Lawrence Durrell's "Science Fiction in the True Sense"

Lawrence Dürrell's "'Science Fiction in the True Sense" l WILLIS E. McNELLY We live lives based upon selected fictions. Our view of reality is conditioned by our position in space and time—not by our personalities as we like to think. Thus every interpretation of reality is based upon a unique position. Two paces east or west and the whole picture is changed. Lawrence Durrell: Balthazar To consider Lawrence Durrell as a science fiction writer may strike many readers as preposterous. After all, is not The Alexandria Quartet the great symphony or epic of modern love? Was not Durrell's position in modern letters secured by The Blac\ Boo\ and confirmed by Monsieur ? And is not Durrell a poet of exquisite sensibility whose evocations of the Mediterranean mystique are drenched with sun-lit ambience? These questions demand an affirmative answer, to be sure. Durrell is all of these things—and more. While many of Durrell's admirers would object strenuously to his being tarred by the brush of space opera, any assessment of the Irish novelist's role in shaping the course of modern fiction must include some consideration of the doubledecker novel Tunc and Nunquam2 now titled, significantly, The Revolt of Aphrodite. Willis E. McNeIIy teaches at California State University, Fullerton. 'The phrase "science-fiction in the true sense" is used by Durrell in his headnote to Balthazar. The material about Ursula Le Guin in this article has been considerably revised from my article "'Sd-Fi': The State of the Art," America, Nov. 8, 1975, Vol. 133, No. 14. 3 AU citations from Nunquam are from the paperback edition (New York, Pocket Books, 1971). ROCKY MOUNTAIN REVIEW61 Upon their original publication in 1968 and 1970, these two books received mixed reviews. While the popular press such as Time or Newswee\ commented favorably upon Durrell's verbal dexterity, almost as if it were some arcane sleight-of-hand, serious critics have generally ignored the volumes and compared them unfavorably with the Quartet. Indeed, the two collections of critical essays about Durrell published in the last few years contain nothing about either Tunc or Nunquam, and recent issues of journals such as The Journal of Modern Literature, Modern Fiction Studies, and so on, barely mention the works. It seems that the critics, disappointed because The Revolt of Aphrodite was not another Alexandria Quartet, consigned the novels to the limbo of the great ignored. Yet is this critical ignorance—if I may play upon words—justified ? I think not, and I submit that a serious consideration of the themes, material, and symbolism in both Tunc and Nunquam may place them at the center of the Durrell canon, as important, significant works, if not great ones. What then, is The Revolt of Aphrodite about? For those who have not yet read this double-decker novel, a brief sketch of the plot line may be necessary. The hero, Felix Charlock (another of Durrell's first-person narrators), is a distinguished scientist and inventor. His fertile brain, for example, has produced a typewriter that presents beautifully typed material when it is spoken to. In other words it types what it is given orally. Charlock's power of invention is prodigious . As a result he is induced to join the Merlin Company, headed by the enigmatic Julian Jocas and Julian's sister, Benedicta. Merlin is a corporation so widespread in its operations and so subtly powerful that it controls us all. Merlin gives Charlock everything, but at the expense of his freedom. Eventually Charlock, now married to Benedicta, is induced to recreate Iolanthe, a famous movie star, now dead, who was secretly beloved by Julian. Charlock and Merlin reconstruct Iolanthe as a bionic robot, but she seems, in her new condition, to be far more human than her once-live original. Indeed, the resurrected robot Iolanthe strives for freedom, and finds it, ironically, only in death. Her 62DURRELL'S SCIENCE FICTION and Julian's Fall—the word deserves the capital letter—provides Charlock and the other employees of the firm with the freedom they were otherwise unable to achieve, and at the end Felix, the creator-inventor, destroys the old covenant which had bound...