![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
John Wyndham: The Secret People
Jun. 29th, 2018 02:07 amThe Secret People was John Wyndham’s first novel, published in 1935 under his own name, John Benyon. A science fantasy of the Hidden World genre, The Secret People is set in Northern Africa, where the colonial powers have flooded the lower elevation regions of the Sahara Desert, creating a New Sea. Wealthy English tourist Mark Sunner decides to impress Margaret, the woman he’s recently met during a stopover in Algiers by giving her an airborne tour of the New Sea in his new rocket plane.
Naturally, there’s a mysterious explosion, the plane goes down in the middle of the Sea, and when our intrepid duo try to turn the cabin into a boat to sail it to shore, they are trapped by a whirlpool, where the weight of the water has broken through the ceiling of a vast cave beneath the former desert, and fall to the hidden depths below.
And of course, in the series of caverns below the desert, they encounter a civilisation of small, humanoid people. Of course, in traditional white man fashion, the first thing Mark does on encountering them is draw his pistol and shoot some of them, which does not turn out well for our imperialist gatecrashers. Mark is rushed and knocked out by the cavern inhabitants, and when he awakes, he finds himself without Margaret, but in the company of three men from the upper world, who tell him they have been trapped in the caverns, captives of the small humanoids living there, for years. It turns out that there is a colony of people who have blundered into the caverns over time, and their descendants, about 1,500 strong, and the little people have simply confined them in a lower part of the cave system from which there is no way out other than a difficult climb up which is watched and guarded. The outsiders are trapped, alive, with access to caves where they can grow food, but without any possibility of returning to the outside world and revealing the existence of their captors.
Naturally, there’s an escape tunnel being built, and traitors willing to expose it to their captors once they discover where it is, and factions within the captive population. Margaret has not been brought to the prisoners’ level, possibly because like the ancient Egyptians, the pygmy people see cats as gods, and Margaret had bought a cat with her into the caverns. There are plenty of plot twists before the final escape of our intrepid duo, with the cat and a few companions, just before the New Sea breaks through into the entire cavern system, bringing an end to the pygmy civilisation and their captives alike. It’s a decent enough adventure story of its kind, and show some signs of the writer that Wyndham would eventually become.
There’s also a great deal of casual racism directed against the Arab and black prisoners, and of course, the lost pygmy people. One of Wyndham’s virtues, which appears here in his first novel, is his ability to write believable female characters who are always much more than just the hero’s girlfriend. Margaret is resourceful, brave, and doesn’t faint any more than Mark does - and while she does scream, it’s deliberate, to draw the attention of people she knows are nearby and need to know what’s happening to her.
An interesting trip in the way-back machine.
Naturally, there’s a mysterious explosion, the plane goes down in the middle of the Sea, and when our intrepid duo try to turn the cabin into a boat to sail it to shore, they are trapped by a whirlpool, where the weight of the water has broken through the ceiling of a vast cave beneath the former desert, and fall to the hidden depths below.
And of course, in the series of caverns below the desert, they encounter a civilisation of small, humanoid people. Of course, in traditional white man fashion, the first thing Mark does on encountering them is draw his pistol and shoot some of them, which does not turn out well for our imperialist gatecrashers. Mark is rushed and knocked out by the cavern inhabitants, and when he awakes, he finds himself without Margaret, but in the company of three men from the upper world, who tell him they have been trapped in the caverns, captives of the small humanoids living there, for years. It turns out that there is a colony of people who have blundered into the caverns over time, and their descendants, about 1,500 strong, and the little people have simply confined them in a lower part of the cave system from which there is no way out other than a difficult climb up which is watched and guarded. The outsiders are trapped, alive, with access to caves where they can grow food, but without any possibility of returning to the outside world and revealing the existence of their captors.
Naturally, there’s an escape tunnel being built, and traitors willing to expose it to their captors once they discover where it is, and factions within the captive population. Margaret has not been brought to the prisoners’ level, possibly because like the ancient Egyptians, the pygmy people see cats as gods, and Margaret had bought a cat with her into the caverns. There are plenty of plot twists before the final escape of our intrepid duo, with the cat and a few companions, just before the New Sea breaks through into the entire cavern system, bringing an end to the pygmy civilisation and their captives alike. It’s a decent enough adventure story of its kind, and show some signs of the writer that Wyndham would eventually become.
There’s also a great deal of casual racism directed against the Arab and black prisoners, and of course, the lost pygmy people. One of Wyndham’s virtues, which appears here in his first novel, is his ability to write believable female characters who are always much more than just the hero’s girlfriend. Margaret is resourceful, brave, and doesn’t faint any more than Mark does - and while she does scream, it’s deliberate, to draw the attention of people she knows are nearby and need to know what’s happening to her.
An interesting trip in the way-back machine.
