Just Finished Reading: Northerners – A History from the Ice Age to the Present Day by Brian Groom (FP: 2022) [336pp] 

Despite living over half of my life in the South (both East & West) I am, and will always be, a Northerner – not just at heart by bone deep. When I worked in London for 6 years it always felt special travelling north to visit my parents and go HOME. I always looked out for certain landmarks after we left Birmingham (at the halfway mark) and although I never had a tear in my eye it always felt different, special. 

Of course, the North IS different, as the author rightly points out. Not only because of its history but because of the basic geology. There is a real North-South divide in the very rocks under our feet. A real consequence of that is very real differences in farming between the two regions. Whereas in the South we see rolling fields of wheat, in the North we have much smaller farms and plenitudes of sheep. The North is also rich in things like coal and iron which is a major reason why the Industrial Revolution happened there. At first the industries around these resources huddled close but it wasn’t long before the demand, especially for coal, required its transport over distance hence the building of first an extensive canal system and then an expanding rail network that was later exported across the world. Industry and the pollution that followed defined the North in ways still remembered and still satirised to this day. It was indeed, at least for a long while, grim ‘Up North’. 

Written with a wide knowledge and a healthy dose of love this was a fun and informative read from beginning to end. I’ve been looking for something like this for a while now. Most English general history books tend to mention the North in passing (often focused just on the Industrial Revolution) so it was good to see the whole North as THE focus of a book. A fair bit of spice was added by an extension bibliography which I’ll be diving into in the coming months for recommendations – it'll certainly help me in my Ancestry endeavours. I was already aware that the author had another book out on the history of Manchester (already on my Wish List) but I’ve just discovered (during my search for a cover to post here) that he’s also produced a general people’s history of the entire British Isles too!  

This is definitely recommended for any Northerner out there curious about their region's proud history. More to come from this author (naturally) and from the North itself. I’m particularly looking forward to a history of Liverpool (the city of my birth) which is out in July. 

The crusts were always my favourite part of a sliced loaf. I was always eager to be the first to open one and, whenever I could, I'd dig down to the crust at the other end before anyone else got to it.... Oh, happy days.... [lol]

Just Finished Reading: The Shrinking Man by Richard Matheson (FP: 1956) [200pp] 

Scott Carey wasn’t afraid. He wasn’t even worried by the strange cloud he had been briefly enveloped in. For a few moments it left his exposed skin tingling like a bad sunburn but, just as quickly, both the cloud and the sensation was gone. Within a few minutes he had forgotten about the whole thing. It was only weeks later that his doctor noted a drop in Scott’s weight. A few weeks more and Scott was back worried about something else – not only was his weight dropping but so was his height. Sent for tests his suspicions were confirmed. Scott was losing height at a steady rate – 1/7th of an inch per day... Every day... They tried every test, every remedy and still, nothing. The rate never varied but never stopped. Scott was shrinking and it seemed that nothing and no one could stop it. The question that Scott grappled with was simple – what would become of him in a world of giants where a misstep could kill him, where the family cat can become a deadly predator or where a common spider can become a mortal enemy?  

I remember being awestruck as a youth watching the 1957 movie adaptation (called The Incredible Shrinking Man). Not only was the idea presented in the movie on the bizarre kind but the life-or-death fight with a GIANT spider in the basement of his own home mesmerised me. Unfortunately, this was one of those instances where the adaptation was superior to the original text. One of the major differences was the format, the flow, of the narrative itself. Although I haven’t watched the film for a while I very much remember it as a straight narrative – Scott is ‘contaminated’ by the cloud, Scott starts shrinking, Scott deals with the effects as he gets smaller and smaller – all very linear. The book, however, is largely told in flashbacks (from his time trapped in the basement) and sometimes in flashbacks within flashbacks which often interrupted the narrative flow. Scott himself is a much more likable and sympathetic character in the movie. Book Scott is a jerk who is angry at everything and everyone for his circumstances. He elicited very little sympathy from me!  

The movie left out a couple of things too. One was the worry expressed of just how much the tests were costing and how they were going to pay for them. I guess this was just an unnecessary detail that could be left out or edited out. The other thing, which both surprised and almost shocked me (especially considering its publication date) was the focus on Scott’s sexual frustration as his stature continued to reduce. Part of that was the perceived reduction in ‘manhood’ and the other was the fact that Scott couldn’t bring himself to approach his wife despite her saying that they would ‘find a way’, and this wasn’t just a passing comment but something that the author returned to throughout the book. At times it honestly felt more than a little creepy. 

Both the climax of the movie and the book was the final (boss) fight with the resident spider in the basement. Both the movie and the book handled it well although in different ways. WARNING: If you are in ANY way bothered by spiders do NOT read this book. It WILL give you nightmares! That for me was definitely the best part of the book and brought it up to ‘reasonable’ and almost made me forgive the rest of it. It was an interesting read on several levels, but I can’t really recommend it. Maybe you should give it a chance if you want to read ALL of the Gollancz SF Masterworks series, but I think you’d be safe missing this one out. More, and hopefully better, SF to come. 

Happy Birthday: Edward Elmer Smith (May 2, 1890 – August 31, 1965) was an American food engineer (specializing in doughnut and pastry mixes) and science-fiction author, best known for the Lensman and Skylark series. He is sometimes called the father of space opera.

Smith's novels are generally considered to be classic space operas, and he is sometimes called the first of the three "novas" of 20th-century science fiction (with Stanley G. Weinbaum and Robert A. Heinlein as the second and third novas).

Heinlein credited him for being his main influence:

"I have learned from many writers—from Verne and Wells and Campbell and Sinclair Lewis, et al.—but I have learned more from you than from any of the others and perhaps more than for all the others put together ..."

Smith expressed a preference for inventing fictional technologies that were not strictly impossible (so far as the science of the day was aware) but highly unlikely: "the more highly improbable a concept is—short of being contrary to mathematics whose fundamental operations involve no neglect of infinitesimals—the better I like it" was his phrase.

Lensman was one of five finalists when the 1966 World Science Fiction Convention judged Isaac Asimov's Foundation the Best All-Time Series.

The Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame inducted Smith in 2004.

[This guy was THE person who got me into reading back in my early teens. A copy of his novel Triplanetary was literally dropped into my lap by a friend of my brothers who thought I looked bored. It BLEW MY MIND and I have never looked back. I became obsessed with Sci-Fi from that point but soon(ish) started widening my reading to where it is today - but he started the fire that has never gone out. I'll see if I can re-read Triplanetary this year. It'll be interesting - if I don't quickly DNF it! - to see what I think of it 50 years later...]