The Mind of Mr Soames

FOR HAL
who will disagree,
point by point, with
everything herein.

The more one reads about education the more it seems obvious that there is a certain lack of agreement among the authorities as to the best possible teaching techniques to be followed. Most newsworthy will always be the picketing of schools by parents, and investigations of teaching staff. More revelatory will be the campaign to teach mathematics through the ‘new math’ and the resulting backlash and abandonment of this particular technique. It might seem obvious, after all the centuries it has been around, that the teaching of mathematics would be a cut-and-dried thing. Apparently not. If the teaching of such basic concepts as one plus one equalling something can cause controversy—what then of the entire field of teaching, the theory and practice of education?

This is a good question and one that has been answered in a great number of texts on theories of education. I find almost all of these books dull, obscure, uninteresting—and often very wrong. I know that there is a great tendency among educationalists of disciplines such as anthropology and physics to look down upon degrees in education and upon people who attempt to teach others to teach. I fight hard to avoid this point of view, but there
is
controversy—no one will attempt to deny that.

Charles Eric Maine is a classic science fiction writer. Classic in the sense that this kind of writing is at the core of sf, the hard centre without which the fringes would not exist. (This does not mean that the outer edges of science fiction, where the discipline merges into that of pure fantasy, are inferior in any way. Many of the best sf novels written are in this category. But without the core of classic science fiction they would simply be fantasy and sf would be swallowed up in that greater field.) By science fiction of this nature I do not mean the galactic extravaganzas of E. E. Smith, PhD, or the vivid brain-flights of van Vogt, but rather the extrapolitive care of Clarke with his Moon, or Asimov with his robots.

These are the ‘what-if?’ stories that provide the solid meat of science fiction. What if men explore the surface of the moon? What if we have intelligent robots? After these questions are asked the answers must be carefully thought over by the author. First in technical or philosophical form; the dust on the Moon may react in certain ways, robot intelligence will need to be controlled by certain fixed laws. Only after this cogitive step is the story written. The first is technique. Turning the theories into fiction is the art. (As someone remarked, science fiction authors must work twice as hard, first imagining their worlds before they can set a story in them. I hope that someone else answered that this is also the glorious pleasure of writing sf.)

Charles Eric Maine is obviously very interested in education. He has done his homework on the subject and has formulated his own opinions of what is good and bad. As the introduction to this book shows he is not above indulging in heated controversy if necessary. Where a lesser writer would have given us a pedestrian novel about a school and the frictions and methods therein, Maine has presented a stunning, yet simple, idea that most graphically will involve both author and reader in the very basic theories of education. He gives us the straightforward, yet incredibly complex, story of Mr Soames.

We meet John Soames in the first paragraph of the first page, for this is his story. He appears to be a physically sound individual a little over thirty years old. But he was born unconscious and has remained so ever since. His mind is blank, it must be blank, so if he ever regains consciousness he will have to be taught.

And that is the story. A personal one for Mr Soames, and a deeply personal one as well for the medical staff and the people around him. This is a novel of character, and a very good one. Yet, by its very nature it is still sf, and must be sf just as
On the Beach
is pure science fiction. (Shute involved us in the lives of his characters so that we care what happens to them. But the basic theme is a story of the aftermath of atomic warfare, classic sf—as well as being one of the most exploited themes in the genre.) While early science fiction used the idea, and the idea only, as hero, more developed sf exploits an idea or concept in a setting of solid characterisation and story.

The idea of a blank infant’s mind in a man’s body is a fascinating one that Maine exploits to the full. If the book has a weakness it is one shared by far too many other sf novels; a dependence on gratuitous action to further the plot ends. (We see this in another classic, Cyril Kombluth’s
Syndic
, which has story and interest enough on its own without the jeep-mounted, flame-spouting, calibre .50 machine-guns.) But this action does not detract from the story—may even make it more attractive to some readers—and certainly leaves us in no doubt regarding the efficacy of the educational techniques practised on Mr Soames.

Of particular attraction is the author’s successful attempt to avoid the pitfall of black-and-white characterisation that marked all pulp writing, which has been the deformed legacy of too many modern sf writers. You could always tell who the hero was by his white space helmet. Maine gains our sympathy with Dr Takaito, a surgeon, a theoretician, and a character in his own right. He appears to be a superman—but he is not. Upon occasion he can be wrong as well. We also feel a great deal of sympathy for Conway, through whose eyes we see much of the action developing. He is not the firm-jawed, always-right hero we have come to expect in science fiction. Kimball Kinnison would look upon him with horror. Conway is a man with doubts, who tries to be right but knows that he fails from time to time. If this is realism in science fiction let us have more of it. I have always felt that Kinnison would be a bore to meet—with absolutely no sense of humour. Conway and Takaito can both laugh at themselves, most human and winning traits.

Concept made solid; idea turned into story. Classic science fiction. It is hard to do because it requires thought, hard work, extrapolation, intelligence, as well as the artistic ability to write a moving and human story.
The Mind of Mr Soames
succeeds in accomplishing what its author set out to do. And is a fine read as well.

Harry Harrison, 1976

During
the morning, after a wash and shave and a half-hearted nibble at a small breakfast, he went over to the operating theatre in the research annexe to observe some of the preparations for the Takaito experiment. It was the first time he had seen John Soames for more than two years. He looked much the same as ever, apart from the white glaze of his skin and the faint purple cyanosis of his lips, but that was because they had taken him from the cold tank in the basement just a few minutes earlier. His metabolism at the moment was probably still ticking over at a gentle thirty-six degrees Fahrenheit, but within an hour or two the relative warmth of the room would seep into his chilled flesh and he would begin to look more human and less like a wax dummy.

Stretched out on the tilted operating table Soames appeared tall and muscular enough, but his eyes were still closed as they had been for nearly thirty years, and he needed a shave and a haircut. However, despite the superficial lack of masculine toilet—and that was not regarded as a matter of priority for patients in cold storage, where aesthetic values were somewhat irrelevant—he was handsome enough in a dark, swarthy way.

The theatre sister and two nurses were fussing around him in a quiet, efficient manner under the shadowless lights, while Dr Barr did interesting things with instruments under the watchful eye of Dr Emil Schearer, the consultant specialist who had been called in to vet the preliminaries. Schearer was something of an expert in metabolic refrigeration techniques, though it was suspected that he had gained much of his knowledge in a certain German concentration camp during the second world war; but that was a long time ago and now he was an old man, nearly seventy, dedicated to what he regarded as his mission in the world of medical science. Whatever the ethics of his past life may have been, he had certainly done a great deal for humanity since, and a considerable amount for the unconscious John Soames.

Conway looked around. There were three or four others in the small theatre apart from himself, mostly doctors from the various departments of the clinic who were interested in the Soames case and could afford the time to stand and watch. Nearest to him was young McCabe from the psychoneural laboratory, looking hollow-eyed, unshaven and in need of a cigarette—and probably a drink, too, even at this early hour of the morning.

‘What’s the latest communique on Takaito, Andy?’ Conway asked, moving closer to McCabe, The other man winced visibly. ‘Not so bloody loud,’ he whispered in mock anguish. ‘I’m a cerebral hyperaesthesia case this morning. The slightest sound is likely to drive me off my rocker.’

‘For a psychoneurologist that’s quite an admission to make.’

‘I admit everything, Dave. Remind me never to drink whisky on top of champagne again, and always, repeat
always
, to go bed before six o’clock in the morning.’ He regarded Conway darkly. ‘Not that I slept even then, thanks to a couple of whoring birds outside the window.’

‘Celebrating?’

‘No. Just whoring...’

‘I mean you.’

‘Me?’ He looked puzzled for an instant. ‘Oh,
me I
Well, yes, in a way. It was Morry’s last night of freedom. He gets married today, though how he’s going to keep awake and find the necessary stamina I’m damned if I know. I’ve stuffed him full of dexedrine, and me too—but all it’s done is make me feel jumpy and more tired than ever. Hell, you should have been there, Dave.’

‘I was on duty—apart from which I wasn’t invited.’

McCabe looked slightly crestfallen for a moment. ‘Oh, yes, I forgot that you and Morry aren’t exactly friends. Anyway, there were eight of us and we got through six bottles of whisky and eight bottles of champagne, not counting the wine and brandy at dinner.’

Conway made a sympathetic murmur. ‘Not to worry. You’re still alive, I think, though whether you’ll survive the day seems doubtful. You on duty?’

‘Not until midnight, thank heaven. I meant to snatch some sleep this morning, but then I remembered they were hoisting Soames out of the ice box and I couldn’t resist the temptation to be in on it.’

They remained silent for a while, watching the theatre staff at work. Odd to realise, Conway thought, that John Soames and I are of almost identical age, and yet there is more than a generation of living between us—that is, if you count living as active participation in the business of being alive. Soames has never participated in anything since the moment of birth, and even before that, but he’s managed to grow well enough and achieve maturity under prolonged clinical supervision.

His mind clicked back to the earlier question which had been swamped and left unanswered in McCabe’s alcoholic reminiscing.

‘What’s the news about Dr Takaito?’ he asked.

‘Don’t they have a grape-vine in the psychiatric ward?’

‘Yes, but I’m normally too busy to use it.’

‘Dave, you work too hard,’ McCabe said laconically. ‘All I know is that Bennett had a telephone message from Cowley early this morning to say that Takaito had left Tokyo by jet-clipper and would arrive late this afternoon.’

‘Does he intend to operate today?’

‘Just like that.’ McCabe made a chopping motion with his hands. ‘Everything has to be ready. He’s got to catch another plane just after midnight—flying to New York for some conference or other on morbid neurocerebral pathology which starts tomorrow.’