The Seeds of Time

Whereas Wyndham may now be best remembered for his novel Day of the Triffids clearly his strenghth as a story teller lay in the short story rather than the novel. These stories, the longest of which is thirty pages, each of which starts on the notion of "what if..." are delightfully entertaining, thrilling or disturbing depending on the tone of the particular story.

CHRONOCLASM: It's the story of a man faced with sudden knowledge of the immediate and distant future and his willing participation (for good and bad) to see the future play out as it has been described to him. Though the threat of a temporal paradox is presented, the story ends up playing out as if paradoxes cannot come into being leaving the reader to ponder if man really show more has as much free will as he thinks he does.

TIME TO REST:
This is one of three stories themed around Mars. Here the Martians are native humanoids, tall, graceful and cultured. The main character is an expatriot Earthman living the sort of life one of Hemingway's characters would have lived if he had written science fiction. It's really just a lovely mood piece.

METEOR:
Meteor plays on the notions of perception and assumption as it follows the disasterous attempt of a slow ship to colonize a far away world.

SURVIVAL:
Survival is the closest these stories get to pure horror. It has all of the classic themes of man's inhumanity to man and monster within that is released when one's existence is threatened. It is the second story that features Mars but here Mars is an unattainable goal.

PAWLEY'S PEEPHOLES:
This story is another time travel piece but is much more lighthearted than Chronoclasm. What would happen if people from the future decided to turn the past into one giant theme park? How would the citizens of the past react?

OPPOSITE NUMBER
Here's another take on time travel. This story works around the idea of different futures arising from different outcomes to decisions. Can true love sort things out when fates goes horribly pear shaped?

PILLAR TO POST
Wyndham's writing here reminded me most of H.G. Wells's social comentary science fiction, espcially that of The Time Machine. Here a man gets a brief chance to live in the future when he is mistakenly transmitted into a distant future. Although the future society is no Eutopia it is better than his life in the past. How hard will he fight to keep his future life and do they really want him in the future?

DUMB MARTIAN
If the woman in this story weren't a Martian (and I think she was a human but of a multi-generation Martian lineage), the story would just be a cautionary tale against domestic abuse.

COMPASSION CIRCUIT
There are a couple classic Twilight Zone episodes that are similar to this story of man and machine and man becoming machine. It's not particularly unique or clever but still chilling.

WILD FLOWER
The last story of the group is by far the weakest. The book ends on a whimper. Just sing Where Have All the Flowers Gone and leave it at that. show less

A decent, well-conceived, and well-written collection of stories, very much of their time. Wyndham shows his cards, for better or for worse, when he approvingly notes, in the foreword, that Edmund Crispin, he of the Spectator, has defined a science fiction story as "one which presupposes a technology, or the effects of a technology, or a disturbance in the natural order, that humanity, up to the time of writing, has not in actual fact experienced." That's not a bad definition, really, and Crispin does him the favor of blurbing him on the back cover as, "one of the few authors whose compulsive readability is compliment to his intelligence." No, Virginia, John Wyndham is not like all of those other science fiction writers, whose stories show more follow the "adventure-narrative form of story." He's trying to steer science fiction in a more literary direction.

And he does, and, theoretically, I should be a big fan of his. I read mostly literary fiction myself and the science fiction I do enjoy tends to be shot through with literary touches and aspire to literary prose. But, I think, Wyndham seems to have rather overcorrected: while some of his stories read a bit like good old British mystery stories, and others read like farces, and one or two like little gothic pieces, they all seem to come off as a little dead on the page. This might, I suppose, be attributed to the fact that some time has passed since this collection was published, and science fiction isn't always a genre that ages well. But there's also a certain stiffness to Wyndham's tone and manner that reminds me of a well-educated — or at least expensively educated — writer trying to show off the dexterity of his pen mostly for the sake of impressing their reader. I understand that the author might have been trying put some distance between himself and the Doc Savage crowd, but at least the writers who worked in the pulps could tell a thrilling story. There aren't too many thrills to be found here, and, come to think of it, there are few characters here that don't sound like they attended either Oxford or Cambridge, even when their backgrounds would seem to call for diction a little further down the socioeconomic ladder. Can what we find in "The Seeds of Time" be considered a step forward for the genre? Well, it might have well been, but, as a twenty-first century American not in a rocket-ship, it's not really a joy to read. It seems to have been written as if joy wasn't really the point of the exercise.

So, what do we have? Wyndham's right on time with "Dumb Martian", which seems to be examining colonial mindsets at right about the time that the British Empire was falling to pieces. "Pillar to Post" and "Time to Rest" also play with ideas of the natural rise and fall of civilizations. "Compassion Circuit" is, as promised, a "neo-gothick trifle," and so, in a more more genuinely horrifying way, is "Survival", a story that really did give me the creeps. And, really, all of the stories in "The Seeds of Time" are fine, and it's hardly the author's fault that they seem a bit musty now. But I also suspect that they might have seemed unnecessarily hidebound on the day that they hit the printing press, which is why I can't give this one more than two-and-a-half stars. I will have to admit, however, that fans of, or those with a historical interest in, of the science fiction genre in its more formative stages just may find a lot to like here. show less

Totally new review after November 2020 reread, replacing 2012 review.

Short stories explicitly outside the traditional sci-fi “adventure narrative” associated with cliff-hangers and “galactic gangsters”. If Wyndham makes you think of spooky children (see my reviews of Midwich Cuckoos and Chocky) and The Day of the Triffids, prepare for something different. There is plenty of variety here, and some great ideas from the 1940s and early 1950s, but more fiction than science, and several of them have a humorous slant.

Ask yourself
What I look for in sci-fi is interesting ideas (language, character development, and even plot are secondary). Wyndham delivers.
1. How much of your uniqueness is in your mind? If transferred to another show more entity, would you still be you?
2. What are the ethics of harming a version of yourself?
3. Does (assumed) low intelligence ever justify secondary treatment, especially if the individual is not human?
4. Would you want to know what happens on alternative timelines, if certain key decisions went another way? Which decisions would they be?
5. Would you prefer a long, painless, but fairly dull and idle life to what you currently have?
6. If you could travel to the recent past to see your forebears, what would you expect or want to gain by it?
7. Would you dare travel to the future?
8. How far can “self-defence” be stretched as justification for killing someone?
9. If you travel time in your craft, you need to be sure you have fuel for the return trip, but what are the possible consequences if it stays behind?
10. If human life is an accident, maybe our species’ survival is too?

Recurring themes

Colonialism and slavery
“We must remember it’s their world.”
There are serious, satirical, and outright comic examples of travelling to another place or time, sometimes with the intention of settling there. Wyndham is clearly against the historical human pattern of dominating and enslaving or obliterating those already there and was perhaps a multiculturalist before the word was coined:
“A culture must grow to live.”

Gender roles
There are characters with misogynistic attitudes typical of the time (and worse), but there’s invariably someone to challenge them: sometimes women by what they do and say, but there are also men who stand up for women’s rights and freedom.

Power of the press
Wyndham was prescient about how the media create “celebrities” and spin stories, but he also has savvy people using the hunger for headlines to their own advantage. See also Midwich Cuckoos and Chocky.

Narrative framing and exposition
Wyndham often (not just here) relies rather heavily on a character writing a report, diary, or letters as a handy way to explain things.

Seeds
The title may be inspired by a line from Macbeth:
“If you can look into the seeds of time, and say which grain will grow and which will not, speak then unto me.”
Several stories mention seeds metaphorically (including survival themes) and literally, but the one titled Wild Flower doesn’t.
“We have to think of ourselves as the seed of the future and every grain of that seed is precious.”

Image: Seeds of time (Source.)

Reviews of individual stories (no spoilers)

Chronoclasm, 4*
“Do you believe in predestination?”
A time-travel rom-com which, despite the foreword, has a spot of adventure and peril. The title refers to the sort of anomaly that can arise if users of history-machines do anything more than observe. The risks of killing one’s grandfather or becoming one’s own progenitrix are mentioned. This is The Butterfly Effect, an idea generally credited to Bradbuy’s Sound of Thunder from 1952 (see my review HERE), the year before this story was first published.
“One has to be so careful; the results of the least action are incalculable… Let one seed fall out of place, and who can say what may come of it?”

Time to Rest, 4*
“Bert disliked the silence which brooded over desert and water like a symptom of mortification.”
A charming pastoral tale where Bert travels the Martian canals on an improvised boat, living a tinker's life, befriending some of the “utterly unmechanical” Martian families he regularly visits, and noting the scenery and plants.
“One exists by barter. One lives by giving - and taking.”
It becomes more existential as we learn how long Bert has been doing this and why. Is Bert still an Earthman, and if not, what is he - what can he be?
“Existence now was not life to be lived; it was a token of protest against the ways of fate.”

Meteor, 4*
“We need long courage, not brief bravery.”
This was written pre-war, but lightly edited afterwards. It’s definitely an adventure, but there are no “galactic gangsters”. The basic plot is obvious from the off, but it’s an interesting example of how an insular perspective (life, experience, body) skews objectivity and ability to interpret unfamiliar situations.

Image: Think outside the box (Source.)

Survival, 4*
This seems like a cliché, but it predates most of the sci-fi it brings to mind. It contrasts some very misogynistic characters with a woman who is unafraid to make and defend her choices. As it’s a survival story, she’s not the only one with difficult decisions about priorities. The punchline is humorous horror.

Pawley's Peepholes, 5*
This is the story I remember most vividly and fondly from my first reading of this collection in my teens, when I was newly dabbling in sci-fi. It is a comic slant on time travel, commercialism, the media, and privacy.

Opposite Number, 4*
“Every ‘instant’ an atom of time splits. The two halves continue upon different paths.”
This story about parallel universes has an original ending that made me question the veracity of everything before it.

Pillar to Post, 4*
“I had acquired an understanding of the language… but the concepts that were behind it did not necessarily follow.”
Dark humour and ethical quandaries. Like Meteor, it’s about disorientation when one cannot even begin to understand one's circumstances, but Terry is fully aware of his ignorance, and the plot and dilemmas are more complex. It also posits that government paternalism removing the need to adapt could cause the slow demise of humanity.

Terry lost his legs in an explosion and then something of his mind from constant use of strong painkillers. One day he wakes to find himself, with legs, in a futuristic place that is not as utopian as it first seems. Near-immortality has a price, and two people attempt to outwit each other to survive at all.

Dumb Martian, 4*
“There’s a natural dumbness about Marts… They kind of non-register… Kind of like a half-robot, and dumb at that; certainly no fun.”
A strong anti-racist, anti-slavery, pro-education, feminist story, with a battle of wits towards the end that makes it more fun than my preachy-sounding description.

Image: Graphic from "Navigating a social world with robot partners: A quantitative cartography of the Uncanny Valley" by Maya B Mathur and David B Reichling (Source.)

Compassion Circuit, 4*
“You couldn’t go on thinking of it as ‘it’ any more.”
A very short exploration of the relationship between humans, domestic AI robots, and the differences between them. Light horror.

Wild Flower, 2*
“Science was the enemy of the world that lived and breathed.”
A twee story, unlike the others. Felicity Fray is a teacher who loves nature in a way that reminds me of Wodehouse’s Madeleine Bassett who thinks “the stars are God's daisy-chain”, but without the charm or clever plots.

More

If you enjoy these, you'll also enjoy his collection, Consider Her Ways and Others. See my review HERE. show less

First published in 1956 this book brings together a collection of ten short stories that features comedy, horror, romance and even occasionally social commentary. There's no real common theme, however three of the stories are based on Mars and time travel also features heavily as does a warning for men not to under-estimate women especially the quiet ones. Each story is individual rather than being part of a whole.

Normally I'm not a great fan of short stories, I usually find that whilst some are good others are less so, but here I found the standard was generally high. Wyndham is a great storyteller and the variety in this book allows him to show off his versatility. It is hard to pick a favourite but if I were pushed to do so I would show more probably plump for 'Pawley's Peepholes' in which the people of the future visit the present and treat it like a theme park, turning up in the most unexpected and unwanted places. A comedy with a satirical edge. In contrast I felt that 'Opposite Number' was probably the most dated and the final story 'Wild Flowers' probably the weakest.

This is a great introduction to Wyndham's writing for anyone who hasn't read his more well known novels and as such I would highly recommend it. show less

Satisfying collection of well-crafted short stories from a master story teller of the 1950s. Some are humorous, some lyrical, and some disturbing, but all are tightly written and most have female characters who express opinions, take action, and generally act like humans rather than cardboard cutouts. Enjoyable.

http://nhw.livejournal.com/1070298.html

I got this Wyndham collection a couple of years ago, not sure if I had already read it. Well, I had read the best known stories from it - "Survival", "Pawley's Peepholes" and "Dumb Martian" - but not the other seven as far as I can remember. Wyndham claims in his introduction to have been trying to avoid the clichéd formula of the "adventure-narrative form of story", and on the whole he does so, though the stories are replete with other clichés - in particular, Wyndham's approach to time-travel is essentially as a chance to have a retake of some moral test, a theme he hits on several times here. These stories are all decent enough, but I think other Wyndham collections are stronger. Still, if you show more like his other work, you'll like these. show less

Some interesting Welles-like time travel and Clarke-like space travel stories, rather jarringly pervaded by Wyndham's sexism and the attitudes of the time. Pleasant enough.