Marion Boyars, 1983, 163 p.

A company called PAX has been developing various projects to improve crop types and yields over the world. This culminates in a product known as freefood, which promises to make human existence easier. It is widely welcomed nearly everywhere – a notable holdout is the indigenous Australian community of Murngin in Arnhem Land, North Australia, which has achieved a kind of independence.

Like in Mitchison’s other Science Fiction forays there is in the narration a high degree of telling not showing. Most of the story concerns itself with the scientists involved and interactions among the people running PAX and the reading experience is somewhat dry. Very little of what would be the social ramifications of such an innovation as freefood is explored. War has apparently ended because, as one character says, it was fought for food.

(Well, to a point: water too, and resources, but let’s not forget in these troubled times personal aggrandisement.)

The ‘future that never was’ that bedevils older Science Fiction stories is illustrated by Mitchison’s characters’ long distance communication methods (video calls) anticipating Skype or Zoom but not, of course, the internet or email.

There is an implicit racism – reflecting the times of 1983 but perhaps not Mitchison herself? – in one character referring to ‘Abos’ saying, “‘They could be a no-good mob,’” but admitting, “they got treated in a no-good way in Queensland,’” plus another use of ‘Abos’ in an unflattering context.

The promised paradise of hunger being banished from the world is disturbed when deaths start to occur among some of those using freefood. This is due to a compound called dioscorin which is found in yams and usually removed by the processes of preparing and cooking. Freefood production has omitted these steps.

Mitchison’s writing is usually perfectly agreeable. Her other (ie non-SF) fiction does not suffer from the flaws I have noted above and before here and here – even though some of it is set in such alien (to us) societies as Ancient Greece or Rome. That tendency to didacticism apparent here is missing from those.

Pedant’s corner:- In the inside cover blurb “polictical” (political,) skillfully (skilfully.) Elsewhere; a missing comma before a piece of direct speech embedded within a sentence (x 3, one without a capital letter at the beginning of the dialogue,) “fresh lime, nimbupani” (fresh lime nimbupani,) a switch into a different font size and back again (x 2,) an end quotation mark in the middle of a piece of dialogue, Bangla Desh (nowadays spelled Bangladesh,) Campuchea (nowadays spelled Kampuchea,) Quazulu (nowadays spelled Kwazulu,) grand-parents (nowadays spelled grandparents,) “none of them were any longer newsworthy” (none of them was …,) “nobody would be allowed to turn in into money” (to turn it into money,) Djuvalji (elsewhere always Djiuvalji,) “a dangerous precendent” (precedent,) peole (people.) “‘Still and on’” (isn’t the phrase ‘Still and all’?)

Travellers’ Library, 1931, 315 p

This is a collection of poems and short stories set in Ancient Greece among the wars between Athens and Sparta. The stories range in date from 500 BC, to 498 BC, 461 BC, 456 BC, 446 BC, 427 BC, 415 BC, 412 BC, 399 BC, 396 BC, 374 BC and finally 373 BC. A few of the poems directly relate to those times but a couple are not so specific.

We start things off with two poems and then each story is followed by a single poem until the last, designated as a song.

Mitchison’s usual facility as a writer is in evidence. There is nothing particularly startling in the contents and she seems to know these times well though bearing her research lightly, but then she did cover similar ground in Cloud Cuckoo Land, and set other books in ancient times: The Corn King and the Spring Queen, Travel Light, Blood of the Martyrs.

She is perhaps strongest when focusing on relationships involving women – the one where one man deceives an ingenuous young girl for his own ends could resonate still, women’s care for each other is displayed but not overly stressed – though those between men are also given weight, in the title story an act of kindness which could be seen as treason being neatly resolved.

While the Ancient Greeks reverence for poetry is not mirrored nowadays there is no reason to suppose human nature two and a half thousand years ago was any different to today. These stories could underline that perfectly.

Pedant’s corner:- shrunk (shrank,) “Hippokleas’ shoulder” (Hippokleas’s: all names ending in s are given s’ as their possessive rather than s’s,) a missing comma before a piece of direct speech, “by and bye” (‘by and by’ as it was rendered later,) a missing end quotation mark after a piece of dialogue (x 2.)

Warner Books, 1975, 140 p.

In this sometime future, humankind has suffered many emergencies – among them a population crisis. Eventually, due to contributions from two people now known only as Him and Her, it settled on what is called Solution Three. To filter out aggression, heterosexual reproduction has been replaced – at least in the mega-cities – by clones of Him and Her. Clone Mums look after these children until they are old enough for strengthening, a process intended to replicate the stresses and strains of the lives of Him and Her and meant to lead the children to wisdom but about which they afterwards do not speak.

In this society, overseen by The Council, heterosexual sex is regarded as an obscenity except for within a group known as the Professorials and for those living in remote communities.

As one character explains, before Solution Three “Inter-sexual love, resulting in the birth of children, had been necessary. When it not only ceased to be necessary, but was seen as a menace, then the logic of history made itself felt. That age-old sexual aggression changed to non-aggressive love of man for man and woman for woman, overt aggression dropped” in the same curve as population did.

Further science-fictional gloss is provided by references to spray-on clothes but for trips outwith the mega-cities fabric ones are to be preferred.

What plot there is centres around a problem with cereal crops in Asia. Use of particular strains to the exclusion of others means that the food production system may not be robust. This leads to some of the characters beginning to question whether relying on the clones for the future of humanity may not be altogether wise.

As in Mitchison’s only other foray into SF which I have read, Memoirs of a Spacewoman, (and in contrast to her historical and Scottish fiction) there is again too much telling and not enough showing. Another of her SF works, Not by Bread Alone, is on my tbr pile. Will it suffer similarly?

Pedant’s corner:- “certain funguses” (fungi,) “Monte Video” (is this an old spelling of Montevideo?) “koala bears” (now called koalas, since they’re not bears,) “bath rooms” (bathrooms?) a missing end quote mark. chupatties (now spelled chapattis.) “Jean murmured, You’re forgetting’.” (Jean murmured, ‘You’re forgetting.’) “For a minute of two” (a minute or two,) elment (element,) “been dealth with” (dealt with.)

House of Lochar, 2000, 174 p. First published 1987.

This is Mitchison’s imagination of what life in pre-historical Orkney might have been like for its human inhabitants. It is not much differet from her tales of the times when Vikings were the dominant force in the islands.

The characters she shows us, however, have names which are more descriptive than abstract (Metoo, Barebum, Hands, Thinlegs, Keeper, Good Woman, Big Woman,) as they cope with their world and seek to understand and exploit it. Hands is fascinated by what he calls the shining edge, glimmering out beyond the sea horizon, and builds a rudimentary boat to get to it, taking some of the others with him. What they find there is more of the same but the new land contains less than a handful of fellow humans, some of whom had disappeared from their settlement years before. Along the story’s way these ancient indigenes learn to spin wool and weave yarn.

This may not have been exactly how Orkney’s earliest humans lived but seems plausible enough.

Pedant’s corner:- “this had to been seen to” (to be seen to,) “in Hands’ mind” (in Hands’s mind.) “There was also children old enough” (There were also children,) “as the cows names came up” (cows’ names,) “like their Aunties names” (Aunties’ names,) a missing opening quote mark at the beginning of a piece of direct speech.)

Illustrated by Barbara Robertson.  Balnain Books, 1991, 139 p.

This is the memoir of Sarah Werden, born out of wedlock since her father, being an apprentice printer, could not marry. Sarah was brought up during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms as a Leveller, believing that “land should be divided so evenly out that every man or woman should have a fair and equitable share for living peaceably as did Adam and Eve before the fall,” her sea-green ribbons a sign that the wearer was against kings and bishops and lords of all kinds. When her father was time-served the family moved to the printers’ quarter of London, living next to Elizabeth Lilburne, wife of the former Parliamentarian Colonel who had begun writing pamphlets against how the new Cromwellian dispensation has turned out, that for the poor nothing has changed. Sarah too wonders, “How is it that the worst always comes to the top, as bubbles come up through milk boiling and burst?”

From her father she learned the printing trade but was married off to a coarse baker from whose philandering and abuse she soon felt forced to leave, finding refuge with a group of Diggers near Cobham but they are subject to the libel and scorn of the locals and driven out, whereon she fell in with a family of Quakers before eventually setting off for the New World.

Mitchison inhabits Sarah’s world for us impeccably, immersing us in the times with frequent mentions of Gerrard Winstanley, Thomas Rainsborough and the Putney Debates, and with Sarah’s constant reflection on religion. It is all artifice of course, but the book is still noteworthy for the facility with which it was written considering Mitchison was in her nineties at the time. It was in fact her last novel to be published and makes for a fine epitaph.

Pedant’s corner:- spiritiual (spiritual,) “Mr Yates’ press” (Yates’s,) “could amost have been dancing” (is ‘amost’ an archaic spelling for almost? Or is this just a typo?) “Mr James’ voice” (James’s,) “so that I could not if I would naysay him” (seems to be lacking a word or two,) a missing comma before a piece of direct speech (x 3,) plowshare (even if by this time she was in the American colonies surely Sarah would spell this ‘ploughshare’?)

Balnain Books, 1991, 174 p. With illustrations by Barbara Robertson.

Almost the last novel Mitchison wrote, this is set in the Frankish Empire a few years after the death of Charlemagne. Narrator Drogo is the son of a Lord who owes his fealty to the new King Louis but he is not close to his father. His true influences are his confessors at the local Abbey, where he has learned the noble speech, Latin. His is a world dominated by Christian belief, of God’s Empire, Holy Roman, under an anointed King. A world where oaths are not merely a solemn undertaking, but sacred.

So it is that his father is troubled when he is called to take the oath, not to the King himself but, in his name, to the Count of Paris. Yet the words will be personal. Wriggling on the hooks of conscience will be required if, as the Count seems to presage, he begins to act against the King.

Other important characters in Drogo’s young life are his half-brother Haimo (got on the wrong side of the blanket) and Wolfin, a Saxon hostage whom they meet in Paris. Their first taste of battle comes when Vikings make a raid up the River Seine – a diversion which at least puts off the dread day of oath-taking. Drogo acquits himself well but Wolfin is killed.

In the aftermath Drogo becomes part of a band of swords for hire – all but brigands -stravaiging about the lands of what is now southern France, the agitation of his soul mounting, while waiting for the chance to deliver a letter from his Abbot to one in the monastery of Gellone. While there Dhuoda, the local Lady, asks to see him. She has a task; for him to deliver a letter to her childhood friend, now in Cordoba, in the Saracen lands,  a thought which almost appals Drogo. Yet his confusion at the acceptance he finds there will add to his experiences as he grows into knowing who he is.

In this slim volume, a minor work by any standard, Mitchison has delved into the mediæval Christian mindset, as dogmatic as any, and still shone a light on the deep roots of some of today’s antagonisms.

Pedant’s corner:- waggon (wagon,) Charles’ (Charles’s,) Gomez’ (Gomez’s.)

House of Lochar, 1997, 251 p, plus ix p Introduction by Isobel Murray and i p About the Author. First published 1952.

This is a deceptively unshowy tale of a week in a Highland district in which apparently nothing much happens but by the end a lot has been resolved. It starts with widow Kate Snow, a trained doctor but now not practising – only occasionally called in as a locum – milking her cows, and receiving a visit from a man called Chuckie with the news that a cache of lobsters belonging to Matta has been stolen. This is a shocking circumstance as it means someone from the local community is responsible. Thereafter the question of the lobsters pops up from time to time – at least until the explanation is revealed near the end – but the main preoccupation of the village of Port Sonas is whether or not it ought to have a Village Hall. There is also an incident involving one of the boarded-out children from Glasgow being treated unfairly by the man of the house where she is billeted and an outbreak of measles in a family from up the valley. The Hall is the most easily dealt with issue at hand; others such as the state of the roads and whether or not there will ever be a bridge built across the loch to shorten the locals’ journeys require much more investment. Kate of course being a modern-minded person and indeed a District Councillor is in favour of the Hall and becomes chairwoman of the committee set up to facilitate it. Despite her status as a doctor and District Councillor Kate is still the subject of sexism, asked by a male Councillor if she knows anyone suitable – as if it’s up to her to find a cleaner for the school toilets.

Naturally most of the opposition comes from the churches, not so much the Established Church but the more hardline Free Presbyterians and even harder line Wee Frees. At one point Kate thinks about some women who speak against the Hall. “They wanted to believe evil. They were brought up to think in terms of sin. They would have liked to have sinned themselves, to have some pleasant memories to brood over – as most of the men had. But when you think of sin in terms of sex and when birth control is ill understood, women can’t afford to sin.” This is also an example of the novel’s more or less candid approach to sexual matters. The question of the nature of relations between men and women is more open here than in most Scottish books of the novel’s era. Lad about town (well village) Donnie Cameron, dragged to church every Sunday by his staunch father, is set to make a “godly union” with his cousin from Halbost but, though never seen with them, finds time to dally with lassies – especially one always referred to as Kenny’s Chrissie. She in turn, via a lawyer, sends Roddy MacRimmon a letter accusing him of being the father of her (still not showing) baby. While not denying spending time with her he is adamant he is innocent of that particular offence. “‘She never had her skirt up. Not for me.’”

Opposition to the Hall is not intrinsic. Through Kate the author tells us “any association that was not directly of the church was a distraction, was a temptation and a leading away from the true race and the only goal. Therefore all such things were evil, whatever good earthly intention they might have, aye all, Boy Scouts, political parties, the Women’s Rural Institutes, the Farmer’s Union, above all anything which in any way encouraged games, dancing, the heathen Highland pipes or any other thing to do with the body where Satan might enter to seize from there on the soul.” The most strict local Minister, Mr Munro, was “mainly troubled in the Lord over two things. One was the Roman Catholic Church, forever assailing the realm of Scotland, and the other was the Port Sonas Village Hall.” He had come to the conclusion that Village Halls were part of a Papist plot. This, despite the fact that, from the text, there appear to be no Roman Catholics at all in Port Sonas.

The fear of modernity is at the heart of it, not lost on Kate herself, as she says to a friend, “‘Odd, isn’t it? These things which have come in our own time: the cinema and the wireless, and both breaking up the community! And when there’s the television, we won’t need to go out of our own lonely room.’” Her attitude to the churches is perhaps reflective of Mitchison’s own, “‘If once we could start treating the Ministers like ordinary decent folk, we’d get help out of the churches instead of the harm they mostly do. ….. You know there are a few folk who contrive to be good without the fear of hellfire at their tails. But maybe we’ll not manage to treat the Ministers right till they stop wanting to be treated as something special.’”

A curious addition to the list of characters is a member of the Highland Panel, come to assess the possibility of allocating funds for the Hall. This is a “‘Mrs Mitchison from Carradale. She writes books.’” This may be an attempt by the author to deflect suspicion that Kate is in fact her avatar. I also mused on whether this is where Orhan Pamuk might have got the idea of referring to himself in his novels. But I don’t suppose there’s any reason to believe he’s ever read Scottish Fiction of any kind, still less Mitchison.

The concerns over change in the community are bound up with the thought that the Highland way of life is in danger. Kate puts this into perspective when she thinks, “You could sum up the Highland way of life, she thought, if you were unkind, in four words: devilment, obligement, refreshment, buggerment.”

This novel is steeped in that way of life, speech patterns and all, only aspects of which now remain seventy years on, yet the capacity for gossip and innuendo, interest in other folk, is a human perennial. These are recognisable people, behaving in familiar ways.

Pedant’s corner:- commas before and at the end of a piece of direct speech in a continuing sentence are routinely omitted, “The Revie’s had come” (Revies,) oursel’s (this is ‘ourselves’. It’s a plural so does not need that apostrophe,) gunwhale (gunwale, and spelled as such on the next page.) “‘Were you thinking ou an extension, Dugal?’” (printer’s typo? ‘u’ for ‘n’? ‘thinking on’,) a-hold (ahold,) an end quote mark inserted into the middle of a speech, Bits’ (Bits’s.) “‘So long as it’ no’ me’” (it’s,) crochety (crotchety,) rhodies (x 3, rhoddies,) Balnafearcha (elsewhere always Balnafearchar,) “all it’s horrible narrowness” (its,) “an seven-day incubation period” (a seven-day,) Angus’ (x 2, Angus’s,)

The Traveller’s Library, 1928, 348 p.

This contains a dedication which I would have thought to be quite daring for the 1920s, “To my lover.”

The book is set during the Pelopponesian War, starting off on the island of Poieëssa in the Aegean Sea. Here young Alxenor is caught between the wishes of his brother, Euripaides, to support Sparta against the island’s overlord Athens, and those of Chromon, the brother of the girl he likes, Moiro, in favour of the democrats. When the revolt aganist Athens comes, Alxenor is only able to save Moiro with the help of a Spartan, Leon, and find she has made an enemy of Chromon. He and Moiro flee to Athens where he is taken in by Theramenes, a trader, and marries Moiro. He is only able to make money by enlisting as a rower on one of Theramenes’s triremes but it is never enough and he and Moiro live more or less hand-to-mouth, even when they have a son, Timas. Moiro is pregnant again when Alxenor has to make another sailing trip and he advises her to keep the new child if it’s a boy or else expose it (in the Greek way) if it is a girl. It’s a girl and his wishes are followed by the household. Thereafter things between Moiro and Alxenor are broken and he takes care not to make her pregnant again.

On one of Alxenor’s trips he receives news that Sparta’s navy has defeated that of Athens at Aegospotami and the fall of the city becomes a foregone conclusion. Thus it is that Alxenor and his family end up in Sparta at the household of Leon’s cousin where Moiro has an affair with Leon and the inevitable happens. Her loyal slave attempts to get rid of the child but it goes wrong and Moiro dies. Here the Spartans offer to bring up Timas as one of their own. Alxenor is willing at first but another non-Spartan who is undergoing the same training as intended for Timas secretly warns him not to allow it. He and Timas make their escape and head for Poieëssa.

This is another illustration of Mitchison’s clear love for ancient times as in The Corn King and the Spring Queen and Travel Light (and also Blood of the Martyrs.) Her knowledge of the times and customs shines through but I would perhaps have enjoyed this more if I’d had a wider knowledge of the Pelopponesian war than merely that it was a contest between Athens and Sparta.

As a novel, though, this has a peculiar ending in that it doesn’t seem to have a conclusion. It just stops. And I still can’t quite see in what context the title Cloud Cuckoo Land is apposite.

Pedant’s corner:- Theramenes’ (Theramenes’s. All names ending in ‘s’ in this book are treated similarly, though,) shrunk (x 2, shrank,) “he dare not” (past tense, dared not,) “none of the Spartans were back” (none … was back,) slipt (archaic spelling of slipped – or is it Scots?) “two fellow-servants of Isadas’ went” (doesn’t need that apostrophe after Isadas,) “wouldn’t leave go” (wouldn’t let go.) “None of them were …” (None of them was… .) mistress’ (mistress’s,) sunk (sank.) T S Elliot (in a chapter epigraph. T S Eliot.) “‘Aren’t I ever going back’” (Please. ‘Amn’t I ever going back?’)

Women’s Press, 1985, 149 p. © 1962, First published in the UK, 1976.

I read this when I first bought it many moons ago but couldn’t actually remember much about it other than it was a bit dry. Re-reading partially reinforces that impression. Much of it is told not shown and the overall effect tends towards the intellectual. That said, it is never less than interesting.

Our narrator Mary is a communications expert who has gained employment on the intergalactic expeditions sent from Earth to contact and understand the aliens on the target planets. Non-interference with the alien life-forms is the guiding principle of the expeditions. On her travels Mary encounters radiates, a bit like starfish, who therefore have no binary view of the universe, and creatures who form grafts on others’ surfaces as a means of reproduction. Mary accepts such a graft and finds herself mentally dissociating somewhat and mysteriously attracted to water. All creatures who agree to such a graft (dogs for example) tend to be unwilling to repeat the experience.

Reference is made to Mary’s relationships with the various fathers of her children but there is more or less no exploration of these and not much more of the hermaphrodite Martian, Vly who somehow manages to engender her haploid child, Viola. (Martians communicate via sex organs.) Keeping contact – or even contemporaneity – with partners is admittedly made difficult by the time blackout caused by space voyaging.

The bulk of the text, though, is devoted to the life-forms on a planet which bears pattern-making “caterpillars” whose patterns are painfully disrupted by “butterflies” they refer to as “masters”. Teasing out the relationships between these creatures takes Mary and her companions a while. Some tension is caused by this as one of the expedition members becomes too close to the “caterpillars”.

In its depiction of a society in which women are on an equal footing with men as scientists and explorers – and in more general senses – as well as in its exploration of the details of alien reproduction Memoirs of a Spacewoman was something of a trail-blazer. That makes it an important (I hesitate to say seminal) pioneering work of SF.

Pedant’s corner:- Extra points for hyaena (now defunct, as hyena has become the accepted spelling.) Otherwise; “I liked in that he had tried” (‘I liked it that he had tried’ makes more sense,) “assemblement of data” (assemblement? Assembly, or assemblage, of data, surely?) “Peder was much interested” (‘very interested’ is the more natural expression,) a missing comma before a piece of direct speech, aureolus (that means golden. I suspect aureola was intended,) in, “We might unwittingly destroy some life which was not induced to move out by any of these stimuli, and of course we destroyed vegetation,” life is contrasted with vegetation (but vegetation is, of course, alive,) Silis’ (Silis’s,) furtheir (further,) Miss Hayes’ (Hayes’s.) Miss Hayes sent off on long expeditions” (Miss Hayes set off on…,) the text describes alien creatures in Earthly terms as eg ‘reptiles,’ ‘caterpillars,’ ‘butterflies’ (I know this usage is for purposes of familiarity for the reader but animals on other worlds would/will not come under the same biological classifications as on Earth,) “as regard” (usually as regards,) follicules (follicles.)

Collins, 1968, 190 p. Illustrated by Brian Alleridge.

This is what may nowadays be called a YA novel. In a long-ago Caithness, still forested, Anlaf, the son of Thorstan the Red, himself son of Anlaf the White, longs to become an adult and go on raids with his father against the indigenous Scots. His future is unutterably altered when, perhaps due to information given to a Scot by one of his family’s thralls his father is killed on an expedition. Wise to the possibility of their new-forged vulnerability being exploited they build a boat and set sail for Iceland, the land the ravens found, where Anlaf’s grandmother, Aud, has kin.

Mitchison builds her story well, the obvious research required being well disguised. Reading this would be a relatively painless way for anyone to learn some history of the Dark Age period and the earliest settlement of Iceland. Particularly well-handled are the tensions between those adherents of the Old Faith and the New (Christianity,) the conventions of Viking society and the relative power women held, but the language is tailored to a young audience. Embedded within it is a prophecy that two of the characters are forebears of the first Europeans to have a child born in the Americas.

On the face of it this would seem to be Anlaf’s story but it is really more that of Aud, Cetil’s daughter. It is her family connections that bring the group to Iceland and her influence that pervades the book.

Pedant’s corner:- “‘Doesn’t he knew?’” (know,) prophecying (prophesying,) a missing full stop. In the Postscript; “There are any amount of stories” (There is any amount.)