote the whites in the Assembly, as you have no doubt heard, and their leader, Sylvanus Strong, has lately made a claim in the name of all of them to merge with the whites by coercive intermarriage. Not only that. They threaten to invade Europe and to fuse with us.

As if one overheated racist fantasy would not suffice, the wily Orientals are also arming themselves in preparation for a war of conquest, under particularly scary leadership for all right-thinking white men:

The leader of the movement is a woman, Khadija Khayat, a woman, it seems, of extraordinary energy and will. Throughout the East she has been preaching a doctrine whereby they are the superior race, designed by fate to rule us.

Heresy!

Brent is calm, however, and asks Stern to arrange meetings with Sylvanus Strong and Khadija Khayat. Stern agrees, happy for let Brent sort out the “two dilemmas”. He tells Brent he is “a wonderful man” who has relieved him “of a great anxiety”.

Before he can sort out these twin perils, a crowd of women arrives to drool over him in an explosion of Brentmania. One, “a Spanish girl of the Andalusian type” is especially pushy:

“My name,” she said, “ is Elena Lopez, and I am as rich as it is possible to be under our equalising laws. I believe in you, and I say it openly, I would like to marry you.” 

Brent demurs and retreats to his study for lunch:

Two sticks of concentrated Omnium, an electric calorification with an instrument, and a glass of water from a pure Bohemian spring.

Yum. Brent has barely enough time to digest this feast before Sylvanus Strong, “the leader of the blacks” is at the door and asking for an interview. Brent agrees to meet the “dusky potentate”, and Strong, a “muscular tall negro of the deepest black”, comes in:

“I have travelled,” he said, “by the fastest airship in America, to see the chief men in this country, and especially to see the famous Brent.”

“I have been told,” said Caesar, “ that you threaten to take the whites by storm.”

“I have said what I now repeat, that unless we are allowed to marry with your race, we shall make laws to compel white people over there to accept marriage with us, and we shall spread ourselves all over Europe, for we have men enough for that without losing our numerical supremacy at home. In Europe no doors shall be closed to us, and eventually we shall gain our ends the whole world over.”

“And why,” asked Caesar, “do you want to marry with us?”

“Why?” repeated Strong, in a loud, emphatic tone, “because we’re sick of being black!” 

Thus Strong proposes to adopt the same recipe for racial harmony once advocated by Blue Mink: a great big melting pot that would produce coffee-coloured people by the score. Brent is not persuaded, since “the white man never will consent to retrograde” and the end would be extermination for Strong’s people if they persist. Rather, he has a more agreeable solution: skin-whitening. Brent has invented remedies that can give black people white skin and “remodel” their features.

Strong is suspicious but permits Brent to demonstrate the technology by making a small injection into one of his arms:

The negro gazed at his arm which, for some moments, showed no sign of change. At length the skin around the spot that had been pricked began to take a lighter hue. This was followed by a greyish shade, and the colour changed by slow gradations, first to a clouded, then to a European white, over a surface slightly smaller than that of a dollar coin.

“There,” said Caesar, “about a thousandth part of you is henceforth white.”

Strong passed a finger over the whitened spot as if to ascertain if it could not be rubbed away. Then he cried excitedly:

“That’s marvellous, that’s marvellous. Oh, Caesar Brent, you’re the greatest man on earth!”

Brent promises to complete the process so that Strong may return to America “unblacked”. Strong “in sobbing tones” expresses his gratitude.

Khayat Flying

In the London lair of Victor Veitch, a crew of malcontents are bitching about Brent and plotting his downfall when Sylvanus Strong pays a call. The agitators are astonished to see that he is now white, and outraged to discover that this is Brent’s handiwork. Strong, disgusted by their anti-Brent stance, makes his exit.

Meantime, Brent is preparing for his meeting with Khadija Khayat, which is to take place on the Island of Bubian in the Persian Gulf (and, yes, it is a real place, stop sniggering). He and a crew of technicians will fly overnight to arrive the following day. Before he sets off, though, Constantia Deane appears and, not without a hint of jealousy, warns him to be careful. After all, Khayat is “said to be as seductive as she is self-willed” and moreover “some of the wisest men have been turned from their duty by the influence of women.” Brent dismisses her concern with a laugh as he, above all men, is not to be so easily swayed from his intended course, which is to deter Khayat from attempting to move against Europe. He will demonstrate that “the science of the West will ultimately defeat them”.

Deane takes her leave and she is escorted from the premises by Silson, who has feelings for her but bravely sets them aside when she affirms that no man but Brent will do for her.

Later, Brent and Silson make for the airfield where their ship awaits. They embark, and:

Then commenced a voyage over land and water at a distance from the earth that rendered the objects on it almost imperceptible, and at a velocity so high that space lost its common meaning. Ceaselessly the paddle wheels rotated, propelling the ship in an even course among the current of the air, her great metallic planes at work aloft, her puissant engines panting amidships. It was said that the fiercest storm could not destroy her, since every accident which could befall her was foreseen.

Caesar and Silson spent most of the time on deck, sheltered from the rush of air which the great speed caused, by a screen that stretched across the forepart of the vessel. There they discussed their coming task or chatted with the captain, who had recently perfected the sextant-clock, the complex instrument by means of which the latitude and longtitude [sic] may be simultaneously read off. 

The journey is without incident until they near Bubian, at which point they are met by “four large airships, with sharp protruding prows, and what seemed like aggressive engines”. Brent invites their commander aboard and having explained his mission, receives permission to proceed to Bubian, where after landing he and Silson are directed to “the former palace of an Eastern chief” where they will reside while on the island. The meeting is to take place in the palace on the evening of the following day.

She arrived as the sun went down, and her arrival was announced by a gorgeous Kawass who, with Eastern pomp, declared his mistress present. In a moment Caesar saw before him a beautiful young woman of the purest Syrian type, with jet black hair and olive skin, with dark brown eyes of the softest hue. She was dressed in a military uniform of white and gold, which revealed the fine proportions of her limbs. Her feet were encased in high boots of white doeskin, and on her head she wore the ancient and immortal head-dress of the East, the red tarboush.

(That’s a fez, in more common parlance.)

Khayat and Brent spar for a while before he warns her that any aggressive move against the West would end in defeat. She scoffs, as the West gave up its armies long ago, but Brent claims to have SCIENCE on his side. 

“I can bring your airships to the ground, and stupefy or kill your regiments”.

Khayat is sceptical but Brent proposes a demonstration. They go up to the roof to watch as an unmanned “aerial car of the kind used for a single passenger” is launched from Brent’s ship.

“That car shall be brought to earth,” said Caesar, as soon as the machine was high above the […] ground.

Again he held up his right hand, and at once there issued from the ship what seemed to be a long black pipe. A hissing-sound was audible, and in a few seconds, the car, as if it had been struck, came crashing down to earth. Its momentum was so great that it broke to fragments as it hit the ground, raising a cloud of dust. 

A cordon of such tubes has been established all around Europe, so if Khayat were to launch an aerial assault, her fleet would be destroyed. And a land invasion would be similarly doomed, Brent says, though he is not prepared to say how exactly it would be defeated. Khayat should take the fate of the air car as a warning, an indication of the power that Brent can bring to bear.

If brute force can’t defeat him, perhaps a softer approach is in order, and so, like every woman in this book, Khadija Khayat comes on to him, first flattering him then pointing out that he is not universally appreciated at home, though she might have phrased it better:

“You are a young man, Caesar Brent, and they tell me that you are unmarried !”’

“That is so,”’ said Caesar.

“They also tell me that people in your country would like to punish you because you want to interfere with children.”

Despite his reputation, she still wants to marry him, arguing that “with your wisdom and my power we should have the whole world at our feet.”, but Brent is not interested, and she becomes angry with him and tells him he must remain at Bubian until she gives him leave to go. On that note, she exits.

Rather short-sightedly, she has assumed that keeping Brent’s ship tied down will be enough to hold him prisoner, but she reckoned without the power of argilite! Brent boards his ship and orders the crew to start the engines, and under the strain the cables securing it break, leaving it free to ascend. Off the ship flies, with a few Eastern ships in pursuit that are easily outpaced by the superior Western vessel.

Safely back in London, Brent meets with President Stern to bring him up to date and reassure him that she has not the resources to attack the West. Then, seeking some light relief, he decides after all to give Chimp a blast from the old brain helmet and bring him up a step in “the ladder of creation”. 

Then while catching up with some correspondence (“The line to Venus had been established, it was thought, but for a short time only, as the motions of the planets made a permanent link impossible”) he gets a telephone call from Khadija Khayat, chastising him for running off so suddenly before launching into an impassioned rant on the vexed question of racial ranking:

“Taken as a whole, you Westerners are decadent. You’ve lost your strength and the first morality is strength, We have become the dominating race, because we have grown strong. “

“It remains for you to prove it.” 

“We shall, and soon. Oh, Caesar Brent, you are wise in most things, not in this. You cannot see that the brown and yellow skins are the largest family on earth, and that the largest family is the most powerful.”

“It depends upon the brains that they possess. The sun shines far too fiercely on your heads.”

He finishes the call with a warning about the looming threat from space, and hangs up, at which point Constantia Deane enters to pass on the news that Veitch is ready to move against him. He takes this phlegmatically and changes the subject back to Khayat.

“I thought of your warning about that woman, and I was grateful to you for it.”

“Tell me, was she very beautiful?”

“She was by no means plain.”

“She wants to conquer us?”

“Yes, and she would like her race to merge with ours.”

Constantia shuddered. 

“We must keep our white race pure.”

“Certainly, as long as possible.”

“They covet us and all we have.”

“They do.”

“If they had their way, Europe would become full of brown and yellow people.” 

“Yes, unless the white stock proved too strong.” 

Thus speak the supposed heroes of the story. 

The Dethroning of Caesar Brent

A huge crowd gathers on “Laffan plain” (presumably Laffan’s Plain, Farnborough) to hear Brent and his opponents debate his scheme to brighten up our babies. Brent’s party consists of himself, Silson and the recently brain-enhanced Chimp, who attracts much attention. Brent speaks first, through a huge megaphone in favour of going beyond nature to make the “human brain […] capable of grasping greater things” so that “the wickedness of men should cease”.

He brings Chimp to the megaphone and asks him if he is glad “to have become more like us”. Chimp utters a “sound resembling ‘Yes’ ” and the crowd reacts noisily, in a mixture of approval and dismay. Others speakers follow him: some against Brent but many, including Constantia Deane, strongly in support. At last, Victor Veitch comes to the megaphone.

Unfortunately for those of us who might hope for something better from him (or indeed anyone in this confounded book), Veitch proves himself just as much a racist as Brent, alleging that he “has deliberately planned the subjection of the European race”, that he is in cahoots with Khadija Khayat and that his procedure, far from being beneficial, is designed to engender “mental degradation”. What’s more, Chimp is simply a trained animal and his supposed enhancement a fraud. Brent reacts angrily:

‘You applaud,” he cried, “the lying speech of a degenerate. If you say that he is right and I am wrong, that he is pure and I am base, you are blinder than I thought a mass of men and women in this age could be, blinder and more credulous! ” 

This does not go down well and one of Veitch’s supporters shouts from the crowd:

“Brent is a traitor to his race! He has dared to bring an animal that he has taken from its natural state, and partly humanised. The creature is more genuinely changed than Victor Veitch supposed, and, therefore, far more dangerous. Some day it may be paired with man, and some horrible low species formed! Shall we tolerate this mischief? No. Let us decide at once that the brute shall be destroyed. Down with the pithecanthropus, I say, down with the miserable thing!”

The motion is put to a vote and Brent is defeated. He retires to the Isle of Wight, where Silson consoles him by digging into the roots of Veitchism:

Simson [sic] had looked into their heredity and had found, after a search in the Great Register, that an ancestor of Victor Veitch had been condemned to an imprisonment for arson, and that there were mental tares in the near descent. As for Agnes, the records showed that her great-grandfather had been a fraudulent administrator, and her mother a dancer three times married and divorced.

 With such ancestral history, was it surprising that the couple should act badly? It would have been astonishing if they had acted well. They must be considered products of an unsound stock, and thus deserving of consideration!

Compounding Brent’s woes, Chimp gets out and, during his wanderings, attacks in some unspecified manner Agnes Law, the wife of Victor Veitch. The village rises against Brent and are only subdued when Silson threatens to put them all to sleep with “an apparatus”.

While Brent is moping about in his observatory, Khadija Khayat drops in by airship, hoping to take advantage of his public defeat to recruit him to her cause. She embraces and kisses him but Brent, “determined not to be attracted to her beauty”, directs her attention to his telescope and “the danger in the sky which threatens to blot out all this race of men”. A “fiery red ball” is “making for our earth” “at a velocity which must be called” — and here he lapses into technical language — “terrific”.

Khayat is unpersuaded and seeing that Brent is resistant to her charms, she draws a gun and attempts to shoot him. Brent is too quick for her and disarms her, but allows her to leave, an act of mercy which she ungratefully sneers at, calling it evidence of the Western softness of character.

When Khayat has gone, in comes Constantia Deane with the news that, thanks to Veitch’s intriguing, Brent is to be impeached on “the fifteenth of next month”, but Brent remains unconcerned. The impending cosmic impact is due within a fortnight and such petty politics will not matter very much, after that date.

Bang!

Brent continues to monitor the threat from space, and calculates that it will strike the earth “in the Eastern hemisphere at noon on the 7th of July”. And although it is “not more than a third of the earth’s mass[?!!]” its “terrible velocity” makes it “a danger of of the greatest magnitude”. Whatever it is, it’s also radiating heat as the temperature rises with its approach.

Panic spreads as the threat becomes more widely-known, while the heat continues to rise and people in their thousands die from heat-stroke. Those who can take to the air in airships, anticipating greater safety aloft than at ground level. Food starts to become scarcer as stocks run low, and the death rate from starvation starts to match that from the direct effects of heat.

Khadija Khayat, meanwhile, in defiance of Brent’s warnings, has gathered her troops and is leading them in marching on the West despite the toll inflicted by the constantly rising temperature. In England, opinion has turned in favour of Brent, since he alone had warned of the approach of the Peril From Space. But this provides little comfort to him, as he watches many of his creatures, including Chimp, struggling to stay alive in the heat. He stays in his observatory, “made endurable by ice”, watching the sky:

There he found, by his spectroscope, that the invading body did not show many signs of the terrestrial elements like other planets, He suspected, therefore, that it must have come into the universe from unknown realms beyond, and he resolved to stay as long as possible to study the phenomenon.

Silson comes in to tell him that Constantia Deane has asked to be allowed to be one of the select few with him at the expected time of impact. “She loves you”, Silson tells him, but Brent tells him not to think of “human loves and cares” now, but of the “great event” that is coming, though he does agree to let Deane join the party.

Less tactful in making the same request is Agnes Law, whom Brent bumps into when on a walk on the beach. She threatens him with a gun but faints from the heat before she can shoot. Brent throws the gun into the sea. When she comes round she begs him to let her be included but when he understandably refuses she vows, if they both survive, to bring ruin upon him.

The “eventful Saturday” dawns and Brent gathers with his “little band of followers” on the lawn above the sea. Each member of the party has been issued with a set of “artificial gills” which, on Brent’s signal, they are to put on and enter the water. As he explains:

“My friends, the hour is very near when the first catastrophe the world has known since it cooled from its pristine state, will be upon us. As this island will probably be ravaged by the sea, I have thought it better to go under. Certainly we might have taken a position on a mountain or a plain, but then, we should have been far away and unable to protect our home at once if we survived. I have not disguised from you that what we are about to do is by no means without danger, but, as you know, it seemed to me the best course to pursue.”

They walk into the water and descend, striding across the ocean floor seemingly as if on dry land. When they reach a good place with firm ground, free from weed, “as they were beginning to feel the pressure of the water”, they make a halt. Almost immediately they are attacked by The Octoponus! which first goes for Constantia Deane, then Silson, before others of the party hack at it with axes until it is destroyed.

And then, at last, comes the Impact from Outer Space, or at least its aftershock, since the actual collision took place in Baghdad 40 minutes earlier. There is a mighty earthquake and they are thrown about in the water but after a while things subside and they regroup and head back for the shore, making slow progress because Brent has carelessly lost his compass. Back on land:

A scene of desolation met their eyes. The retreating water, which covered the land as far as the eye could see, was laying bare, in places, what had once been buildings, but now were shapeless ruins. Here and there a mutilated tree stood out as a witness to the cataclysm which the world had just gone through. A few dead bodies floating on the surface of the water added to the desolation of the scene. The sulphurous air was heated still, and the sun shone through what seemed to be a veil of dust. 

Of their number, six are missing, fate unknown. They are many miles from home and the situation on the island is uncertain. In this scene of chaos and doom, Brent decides it is the ideal time to clear the air. In a scene worthy of a TV soap opera, he asks Constantia Deane to choose between himself and Silson:

“Without knowing what is to be our fate, I think it well to take this opportunity to say what I ought, perhaps, to have said some time ago that Constantia Deane, who has cheered us by her presence here to-day, and who has upheld the cause of progress in the woman’s Parliament, is admired by two men, both of whom are ready] should say eager—to ask her hand. Those two men are Silson and myself. And I now invite her, if either of us should find favour in her eyes, to choose between us.” 

Then, turning to Constantia, in whose face surprise and emotion were betrayed, he said: 

“Now say, Constantia Deane, if you are able, which of us, if either, will you wed?” 

Without a moment’s hesitation, Constantia held out her right hand to Cesar: 

“You!” 

“That is your well-deliberated choice?” 

“It is.” 

“So, then, shall it be.”

Is there a more true and tender portrayal of romantic love in all fiction?

The general devastation brought about by the collision proves to have an upside: the populace turn to Brent as the only man who can fix the mess. An emissary sent from London picks him up and he is installed as the President, in which office he wastes no time before starting the process of restoring order. It is not long after that, once the streets are quiet and the rule of law prevails, that he calls Constantia Deane to him and the two are wed.

Brent’s Brave New World

Eight years have passed, and Brent’s benevolent rule has transformed the country, as Constantia reflects:

Out of the ruins of the former London a magnificent new capital had sprung, brighter, fairer, happier than any that had gone before, enjoying, like all England, the constant summer that had come with the axial change, and a climate that had now grown perfect. But all this, she considered, was as little compared with the immense advance that had been made in the minds and conduct of the men and women of the nation. Owing to the gradual application of Caesar’s methods, a race was being formed which bade fair to be supreme, and she herself, a year after her marriage, had given birth to a male child that was generally held to be the apex of his race. 

The Eastern menace was wiped out by the impact from space and now Brentianism reigns supreme. Parents are choosing to have their offspring improved, wealth has been redistributed and everyone is happy. Everyone, that is, with the exception of Victor Veitch, Agnes Law, and their acolytes, who have formed a counter-revolutionary movement ironically called The League of Good which works to undermine Brent and his towering achievements. Their very seed is cursed:

For they were jealous of the happiness of the greater number, wishing happiness restricted to themselves. Veitch, moreover, had not been re-elected to the Council, and his indignation at the elevation of his rival knew no bounds. It was shared by the survivors of his coterie who gathered round him. Agnes, too, was jealous. She had given birth, in her retreat, to a son who was a sorry and ill-favoured sample of the race. Misshapen, ugly, evil-tempered, frail, he was considered by the anthropologists who saw him to be the lowest of his kind.

Should you be struggling with the point he is making, Carrel goes on to make the comparison between the two boys even plainer, when Brent and Constantia asks their son about his day at school:

“Well, Marcus,” said Constantia, arranging the locks of hair which hung over the high forehead of the boy, ‘‘what have you gleaned today?”

“Very little, mother,” was the answer. “I knew nearly all the professor said.”

“Although you had not learnt it ?”

“Yes.”

Caesar smiled. This boy of seven knew more than his unchanged comrades of fifteen. Where did his knowledge come from? Clearly from the ancestral source which he, Caesar, had set free.

“Was Horace Veitch at the lecture?” Constantia enquired, and again the lad assented.

“What do you think of him?” the mother asked.

“I think,” said the boy, “that he is quite unlovable. He’s not intelligent, and the professor says he never will be.”

“Doubtless he is wicked,” Caesar said.

“Yes, for he tries to spread reports about the boys he does not like.” 

This conceited little prig is the future of the race. Asked to explain why all humans are not equally gifted and good, he replies that it is “a chemical effect” — at which his parents exchange a look of pride at having bred such a magnificent genius of a child.

Meanwhile, refugees from the East have flooded the country amongst them a mysterious woman called Mariam Zend supposedly of Indian origin, conspicuously wealthy, and a new ally of Victor Veitch. (What? a mysterious woman from the East? Whoever can she be?)

Whoever she is, she sets about seducing Silson and entices him into joining the League for Good, with the aim of learning Brent’s secrets. Silson lets slip that Brent has created an all-powerful weapon, which Must Never Be Used, and Zend redoubles her efforts to get the details from him, though he loyally resists.

Things take a terrible turn when Brent and Constantia’s son falls ill. His skin turns dark and perhaps relatedly Brent comes to suspect that the disease is of foreign origin, a theory confirmed when he finds a tell-tale pinprick: the boy has been deliberately infected. Silson fears the League are behind this atrocity but he has sworn an oath, so does not reveal what he knows. The boy dies.

Silson goes to Mariam Zend again but is offended by the callousness with which she dismisses the boy’s death “He had not had time to grow obnoxious,” she remarks. Silson leaves her, then find himself outside a hall where the League of Good is making speeches, enters and loudly protests, refuting their claims. He has finally turned back in the right direction, and now, despite his vows to the League, he goes to Brent and confesses all, throwing himself on Brent’s mercy. Brent is, as ever, magnanimous:

“I absolve you from all blame. The power of affinity is often greater than the strength of the resistance. But you have triumphed in the struggle with yourself, and you are with us now. One of two things must happen. Either this evil must be crushed or the race must die.”

Silson looked at Caesar as he stood before him with a haggard countenance and glassy stare, and he feared for the wisdom of his master. Surely he did not contemplate the act which his last words seemed to indicate. He was overwrought, and grieving for the loss of his prodigious son. But, in a calmer moment, he would come back to his old serenity.

“Silson,” he said, “ I am tired of my impotence. After you left this morning, I tried by every device my head could conjure up, to bring that boy to life again, for it seemed to me that he had not quite died. In vain. I have been able to create life, but I am powerless to prevent death, I am weary of the science of this world!”

As he finishes, the door opens and in comes Sylvanus Strong, with important news. Strong, the “whitened negro”, has been looking into Mariam Zend and has discovered that she is no Indian but in fact Khadija Khayat in disguise! That Brent is surprised by this revelation says much about his supposed brilliance of intellect.

The next couple of chapters hardly merit summarising, but in short, Brent’s enemies think they are in the ascendance and make various threats, Brent hides out in the Isle of Wight, depressed, but in the end there is a vote in his favour from the Council and all is, just like that, made well. An angry Khadija flies over his house while making her escape from England and drops a bomb on it, but only one gable is damaged. (Nobody writes an anti-climax like Frederic Carrel, it’s a rare gift.)

It’s All Great Until It Isn’t

The era which now commenced was the happiest the Western world had known. Human nature was divested of its weakness, its baseness, its cruelty and crime. Instead of the law of ruthless competition, one of mutual assistance reigned. None were allowed to sink to poverty. None were permitted to be over-rich. Humanity now laughed to find that all the burdens it had borne so long were only due to ignorance, that with more enlightenment, life was a simple thing. But this period was short. Ten years had not elapsed before a cloud came over Europe. It became apparent that the birth-rate, which had been diminishing ever since the cataclysm, threatened now to cease. In other words, the European women had grown barren! 

Isn’t that always the way? You solve one problem and another pops up. Even worse, the East is not afflicted by the curse of infertility. Could, somehow, Khadija Khayat be responsible? As Brent and his companions mull on this grim possibility, they get a phone call:

“I am Khadija. I know your habits. You are in your study at this hour, and you hear me well. Caesar Brent, your race is doomed. Your women are no longer women. Britain and the whole of Europe is sinking fast. You want our women, but you shall not have them. See what will result. Hail Caesar, The future conquerors salute thee. You shall hear of me again when the time is ripe.”

Brent decides that the solution can only lie in the young minds he has created through his process and fortunately he has one of these to hand in the shape of his daughter Grace, who he consults.

The girl reflected for a moment. Then she said:

“Khadija and her people will overrun this Europe until we can devise the means to defeat her. It will be horrible. If they invade and conquer us, our women are at the mercy of their men, and I, for my part, would prefer to die, and so would all the women I have met. But father will devise a remedy. I have written out a crude idea which came to me this morning. If it has any value, father will discover it.”

Saying this, she handed a paper to Caesar and withdrew. 

Though Brent immediately recognises the germ of a solution in Grace’s idea, it takes him and Silson more than a year to make it concrete, during which time there is an influx of Easteners into England, causing much unrest. One of Khadija’s acolytes attempts to assassinate him with a small explosive and he loses a couple of fingers. He is exhausted with the work, and, feeling that he lacks sufficient blood to irrigate his brain, has a few extra pints transplanted into his system “from a healthy man who suffered from a plethora”.

Finally the breakthrough comes, and he calls his wife to him with the news:

Pale and worn she came to him, enquiring: “What is it, Caesar?”

“I have discovered it,” he murmured. “let those who suffer, burn this powder in their homes, let them breathe its vapour night and day, and I am positive the cure will come.”

Constantia took a small bow] from a stand upon the bench. It contained a grey-white granulated substance.

“Light it,” said Caesar, and, replacing the bowl, she lit the lamp beneath it.

Presently there was diffused throughout the room a penetrating odour, which seized Constantia, after a few moments, with a sudden spasm.

“Oh, how strange!” she cried, “and will this save us?” 

Of course it will, silly. Caesar Brent feels it will, and he’s always right. Without waiting for clinical trials, everyone gets busy with burning the “vital incense” as Carrel refers to it, in their houses. Indeed, Carrel doesn’t bother at any point to reveal the name of this most important discovery, which may be an indication of how tired he was of this writing business by now. Setting aside the question of nomenclature, if there had been clinical trials they’d have quickly revealed the main problem with it, which is that to Easterners it’s fatally poisonous.

By now, you know enough about Caesar Brent and the attitude of his creator to predict that this lethal side-effect will be treated as a positive boon rather than a defect — as indeed it is. Khadija Khayat makes a final desperate attempt to do away with Brent but before she can get in a clean shot she is overcome by the fumes from an incense burner in the corner and she drops dead. She is merely one data point in the process of ethnic cleansing that sweeps over Europe. Finally, there’s just fertile white people from one end to the other, which is what Frederic Carrel considers to be a happy ending.

Carrel lived to see the Second World War and went through the Blitz in London, which seems like a fitting reward for his having written 2010. Genocidal strongmen who promise to fix everything, who experiment on children in the service of a master race? If only they could be kept confined to fiction.