The Grain Kings
Keith Roberts
208 pages
published in 1976
Nothing says seventies science fiction as much as a Fossian cover like this, slapped by Panther and Pan on every book they published regardless of contents. Big, blocky machinery, preferably some sort of spaceship, with brigh colours and no human figures: that's science fiction and you don't need anything more. For once, the cover is even justified, showing one of the huge grain combine harvesters from the title story of this collection. Course, you'll still be disappointed if you get this expecting the sort of cool, clinical, techno-driven stories the cover suggests; Keith Roberts isn't that kind of writer.
Keith Roberts debuted as a writer in 1964 in New Worlds, involved with, but not a part of, the New Wave. Partially this was due to his personality as he allegedly was quite a difficult character to work with, getting into fights with his editors and publishers. But it was also because he was less interested in the two main obsessions of the New Wave, death & entropy and sex & taboos. Nevertheless if you like Brian Aldiss or Christoper Priest changes are you'll like Roberts as well. Roberts was more than just a writer; during the sixties he worked both as an editor for the British magazine Science Fantasy/SF Impulse, as well as its artistic director, designing most of the covers for it, as well as for several issues of New Worlds. A shame he didn't get the chance to design the cover of this book, as the impressionist look he used in his own designs would've been much more suited for it. Keith Roberts has always been somewhat of a cult author, best known for his second novel Pavane, a classic alternative history story and one out of two of his books still in print today (the other one is The Furies).
The way I got to know him was through an interview and review in a back issue of Dutch fanzine Holland SF, of which my local library had a couple of collections. That interview/review showed an interesting, challenging writer and when I started reading his stories this image was confirmed. I found it difficult at first to understand his stories, partially because of still learning to read English at the time. Whenever I encounter a writer I have difficulties reading I have the tendency to rate them slightly higher as a writer than I would otherwise have done. This may have been wrong in Roberts case.
Because the truth is that I was largely disappointed with The Grain Kings. Though it started strong, with perhaps Roberts' best story ever, "Weihnachtsabend", I found tthe second half of the collection, including the title story, extremely weak and uninteresting. Though normally I could've read a short collection like this in a day, the title story with its tedious midlife crisis plot took me several tries to finish. Taking it with me on my daily commute there were several times I prefered staring out of the window to finishing the story. If "Weihnachtsabend" and "The Grain Kings" are the extremes in this collection, the rest of the stories here neither evoke admiration nor loathing. They feel decidedly minor, something you read through but can have forgotten in five minutes. What they all have in common, apart from "The White Boat" is that they all have an ineffectual middleaged protagonist going through some sort of midlife crisis, while having to cope and failing to do so with another kind of crisis altogether. These are stories in which only the men are real, the women and girls who figure in them only there to figure in the protagonists' emotional crisises.
- Weihnachtsabend
In my opinion this is the best story Roberts has ever written, a chilling alternate history in which Britain has come to an accord with nazi Germany and is now its junior partner. The plot, of how a high ranking civil servant working closely together with the Germans is driven to a desperate act of revenge by the near-mythical underground resistance is less interesting than the details Roberts gives of the world in which it takes place. The plot itself is how the protagonist is invited to spend Christmas "Weihnachtsabend" in the home of the minister, along with other favoured guests, together with his secretary, who he has had a short but dissatisfactory affair with earlier. They rediscover their love while there, but then she disappears, while he discovers a forbidden book. published by the resistance on his bookshelf mixed in with all the approved reading matter "The Fuehrer's official Biography, Shirer's The Rise of the Third Reich"... What does this mean and how does this tie in with the Christmas morning hunt he slept through? - The White Boat
A short story set in the same world as Pavane, of a young girl growning up in a small, grey fishing village, where she one day encounters the White Boat, the only spark of life amongst the dull conformity of her surroundings. The White Boat goes against all the things she has been taught to honour and while at first it seems an escape when she swims out to it, she ultimately has to return to her village. Things do not end well. - The Passing of the Dragons
A heavyhanded morality tale of how the exploitation of an alien planet is killing off the titular dragons, who seem to voluntarily allow themselves to die. - The Trustie Tree
The sole survivor of an aircrash is taken by canal boat by the indigenous canal men back to the Terran headquarters on Xerxes, ill with fever and dreaming of his past back on Earth. - The Lake of Tuonela
Set on the same planet as the previous story, this is set several years or decades later, as the intricate canal system in use before the humans had come has slowly falled into disuse with the more convenient alternatives of human technology. One man attempts to prove that this great complex is still navigable, that it should be restored to its former glory. When official permission is denied, he does it unofficially, as a grand if probably ineffectual romantic gesture. - The Grain Kings
Sometime in the future climate change has made the great tundras of Canada and Alaska into huge grain plains, in which the Grain Kings, huge combines more like small cities than anything we'd know as combines, are used to harvest the grain and feed a hungry world. The protagonist is a journalist for a magazine on a publicity junket on one of the grain kings, again middle aged, a failed marriage behind him and no inspiration to write until he starts an affair with one of his photographer's assistants. She's not that kind of girl and it all ends in disappointment. She's only seen through his eyes and the whole story is evidence of how much has changed between then and now. - I Lose Medea
In this the girl who is the object of the protagonist's unresolved emotions is quite literally a construct. As with the Xerxes stories, Roberts offers a glimpse at a much more interesting world than his hero notices, who is obsessed by his inner turmoil to the exclusion of everything else.