The "Lomokome" Papers

Herman Wouk has written some extremely good books. Everyone knows the Caine Mutiny and knows how good it is. And he has an often overlooked gem in Don't Stop the Carnival about a New Yorker who decides to ditch it all and run a tropical hotel. As with all but a very few authors, other books don't live up to the hype of the author's name. For Wouk, a recent example is A Hole in Texas which, while it had some entertaining characters, lacked a certain reality (I guess verisimilitude is the big word) and was just never as funny as it intended to be.

And, sometimes, the sound of failure is so resounding that few can ignore it.

As I'm sure you guessed, The "Lomokome" Papers falls in that last category. Now, in Wouk's defense, this was an early show more effort. It also represented his first and only (thankfully) foray into science fiction.

One of the things that any writer should recognize is that they should not attempt a genre with which they are not familiar and that seems to be the case as Wouk takes on science fiction. Now, I am taking a leap here that Wouk did not have much experience with science fiction when he wrote this. For all I know he was a voracious reader of the genre, but it does not show up in this book. And, a good writer (and Wouk is a good writer) would produce a better effort than this if they were so immersed.

But clichés abound. We have the conceit of discovered "papers" written by a man dying on the moon. We have accounts of a hollow moon with aliens inside. We have our protagonist unable to grasp the horror of local traditions and stepping in to "save" the potential sacrifice. And all told in a dry style that gives the reader no urgency.

And what we really have is a boring exercise that Wouk himself described as a novel starting "in the dry vein of a Defoe hoax, and gradually slip[ping] into the mirror satire of Reasonable War, and the modest proposal of Death Day." He goes on to say that "Essentially this tale derives from both A Modest Proposal and the chapter in Erewhon on musical banks."

If that doesn't scare the potential reader away, what would? I admit I didn't read the introduction until the book was officially in my possession. But I hoped Wouk would win the day. He didn't.

There is also one aspect that fascinated me throughout the book. I could not help but notice the similarity between the plot device of "Death Day" and "A Taste of Armageddon" from the first year of Star Trek; a similarity so striking I wonder if the scriptwriting wasn't influenced by this book.

Would my opinion of this book been better if I had not been distracted by the similarities with the Star Trek episode? No. It is still a mediocre effort at best. show less

This is a dreadful book! I have it in my collection only because it was one of Wouk's earliest "novels" (at a mere 113 pages) and it was written in a hurry to fulfill a publication contract. As a result, it is Wouk's only attempt at science fiction, and for that reason it is a collectible. It is deservedly forgotten.

Fiction, Science fiction, Selenites, Selenites love war, death, and violence: “We must have enemies. We cannot be happy without them.”, According to Wouk the novel was written in 1949, First published in Collier's Magazine, February 17, 1956 and in book form by Pocket Books, New York, 1968, paperback, First Italian edition, Oscar Fantascienza, Mondadori, Milano, 1983