Confessions of a Technophobe, New Series 6

Having explored the facets of my life which involved Mountains, Beaches and Wildlife, I wondered what other major influences were worth writing about, I came up with books. Today, books are a dying distraction from everyday life because of the pernicious attraction of digital media. There should be room for both in every person’s life. Books are a more personal communication. You carry books around and a good book becomes a part of your life and all you have to do is open it at the right page. Digital communications do cover a vast array of subjects but with current computing systems finding what you want to read becomes a treasure hunt of the mind!

As a child, the first time books opened up a new world for me was when I discovered a series of novels entitled Swallows and Amazons written by Arthur Ransome in the 1930s. These wonderful stories featured a group of young friends who spent their leisure time on a sailing dinghy on the Norfolk Broads and the Lake District. I was filled with excitement and a large degree of envy as they adventured all over the inland waterways near their homes. Later, as I discovered that I was chronically motion sick especially on water, my envy diminished but the books opened a world of possibilities and ideas not available in everyday life.

I then went through a period as a teenager where sports preoccupied most of my waking moments and added to the real-life adventures of exploring our new home and its environs in South Africa, after the dour and rather grim days of World War Two in Britain. Before I left high school, however, I unexpectedly discovered science fiction. This opened up horizons far greater than the Norfolk Broads or the Lake District that my little sailing friends frequented.

I don’t remember the earliest SF books I read. I think they were probably H.G. Wells but, once bitten by the space bug, I soon progressed onto what became known as the Golden Age of Science Fiction in the 1950s and ’60s. I’ve commented previously on why this era was so significant for SF but it’s worth repeating. The ’50s and ’60s period was when science and technology were expanding after the World War but (in many areas) it had not yet broken through into the development of inventions that later became very much part of our lives. For example, commercial airlines were in their infancy and early jetliners were set back by the crashes of the de Havilland Comet.

The writers of SF’s golden age were therefore looking at future potential that was not yet fully realized. This enabled them to use their vast imaginations to speculate on technical developments that only years later became a reality. This made for really exciting reading with the reader dreaming the dreams of the author in the expectation that at some time in the future the postulated ideas and inventions would come to fruition.

As science and technology began to achieve what had previously been only a dream, SF suddenly became less of a dream world and more rather overly technical with stories about existing inventions. This took the sense of adventure out of them and only really appealed to the very technical-minded reader.

Wonderful writers such as Asimov, Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke, L. Ron Hubbard, Zelazny, Philip José Farmer and “Doc” Smith, all part of the Golden Age, faded away but some of their literature leaves a lasting impression. Asimov created the Laws of Robotics, which are still very much part of today’s growing concerns over Artificial Intelligence and the need to ensure that tomorrow’s computers – and more especially robots – do not start to control humans rather than humanizing computers and eventually robots. Robert Heinlein’s best-known work Stranger in a Strange Land is a fascinating look at planet Earth from the point of view of a man who was born on Mars of Earthling parents. He returns to Earth in the midst of the Third World War and sees the planet from an alien point of view, even though he is human.

Philip José Farmer’s Riverworld series is another extraordinary piece of writing. Men and women from every age come back after death and find themselves on board a river steamer plying its way to the source of the river. This allows people like Shakespeare to meet Atilla the Hun, for example, as they all journey up the river.

L. Ron Hubbard is best known for his pulp fiction stories written for SF magazines like Astounding. He wrote in the style of the writers in the ’30s and ’40s but remarkably many years later he updated his writing style with novels like Battlefield Earth and the ten-volume Mission Earth. A writer who would have been recognized as a literary genius in any other genre was Ray Bradbury. He had a unique, almost poetic writing style and was acknowledged by many who were not fond of SF to be a great writer.

When the Golden Age of SF era finally ended, I lost interest in the genre and have only read a handful of more recent works since then. At about that time I was experimenting with my own writing, mostly short stories. My illustrious cousin Vera Atkins took an interest in my writing. She had headed the English-speaking section of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) during World War Two. The SOE was a specialized group that sent spies who were fluent in French into occupied France during the war. Vera was responsible for sending two women, Odette and Violet Szabo, over to France. Odette was tortured but survived, Sadly, Violet was shot.

Anyway, Vera (born in Romania of German parents) was an exceptional person. When she settled in Britain just before the war, she made it her business to perfect her English. Meeting her, one would never suspect that she wasn’t English. In the process she read many English-language novels and decided that I should read what she considered to be fine literary works. Amongst other recommendations she decided I should read The Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence Durrell. I did so and was in awe of his writing. What the novels did was to tell the same story four times, but each novel saw the events from the perspective of a different character. His use of the English language stopped me in my tracks. If that’s what it takes to become a writer, I thought, then I’m not in the ballpark.

For a number of years, I gave up any idea of ever becoming a writer but had by then started work in television. I decided that I would rather become a director of TV shows – but in that process I further decided that I didn’t want to be stuck in a studio all my working life, so I returned to South Africa from Britain and moved into film production.

Circumstances intervened, and one day when I was a very junior director for Alpha Film Studios in Johannesburg, one of the writers ran off with someone else’s wife and left a gap in the writing department. I had been employed as a director by the general manager but at exactly the same time the owner of the company had employed a very experienced director. I was an embarrassment all round, so they asked me if I could write. The only writing visible to me at that moment was the writing on the wall, so I said “Yes, of course.” I was promptly transferred to the writing team, where I was told to write cinema commercials. South Africa only started television in 1976 so my introduction to the medium was writing for the big screen!

Thankfully, I had good creative ideas and, with enough experience from my TV years in Britain on the production side, I managed to write commercials quite easily. I’ve always been grateful for that experience. Commercials require one to tell a story in thirty seconds or sometimes a minute, so I quickly learned not to be long-winded and make every word count. Just when I was feeling secure in my new occupation, the studio owner, whom I never met, threw a second spanner in my works. His nephew was looking for a job and as I was the most recent of the writers to be employed, I was summarily fired, and the nephew put in my place. I believe he lasted six months before he was fired for the sheer inability to write.

A good friend of mine from school, Derek, was looking for someone to work on a farm he had bought until he could pack up his job as a chemical salesman and go farming as well. Fed up with the iniquities of heavy-handed bosses, I jumped at the chance, spending a glorious few months ploughing the fields and seeding them in the true biblical style of carrying a wicker basket filled with onion seeds and throwing them into the furrows.

Derek and I both played rugby for the top team in the Transvaal at the time. So it was hard physical work on the farm followed by the rather intimidating need to survive amongst the massive and hard South African players with the oval ball. Wanderers was the team’s name. In that year only three of us in the team did not have either provincial or international Springbok caps. Even Derek had been captain of the Transvaal Under 21 side. But other than my almost making the South West African side against the British Lions in 1955, I had not achieved higher honors than premier league club rugby.

When, due to our complete ignorance of actual farming techniques, our entire onion crop failed, I went back into town, finding a job as an advertising copywriter. Derek returned to selling chemicals. Once again, I had no experience with actual copywriting but managed to survive due to my creative ideas and ability to write film commercials. After a few months I saw a job as a film production executive with Lintas Advertising (originally exclusively Lever Brothers advertising but later opened to other products). As it was situated in Durban, I was also excited by the prospect of living at the coast.

By then I had re-awakened my interest in writing, which eventually led me to writing and directing documentaries and eventually writing of feature film and television series. In the back of my mind, I still felt that one day I would write at least one novel. The two South African writers whom I most admired were Alan Paton and Wilbur Smith. I had the good fortune to meet both of them.

Alan Paton is famous for his classic tale of the trials and tribulations of a young Zulu coming to Johannesburg to seek work. Apart from a fine story, Alan, who spoke fluent Zulu, managed to capture the idiom and almost poetic cadence of the Zulu language. Nothing he wrote subsequently reached the quality of his work Cry the Beloved Country which was made into a film with a young Black American actor, Sydney Poitier, in his first starring role.

Wilbur Smith and I were at school together for one year. He was in his last year and I in my first, so we never spoke until many years later when I attended a book signing of his in London. I chatted with him for a few minutes. His many novels have mostly been written about Africa and his adventures have captured readers across the world that enjoy his racy all-action style.

As I struggle with my computer, which admittedly I don’t fully understand, I cannot wait to experience the ease of using an ExoBrain system. I spend almost all my working moments these days on a computer, and I’m astounded by the things it cannot do and the so many things it should do. Despite that, I cannot conceive of not having a computer – but can of having one that will actually understand what I want it to do. The ExoBrain system will do just that. It is a prospect that gives me friendly goose bumps!