A Brave New World: The Japanese Devil Fish Girl

The War of the Worlds is a science fiction masterpiece by H.G. Wells, and do I really need to say anymore? If you haven't read the book, you've seen one of the movies, or listened to the rather superb (and in many ways emotionally and arguably narritively superior) Jeff Wayne rock opera, or perhaps you've read a comic or played the RTS game I mentioned in another blog - Either way, if you were presented with a vague, tripod like alien with metal tentacles swirling around it's flat hood like head you'd know what it is and where it came from. As such, The War of the Worlds has attracted many retellings over the years, many adaptations, but also many quasi-sequels.

I didn't really discover this fact on purpose, it was more a fact of the supposed sequels finding me over the years and not me actively looking for them, but when I saw how many there were some part of my hospital addled brain decided I needed to read them. So I'm going to share with you the results! These will be special little footnote editions of From Cover to Cover, where I take each book and examine how the two sides of the war for London town fared after the original novel, how these novels stack up as the sequels to the original they present themselves as and perhaps, most importantly, how they stack up as books in their own right. So let's get started with our first candidate, The Japanese Devil Fish Girl.

Authored by noted humourist and proprietor of far fetched fiction Robert Rankin, The Japanese Devil Fish Girl and Other Unnatural Attractions was published in 2011. It takes place a decade after War of the Worlds (at least, it says it does but in reality seems to play fast and loose with the novels time line to suit its own ends), where the British Empire has not only managed to backwards engineer Martian technology for their own use, but also signed trade agreements and diplomatic alliances with emissaries from Venus and Jupiter. The story follows George Fox, a side show Zany (he prefers the term assistant) to an eccentric show man. Their main attraction, a dead, but anatomically whole Martian, is rotting fast and they need something fresh, new and exciting to pull in the Rubes. This leads them on a quest to find the single most awe-inspiring attraction on Earth - The legendary Japanese Devil Fish Girl.

How does mankind fare in this world post alien contact? As it turns out, extraordinary well. The novel most certainly presents us with a situation where man is on top again, or at the very least, the British Empire is. Having mastered Martian space travel and the terrifying might of the heat ray for their own use, the Empire has raised the one and only spaceport in the world next to Crystal Palace. They also have exclusive rights to intergalactic trade and diplomatic routes, leaving the rest of the world cold, and access to all the kinds of technology you'd expect in a steampunk novel. From airships, to steam cars, to the early onset of electricity, even the mighty Tesla coil makes an appearance. For some reason the fashion of small, accessorised goggles and cumbersome brass corsets has also caught on... But more on that later.

As for the Martians? Exterminated. Gone. Dust. The fact that they mounted a similar attack on Venus at the end of the original novel is either glossed over or forgotten, and I can only assume that that the Venusians repelled their advances and forced them back to their red orb, where the British Empire finally put the boot in. The solution to the problem of further invaders from Mars is possibly one of the highlights of the book. It's cold, it's callous and it's... Kind of genius in it's own way, and the historical figure that came up with it adds a nice little cherry on the cake.

When it comes to the themes and ideas that the novel brought over from the original, I can only shrug and say not many. The chapters are short, much like in the original, and there are Martians. The heat ray is about the only part of the mighty Martian armament that makes a return, with the Empire deciding instead to stick to the wheel and employ much clunkier airships than the Martian flying machines they had supposedly cracked. Wells' book is treated as a historic document, and the one theme I was surprised to see it pick up was the damning of Imperialism and the inward looking selfishness of the Empire that prompted Wells to originally write the book. Of course, being a humourous title a lot of that is there in the form of jokes and ribbing at the United Kingdom's perhaps chequered past, but still. It is there.

So, how good is this novel as a sequel? Honestly, not very. If you're looking for an absurd, steampunk tale that encompasses Wells' material but could just as easily not have done, you might enjoy this. If you're genuinely curious on Rankin's perspective of what might have happened after the Martian invasion, don't bother. The toughest thing for me to swallow is Rankin's insistence that the British Empire backwards engineered Martian space travel in less than a decade. I only find this unbelievable because... Well, the Martians literally shot a cannister through space. I suppose with enough time and research and some wonderfully fantastic minds behind the project you could backwards engineer a gun from the bullet fired from it, but I find it incredibly unlikely.

The technology in general has more in common with standard steampunk fare than anything in War of the Worlds, which is a shame as the presentation of how everything the Martians brought to Earth was carefully considered and wholly it's own. There's a reason the tripod with it's human collecting cage and flashing box like heat ray and whipping, writhing tentacles has become so iconic, and it's a shame Rankin chose not to take advantage of this and instead cling onto something we've seen a million times before. I suppose you could excuse this by saying the technological ideas came from the other alien races he introduces, but we see their technology later in the book and it resembles nothing humanity has come up with either.

Speaking of those aliens, they are another great shame. While Wells' vision of a giant brain on tentacles that sought subsistence from the blood of other beings may enter the realm of 'squint really hard and you can believe it's possible' in scientific terms, at least it's a wholly inhuman and different take on alien life. Not so with the men from Venus and Jupiter. They're you're standard humanoids with bits on, and even though I know the whole enterprise is a wacky comedy novel, considering the book it preports to follow I can't help find the execution of these elements lazy. More just another steampunk book cashing in on the trend than bringing anything new or interesting as a follow up.

The question is, does it fare any better as a book in it's own right? And to be honest, I think the term 'lazy' can be applied across the board. Lazy humour. Lazy integration of historical figures. And a lazily plotted story where all the twists can be seen a mile away.

 The humour of the book relies mostly on running gags, glib asides and the forceful integration of the modern into the Victorian Age. The problem is that for me, the majority of them completely missed the mark. I didn't find many of the running gags funny the first time they appeared, so to see them again and again drove me to frustration. The glib asides were either so glib or so overt that their effect was lost and as for the modernisms, I felt they could have been handled better. To draw comparison to Terry Pratchett, the key to his success is that while he writes satire of very modern concepts, he never lets that satire break the believability of his world. He takes the time and effort to weave these concepts into something that you can believe would be a part of his universe, but is still recognisable for what it really is. Rankin instead relies on the sudden, often jarring, insertion of a very modern concept and perhaps wishes to take the reader off guard or make them laugh at the absurdity of it. All it did was take me out of the book, especially the customs and immigration joke which made me groan and want to punch the page everytime I had to suffer through it.

But humour is subjective. What I find groansome, others may find side-splitting, so let's instead focus on how Rankin treats his historical figures. Slap-dashly, is the word (sort of!) that comes to mind. After having read the Burton and Swinburne series, novels which take great pains to use both persons of interest and noteworthy events (such as the downing of the Royal Charter in a storm or the Tichborne affair)  of the period and even the writing styles of authors who appear in the pages to tell an original story. Mark Hodder takes great care to link his characters together, and use actual events with brand new explanations and twists to bring his novels to life and ignite your curiosity about the era. Rankin takes a 'history is bunk' approach and uses figures who are long dead, with no explanation but the one I just gave, and throws them at us with new twists that never come to anything. Joesph Merrick, as Jack the Ripper, for example is only mentioned in passing and when a murder happens on the airship they are travelling on him with it is never linked back to him. Indeed, he is never mentioned again. Hitler also appears as a surly wine waiter. Why? Because Adolf Hitler in a pedestrian and subservient role is funny, I suppose. I would not even take issue with this, but there are so many historical persons living lives long past the ones they are due and it is never tied or factored into the actual story, it just exists as one of the many, tiresome long running jokes.

But the real reason I can't recommend this book is purely down to the writing. It's not atrocious, most certainly not, and it doesn't outstay it's welcome. The book is a breezy read, and has just enough going on to keep you interested, but as I said before the plot is predictable and the style it's written in does nothing for me. The worst offender is Rankin's continuing insistence of using terms like 'George did many sighings' or 'Ada did crossings of her arms' instead of 'George sighed' or 'Ada crossed her arms'. It perhaps seems innocuous to you and like I'm being nit-picky, but seeing it over and over and applied to turns of phrase that it clearly doesn't suit simply drove me batty by the end. The characters are also wholly uninteresting for the most part. Caricatures of famous historical figures that are drenched in nudge-nudge wink-wink hints to their future and the main characters of George and Ada, while initially charming, became gradually more boring as the novel progressed. As for Professor Coffin, I was intrigued and interested in the spritely old man at first, but he soon became a pantomime villain and Rankin couldn't quite make him as detestable as he wanted too. Even in the end, I was almost rooting for him. Almost.

Down to rating it is, then. Pretty simple and cut and dry to be honest. While initially charming and with some moments that made me smile, this book just needed more work. More work in every possible aspect to bring it up to the standard that it's premise, and supposed connections, promise. More damning though, is the fact that it's a book that thinks the use of the word 'wee-wee' and dung throwing are funny enough for multiple appearances. Which should tell you all you need to decide if the humour is for you.

Two out of Five Monkeys.