Josephine Saxton

Vector for Seven has been described as a fabulation and according to wiki

"Such novels violate, in various ways, standard novelistic expectations by drastic—and sometimes highly effective—experiments with subject matter, form, style, temporal sequence, and fusions of the everyday, the fantastic, the mythical, and the nightmarish, in renderings that blur traditional distinctions between what is serious or trivial, horrible or ludicrous, tragic or comic."

I was surprised to find there were show more no reviews of this well thought of 1970 novel on LibraryThing. Vector for Seven is a fusion of the everyday and the fantastic as seven people take off on an earthbound, but bizarre trip of a lifetime. It is also very English with characters that would not have been out of place in novels some 20 years earlier, but now must adapt to the swinging sixties and a more contemporary life as the story allows them to open up in a sort of bildungsroman experience.

The novel starts with Sophia Smith and Mrs Mortimer meeting at a deserted airfield somewhere near London. They have each paid £150 (quite a substantial sum in 1970) for a mystery holiday and are awaiting the tour guide. They are joined by Edward Harrington-Smyth and then by the younger Obadiah Crutch who threatens to thump anybody that makes fun of his name. Martha arrives and the others think she looks like a gypsy. It is a microcosm of the English class system as the characters quickly sum each other up and take to their allotted place in the society of the time. They are all anxious about being swindled out of their money, but another person arrives and it is a seven year old boy named Septimus who we are informed is a hermaphrodite and is slowly starving to death as he is waiting for someone to feed him. A coach arrives and the tour guide whisks them all off to the first of the mystery destinations. Obadiah thinks he sees a flying saucer through the coach window as they make a circular tour arriving back at the airfield where Obadiah discovers that his motorbike has been smashed to pieces. It is the love of his life and he comes close to suicide when he sets the petrol ablaze and burns himself badly. It soon becomes clear that these are lonely people, somewhat adrift and desperately seeking something.

They are taken on an aeroplane to Peru, quickly leaving Lima to travel into the desert-like back country on barely existing roads to spend time in a poor village, where the mysticism that rules the peoples lives becomes an attraction for Sophia that she cannot resist. The remaining five are at some point flying across America to another mystery destination, they are bonding as a group, they think about the food they eat, they think about their lives, they think about sex, they become aware of each others needs and the requirement to look after Septimus. Time is elastic in this kind of travelogue of events. They board a rickety steamboat somewhere of the coast of South America and soon become shipwrecked when they crash into a polystyrene iceberg. They are all rescued by a millionaire owner of a submarine, whose hobby is to rescue people, who he has shipwrecked. They are treated to a sumptuous meal and satiated four of them make their way to the love room and two of them enjoy the best sex of their lives. The lovemaking particularly is written from a woman's point of view:

"All the time one thought about it, and the body longed and called. It was just as well that it was possible to be satisfied in the desires that sprung up, for otherwise women would go mad, and men would be monsters. And was that not how it largely was? most times? most couples? Yes. More rape in marriage than out of it, without a doubt. If the women warred on the men about this, how many heads would roll, how much blood would be spilled before all the suffering of womankind was redeemed."

They take LSD and Martha has a bad trip, hey reflect about their past lives and the author; Josephine Saxton mingles their thoughts and desires in a way that they could apply to more than one member of the group. They are all growing up; becoming different people. They listen to music are affected by poetry and as they come to the end of their trip there is a birth, a death a marriage and a serial killer to deal with. The climax to the book is well written and I found myself in tune with the characters, anxious that they would not lose everything that they had gained from the journey.

Saxton's violations of standard novel expectations are put to good use and they do not interrupt the flow of her story telling. Interwoven there are mini essays on sex, on the enjoyment of food, the class system, peoples hopes and fears and these could be described as from a feminist perspective. The edition that I read was published in the science fiction gateway series, but speculative fiction would be a better label to use. I read this while I was taking a train journey myself, this was a journey where there was a five hour unscheduled stop on a hot afternoon caused by a damaged electric cable. Perhaps this slightly surreal experience heightened my enjoyment of the book, anyway it was a four star read. show less

The title story was not my cup of tea, I struggled with it and gave up half way through.

But I enjoyed the rest of the stories. My favourites were "Woe, Blight and, in Heaven, Laughs" a SF version of Sleeping Beauty, "The Message" and "The Pollyanna Enzyme", an end of the world story.

A woman with an extremely combative personality decides to take herself on, using self-directed brain surgery to open up a channel into her subconsciousness. More metaphysical than scientific.

A couple of time travelers from the future emabark on a tour seeking knowledge of the past but do not like what they find...