Ronald Ross - "The Vivisector Vivisected" (1882)

INTRODUCTION

Ronald Ross (13 May 1857 – 16 September 1932) was a British medical doctor who was the recipient of the 1902 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine "for his work on malaria, by which he has shown how it enters the organism and thereby has laid the foundation for successful research on this disease and methods of combating it". He wrote a handful of fiction, "The Vivisector Vivisected" was originally written in 1882, but was unpublished until just before his death, first appearing in the 1932 anthology "Strange Assembly".

THE VIVISECTOR VIVISECTED

IN the year 1860, I, having completed my medical studies in London, and being a man of some small independence, determined upon visiting the various universities and scientific societies of the world. I travelled through Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Russia, Persia, Turkey, India and China. Having seen much physic poured down many throats, and having listened to the opposing views of five thousand professors, I became in the end assured that for most diseases the best medicine is water, taken internally. I was also convinced of the necessity for a better knowledge of physiology; for unless we know the working of a watch or machine, how can we hope to mend it? Truly hot oil poured in may do good; but it can also possibly clog the wheels. Hygiene is the better part of medicine; physiology, the best part of both: for without it we put on spectacles in the dark. Those great mysteries of Life and Death, birth, maintenance, action and thought were to me Mexicos, their solution El Dorados. Accordingly I set foot in America, the land of experiment, with enthusiasm. I passed eastward, calling on persons long known to me through their works; but I was not satisfied. At the large city of Snogginsville I met the well-known Dr. Silcutt, famous for his excellent work on the encephalon of politicians. He was as ardent a physiologist as myself; and was at the time much excited by his recent excellent discovery that gold produces effects different from those of copper when approached to the different nerves of those engaged in public services. Titillation of the palm with the former metal produces contraction of the flexors, with the latter, contraction of the extensors. He was personally tall, sombre, and not of a humorous disposition. He lived in his private chambers at the Infirmary where I stayed with him so long that we became friends. With him there resided an old gentleman, suffering from dementia, whom at first I took to be his father.

The day before the one on which I intended leaving Snogginsville, Silcutt exhibited to me his private museum of medical curiosities. I remember that when we entered the room, he, being interested in argument, left the door ajar. Passing from specimen to specimen we at last arrived before a most curious contrivance. Roughly described, one would have considered it a double kind of pump with four tubes (two tubes from each pump) leading to a central mechanism. Each pump was a heavy square mass meant to be placed on the ground, with a piston action; the piston being so disposed as to require pushing down and pulling up without a lever. Silcutt seemed inclined to pass it, but I inquired its use; no sooner, however, were the words out of my mouth, than I heard a kind of scream behind me, muffled in laughter. The above-mentioned old gentleman was standing looking at the construction which had interested me. A quick frown passed over Silcutt's face, and he clutched the other by the arm. The old man lifted his right foot and placed it on a low bench close by. His face became tumid with blood until his white hair, eye-brows and scanty whiskers started out, as it were, in contrast. The veins of his neck swelled, and perspiration broke out on his forehead. His teeth were clenched and his eyes bloodshot; and though all this transformation occurred in a few seconds, yet he had every appearance of a man who had undergone severe bodily exercise. He stooped down as if to lift a heavy weight with both hands, and began to pull up and push down with his arms, as if, as I thought, he was working one of the pumps described above. He laughed and screamed alternately; until, after a few seconds more, a foam gathered on his lips, he shrieked, and fell down in an epileptic seizure.

Silcutt said, 'He is not my father. He is accustomed to these fits. He has been located with me for twenty years. Tonight, I will give you a manuscript, fully describing this occurrence and that machine; upon the condition that you do not divulge its contents until the death of both of us.'

Upon retiring to rest, I found on my bedroom table a manuscript signed 'William Silcutt, U.Sc.Phil.' Opening it, I read:-

I attended Snogginsville Infirmary as a medical student from 1838 to 1840. Patrick Maculligan, a man of about forty years of age, was resident medical officer. He was at the time deeply engaged in experimental research on both physiology and therapeutics; and needing an assistant, he fixed on me. I was intensely fond of both these subjects; and we were often engaged together in the laboratory for the whole day. The Infirmary is situated on a hill, and is a long building, turreted at either end. At the time I speak of only one half of the structure was occupied by patients. At the top of the turret belonging to the empty wing, our laboratory was situated. Here we worked, ate, and often slept without seeing anyone but ourselves for twenty-four hours at a stretch. The laboratory consisted of five rooms; an animals' room for keeping live-stock; a chemical room; a microscopical room ; a workshop for making implements; and the operation room. This last chamber was the top central one of the turret and had a window facing westward. It was painted black so as not to show the blood that was often spurted upon its walls. In a corner were a basin and ewer. Tables with various knives, tweezers, forceps, saws, etc., stood round. At a yard from one wall there was the usual stove with a pipe leading through the roof. In the middle stood the operating-table, which we called the altar of science. It was a complicated contrivance, padded and covered with leather, with a waterproof over all. It could be so drawn out, or pushed in, as to afford room for holding either a donkey or a guinea-pig at will. Numbers of fastening straps were attached. The door and window were padded to prevent the egress of any sound which might disturb the patients below.

Maculligan was an Irish immigrant. He was of middle stature, pale of complexion, with light sandy hair. He was very grave and had large white front teeth. His hands were long and hairy; and owing to his studies, he was slightly bowed and weakly. A long scar cut from his left eye to the mouth, and the deformity made him the more shy. He was a Protestant, and when not engaged in vivisection, it was his great delight to read over a book of hymns, which he often hummed to himself. He told me that he was the son of an Irish physician and had left home owing to family quarrels, when a lad of seventeen.

We had often discussed the awful problem of death. Could it be prevented? May not science hope to find its antidote? He said: "Seeing that most tissues are repairable, like bone, re-formable, or like skin to be mended by another structure, I believe that death does not originate in these parts which may be called rather the appurtenances of life than life itself. The older the man, the less able is he to obtain healing of wounds. Why? Because the healing power is older and less vigorous. What is the healing power? Where is it? Either in the nervous system or in the blood, I should say. A man dies, not because his muscles and organs decay; but because either the mechanism of his brain, cord, or ganglia is so attrite, and worn out, or his blood is so changed by continual use, as to be of no further service to the body. We cannot give an animal a new brain; but we can provide him with fresh blood. Let us try then whether the blood be not the seat of life. The plan we will adopt is this: I have constructed an artificial heart which may be filled with the fresh blood of an animal recently killed. Now we must obtain a corpse which has died of loss of blood alone : we must quickly after death cut down to his heart, and apply the apparatus to his blood-vessels, pour in a fresh circulation. By this means," he ended, rubbing his hands, "I hope to bring the dead to life." '

To understand the rest of Dr. Silcutt's narrative, the reader should know the course of the circulation. This is very simple. The heart is divided into two partitions, a right and a left one. The blood enters the right partition, whence it is squirted into the lungs; from the lungs it returns to the left partition, whence it is squirted all over the body; and from the body it finally returns back to the right partition, and so on ad infinitum. The apparatus now shown to Silcutt, described without the use of anatomical words, was an artificial heart, only the two partitions were quite separate, and to be worked by different pressure. The chest was opened and into the large blood-vessels, which convey the blood to and from the heart, long india-rubber tubes were inserted: so that the blood from the body was carried to the right artificial heart or pump, and thence squirted back to the lungs; from the lungs it passed to the left artificial heart or pump, and thence to the body, and so on. These artificial hearts were mere ordinary double-action pumps, with valves, which sucked in the fluid from one direction and expelled it in another; but having to be completely air-tight they were heavily constructed and the pistons were worked only with considerable difficulty. Each pump was placed in a hot-water bath to maintain the blood at the temperature of 100°; and one was to be put on either side of the dead body. To resume the manuscript:-

' It was some time before a fit subject was brought into the hospital. What was required was a person who had simply bled to death without much serious injury except the wound of the blood-vessels. A donkey was kept in readiness to supply the required fluid. We often practised the insertion of the india-rubber tubes into the blood-vessel on dead patients; and had become so skilful as to be able to finish the operation in five minutes.

At last, on the morning of 5th October 1840, a patient was brought into the Infirmary with a cut wound on the head from which he had bled profusely. He had been cut with a knife in a street row. He was a tall, vigorous man, with an immense amount of red hair and beard and with a vicious leering kind of expression. When I saw him he was fast sinking; for the evident drunken habits of the patient did not predispose him to recovery. I only saw him and attended him (except the nurses); and had him removed to a private ward when he died at 2 p.m. Having previously acquainted Maculligan of the case, I waited below while that gentleman was preparing the apparatus. I sent the nurses out of the ward after the patient's death. I wrapt him in a blanket and drawing his hands over my shoulders carried him out. A violent storm, which had just broken, gave me greater security. I locked the door of the private ward and struggled as I best could with my burden up the narrow stairs of the turret. When I arrived in the laboratory, the apparatus was ready, and the pumps were standing in their baths of hot water (which was procured from the stove boiler). The donkey had been killed, and his fresh blood was in the cavities of our machine.

Maculligan was flushed with excitement: "Now," he exclaimed, "we shall get at least some knowledge; either a useful negative result, or a world-reforming fact."

I placed the body on the bed : on his left side was the pump which I was to work and which sent the blood all over his body; on his right side Maculligan supplied his lungs. In a minute I had fastened the limbs, and made bare the chest of the man. Maculligan seized the knife, and at one swoop cut down to the heart. I held apart the several parts. Almost immediately it seemed he had inserted the tubes into the arteries and veins, and a few seconds sufficed to sew up the chest again, joining the cartilages as well as the skin, and covering all the incision with a quickly congealing gum to exclude the air, and permit breathing. The whole was done by ten minutes after death. The corpse was pale, slightly cold, the eyelids half-open, and the eyes turned upwards beneath them. Blankets were thrown upon it to retain the heat. The storm outside had increased in fury; the rain drenched the window-panes, and the violence of the wind was such that the whole tower seemed to rock. Most unearthly noises, too, were caused by it; and the darkness was so great that we could barely see to do our experiment. I could observe Maculligan trembling with excitement. I myself, though generally stolid, was much moved.

"Are you ready," said he, taking hold of his pump and speaking hoarsely. "Then away," and down went the pistons simultaneously.

We told twelve strokes-no blood had oozed from the cut in the chest-all was satisfactory. Another twelve-a slight flushing the cheeks. Maculligan stopped, and we both took off our coats, the wind howling with tenfold fury. We resumed-suddenly the eyes closed. We went on for fully quarter of an hour.

"He is breathing," cried my companion.

Most certainly there was some slight action of the diaphragm. Maculligan suddenly motioned me to stop, and going up to the patient listened to hear the breathing. While he looked into the man's face the eyes suddenly opened, following my friend, who sprang back to his pump, trembling violently. We went on silently; the man, all the while, watching Maculligan whose hair seemed stiff, and whose face was so changed that I should hardly have known him. I myself was so astounded that I could not conceive the occurrence as real. We had never expected that there would be any recovery beyond a comatose condition.

Suddenly the man, who appeared as if recovering from chloroform, said aloud, "Lave it, 'vill you."

"Lave what?" asked Maculligan, hoarsely.

"Lave pulling that out of the ground, for sure it goes bang through the wurrld, and is clamped on the other side. It's o' no use."

"Bedad," he continued, "but ye're the rummiest eggflip iver I came across."

"Egg-flip! Eh, boy?" cried Maculligan, laughing excitedly; "You're another."

"What!" said the man, smiling with one side of his mouth, "you air a wag, you air-a kind o' wag as tells loodicrus tales to tay-totallers at taymatins, you air."

"No, I ain't now," exclaimed my friend, lifting his chin, and winking in an excited, ready-boy kind of manner.

"Wal, friend," continued the patient, "kep your 'air on, an' nobody 'ud tell you warn't a Quaker. But you're too quaky for your occupation-I tak it you're a water-works man, with that 'ere pump, eh, friend?" He then spat into the air.

"What makes you think that, boy," answered my companion, putting his tongue in his cheek, and pumping vigorously.

"Wal," returned the other, laughing roughly, "I guessed you war by your complexion. I say," he continued, winking, "you don't often git your pipes bunged in these parts by vivisections does yer-no vivisected babbies, now-eh?"

"Not I, lad, not I," laughed Maculligan boisterously.

"That's odd now ! och ! man, sure, an wasn't I a vivisector in ould Ireland, an a phesycian."

"I hope you got many of 'em," laughed the other.

"Many o' wot?"

"Fees- you said you were a feesycian."

"Wal," laughed the man, winking, "just you write that 'ere goak in ycr diary and have a dinner on the annivassery  of it, ivery year. Yes, sir, I was a physician, and, sure, an eminent one and got me thousand a year, and lived in Merion Square, bedad. But I went in for physiology-I went in for physiology, and so got ruined. I say! won't the devil give me hot for my vivisecting-for the cutting-eh? For the fastening up-eh? 'You should have taken the trouble to give chloroform,' he'll say. But I don't care a doight for the devil-eh?-till I am dead-eh? sniffiewink?"

"But what if you are," cried Maculligan, loudly. "Eh, boy, what if you are?"

"Hey? Wal, stranger, I guess you air goin' it with that 'ere pump. I say," he called out suddenly, "stop it, will you ! Every push sends a throb in me chist, you skippin' spalpeen."

The patient seemed to become alarmed. He had kept his eyes fixed on my associate; he now turned them upon me, and I saw that he recognized me.

He began to pull at his wrists and ankles, when Maculligan, not knowing what he was saying, kept on repeating, "But, what if you are dead?"

All this while we were both pumping without intermission.

"Aha!" hissed the man, his face wearing a horrible expression, "what is this? What is this? I am dead! Begorra, I died just now-I died of a cut on the head, and drank a bottle o' whiskey upon it to die drunk! Oh, Lord! I see it - ochone ! I am in hell, and I am drunk still!" He wrenched again at his wrists, screaming.

"So you are, Pat," cried my friend. "So you are."

"Ah! Lord! What 'ull they say if I come up to court drunk! Maybe I have been in court already, but was so inebriate I did not know it, and have got damned out o' hand, with never a bit of a voice in the matter."

"So you have, Pat, so you have. You were dead drunk in the dock, you were."

"Ah! krimy," groaned the man, his eye wandering down tu the instrument stuck in his chest, the stitches in his skin and the tubes leading to the pumps. "Och! St. Pathrick, I see it ! And my punishment is, to be done to as I have been done by. And you are a couple of devils, and I a vivisection; and I shall be vivisected for iver and iver, wurrld without end-Oh ! Lord-damn-damn-damn-"

'Here Maculligan inadvertently missed a stroke which caused the patient to gasp violently.

"Now, don't do it again, honey," he continued. " I 'll swear no more, purty deevil that ye are, I did not mane to chaffer ye just now-but ye're the wittiest devil, truly speaking, that I iver saw on earth, or in h or anywhere. You'll not be studyin' much on me now, will yer, dear?"

"We shall not do more than tie up your bile duct and establish a fistula in your side today, friend," said Maculligan, winking at me.

"And will you do that? Oh! crikey?"

"To-morrow we are going to lay out a piece of your mesentery under the microscope to see the blood circulate."

"Oh, sammy ! And what 'ull yer do the day arter ?"

"See how much of your brains we can slice off without stopping your thinking."

"Why, yer don't imagine I think with the pit of my stomich, do yer? One blessing yer'll have to lave it soon, for there 'ull never be a pickin' place left on me carcase."

"Not a bit of it, my dear sir," roared Maculligan, who seemed mad from excitement. "You heal up in one place as soon as we go on to another."

"Well, that knocks all hope out of me. But what are ye <loin' now?"

"Injecting you with donkey's blood to see if you will bray."

"I'll not do that, anyway, but I tell you what, I feel uncommon sharp and witty like. I'ud advise you to try a little of the same mixture. Yer not agoin' to have any alcoholic experiments on me, friend, air ye?"

"No-why?"

"Wal, yer might find out how much whuskey it 'ull take to make me drunk, anyhow, honey. O Lord!" he ejaculated, looking round, "how well I know them scalpels, directors, retractors, bone-forceps, aneurism needles and the like, and I have often done all the experiments you have mentioned."

At times the man dropped the coarser Irish brogue, and at other times used a Californian slang.

"You see," he continued, "I was a man of some eminence in the medical profession."

"And how did you lose that eminence?"

"One day I was up to the ears in thought about me theory of diabetes, when a poodle happening to bark about me heels, instead of kicking it away, sure enough I put it in me pocket, thoughtlessly."

"Well?"

"Well, that poodle belonged to the vice-queen, or the vice-royess, who offered a hundred pound for it. Now a rapscallion saw me pockit the poodle, tould a policeman, who followed me as I went home one day, entered me house, got up to the laboratory and found the identical poodle with a pay in its fourth ventricle, and a pin in its curvickle ganglion. They had me up for dog-stealing, jist as I had complated me work on the subject in hand, and instid of putting me in the Royal Society, put me in a common prison. When I got out I took to drinking and went to America and the dogs; and I've got there now, begorra !- Yer will not give me chloroform, thin, honey; or a gin-cocktail now? Be Jesus, how the devils are howlin' round about!"

During this extraordinary conversation the wind had risen still more, and the turret was plainly felt to rock to and fro. The evening, too, began to hasten in, aided by the black, scurrying rack that obscured the sky. We had been toiling for more than an hour, having to keep time like rowers. My arms were getting tired, and I was profusely perspiring. Maculligan was shouting and laughing like a maniac or drunkard, his face bloated with exertion and his long light hair hanging over his eyes. Suddenly I cast my eyes on the thermometer in the bath which maintained the heat of the blood at the necessary 100°. It stood at 97·4°. The fire in the stove was getting low.

I said: "The fire is getting low; it must be replenished."

 "You pile it up then," said Maculligan; "we must both leave off together."

At a signal from him we both ceased pumping and I, who was nearest, rushed to the stove, knocked the lid off and poured in, in my haste, the whole scuttle full of coals. When I returned the patient had fainted: we immediately resumed.

I said: "He was nearly out then, Maculligan."

"Wot's that?" muttered the patient, coming round. "Tarnation take you deevils, ho\V did you gumption that my name was Maculligan ?"

"Is that so?" inquired Maculligan.

"Is that so! I guess it is-Josephus Maculligan av Maculligan Castle, County Lietrim, son av old Maculligan av the same, and be damned to yer !"

No sooner were these words uttered than my companion uttered the most horrible yell I ever heard.

"You are my brother," he shrieked; "Ha! ha! look at this!" showing the long scar on his face. The patient's jaw dropped, and he struggled violently; but when my friend relaxed the speed of pumping he fell back, and began to groan.

"Oh ! oh ! Is it me brother they have put to plague me, me twin brother, who I knocked about and gashed down the cheek because he was after bein' five munutes older than myself and had got all the proparty? Ye are not dead, Pathrick dear? Ye are no ghost, avic? Ye will not tormint me though your father and me druv you to Ameriky?"

"No, no," shouted Maculligan. "I am alive! You are alive ! We are all alive ! I am surgeon of the Snogginsville Infirmary. I have made an invention for reviving the dead by means of injecting hot, fresh blood into his veins. I required a case for experiment, which had merely bled to death. You were the first that presented. If we leave off pumping for five minutes, or the stove goes out, letting the hot water cool, the blood will clot in the machine and you will die immediately."

I cannot describe the face of Josephus Maculligan during this recital. He burst forth into oaths, upbraiding his brother for attempting such an experiment, and shrieking for help. But the wind out-shrieked him. He prayed and cried alternately. My arms were getting intensely tired, and my back was aching, owing to the necessary stoop of the body. Suddenly the setting sun, which was almost touching the horizon, gleamed out from the clouds, and poured a red glow on Patrick Maculligan's face. I shall never forget its expression: he seemed to have become more like an ape than a man. His face was turbid and red; his mouth drawn back at the corners, showing all his teeth and the very gums. His tongue hung out, the large veins of the throat and forehead stood prominent, the long scar on the cheek glistened white, and seemed to have contracted in length, drawing up the upper lip, and showing the canine tooth of that side. His necktie and collar had burst open, and he panted quickly like a dog; while his eyes, round and lidless, glared on his brother, not with anger or fear, but without any expression at all. The one beam of blood-red light, streaming in from the window seemed to rest upon him on purpose, and, as it were, moved and twined amongst his hair. He alone was visible: all the rest of the room was dark; for the ray, after touching him passed into the workshop beyond. I could see that his hands which were working the pump were swollen and veined.

He said: "You have wronged me. We are twin brothers, and I being the weaker should have been protected by you, rather than bullied. We both loved Lucy Hagan ; but she preferred me. One day I said: 'I have brains; I don't want the property; I will ask Lucy to marry me, and we will go to America!' I went to ask her passing through a wood. You were there felling trees. You threw the hatchet at me, saying: 'I'll knock the Polly Beloy dear out of you!' The steel cut my cheek. A week afterwards I presented myself to Lucy. She said she would think about it, and in the evening sent me a refusal written in French and a hymn-book with her favourite hymns marked. She informed me that she was going to marry you. I called upon her to thank her for the hymn-book, and murdered her on the spot. I then proceeded to America when I heard that my father was found dead in bed. I said: 'My brother Joseph has murdered him.' Both of us being murderers, it was natural enough that we should go a step further and become vivisectors, and this is our punishment."

"Wal," returned the other, spitting into the ray of light, "I guess I'd rayther be you than me in this here investigation of nature. You are payin' interest and principal together of that 'ere loan across the cheek I gave yer. If yer cannot kep up that elber-jiggerin work much longer, I will be much obleeged if you will ax someone to come up and relieve yer, and bring up a drop or two o' somethin' cooling, cas I am feeling tarnation warrum."

"If either of us stop for two minutes you are dead, clear; and there are no more donkeys in the establishment," answered Patrick. "It won't do for only one to pump, because that will burst up your vessels. And it won't do to call, because no one will hear. It would take at least four minutes to get to the occupied wing of the building and back and by that time clots would be sure to form, any one of which getting in your brain would kill you slick."

"Wal," asked Josephus, "and cud not both of you go and divide the distance atween yer? I am getting as hot as a tay-pot."

Looking at the thermometer in the water-bath of my pump, I observed it stood at 102°. The fire in the stove, drawn by the violent wind, was beginning to roar through the heap of coals.

"Turn on the cold water," said Patrick.

It came from the tap with a gush, then stopped-the water-pipe had been broken by the storm. The thermometer was rising-if it passed 120° the blood would be heated to the same temperature, and would certainly become coagulated, or would coagulate the nervous matter of the patient. We left off, and I rushed to the stove- the poker and shovel had both been sent to be mended. The patient was gasping.

"If you stop me circulation again, yer spalpeens, I'll skin yer," he said.

We resumed. The light had left Patrick's face, but the stove glowed out in the darkness, and we heard the roaring of the flames. Patrick was staggering like a drunkard, and breathing stertorously. His tongue was hanging further out; the corners of his mouth were dra¥.'tl more and more backwards; and at every stroke he pulled, his ears twitched. In my hands there was no feeling left, for as said before, the pumps were very stiff. I pushed and pulled mechanically; there was a dead pain at my heart; I could think of nothing, my eyes were glazed; all I saw was the thermometer slowly rising. Josephus was struggling and howling.

"Arrah, now," he cried, "ye're running fire into me. Lave it will yer. I guess I'll get up and pummel yer both."

We stopped for a second, when he yelled out, "Go on yer hell-sparks, or I'll report yer behaviour to the deevil. O Lord," he groaned, "here's faver and no ague."

The thermometer had reached 106°.

"Wal," continued Josephus, "this 'ull put me in the very best trainin' for hell cud be imagined. I shall ask for a place as head stoker after this, for I shan't flinch at no fire agin."

Patrick tried to speak but could not. The flames in the stove shot up through the coaling-hole at top. The thermometer stood at 108°, a temperature seldom reached by the most violent fevers.

"Josephus said, "I poisoned me father with opium and drove me brother to murder his sweetheart, but they ought to let me into heaven arter this, for it's punishment enough sure. It's plaguey hard on a poor boy to make him die twice -to make him pay over agin for his ticket to tarnation. Ah ! lads kep it up, lads. Though ye're a runnin' the red-hot blood o' ten thousand jackasses biled in the boilers av the cintre of the wurrld into me Ah-orta, kep it up! Though ye are a sweatin' away yerselves, till there is nothin' left av yer but yer skilitons, and a little ile in yer boots, yet kep it up, lads, kep it up! Brayvo, brayvo ! oh! but the warrmth-the warrmth ! I'll tak me whusky cold, I thank you. Ice ! Thanks, I wull jist tak a limp o' the same."

He then ceased talking and struggled violently. The last he said was, "Good-bye, Pathrick; I'll vivisect yer, t' other side o' Jourdan!"

The thermometer had reached 116.5°. The howling of the wind was awful. Patrick was rolling from side to side. The perspiration ran down over my eyes. I could not feel my arms below the shoulders. Patrick suddenly drew in his breath sharply, gave a yell, threw up his arms and fell on his face. Josephus by a last effort wrenched his arms loose, sat up, clutched at his throat and fell back. At the same moment the storm blew in the window with a crash. In came the tempest and rain, a spiral of flame shot up from the stove, and I was hurled to the ground.

It was morning when I woke. The stove was out and Patrick sleeping soundly. I could not stand, nor move the arms below the elbows. As best I could I crawled downstairs for assistance.

Josephus Maculligan was stone dead, and was soon buried. Patrick lives, but he is demented and suffers from attacks of epilepsy. I am myself quite well.

(Signed) WILLIAM SILCUTT.

Such was the remarkable manuscript I read, and I may well be believed when I state that so great was the horror of vivisection which I derived from the perusal of this account of the impaling and exhaustion to death of living beings, that I took to collecting butterflies in the summer, and hunting in the winter, neglecting the medical profession altogether. After the death of Silcutt and Maculligan, I related the story to the President of the Club for the Total Abolition of Vivisection. He asked me down to the country branch of that club, where I was to read the manuscript.

After our interesting pigeon battue, where more than two hundred birds were killed, we dined. I then read the work; which filled the members with such horror that they passed forty-five resolutions upon the spot, and finished the day with an oyster and white-bait supper. I am sure that the reader who believes this atrocious and fearful tale cannot become anything but a Total Anti-vivisectionist.

Episode 44.4 transcription - P.D. James - "The Children of Men" (1992)

(listen to episode on Spotify)

(music: low ambiance)

PD James biography, non-spoiler discussion

Gretchen:

Hello everyone, this is Chrononauts, a science fiction literature history podcast. I'm Gretchen, joined by my co-host, J.M. and Nate. This episode is covering the family and fertility with this segment covering the novel "The Children of Men" by P.D. James.

To hear about EM Forster's "Little Imber", Judith Merril's "That Only a Mother" and David Keller's "Onto us a Child is Born", please check the previous segments for discussion on those.

Born in 1920, Phyllis Dorothy James White was the eldest of three children, the other two being her sister Monica and her brother Edward, named after their maternal grandfather, Edward Hone. Both he and James's paternal grandfather were schoolmasters. The former was the headmaster of the choir school, later the pilgrim school, and the latter worked for a period for the British and foreign bible society. The religiosity of her grandparents as well as her parents own religious beliefs and fondness for church music meant that it had a significant impact on James's life and her work, which we will definitely be seeing a little later on.

Nate:

Yeah.

JM:

You can kind of tell the kind of upbringing she had from the book that you read.

Gretchen:

Yeah, it made quite a bit of sense reading about her, it clicks when you're reading the novel. James's father, Sidney James, left school and joined the patents office by the age of 16. He met Dorothy May Hone and married her during the First World War in 1917 while he was an officer in the machine gun corps. James writes that her mother was 25 at the time, an age at which in those days a girl was beginning to feel that she might miss her chance of marriage. That's nearly my age and I don't know, I'm not even close to thinking about marriage.

Nate:

Yeah.....

JM:

I don't know that she and Judith Merril would have got along with these kinds of stuff.

Gretchen:

I think they were pretty different people. James's mother eventually was admitted for a time to full-born mental hospital, though James couldn't recall when. She wrote of her sister Monica being apparently completely in the dark about what was happening. She said that no one had ever explained to her what had happened. "I had merely told her and Edward one morning that I was taking them for a long walk. When we returned, mother had disappeared." Monica didn't see her for nearly two years and wasn't even told what had happened to her, which is an incident that feels very impactful in "Children of Men". There's something that just feels very reminiscent of that.

James attended Cambridge Girls High School from 1931 to 1937, having to leave school around 16 and join the workforce as her father had done. While she was in school, she earned her first appearance in print after winning a short story prize and getting her piece published in the school magazine. Her first job was at the Income Tax Office in Ely, which she found to be disastrous. Early though, she took up a job as an assistant stage manager at the Cambridge Festival Theatre. It was while she was working there that she met her husband, Ernest Connor Bantry White. Connor was attending St. Catherine's College, earning a medical degree. They married in 1941. As it was required to gain parental consent if either the bride or groom was under 21, they did so on August 8th, just five days after James came of age. They had two daughters. Claire was born in 1942 and Jane was born in 1944.

After becoming a qualified doctor, Connor served with the Royal Army Medical Corps during World War II. Stationed in India, he often sent food to James and their children, as of course food was scarce at that time. James herself also studied medicine during wartime, working as a Red Cross nurse. She continued in this field once the war ended, serving as a principal administrative assistant at the Northwest Regional Hospital Board from 1949 to 1968. This was in part also fueled by the need to support herself and her daughters, as Connor returned from service suffering from intense mental illness. He was admitted into mental hospitals regularly until his death in 1964.

In the fall of 1962, James published her first novel, "Cover Her Face". Not only was it her first novel, but it was also the first to feature a recurring character in a number of her later works, the detective Adam Dalgliesh, named after a school teacher she had in her youth.

On choosing her pen name, she stated,  "one of the questions I am often asked after signings is whether I deliberately chose to write under the name P.D. James in order to conceal my sex. Some questioners actually assume that I thought it was an advantage to be mistaken for a man. This certainly never entered my mind and I am grateful to have been born a woman, perhaps more from an innate positiveness rather than from any careful weighing up of the relative advantages and disadvantages. But I would certainly never dream of pretending to be other than a woman. Not only would this be pointless since the truth becomes known fairly quickly, but women are generally well regarded as crime writers and only a minority of readers would reject a book because they dislike the sex of the author, although I have to admit I have known cases. My memory is that when the manuscript was ready to be sent off to an agent or publisher, I wrote down Phyllis James, Phyllis D. James, P.D. James, and decided that the last and shortest was enigmatic and would look best on the spine."

After the publication of "Cover Her Face", James would write more than 20 other novels over the rest of her life, as well as multiple short stories and a couple of nonfiction pieces. Besides very few exceptions, these works were nearly all in the crime and mystery genre, which earned her the nickname the Queen of Crime. She did continue to work outside of writing. After her position as assistant on the hospital board, she served fittingly as a member in home office of both the police department from 1968 to 1972 and the criminal policy department from 1972 to 1979 when she retired. After her retirement, though, she still served as a justice of the peace in both Willesden  London and Inner London, a chair and president for the Society of Authors, and a member on the board of the British Council. She died on November 27, 2004, at the age of 94.

As previously mentioned, there are only a few works in James's bibliography that stand out as works not dealing with the crime genre. One of them, of course, we'll be talking about tonight. James published "The Children of Men" in 1992. Regarding it, she wrote, "and nearly every festival I get asked about my novel The Children of Men, either during question time or at the lineup for signing. This novel, which is totally different from all my other work, didn't begin with a setting but with a review I read in the Sunday Times. The book reviewed dealt with the dramatic and so far unexplained fall in the fertility rate of Western man. Apparently, young men today are only half as fertile as were their fathers. The reviewer pointed out that, of the millions of life forms which have inhabited our planet, nearly all having time died out or were destroyed as were the dinosaurs, man's span on Earth is as the blinking of an eye. I began to imagine what the world would be like and more specifically what England would be like, a quarter of a century after a catastrophic year in which the human race was struck by universal infertility. For 25 years, no one would have heard a baby cry or heard a child laugh. This idea for a dystopian novel was not in itself original. A number of novels explore a world in which mankind knows itself to be dying. The Children of Men ends on a note of hope but was traumatic to write and I was glad at the end to return to the less depressing ambience of classical detective fiction. The novel was not intended to be a Christian fable but that, in fact, was what I wrote. It is also different in technique since the whole story is seen through the eyes of the single character and the structure is linear, the plot moving strongly to its dramatic conclusion. This is the only one of my novels which has not earned its advance, a depressing and somewhat demeaning thought, but it has produced more correspondence and more controversy, particularly in theological circles than any other novel I have written."

JM:

So I'm definitely interested in checking out her older mystery novels after reading this. I mean, I do like, I guess it's kind of the generation following, but I do like these like kind of British mysteries. I mean, I like American crime fiction probably from the 40s and 50s more than most people do but I also have time for those classic British mysteries. Ruth Rendell. I don't know, I'd say she's a favorite but I've enjoyed quite a few of her books. I guess she's more like 60s and 70s and beyond but she definitely has a little bit of that feeling but I feel like she's more, I don't know, I can't comment on the PD James mysteries because I haven't read any but if judging by this book, I would say Rendell's a bit more like conscious of how the other half live, you know what I mean? I feel like this is a very narrow look at a significant problem but I think once you get used to that, it's cool, it's good and it's enjoyable that way but it took me a bit to adjust to because the book was not really what I was expecting.

Nate:

No, it definitely wasn't what I was expecting either.

JM:

Yeah, I didn't like everything about it but I enjoyed it overall.

Nate:

Yeah, I'd say I enjoyed this too. It doesn't really get to religious polemic territory but it comes close a couple times and there's a couple of like weird things that she seems like oddly hung up on and it's just like alright, alright, fine but I think overall it has a really good mournful tone to it that I really liked and, it is very British and it reminds me and just in feeling of this one record, David Cain's "The Seasons" that was like a BBC 60s Radiophonic type thing where it's like the cottage overgrown with ivy like nostalgic for a time that you never lived in type thing.

Gretchen:

Yeah, I definitely have some conflicted feelings about certain things in this work but I do like the overall tone, I do like the overall style of the work, I like the kind of melancholic feel that it gives you at times. I have a different experience I think than both of you because I had seen the film beforehand and I know that both of you hadn't seen it, correct?

Nate:

Yeah.

JM:

So there was a feeling that I got from this book like a lot and I want to see if you guys agree with me but maybe you don't but this is to do with the mournfulness that has been mentioned at the melancholy and everything else. This feels like a book written by an old person, like this is very much an old person's book.

Nate:

Yeah, yeah.

JM:

It feels like, I don't like reading this stuff into the science fiction that we do sometimes but it almost feels like the infertility that she is talking about is a metaphor for something she's feeling herself. I mean it's very curious the way this is written so significantly unlike anything else we've been talking about and yeah my opening talk was very general, I'm no biologist, I don't really understand how you can transform a tail cell into a sperm cell or an egg cell or anything like that but this book doesn't talk about science at all, like there is almost no mention of science anywhere in this book. There's talk about like sperm testing because it's the men who are infertile but other than that there's nothing and it's just so weird that being absent from the story. Like the first thing when she describes exactly what's happened and you know that the animals are fertile so the first thing I would have thought would have been, okay some scientist has got to look at the primates and see what is the defining factor that differentiates humanity to the point where the humans aren't giving birth, the dogs and cats are, are the monkeys giving birth.

I don't know, it's the whole way this is done is so focused on the problems of the characters. It's like really astonishing to me almost, like it's such a narrow way of looking at this problem but it kind of works.

Nate:

Yeah, I like the approach a lot actually and it differs from the film and Gretchen like you were saying I'm sure you had a very different experience with this novel than both JM and I did because you're coming to this from what you said you've seen it multiple times, right? You said it was one of your favorites?

Gretchen:

I wouldn't say it's a favorite. I did enjoy the film quite a bit. Well, I first watched it about a decade or so ago on my own and then I rewatched it fairly recently for one of my courses where we discussed it in relation to like biopolitics which was a really interesting course and it gave me a different perspective on the work. And I think that that's what's really interesting is it does kind of focus more on some of the social issues because we hear about them in the novel. They do talk about the impact that it's had on like political and social structures.

Nate:

Yeah, definitely.

JM:

Right.

Gretchen:

But I do feel like the point of the novel is much more on the individuals and like the feelings like that melancholic feeling and like the hopelessness and the despair that they feel. Where I think in the film there's a little bit more depiction of that social and political unrest than what's shown in the novel.

Nate:

Yeah, like the first whole book of the..., the first book of the book, I guess, is a melancholy character drama and it doesn't really get into like adventure book mode until the second half. And I really like how she put this whole setup here of what's going on in the head of our narrator Theo and how she interleaves both chapters of his personal diary and the third person narrator. It's just a neat way of presenting the story to us because we get really deep into Theo's head in a way that the film just never shows us. I guess we'll talk more about the film when we finish talking about the novel. But I was kind of surprised at how vastly different the approaches to the same source material were. And I was kind of expecting the film, I guess, to be more adventure-y and I kind of expected the novel to be a little less so, but I just was not expecting the amount of character moments and interpersonal relationship stuff that we get here because that's basically the entire first half of the novel is that kind of stuff. And I think she does handle it well. There are points where it does feel very like soapbox-y, complaining about the youth and all that kind of stuff. She keeps harping on government ownerships of porn shops.

Gretchen:

There's just definitely some quotes about that from the diary where she's very, this is what the sexual liberation is wrong. There's some moments where it's like, oh, this makes sense. This makes sense that you would write "Children of Men" and some of the moments in "Children of Men" come from this.

Nate:

Yeah, I'm just kind of imagining the logistics of the government-operated pornography store is kind of funny on a its face.

JM:

It's like, well, hey man, they do the liquor stores here, all the liquor stores are government run, so, you know, why not?

Gretchen:

Also, I mean, just the general disinterest in sex and sexuality and of course, you know, after reading "Little Imber", I'm like, what about gay sex? Like, they kind of mention same-sex, like there are more people who are in same-sex relationships, she mentions at one point, but it's like people haven't always had sex to reproduce. And I don't think that would mean everyone would suddenly not want to have sex anymore.

Nate:

Yeah, it's a very odd way of looking at it for sure, and the idea that like pornography is what's going to stimulate that and bring that spark back is, again, a very odd way of looking at things.

JM:

Right.

Gretchen:

Yeah.

JM:

In general, I think, yeah, I have really complicated feelings about this and I hope I'm going to articulate everything all right, but in general, I feel like this is a pretty conservative book, like if it feels, I don't know, if it feels like a lot of it does have this, what's the world coming to, what are the kids today going to do kind of feeling to it? And I think the issues, and I think it's all right to talk about the film now because the film is kind of famous and Gretchen, you started with the film, Nate and I didn't.

Nate:

Yeah, I'd imagine most people would be coming to this first from the film because I had first heard of the film long before I knew it was a book. The film was very, very well acclaimed when it came out and I just didn't see it, but I knew multiple people that were like, yeah, "Children of Men", that was a great movie. And I was like, all right, fine, you know, I'm sure I'll see it someday. And well, I did.

JM:

An interesting thing happened to me then. I mean, I, both you and I, Nate, came to the film second and I watched the film. And I, it's weird because the issues that I have with the book, I can tell that the creators of the film felt the same and they wanted to fix that. But the film didn't really work for me. And I think maybe it's because, yeah, by then I already had an idea of what "Children of Men" was set in my head. And I sort of came to terms with it, you know, I'm kind of like, yeah, it doesn't cover all the issues that I think that a book like this maybe should cover. But the Xan/Theo character drama is really good.

Nate:

Yeah.

JM:

And that's kind of what I feel is the centerpiece of the book. I hate the romance in the book. I don't think it works at all, but... 

Gretchen:

No, no, no, I don't, I don't like it. I have a lot of issues with that and I have a lot of issues with I look, we can get into this a little more. But I just have to, I don't like the whole relationship with Theo and Rolf and their weird little competition that they have.

Nate:

Yeah.

Gretchen:

I despise that.

JM:

Yeah, we'll get to it, I'm sure, but like there's one part where Theo is meeting with Miriam and like Miriam's like, well, she's starting to love you and as like, oh, I didn't really see that. And all I see is him thinking what she should be like and she's barely talked to him at any point during this book and all right, all right, that's what Miriam says. She's starting to, I mean, I guess that's what he wants. So good. Right. Good for him.

Gretchen:

All I've seen is Theo belittling her every single time that they meet and her trying to defend herself.

JM:

Yeah. Yeah. And it's just so funny because I can see the process. I can see the people who made the film, read the book, sat down around a table like a movie making committee with a whole bunch of executive producers and said, all right, we have this property, we could do what we want with it. I think we should throw the whole story out and just start with some very... like the things they decided to keep in were so weird and kind of surface level... like not really surface level, but like, I don't know. For example, it starts with the same incident that the book reports where the youngest person in the world has died, right?

Nate:

Right.

JM:

And it's like, okay, that's there. But the Xan/Theo relationship is completely gone. Jasper is just some old hippie guy that he used to know. Like he's an activist and not the advisor to the state. So it changes the whole nature of the story. Like, yeah, he's old and cynical. But he used to be a firebrand and used to be like, I don't know, I got to be honest, I feel like the movie was pandering. I didn't like it very much. I think it just changed the story too much for me because I had reached that point where I'm like, yeah, I'm not sure about this lady's book entirely, but I'm willing to go along with it and the mood is good. And I don't know, the last half of the book or the last quarter of the book, I really raced through because I wanted to see what would happen and I don't know, I see why they made the movie that way because yeah, they fixed a lot of the classist stuff. They included more of the issues that people would think were important like, okay, what's the deal with the immigration? What are we going to do about this? Like, you know, let's show that and let's show more people of color and let's show like all that stuff. And I get that. And I, I understand why they did that.

But again, it's the thing of the two mediums, right? And I don't know, the more you kind of get exposed to TV and films, especially like ones with a lot of budget and big name actors behind them. And you kind of realize that, oh, you know, they do have to, they do have to play to as much of their audience as possible. And I kind of feel like PD James didn't have that feeling. She just wrote this personal book expressing her melancholy feelings about aging and about the lack of ability to continue on in this world and everything drying up and becoming sad and blowing away. And to me, that's what "Children of Men" is, and it ends with a message of hope, yes. But there's no reason for that. There's no heroism behind that. There's no, it just happens completely out of nowhere. It's like there's no, there isn't even any knowledge that this could be happening to anybody else in the world, right? The new baby is born at last. Who knows why it just happened, right? There's hope. Hang on. We can still do this.

And I don't know, I did appreciate that in the end, despite like sometimes throwing my hands up and being like, oh, you know, she's, she doesn't like young people. That's her problem, right, like, but it was a really interesting experience reading the book and coming to the movie and kind of like, you know, I had such a weird thing because Michael Caine is in the movie, right? And I was thinking, oh, he's got to be Xan, like there's no question, right? Only to find that he's not even in the story. I don't know.

Nate:

Yeah. I mean, it speaks a bit to the nature of the difference between making film and TV, I think, whereas a film, you have basically have an hour and a half to spend with the viewer. So a lot of the in-depth characterization stuff and backstory, it's difficult to bring across the same level as James does in the novel where... 

JM:

I agree with that, but I don't think that necessarily giving more material, more content solves the problem. I think that what I would have done if I'd made this film is actually double down on the things that James wanted to focus on and being like, yeah, this is a character drama between two men who were growing up in an apocalypse.

Nate:

Yeah. Yeah.

Gretchen:

I will say that P.D. James actually did approve of the film and did enjoy the way that it was adapted.

Nate:

Yeah. I'm kind of curious as that whole process, I don't, I didn't get a chance to look at any of the potential extras on any of the DVD or blue-ray releases, Gretchen, did you take a look at any of that stuff?

Gretchen:

I do not have a chance to check out any of the behind the scenes. I really only had a chance to really like kind of skim through the film again to remember it, just because I ended up coming to it a bit late.

Nate:

Yeah. But I don't know, I think those kind of decisions are interesting to take a look at, you know, are we cutting for time, do we want to emphasize different stuff, because the film I think is, it has a very different focus, I think, as far as how it presents the subject matter and the last half hour or so, it definitely falls into that kind of war movie like style of filmmaking.

JM:

Yeah.

Nate:

That was, I wouldn't say popular, but you know, you see it in like "Saving Private Ryan", there's obvious influences from like "Come and See" from the 80s and other war films where like you have this very big set pieces and like a lot of stuff is happening in the background where our characters and heroes are just kind of like wandering, stumbling through the scenario.

JM:

Yeah.

Nate:

We have these like mini stories being unfolded behind us and, you know, we didn't really get any details about any of that. And it's just a different method of storytelling that we never at all see once in the novel. So it's kind of interesting.

JM:

Like there's not a lot of happening in the novel, not a lot actually happens. So it's not like if they were to make the novel into a movie, they needed to add more like, it just seems like, yeah, in the film, they wanted to make it more action oriented and also make it more like, yeah, the terrorist thing is a lot more real and it needs to be a lot more real because we're in a dystopian society and it's racist and it's operated horribly by this faceless, like we don't even get to see the leader. He's not a part of the film, right? So it's just too different for me. Like if they called it something else, I might have been okay with it, but I just, I don't know.

I wanted a version of that story and I got something else, but just when I came to terms with being okay with what that story was, which took some time because yeah, it's kind of like, you know, a little bit, and it was really funny too because there was one point where, yeah, so she was talking about how things that had happened in society in like the 80s and 90s changed, I guess, the way people thought about sex and stuff like that. And leading up to the happening, whatever they called it, I can't remember the moment when, yeah, the fertility basically just stopped. And she's explaining all that and she's saying like, oh, you know, people became a lot more focused on pleasure and they didn't want to start families and there were a lot more same sex marriages and stuff like that. And I was reading "Elementary Particles" at the same time. And Michel Houellebecq was kind of talking about the same thing, but in a much more forward extreme way. And then he starts talking about somebody going to cinema and seeing "Emmanuelle" and like, and I've kind of got my wires crossed and wasn't for a second got confused about which book I was reading. And I was like, wait a minute, this feels very odd. This isn't the book I was reading, but it's just really funny how the two kind of went in parallel like that, because they were both actually, I think both written in 1992, come to think of it. So it's kind of funny that that happened.

Interesting experience. I'm really glad I read this. I don't know that I loved it, but like, especially in the last quarter, I really wanted to know what would happen. And she did some things really well, that the mood was awesome. I really enjoyed the relationship between the two cousins. That was my favorite part of the book. And I would have happily seen more of that. And like, I don't know, that's maybe that what is, yeah, if the movie had been more like BBC miniseries, maybe that was what it would have focused on more. I don't know. Maybe you're right, Nate.

Nate:

Yeah, I don't know. Sometimes it takes a little bit more time to develop these shades of characterization, even though like, not a lot of direct action is happening, and it really unfolds over like a 10 hour miniseries rather than an hour and a half movie, because there's really only so much you can develop characters in a meaningful way in 90 minutes. But you know, that said, I did like the film. I like the novel. They have different takes on the same thing. They are very different. I mean, the filmmakers could have easily changed all the character names and called it something different and not paid P.D. James a whole bunch of royalties.

JM:

And to be fair, you don't really get to know like Julian in the novel either.

Nate:

Yeah, yeah.

JM:

There's there's quite a lot of weak characters in the book, too, but yeah, I don't know. But it has a focus like it has a really specific focus. I personally don't mind that. I mean, I at first, yeah, I was like, why isn't she like she's talking about these issues. Like, these really important social issues, but she's doing it in such a roundabout passive way and not addressing anything, right?

Gretchen:

Thinking of how the film does cover what happens with immigration. The fact that again, I've watched the film first. So I do still really like the film and I do like this book for different reasons. But the fact that they just casually will be like, oh, yeah, the Sojourners that come here, they're treated as slaves and then move on multiple points. It's so it is very strange to see how that differs from the film.

JM:

Yeah. And she's not willing to commit to anything. And I think that's like, I kind of realized when I was over at my mom's place, like, she was my mom's age when she wrote this book, right? I mean, she lived a bit longer than that even to her 90s. But like, she does feel uncertain about a lot of these things. And it's reflected in the book and she doesn't, she knows, she knows that certain things are wrong and she's acknowledging it, but she's really seeing this from this like old professorial point of view almost where she's not really connecting up. There's only one scene with the Omegas, right? It's the young people in the book and there are these like savages and in a way, you can see why people would be that way because you'd be like, there's no generations coming. And now is the time to run wild because there's not going to be any running wild coming up.

Nate:

Right.

JM:

So we should be like that. But she doesn't explore anything like that and she doesn't explore the immigration thing. She doesn't get into the science. She doesn't get into like, it's just so, so focused on her specific things that she wants to talk about, which are the relationships between men, especially. There is a romance, but it's not a very good one. So I don't know. It's just like, yeah, that's, and yeah, I mean, the whole pregnancy and birth thing almost feels secondary in the book, like it's there, but it feels like a metaphor. Again, for her thing, because she's looking for hope and she's looking for a way that people can still be together in a traumatic dying world and produce something of worth, which is finally a child after years of dryness. And I think that's what it is all about. 

Nate:

Themes of rebirth and salvation and all that kind of stuff.

JM:

Yeah. And there's so much guilt in the book, guilt everywhere. It's like she poured all her 75 years of guilt into the book. So that's again, not something that the movie even thought to capture, right? So it's just such a different thing. So I don't know. I think a lot of people who like the movie a lot will be disappointed in the book because they expect something similar and vice versa. I actually learned that it was a book at the same time, like I don't remember ever thinking of them separately. So now that I have to, because I've actually experienced both, it's a problem in my head I'm having, I guess. So yeah, that's it. But good stuff. Why don't we get into what happens and we can get into some more specifics.

(music: bell chiming, fluttery ambiance)

spoiler plot summary and commentary

Gretchen:

"The Children of Men" starts in the future, the year 2021. And it starts as the journal of Theodore Faron, a history professor at Oxford. He begins this first entry with the news that a few minutes into the new year, the youngest person born on Earth was killed at the age of 25 years old. The year of this man's birth, 1995, is known by this point universally as Year Omega, the year that marks humanity's infertility. In the years that followed, there were worldwide efforts to identify its cause and find its cure. However, there has been no progress and the human race appears to be dying out. Along with this revelation, this lack of hope has come a waning of sexual desire, much to the reverse theoclames of the sexual freedom of the early 1990s. As fewer populate the Earth, England continues on under the dictatorship of Xan. How did you both pronounce it? Is it Xan? (short-a)

Nate:

Yeah. I always said Xan.

JM:

I would say Xan (long-a).

Nate:

Xan. Sure. I don't know.

Gretchen:

Yeah. I think I'll go with Xan. (short-a)

Nate:

Yeah, I think it depends on if you want to do a British accent or not.

Gretchen:

Yeah. But England continues under the dictatorship of Xan, Xan Lyppiatt, known as the Warden of England. Faron, not only a former advisor for the Warden, is also his cousin. He recounts in his diary the summer vacations they spent together at Woolcombe, Xan's family's property. He also recalls from his earlier years the illness and death of his father, prefacing it by writing, I know or think I know when my terror of taking responsibility for other people's lives or happiness began. He says that no one ever told him his father had cancer and rarely explicitly referred to him being sick. The one memory that stands out to him of his father is when he cut his finger and it became infected a few weeks before he died. He often dreamed of his father at the foot of his bed, pointing at him with a bleeding stump where his hand used to be. He claims that it was after he killed Natalie that the dream stopped.

Natalie was the daughter he had with his now ex-wife, Helena, with whom he had a difficult relationship before Natalie's death. Theo, admitting he never really loved or cared for her or his daughter like he thought he should, had never done so towards anyone in his life. They divorced after Theo accidentally ran over Natalie when she was a toddler in 1994, Helena leaving him for a man named Rupert Clavering.

After these initial journal entry chapters, James switches between them and ones in third person. In the first of the latter, Theo attends his weekly visit to a chapel, not for worship as Theo is a religious but for the choir. He runs into a common sight while heading there of a woman pushing a doll in a carriage as though or a real baby. Many women do this to cope with their inability to have children. When he gets to the church and attends the service, he recognizes a woman in the pews with him. Her name is Julian and attended one of the literature classes he was forced to take over as professor, one who sparked debate with her opinions on the works read.

After the service, Julian approaches Theo wanting to speak with him. She shares her concern at the state of Britain and she speaks of belonging to a group of people who want to change things. She has reached out to him on behalf of the group to ask if he could talk to Xan about making changes before the group commits any actions themselves. Theo is skeptical and claims he's lost his influence since leaving Xan's Council of England but he still agrees to meet the group and hear them out. Before the meeting, Theo meets with Jasper Palmer-Smith, a retired professor to whom Theo was a favorite pupil. He lives out in the country with his wife Hilda, who seems ill, with something akin to Alzheimer's, though that, Theo stays in his diary, has been relatively cured since the 1990s.

Jasper wants to move into Theo's house, which is fairly empty, though Theo, displeased, makes the excuse of Hilda not being able to climb the stairs. The two also speak of the Quietus, organized mass suicides of older members of society. Theo doesn't find it appealing, but Jasper is more amenable to the idea and claims Hilda has mentioned it. On his way back into the city, Theo sees a crowd of people waiting for Rosie McClure and Evangelist who preaches of love and comfort. Her style conflicts with the harsh fire and brimstone ideology of a previously popular preacher, Roaring Roger, who believed this universal infertility was God's punishment of humanity's sins.

A few days later, Theo meets with Julian's group in another church. Besides her, there is her husband, as well as the leader of the group Rolf, an ex-midwife, Miriam, a priest Luke, and a young man, Gascoigne. Theo tells them all, as he did Julian, that he was sure he had little sway over Xan or the council. He also points out the inadequacy of their group and their methods of security against the state police, not knowing much about religion except Luke and Julian, despite using it as a cover to meet.

Still the group tells Theo about the issues they take with Xan. Rolf is upset by the fact of his leadership, though Theo suspects Rolf might just want that power for himself. Gascoigne takes issue with the use of the Grenadiers as his private army. Luke doesn't approve of the degrading sperm testing and gynecological examinations to which citizens are subjected. Julian brings up the issue of sojourners, what immigrants have come to be called. They consist mostly of people from the Omega generation from other countries. These Omegas, as sojourners, are given no rights and essentially work as slaves for English citizens.

Miriam tells Theo about her brother, who was sentenced, as many people are, to a penal colony on the Isle of Man, where there is no governance and prisoners are left to starve. Miriam's brother was able to escape and return to her and told her about the horrible conditions of things there before the police captured him again and he was killed instead of returning to the colony which Miriam believes he would have preferred.

After hearing their complaints, Theo is not any more sympathetic to their cause. He thinks that their aims are too scattered and their ideas too disorganized, however he still wants to observe a Quietus before he makes the final decision on whether he will try to speak to the warden for them. He tells them he will leave them a simple yes or no message under a statue at a museum he frequents. If he agrees, he will meet with Julian again after he speaks with Xan.

Eventually the day of the Quietus arrives and Theo makes his way to Southwold, the town where it is taking place. It's a fairly empty deserted place out of the way of areas labeled as population centers. He watches the members of the Quietus, this one specifically for women, getting out of coaches and let down the seaside by nurses as well as band members arriving to play music as the event proceeds. The old women change into white robes for the ceremony and are given flowers to carry while the band starts and as he watches some of them sway and sing, Theo wonders if they have been drugged.

They are led to appear where two boats wait as well as a crowd of some loved ones and mostly state police are waiting. A few officials start to attach weights or shackles to the women's ankles when suddenly one woman cries out, jumping from the boat and into the water. Theo instinctively runs towards the scene, wanting to help her and as he gets closer he realizes the woman is Hilda Palmer Smith. Before he can reach her, one of the soldiers from the boat strikes her with the butt of his gun and does so again as she continues to struggle. Unconscious, she is swept away by the tide as Theo himself is hit and knocked out.

He comes to later and encounters a woman who runs an inn and lets him stay there for the night. She tells him later when he expresses gratitude that he was an answer to her prayers that he was sent to her since she had been feeling useless. He asks her about the Quietus and she denies that anything of the sort happens in Southwold, the next day he places a message of 'yes' under the statue.

Theo soon meets Xan again for the first time in three years, the first time since his resignation. He is joined by the members of his council, Martin Woolvington whose overseas industry and production, Harriet Marwood, over health science and recreation, Felicia Rankin over home affairs and Carl Inglebach over justice and state security. When Theo first sees him, he notices Xan is wearing the coronation ring, a symbol of power that Theo remarks upon.

JM:

Yeah, we see this council only the one time in the book, right? Well they come back in the end, but they're kind of like, you know, they don't say anything. But it was kind of weird because I was expecting, I was expecting them to be there a little more. But again, it's kind of like, this is her focus. These are the people that drummed him out basically, like he was, he was a part of this at one point and now he's not and now these people have taken over and it's this like nightmare situation where they have to explain himself and they're all like really cold and remote and like the way they're talking about the world's problems is all very cold and remote. Again, they've dried up and they're so detached from everything because yeah, everything is shutting down. There doesn't seem to be a lot of point to anything anymore and I guess it does make me kind of question why certain things happen, like why, why the Quietus is why the, like what's the point, right? I mean, it seems kind of, I don't know, I guess, I guess gratuitously cruel, but at the same time, like for the most part, this seems like a regime of attrition, like it just seems like it's a regime where, yeah, it's malevolent to a point, but it doesn't really have to do a lot because at the end of the day, nobody will resist. They're all going to die soon. They send people off to the Isle of Man, but for some reason, the wild Omega's don't get sent there, which is another thing that I can't quite figure out because they seem to be harming useful members of society. But again, I think it's part of her thing where she's like, yeah, the young generation is allowed to run wild.

Gretchen:

They're so indulged, you know, they are so indulged by the others that they can do whatever they want.

JM:

Right. They're a privileged class and because there's none that come after them, they're even more so now where it's like, yeah, like they can't do anything wrong and all these people are depicted as being very educated and smart, but they have this nightlife where they just go wild and hurt people and set cars on fire and stuff like that. Yeah. Anyway, we haven't got there yet, but I'm just, it's interesting.

Gretchen:

Yeah. But yes, Theo begins to voice the concerns of Julian's group as well as his own experience of the Quietus, but Xan and the others have very dismissive responses and bring up Theo's own lack of concern while he was an advisor. Why care now? He makes a mistake by revealing how much he knows about the penal colony, showing he is aware of what Miriam's brother, one of the only people to escape, had witnessed. After his failure at this meeting, Theo leaves, but is joined by Xan, who speaks with him individually.

Xan wants to know who Theo has been talking to, who he is consorting with, to which Theo comments that these are just concerns he's overheard from people around him. Xan gives him and whoever he is speaking for a warning if they plan to go further. "I shall do what needs to be done."

Theo meets with Julian at a different museum. He relates to her what happened and that he may have done more harm than good. Julian still wants to do something to change things for the better. She wonders about approaching the warden about voluntarily being sent to the colony and Theo berates her and her group for wanting to be either martyrs or saviors. He advises her to let it go. The group isn't equipped to handle such undertakings. He asks her to at least save herself, leave the group, but she refuses, not because of her marriage to Rolf, but due to her faith in God and her duty to him.

Soon after, Theo finds a leaflet at his door from the Five Fishes, obviously Julian's group. Helena invites Theo to see their cat Matilda's new kittens, and he has tea with her and Rupert. Their discussion turns to the leaflets, of which the couple also received a copy. Helena is disturbed by the demands of the group, alarmed especially by the suggested reforms of the penal colony. Not long after this visit, Theo receives a visit from the state police about the leaflet. This he learns is because the Five Fishes have started to commit more direct actions, specifically the bombing of ramps used during the Quietus ceremonies, and the circulation of the pamphlets among the sojourners.

Theo of course denies any affiliation with the people performing these acts, even though his connection is clearly very likely. Once they leave and he recounts the meeting in his journal, Theo is concerned especially about Julian, even as he feels annoyed at them for getting him involved. The final chapter and diary entry of the first part is Theo writing of meeting Julian by chance and cautioning her again and telling her of his address in case he is ever in trouble and needs his help. He concludes though by announcing his plan to leave England for a while and travel to get away from his troubles, regretting his decision to share his address.

Nate:

Alright, so book two, Alpha, opens up with a bit of a time skip where Theo returns from Europe in September without any hassles, though his European trip is a bit unventful.

JM:

Yeah, it's a pretty depressing trip around Europe it sounds like. Nothing really happens, it's boring and he stops it. I think this is when he stops his diary too.

Nate:

He has one entry later, but yeah, yeah, the prominence of his diary entries in the first part definitely is reduced in the second part for sure. But yeah, I guess one highlight of his European trip is the Pieta and the Vatican by Michelangelo. So it's nice to see that's still there. But upon his return Oxford feels like nothing has changed and everything is stale like a sealed container that had been unopened for years. There has been however increased dissident activity, there are the disruptions of the Quietus rituals, and even talk of recruiting the convicts from the Isle of Man to depose the warden.

Theo's recurring nightmare comes back. This time it is Rolf screaming, "you've killed Julian, you've killed Julian", and he's pounding his fists on a car. It's Luke this time that is the one with the bleeding stump, and after the nightmare he goes for a walk to Binsey Church to find that the parson is being carried out in a coffin and the premises have been all disrupted and are disheveled and vandalized.

That night Miriam comes knocking and tells Theo that Gascoigne is captured and the group has gone on the run. Julian has sent Miriam to fetch Theo and he is to meet them at the chapel at Widford with his car as surely the SSP has Rolf's license plate and has made a note of it. Time is of the essence as while security's focus is not yet on Theo it will be very shortly so they have to get as much supplies as possible as quickly as they can which also includes Theo's diary before heading off.

On the way to the car they catch some Mozart playing in the street and off they go in a fashion that still respects the speed limit. Gascoigne was caught two hours ago trying to place explosives and blowing up the piers disrupting the Quietus isn't exactly subtle. He never called back when he was supposed to have completed the job and Luke went around looking for him which is also not very subtle of him.

Theo demands that Miriam tell him who they are. Gascoigne is a truck driver who learned explosives from his military father. Rolf is an electrical engineer. Luke used to be a priest of the old variety no longer in favor. Miriam was a midwife and Theo demands to know their fish-like code names which they reveal and Theo thinks it's all very silly amateurish job.

JM:

Yeah he's so snobbish and critical.

Nate:

Yeah he is. I mean he's basically telling her that they're only free because the warden wants them free as some kind of controlled opposition rather than some martyrs that will gain legitimate support among the populace and what he really wants is an excuse to buttress his own authority and they're just the tool that allows him to do that.

However, something incredible has happened that makes it urgent that they act now and that is Julian is pregnant.

This seems completely ridiculous and Theo doesn't believe her at first after all it used to be a common delusion after the Omega generation but Miriam is a midwife and has confirmed her pregnancy. She was working in a hospital when birth stopped and will be there when they resume.

They arrive at the village which is deserted and Miriam says that Julian and Rolf parked their car about a mile away from the chapel and walked on foot through the woods to remain unseen. The scenes of the village and chapel bring back to mind a college memory of Xan who says that he'll join the army and maybe later enter into politics and Xan will be able to distinguish himself just as Theo will under the guidance of Jasper all while saying this with this extreme hint of jealousy in his voice, perhaps the underlying motivation for his actions the entire time.

Upon entering the chapel everyone is gathered and Julian is in a cloak. "It's true Theo, feel" she says and he feels her heartbeat removing all doubts that is delusion or some medical condition like a tumor. Theo says she needs to go to a hospital but they all want Miriam to deliver the baby for fear of the warden for taking her and the child both. "If I have my baby with a warden present we shall both die" she says and their plan is to find an empty cottage or something somewhere where they can post up for long enough for the baby to be delivered.

Gascoigne doesn't know about the baby fortunately, so even if he is tortured or fed truth serum type drugs he won't give up any useful information and Theo agrees to come along with their plan feeling that he can't be responsible for her death like he was for his own child.

There is some quarreling between Theo and Rolf and Theo suggests that they go to Jasper's for supplies with Miriam joining him to go up to the house. However, when they reached Jasper's place they found that he shot himself with a suicide note in both Latin and English.

JM:

I was saying when the deaths happened in this book they were pretty gruesomely described.

Nate:

Oh yeah.

JM:

Like it's very startling you know it just happens very suddenly and she wastes no detail in describing how gruesome it is.

Gretchen:

Well this is the queen of crime.

Nate:

And he's basically blown half his head off with a mysterious note though I guess that mystery doesn't really need to be solved by our characters.

JM:

Yeah that's probably something you would see in mystery novels too.

Nate:

There are parts of the novel that do very much unfold like a mystery novel like a lot of the stuff in the first part of the book where there's like clandestine meetings at a museum to deliver like, yeah right all the intrigue and stuff.

JM:

Yeah it kind of reminded me of Helen MacInnes true the two books that I've read by her like including the one for the podcast where it just seemed like an amateur picked up on this stuff really quickly and was like yeah put it in here and write this code word and it'll be that simple.

Nate:

But yeah so I mean here we have the mystery suicide note of the Latin and English with Jasper's head pretty much blown half the way off described in yeah very gory detail but Theo takes the gun and there's one bullet left, and they find plenty of linens and food and medical supplies and it's really quite the score despite the fact that Jasper is no longer with them.

JM:

Yeah so this is a total Chekhov's gun situation because I mean you think that he could use the gun at several points later on in the book but it gets used in like the last seed right like it's specifically held for that point but he finally uses the gun and the one bullet in the gun.

Nate:

Yeah.

JM:

It's the only firearm in the entire book pretty much and it's like yeah so it's definitely she's done all this to a purpose and there's there's a certain symmetry of the way everything works that I can't help but I do admire I think and yeah.

Nate:

Yeah well the ending scene I guess we'll see is quite the poignant duel but yeah, so I guess they stock up on supplies here the security is going to be on them very very soon so they basically need to get what they need and head out, though Miriam tells him to keep the gun secret and of course he agrees, and they load everything out in the car including a paperback copy of "Emma" which is not the only 19th century novel that is mentioned in this book. "Middlemarch" and "Vanity Fair" and some other stuff is referenced to so yeah P.D. James is definitely letting us know some of her personal favorites I'm assuming, because "Emma" comes up again in a little bit. 

But they're on their way and Rolf is a bit powermad and there's this power struggle between him and Theo where Rolf declares that he must be the leader and he is really under this delusion that the people of England will naturally flock to him like a king when they see that their country can be repopulated with his seed, and how he's going to be the great patriarch and all that and yeah.

JM:

That's delusion of grandeur.

Nate:

Yeah it really is. It's clear that he doesn't really want any part of the social reforms that they've outlined in their pamphlets, but he's just really power hungry, and he's definitely cut from the same cloth as the previous revolutionaries who have ultimately betrayed the workers in the end, just another violent angry person who is just paying lip service to social justice.

Theo thinks it's all ridiculous because the warden can just knock him off whenever he's outlived his usefulness, but Rolf has completely transformed into this figure with a messianistic complex that reminds me a lot of a character from a story we'll be covering in a couple months, the Nameless One from "Under the Comet" but again we'll talk about that one when we get there a bit.

Rolf of course still insists leading in all aspects, including driving. So back on the road he's driving fast and hard over potholes and it's really rough on Julian, and through his bad driving a tire punctures and they need to change it, but they're deep in the country which is dangerous if they're seen on the road so they try to pull off the road as quickly as possible, but the sun sets to the point where they can't see what they're doing anymore, so they have to spend the night there for a daylight to reemerge. While the night passes without incident in the morning Julian and Luke have gone off by themselves to pray.

Theo and Rolf have a heated theological discussion with one another so they're battling with their wits not only their physical strength and there seems to be something more behind Luke and Julian than just Christianity. The next diary entry we get is on Friday the 15th October of 2021 and this may be Theo's last entry it's a gorgeous fall day and they're reading from Emma and generally having a very good time and Theo just needs to capture this moment because he knows there's going to be horror and hardship to come.

JM:

And it was a sweet moment.

Nate:

It was.

JM:

It was a nice moment in this, and I enjoyed seeing them trucking across the country like this seemed like they were actually starting to almost get along I guess. 

Nate:

Yeah for a little bit anyway.

But as Theo alludes to it's quite short lived. PD James is definitely very I'm sure well versed in how to write a mystery novel and how to do foreshadowing and the payoff doesn't come that much longer after it so they're back on the road but there is a downed tree in the road that's blocking their path and they have to kill the engine to move it, but they realize very quickly that it's a trap, and this is one of the few scenes of the novel that kind of make its way into the movie, but they back up the vehicle as quickly as they can and the Omegas are very very quickly on them as they were not able to realize that it was a trap quickly enough and there's these hordes of mobs of painted faces coming out at them.

JM:

Yeah that's a very different and then in the film because in the book they're like this primal force of destruction... 

Nate:

Yeah. 

JM:

That, doesn't really like doesn't really have any direction or purpose other than just to be wild. I mean, yeah, I would have I would have liked to have seen something of the last generation, like maybe if she had had one of those people be one of the group that would have been interesting, but this is all very different. This is all very, very middle aged. I don't know when I was imagining Michael Caine as Xan in the movie, I kind of thought that the Theo character would be older like that, but they definitely aged down. A lot of the from my perspective anyway, it seemed like they aged down a lot of the. Yeah, and I. Again, I don't really think that that's necessary. I think it feels like like. Anyway, yeah, also complaining about that. I feel like it's pandering. 

Nate:

Yeah, I don't know. It's interesting how the two scenes play out differently too, because I think that's one of the, I guess, probably deliberate choices they had to make of how to keep the action and suspense fresh when you're adapting from a book reader point of view. In the book here, the, you know, Omegas are more of a primal mob and they're basically just attacking the car dancing around screaming stuff and they start pounding on the windows.

JM:

Yeah, they're enacting ancient pagan rituals that will never be reenacted again by anyone in society. Yeah, in any generation, it's important that they do this.

Nate:

Yeah. And in the movie, it feels definitely very much more like a planned hit. Like they fire into the car very, very quickly and the scene is very fast and intense, whereas here it's more drawn out. So Theo is kind of trapped in the car and he's just like assessing their options. And there's only one bullet in the gun. But if he shoots one of the Omegas, they'll obviously all just descend to them and tear them to pieces. But Theo realizes that they usually just sacrifice one victim. So Theo proposes that him and Luke will distract the Omegas while Rolf and Julian can make their way to safety and thus safeguard the child.

So that's the plan and the Omegas start breaking the windows of the car. And in one of the dancing lulls, they all run out of the car in different directions and Theo distracts them by trying to join in on their dance and just basically attract all the attention to him and away from Rolf and Julian who are running away but are grabbed by one of the Omegas who just like latches onto Julian's cloak and Luke pushes himself forward demanding that he be taken instead. And he is indeed taken and it's horrible. The mob all descends on him and basically just horribly beats him to death and the rest of them all get away in this chaos of screams and breaking bones.

I think it was an interesting choice that in the film version, Julian is the character that is killed. In the book, Julian is the one bearing the child where you expect her to live through this encounter if you're coming to the movie from having read the book. So I'd imagine book readers coming to the film for the first time would find that scene a little bit shocking and I'm sure the filmmakers did that on purpose to kind of maintain that level of suspense of what's going to happen in the scene.

JM:

But there's no, like, yeah, I mean, Julian is the ex-wife in the film. It's totally different.

Nate:

It is, yeah.

JM:

I don't know. I know what you mean, though. I mean, I guess, yeah, if you were expecting that, but there isn't really a rekindling of the romance between Julian and Theo anyway. I kind of more or less made clear that she's just kind of using him at this point and she's also like really into the activism and the idea of getting to the Golden Dawn project or whatever they're calling it. It's not that. Again, it's something that's not in the book, but it's like this whole idea that there is there is actually a scientific group that is trying to scientifically figure out how to make the human race fertile again, which is certainly something that's missing from the book. If you want to be focusing on like what you think maybe the book should be more broad and focusing on more of the issues involved, whereas it's more of that personal character struggle, which the movie is not.

Nate:

Right.

JM:

I don't know. I mean, again, I get it. It makes sense. But yeah, I mean, it was shocking that she got killed because she seemed to be a major character, right? But she's not even the one that's pregnant in the film. So, yeah, it's different.

Nate:

Yeah, it is. Yeah. Yeah. But I thought it was an interesting way that they handled that. But yeah, this scene is definitely very visceral. You know, it's horrible to see Luke make his way out of the story this way just brutally beaten to death and his bones are breaking and I'm sure he is in really intense pain. The Omega's light the car on fire and it blows up. So everybody else basically has to hide out in the woods until they all disperse. 

They basically decided that they have to give Luke's mutilated body a funeral. And Julian is incredibly emotional, causing Rolf to ask "whose child is it?" And of course, she reveals that it was Luke's the whole time. There's emotional talk between Theo and Julian on love and their marriage and between Theo and Miriam on religion. And they look for a good spot to give Luke a makeshift burial. Though he like falls face down and I don't know, it's not in consecrated ground and all that, but Theo reads from Psalm 90, where we get the title of our novel from and I'm just going to read the excerpt here.

And he says, "Lord, Thou hast been our refuge from one generation to another. Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever the earth and the world were made, Thou art God from everlasting and world without end.

"Thou turnest man to destruction; again Thou sayest, 'Come again ye children of men.' For a thousand years in Thy sight are but as yesterday, seeing that is past as a watch in the night.

So with all this solemnity and unpleasantness over with, Rolf departs to get another car that night and he's still gone when everybody wakes up. And Miriam thinks he's sold him out to the warden and Theo knows they have to move to stay undetected. Theo is going to go to the nearest village to steal a car and get supplies.

JM:

Yeah, Rolf realized he doesn't have the magic seed. His whole dreams are, everything is crushed now. So he's just turning himself in.

Nate:

But now Theo is going to go play criminal with his gun, much to Julian's consternation. And the village is sleepy when he arrives, but he comes across a house with a car and he figures he'll have to tie up the residents to prevent them from calling security when he takes off with it. They're an elderly couple blasting the TV program Neighbors and when Theo rings the doorbell, he says he's from the council. This gives him an excuse to break in and overpower them. The woman is in shock and panicking and Theo gets them upstairs and orders them to tie themselves up. But the couple has trouble with this whole affair and Theo's humanity really kicks in here, wanting to treat them as well as he possibly can and he doesn't want to inflict any more suffering on them than he needs to.

JM:

Yeah, this is almost surreal, like it's almost surreal how sad this whole part was.

Nate:

Yeah, but he is able to get some supplies and leaves and there's not much gas in the car and no maps, but it'll have to do and he's able to drive back to pick up Miriam and Julian. While he was gone, Julian went into labor so they need to find some place quick and Julian thinks of the cottage from his childhood by Wychwood Forest. It's near Oxford, but hopefully security will be going in the other direction and expects them to be in the far country.

The drive is tense, but they make it to a spot near the cottage without needing to fill up or attacked by the SSP or the Omega's and when it comes time to ditch the car, they turn on the radio. The news is putting out warnings for them as the woman Theo tied up did not survive the night and now they're wanted for murder. The news report says there are three of them, which is an immediate tip-off that Rolf fated to the warden in some form or another.

Theo's a bit horrified that he enjoyed power tripping over the elderly couple a bit, but a child ultimately will be born because of it. And with that, they push the car into the lake. Theo throws his diary in there with it and they still have to press on foot to the cottage with their supplies greatly diminished. And while capture seems imminent, the surrounding nature is incredibly gorgeous.

The woodshed is still extant, fortunately, and it's big enough for them to take shelter and enough wood for a fire. And they set up Julian and the baby comes quickly. A fire is started and Theo holds Julian's hand as she gives birth and it is a son. Miriam wants to stabilize Julian and then go off for supplies. Theo says she'll surely be seen, but she insists anyway on going alone, regardless and does about 20 minutes later. The baby is hungry and Miriam is still gone an hour later. Theo goes to look for her in the house and of course she's there, strangled and dumped by the fireplace.

Theo wonders why they would kill the midwife so horribly and he returns to Julian with water which she drinks and eats along with some tins of food. Finally, somebody has come, and it's Xan alone. He says he has everything on standby, the ambulance, helicopters, etc.

JM:

Yeah, and this was a really great scene.

Nate:

Yeah, I think so. This was like one of my favorite scenes in the book for sure. I don't know, I mean, I know he's a dictator and he's terrible and stuff, but I enjoyed Xan as a character quite a bit. And he was an interesting face to the institution and the society. He wasn't just a mustache twirling evil dictator, like what he was saying. I will do what has to be done and I will do what I must do, and that seems to me the principle that he operates on. And yeah, he loves power, but it's almost like it's past that point now. Power's just what he represents and what he has to do and it's like a business to him almost. And it's, I don't know, I really enjoyed these two together because it seemed like their friendship was never too far away from the scenes. And I appreciated that, even though they were at odds the entire time.

Nate:

Yeah, and this is definitely an emotional scene how it plays out too. When we did the Fritz Leiber episode, we were talking a lot about Greta Garbo and I made the mention that, you know, I haven't seen "Flesh of the Devil" and I wanted to check that out. And I watched that not too long after we recorded that episode and there was a similar scene in the climax of that movie than there is here. And I don't know, I kind of reminded me of one other and a little bit, although they played a little bit differently. But yeah, I really like the way how this scene plays out.

So Xan tells Theo that if the child is male, he'll be the father of the new race and Xan will marry Julian. And Theo of course grabs for his gun and Xan gets in a couple of cutting remarks and they both fire at one another. Xan completely missing, while Theo striking Xan in the heart. Theo takes the ring from Xan's body, places it on his own finger, and with this, a lot of people come out of the woods, both medical and military personnel. Theo declares, the warren of England is dead and the child is born. He enters the shed alone, asking Julian if she can show them.

After the people outside see the child, there's great, great weeping and rejoicing, and Julian wants to be alone with Theo and ask him to quickly christen the child. She appears to be bleeding to death. The child is christened after his father with a cross stained with tears and blood. The presumption that I got is Julian bleeds to death shortly after this. I don't know if that's the sense that you guys got from this ending?

JM:

I don't know. I didn't really get that sense. Maybe though. I mean, I don't know. That's interesting. Gretchen, did you feel that way?

Gretchen:

I didn't feel that way personally, but I do think that it is definitely something that is possible that could be hinted at.

Nate:

Yeah, I was looking up, trying to find criticism to see if people expand on this point and I didn't find any mention of it. So maybe it's just me reading into it, but I don't know. That was definitely the sense that I got both on my first read and my second read through.

JM:

I mean, it seems like now she'll have the best medical care that she can possibly have. So it doesn't really, it seems like her future might be okay, but I don't know. Yeah, it's interesting. I don't know. I mean, it was a very rough pregnancy and she didn't have all she needed.

Nate:

Yeah, I mean, sometimes it's too late. It just happens very, very quickly.

(music: dark wavy ambiance)

spoiler discussion

Nate:

But yeah, I like the ending regardless of what happens with the Julian or not. The duel between Theo and Xan was like a really great scene. And yeah, when the novel turns into adventure mode, the pace really picks up even though I really did like the first half of the novel with other character moments. It does really get suspenseful towards the end here and she's good at that kind of plot unfolding, I think.

JM:

Yeah, I really wanted to know what would happen. So I raced through the end of the book and I thought it was probably going to be not good. Like I thought, I don't know, the child would be born and it would be like, it would be that only the mother situation or something like that. I don't know. I didn't know what to expect. Like I said, I hadn't seen the film and it's too different anyway. So it's not something to base your expectations on when you read this, but I think I really enjoyed it. I just I can see why somebody might be frustrated with it because yeah, it doesn't tackle a lot of a lot of things that you would think that would be the first things to come up in the situation that's described. And there are things that are gone into in such a miniscule way. And yeah, like there's a problems with the migrant workers and stuff like that. Like we don't see any of that perspective.

Nate:

No, no, that's barely in it at all. And I mean, even the Isle of Man stuff like barely plays...

JM:

Yeah, I was sure we were going to go there at some point. Like we would be there because maybe he would be sent there or something like that. But no, we never we never go there. The Omegas is not really gone into they're just there to rough stuff up for a little while. And that's it. Right. Like it says that seems like a serious thing. Like that seems like something that should be brought up too. Like, okay, you have this penal colony where you're sending all your undesirables. Meanwhile, you have these people who are setting cars on fire and making shit difficult for people. Why aren't they being sent there? Well, it's because they're this privileged class, right? And they're this they're able to do whatever they want because they're the last generation. And that makes sense. I mean, I get why that would be a thing, but it's not really something that she's willing to explore. So it's this this is Theo's book. This is Theo's journey. And I guess the romance is important. I mean, I personally just find it frustrating. Like, there's like nothing about it that sets me apart even remotely. It doesn't make sense.

Gretchen:

I think that both the beginning, when it's setting that mood, that really melancholic tone, the diary entries, learning about Xan and Theo's relationship, that's really interesting. And I really enjoyed that. And I did enjoy the more action packed second half, but there's that middle part when it is more focused, like I said, the romance between Theo and Julian and the Theo and Ralph's whole competition over her when it's like they don't seem to even care about her at all.

Nate:

Yeah.

Gretchen:

That part made me want to stop reading for a little bit. I got I was very frustrated by that and...

JM:

Yeah. And you would almost say you would expect that to be written by a dude.

Gretchen:

Yeah.

JM:

One of our like 1940s sci-fi writers men.

Nate:

It does feel very macho.

Gretchen:

It's such like male posturing. And it's so... it just made me frustrated.

Nate:

Yeah, she should have made them had sex with each other like EM Forster did. I think that's a satisfying conclusion to that.

Gretchen:

Yeah. Yeah. Maybe that would have evened them out a little bit. I don't know. It could have calmed them down.

JM:

Right. I think there's nothing really wrong with her writing this in a very masculine way, but I just think like if she was going to do that, maybe like not bother to include the romance because, like it's just when Miriam even says, oh, she's falling for you. Really? Yeah. Why?

Gretchen:

I remember reading through the bit and feeling so bad for Miriam because she has to put up with their nonsense. I was like all poor Miriam.

Nate:

She's got to be like 30 years older than all these characters, too. So they're just, I don't know.

Gretchen:

Yeah. I felt bad for her.

Nate:

Yeah.

JM:

Yeah. Well, yeah. I mean, you know, she's the last mother and she's had this like bad relationship and then she was really affected by the priest. And they had this affection together, but then the priest died. And so, but it turns out she wasn't really in love with him anyway, either because she was already falling in love with Theo because he like challenged her in English class and stuff. I guess so. Yeah. I don't know.

But yeah, I mean, that didn't need to be there for the book to work, I guess. So I just kind of feel like, again, the people that made the famous film with all this money behind it and all, you know, these fairly prestigious actors just kind of thought like, oh, you know, we'll throw the story out and make something different. That's more appealing to mass taste. And I guess they succeeded in that. I mean, the film did really well.

Nate:

Yeah, I definitely like the film. I mean, they're definitely two different entities, but on its own ground, you know, divorced from the novel, despite the fact that they're both called "Children of Men", I guess the film doesn't have the word "the" in it where the novel does. So an important distinction there. But yeah, I don't know. I liked it on its own merits. Definitely very well shot. Well acted.

JM:

I just realized where I saw that.. Clive... What's his name? Clive. 

Nate:

Clive Owen.

JM:

Yeah, where I saw him before it was in this really, really bad movie called "Closer" with Julia Roberts and Natalie Portman that it was just like a random watch for me and it was such trash. It was really bad. So that's like, that was kind of making me laugh too. It was like, yeah, the film was of its time, I guess.

Nate:

Yeah, it definitely was. Yeah.

Gretchen:

Yeah. And I think that also is the reason why there is more focus on certain social issues than in PD James's novel, you know, I mean, this is the early 2000s. There's concern with terrorism, the war on terror that maybe they would focus more on immigration as something to be concerned about.

JM:

And what I will say for the film is that the organization, I guess the terrorist organization, you might say, they're pretty shitty like in the film, like, you know, the way they go about doing things and they kill Theo's friend, right? This is like, harmless old hippie likes to smoke pot and like, this likes his buddy a lot that seems like a really nice guy and he just gets killed for no reason, right? That's like, that's the kind of thing that's absent from the book. Like, it feels like there's no active resistance to what's going on.

Gretchen:

It's like, it's just five people in a room being like, I'm really mad about this thing that doesn't affect me.

JM:

Right. It's just like, it's everything's dying, right? This is everything's dying. What's the point in staging a coup or a rebellion? Like, it's your children are not, they're not children. So they're not going to see the fruits of your success. Might as well just live up your last few years in reasonable comfort, right? This is kind of the feeling of the book. So when they do try to mount something, it's the five fishes, you know, it's like, they're not very effective.

Nate:

No, they pass out some leaflets, they blow up a couple of docks. Yeah, not bad, I guess.

Gretchen:

They got some people's attention.

Nate:

Yeah, they definitely did that.

JM:

At least they have an explosive expert. They can blow up a few bridges and stuff. Very important part of any revolution.

Nate:

Of course, yeah.

JM:

Blowing up bridges.

Gretchen:

I still do enjoy the film quite a bit. And I think I'm biased because I did experience that first before reading the novel. I just really do enjoy the cinematography of it is really great.

Nate:

Yeah, it's definitely very well shot.

JM:

I think that's fair. I just, I guess I have this like weird thing where I'm kind of like, really on this kick lately. Well, maybe I always have been, but where it's like, I want to accept whatever the artist gives me. And I don't have to 100% be on board with it or like all the things that they're saying. But it's that that I'm accepting. And so I've kind of felt like whiplash, you know, just like this is something completely different. And this isn't not what I want. Like this is not the characters are different. The situation is different. The main characters aged down. He's like a former angry activist whose flames died out. But he's not like the former advisor to the administration that's for sure. There is no leader. There's no Xan. Like it just I wanted because I got used to that. I mean, I took it on face value that she might not be my friend. But this is the story that she's giving me and I'm happy with that. So this gave me something different called "Children of Men". Um, I don't know. I didn't really, I didn't really connect with it, but I would watch it again. Maybe. I mean, maybe it's better than I'm saying, right? Like you guys seem to enjoy it more than I do.

Nate:

Yeah, it is interesting that they gave it the same ish title. I think when we did the "Vintage Season" episode, it makes sense for them to call that movie something that wasn't "Vintage Season" because it was yeah, a fundamentally different story with a different approach, but it worked. And likewise, I think this works on its own. Obviously, if you compare it to the novel, it's going to be a totally different take away with very, very little in common, aside from the, I guess, general setting and maybe like one or two scenes that kind of make their way over. But yeah. 

Gretchen:

I am glad that one of the scenes that was kept in was Miriam talking about her experience as a midwife before everything happened.

Nate:

Yeah.

JM:

Yeah. It's almost like the concept of the situation was what, and I didn't get that. Like, I remember thinking of something around the same time or a little earlier of a situation where, I mean, as you know, one of the dozens of stories that I had in my head that I've never actually wrote down where it's like, oh, you know, what would the last if there were no more fertile humans? What would the last generation be like? What would they do? Right. I kind of thought about that. And then I realized, oh, that's already a thing that movies coming out soon. It is very different from what I imagined. But I mean, I just saw, I just got around to seeing it now after reading the book. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, the movie is a lot more realistic in the way it portrays like, yeah, there is actually some science underway to try to figure out what's going on and how we can fix it. And that's important. Like, that's, that's something that's missing from the book, right? But the book is, I really feel like it's more this metaphorical thing. More like the fertility thing, the fact that there's no births. It's not that important to the book. Like it's not really, it's, it's a general feeling of dying and how we can, how we can turn that around.

I don't know if she had grandkids, but I feel like they were maybe at the front of her mind when she wrote this book. And she was kind of thinking like, the world is getting really crazy. The future is uncertain. How is the young generation going to not lose direction and go wild? And even maybe like the whole idea of continuance of the human race feels like anathema to some. I mean, it's like back in the 1890s, people were all worried about nihilists, right? You know, they were worried about like, they're really going to undermine society. And now a hundred years later, I feel like she was kind of maybe thinking about a similar thing a little bit. Maybe it wasn't so much just the young, like maybe it's like science is going to get out of control or like, we're going to pollute the air so much that the English countryside is going to be uninhabitable, right? And that's the other thing too. This book is very pastoral. It's very...

Nate:

Yeah, definitely, yeah.

JM:

Like, yeah, it's very like the beautiful English countryside of Oxford, you know, it's like...

Gretchen:

The descriptions are really great. Like the way that she describes whenever they're, she's setting the scene in some pastoral places. It is really beautiful.

Nate:

Yeah, that David Cain record I mentioned earlier really captures that same feeling of, you know, the English countryside that's, you know, you're passing by a stone house that's 600 years old or something like that.

JM:

Right. And, you know, it's the kind of thing that I'm just kind of getting into the weeds here, but like "Lord of the Rings" from Tolkien, right?

Nate:

Yeah, totally.

JM:

Tolkien had this anti allegory stance. He really didn't want to see his book work as an allegory for anything, but especially after the movies really highlight this to an extent anyway, they drop the ball at the third movie and don't follow through, which is really annoying to me, but they highlight the fact that "Lord of the Rings" is actually in part a story of industrialization versus that beautiful English countryside, right?

Nate:

Right.

JM:

And Saruman's Empire in particular, Isengard stands for, yeah, the complete subversion of nature to an industrial cause. And at the end of the book, that invades the Shire itself. So the home of the Hobbits has now become this depleted place almost. And it's like, I guess it's part of the worry of the old upper class Englishmen, right? That women, whereas like, what if we lose all that? What if we lose all this beautiful countryside? And everything now is just gray factories and boredom and wasting away into dry, desiccated nothingness and blowing away all the wind and nothing is left of our society now, you know? It's like all this great empire that we built and threw away and squandered. And it's like, you feel, I think, remnants of that in this book.

Nate:

Absolutely.

JM:

I get it. I mean, I feel far removed from it. But yeah, I mean, I've been steeped in this kind of English stuff my whole life, too. So it's not alien to me, and I understand. And I think she does a really beautiful job of portraying this, especially in the Xan/Theo relationship. And again, like, I don't know, I mean, I think something that's become very apparent when we do this podcast is that when we read a story, there is one thing that we focus on and it's a thing that we want to follow through as the story goes along. And to me, it's that thing where there are two cousins that are related to each other. They are of the same blood. One represents the new order and one represents the attempt to retain what was lost and to, I guess, bring back the pastoralness and bring back the beauty and bring back the natural childbirth. And I think that that's really what she's doing. It's interesting. It definitely seems to play on that old English fantastic tradition. And I don't really get the chance to look at the autobiography, but, you know, I kind of wonder what she talks about in terms of her favorite books and her favorite inspirations in literature and stuff like that. And what she read and what she saw in the English countryside and so on that really got to the core of her. And yeah, maybe her worries about where things were going. I mean, they've had over 100 years of industrialization. So 1990s now.

Nate:

Yeah. Well, certainly she mentions "Middlemarch" and "Emma" in this one, which both have a lot of nice pastoral countryside scenes. "Vanity Fair", not so much in the country, but much more cutting as far as its social commentary goes.

JM:

Yeah. There's a million ways this book could have been different. And we could spend a long time suggesting how this book could have been different. But it is what it is. And I know it sounds like a platitude, but sometimes that's just how I have to roll. It is what it is. That's what we're presented with. You're either on board with it or you're not. I'm mostly on board with it. I like the way she handled this. I think that the faults that it has of not covering all the ground that you think maybe a book like this should cover are something you need to talk about when you discuss this book. Because I think that almost everybody will have expectations of this that are different than what you actually get.

Gretchen:

I think she accomplished what she set out to do in this book. Like what she wanted to focus on in this book, I think she did very well.

JM:

Yeah. Yeah. And I think if there was one thing to take away from this episode, it's probably that. That you should read this book, but don't expect the kind of story that you think you might be in for, which is some overarching dystopian novel trying to deal with world issues and trying to solve problems that are present in the world. This is a very personal story and that's what it is. It's very particular and it's not a global story. A lot of things are not talked about that you will expect to be talked about. And maybe for the first half, it'll frustrate you like it did me. I'll be like, why isn't she talking about this stuff? But once you really settle down and you're like, yeah, okay, I get it. This is a personal journey. And if I was in this kind of situation, even though I'm not an Oxford don, I would probably be similarly cut off from the rest of the world, not really knowing if there's awesome science experiments somewhere in Brazil trying to preserve the human race. Like that's just not in my purview. So I get it. It's worth reading. Worth getting to good choice for this topic.

Nate:

Yeah, I definitely really liked it.

Gretchen:

Yeah, I'm glad that because we had been between this and "Handmaid's Tale" by Margaret Atwood. And of course, Margaret Atwood's novel has been covered many, many times. So that's part of the reason why we decided on "Children of Men". And I'm glad we did because I did enjoy reading this.

Nate:

Yeah. Yeah. All right. So what do we got for next time?

JM:

We're actually going to continue along the path of medicine and biology. And we're going to broaden things up and generalize here. We're actually going to do something we haven't done for a while on the podcast and return to the 19th century for all of the following stories. And we're going to be looking at, I believe you called it Nate, "The Children of Frankenstein".

Nate:

Yeah.

JM:

And I think that's a really appropriate name for what's coming. Certainly we'll be looking more into stuff along these lines from the 20th century and 21st century in future episodes. But now we're looking at all stuff from the late 19th century. And we're doing several shorter works and a longer work again. The longer work is not very long. So everybody should have plenty of time to read all these.

So we'll be doing H.G. Wells returned to him for the first time in a few years, actually. Or a couple years anyway, since "The New Accelerator" back in 2022. But we've always intended to cover a lot more H.G. Wells. So we're going to start doing that now. And we're going to cover two things actually. We're going to cover his short story "Under the Knife" from 1896.

We're also going to be covering W.C. Morrow's story, "The Monster Maker".

We'll also be returning to another old favorite of the podcast, Edward Page Mitchell. And I have at least one more story on deck for him too. So it won't be the last time we visit this really interesting unsung master of 1870s science fiction. We'll be doing "Man Without a Body" from 1877.

We've also got Ronald Ross and his story, "The Vivisector Vivisected" from 1889. I can imagine what that one will be like. Kind of reminds me of something I read not that long ago by Brian Lumley, a British horror sci-fi writer.

Nate:

Yeah, adding another Nobel laureate to the Chrononauts author deck here with that one.

JM:

And finally, the longer work will be, again, Mr. Herbert George Wells and his classic, "The Island of Dr. Moreau". Which has been the subject of many adaptations and is hugely influential in so many sectors. And that one's also from 1896. So I think this is going to be a really good time and an interesting congruence to the theme of tonight. Definitely.

Nate:

Yeah, absolutely.

Gretchen:

I still have not read too much of Wells. "Dr. Moreau" is one I've read before, but I'm excited to read it again. I do think it's a pretty great work.

Nate:

Yeah, I haven't read that before, so I'm definitely excited to read it for the first time.

JM:

Oh, it's really good.

Gretchen:

Yeah.

JM:

And Gretchen, I know you're a fan of "The Island of Lost Souls".

Gretchen:

Yeah, yeah, that's a great film.

JM:

Yeah, that's definitely one of the closest adaptations of The Island of Dr. Moreau. Certainly, the 1990s one has some weirdness about it. I think there was one in the 70s, too. Yeah, we're looking forward to that one a lot. Yeah, I hope you guys will join us. Everybody, you can read all these stories in the public domain, actually. They should all be readily available on the internet and all your favorite devices. And of course, if you have print copies, that's even better, probably.

(weird sounds)

Oh, no. What's that? Do you hear that, guys? It's the baby crying. Whose turn is it to change the diapers? Oh, man, it's mine. All right. Well, I guess that's it for Chrononauts tonight. I got a mess to deal with. We'll see you all later, and we hope you have a great month. Good night. We are Chrononauts. We have little ones to look after. We'll see you next time.

Bibliography:

James, P.D. - "Time to Be in Earnest: A Fragment of Autobiography" (2001)