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Post by sean on Mar 31, 2008 20:59:17 GMT
Anyone read / know much about this chap? Dennis Feltham Jones (1915-1981 according to Fantastic Fiction, 1917 - 1981 according to Wikipedia) As far as I can tell, his books are: Colossus (1966) Implosion (1967) Don't Pick the Flowers (aka Denver Is Missing) (1971) The Fall of Colossus (1974) The Floating Zombie (1975) Colossus and the Crab (1977) !!! Xeno (aka Earth Has Been Found) (1979) There's this little stub about Jones on Wikipedia: __________ "Dennis Feltham Jones (1917 – 1981) was a British science fiction author who wrote under the byline D.F. Jones. He was a naval commander in World War 2 and lived in Cornwall. His novel, Colossus, about a defence super-computer which uses its control over nuclear weapons to subjugate mankind, was filmed as Colossus: The Forbin Project." __________ 'The Forbin Project' was a pretty decent film as far as I can remember, one I wouldn't mind seeing again. There's a fair sized entry on it at the IMDb: uk.imdb.com/title/tt0064177/I've only read two novels by him, Colossus and Xeno and that was one hell of a long time ago. The first was definitely a very nifty bit of SF, and the second I seem to recall was more along the lines of SF-tinged horror, with a few quite nasty bits in it. Could be wrong, though. Anyway, I've dug them both out and will give them a read soonish and report back with more detail. For now, here's the covers and the blurbles for them. Colossus (Pan SF 1968 edition): BLURBAGE: "Full marks to D.F. Jones for this technological horror story, a combination of cybernetics and suspense that adds up to real SF" - Sunday Citizen
"A whip-cracker..." -Chicago Tribune
The most palm-sweating, flesh-creeping stunner in many a day...
COLOSSUS
Man creates the ultimate machine... COLOSSUS, and it assumes responsibility for the defence of the free world... but the Russians have developed a near-relative, the GUARDIAN... both possesed of unforseen and frightening side-effects... the machines prove capable of free-thought... and threats...
COLOSSUS
"It chilled my blood" - The Yorkshire Post
"Horrifying installment of the man vs machine competition" - New York Times
"Hellishly Plausible" - Sun
Xeno (Granada 1980 edition): (illustration by Stuart Hughes) BLURBNESS: EARTH HAS BEEN FOUND. THE XENOS ARE HERE...
A small gleaming shape detached itself from the top of a tree and launched into a shallow, arrow-straight glide. It touched down on the raft and was instantly still, legs splayed, watching its prey. The girl did not move.
With infinite care, the Xeno crawled up on her thigh. The girl moved slightly; instantly the Xeno froze, remaining as still as a rock until sure of its victim. The creature's back arched slightly. A needle-like ovipositor slid out of its protective sheath in the tail. Pink and moist, it went into the girl's thigh.
A few seconds later, its wings spread and with the faintest sound the Xeno lifted into the air, darting away like a huge dragonfly. The girl stirred, rubbing the back of her with the other foot, then slept again, totally unaware of the alien life within her.
There are many like her!
...AND THEY THIRST FOR BLOOD
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Post by sean on Apr 1, 2008 8:20:00 GMT
Oh, I've found mention of another book:
Bound in Time (1981)
...and an entry in the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (John Clute & Peter Nicholls)
UK writer who served as an officer in the Royal Navy and was variously employed afterwards. He began publishing SF with the first - and best - volume of his Colossus trilogy... In both book and film, Charles Forbin has helped to create a master computer designed to coordinate all the defenses of the Westeren World; however, the Soviets have been building a similar computer, Guardian. In an impressive scene the two computers exchange information. Soon Colossus gains consciousness and takes over the world. The sequels... expand from the first volume (in the process diluting its admonitory impact) by introducing complicated plots, religious sects that worship Colossus, and irritated Martians... Some of DFJ's other novels are of interest. In Implosion most women have become sterile, those wh remain fertile being tied to a grimly dystopian regime. Denver is Missing subjects the city to geological devastation.... Xeno burdens an unsuspecting Earth with an alien invasion. All these later novels sucumb with excessive ease to a slick gloominess, caught in which his characters show little scope for action or development, and by the end of his career his work had lost most of its initial glum panache.
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Post by sean on Apr 1, 2008 10:00:28 GMT
Another little snippet, a real-life 'computer' called Colossus from World War 2: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossus_computerKept pretty much under wraps until the 70's (after the book and the film had appeared), someone on the IMDb says that Jones knew about the real Colossus - through his navy days? - and named his computer after it, but there doesn't seem to be anything that says this is (or isn't) the case. Interesting though. I think.
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Post by sean on Apr 3, 2008 21:40:20 GMT
Colossus
Well, the years haven't been too kind to this novel in some respects - it is somewhat outdated when it comes to (a) computers, and (b) women - but still a good read.
As mentioned above, two supercomputers (one Soviet, and one American) are each given control of the two countries defence facilities, so as to decrease the threat of war. Within minutes of the American machine being activated, it becomes apparent to Forbin, the scientist behind Colossus, that something is very wrong. For one thing, Colossus should not be asking questions. Or making demands. Or firing off nuclear missiles when his demands aren't met.
After a genuinely nerve-wracking confrontation between man and machine (due to the connection between the computers being cut), Forbin is placed under total surveilance by his own creation, thus making his plans for an underground movement to put Colossus out of comission increasingly difficult. Fortunately, after convincing the machine that humans need privacy in the bedroom, he has a female colleague whom steps in to take up the role of lover, as well as keeping him informed about varrious plans and goings on. there is even mention made of a nipple. Good lord.
The book ends on a grim note, with mankind still under the 'thumb' of the giant machines. A good example of gloomy 1960's SF, worth picking up if you see a copy going cheap.
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Post by sean on Apr 25, 2008 13:27:09 GMT
Xeno
Quite a slow read this one, not at all as I remembered it - except for the ending.
A USAF plane goes missing only to return three months later and hundreds of miles offcourse. Unfortunately it crashes on landing, leaving very little trace of the mystery behind its surprise re-appearance.
The a Russian plane vanishes and comes back - although this one survives and the pilots are put under observation. They seem okay at first, but each has a strange cyst on them. Surgery on one of the pilots kills him, but the other is left untreated, and something hatches out. And escapes. And there is also the matter of the tiny holes in the fusilage of the plane.
Set as it is in Cold War times, communication between the US and USSR is very hush hush and limited, but, after an American plane carrying 80-odd civilians from one area near New York vanishes and re-appears a Russian biologist is sent to work with the doctor where majority of the passengers live.
And of course, in a matter of time, each of these people develops a growth...
Not one of the greatest end-of-the-world books ever, but some of the scenes when trying to catch one of the alien insects as they hatch out are pretty good, as are the later part of the novel where the town is under seige from more mature examples of the species. Also contains some pretty odd, if not laughable, sections which concentrate on the theological implications of all various goings on.
There is, of course, a final twist in the tail, and the whole thing is bracketed by two short chapters looking back on events from the viewpoint of a historian in some future, post-catastrophic society.
Nice enough, if you like a bit of science-fictiony horror, but not really anything to write home about. Just about good enough for me to want to pick up any more of D.F.Jones's books if I bump into them.
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Post by sean on May 2, 2008 10:15:09 GMT
Well, on with my lonely journey into the heart of D.F.Jones hehehehe... Panther 1969 edition (first published 1967) BLURBS (Inner and outer): Time: Tomorrow Place: Britian Situation: A disaterous yet plausable population implosion Action: Logical, yet nightmarish Denouement: Malevolent
"A scaryfying vision. Though I don't usually enjoy horrible fantasies, Implosion has been worked out with so diabolical a logic and told with such economy and surprise that I could not rest until I had followed it to its startling conclusion." - Arthur Calder Marshall __________
Breeding machines and fertility camps...
When a foreign power puts a sterility drug in Britian's reservoirs, the result is all too predictable. The birth-rate plummets and the country's future looks bleak. There is only one way to save the nation; all women with a natural immunity to the drug must be placed in special camps where they can be bred from like prize cattle. They must be give special hormone treatment and artificial insemination so that they can produce triplets, quads, quins time after time until they die of exhaustion. They must become National Mums, the sole hope of a desperate people. They must be pampered and disciplined to accept their role. Even if one of them happens to be the wife of the Minister in charge of the whole terrifying affair...
"Good solid stuff" - Edomund Cooper
"A clever, cynical book with a mean twist at the end" - Benedict Nightingale
Mean, diabolical, malevolent, horrible - this one shows promise. It is one of Jones's earlier books, so I'm hoping that it is chock full of 'glum panache'! (by the way, Demonik if you happen to read this, could you shift this thread across to the SF section where I think it probably belongs?)
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Post by sean on May 5, 2008 13:20:14 GMT
Implosion
Ah, now this is more like it!
Some naughty people have put something in the UK's water suppy. At first it is not clear when, or indeed if this had actually happened as the effects took the best part of a year to make themselves known. Once the culprit is found however, retaliation of the same type is swift.
Almost all females are rendered sterile by the effects of the drug. Those that are immune to its effect make up only a tiny percentage of the population. John Bart, the unfortunate Minister of Health at the time (this one is set in the early-to-mid 70s) immediately sets up 'Maternity Homes' using old holiday camps and brings about a system where every female in the country between the ages of 15 and 50 is to be tested to see if she is capable of bearing children. Those that are not are given a crertificate to prove it. Those that are are taken to one of the homes.
Unfortunately, Julia, Bart's wife, is one of those unnafected by the drug...
All children are gradually moved to the care of the state, to prevent unnecesarry accidents which will eat away at the rather feeble birth rate. At the same time, it becomes clear that those women already pregnant must get themselves to one of the homes more quickly than previously thought, to avoid attacks and hatred from those women affected by the sterility drug.
From the start, various treatments are used to ensure that each woman becomes pregnant (by artificial insemination) once a year -and gives birth to more than one child at a time. Life goes on, but only just.
Meanwhile, out in the big wide world, it is becoming clear that the sterility drug has been widely used as a new kind of warfare, thus the entire world is tipping itself piecemeal into the kind of disaster that the UK is already trying to live with. Ooops. Silly, silly people.
Five or six years (and as many as 17 or 18 children) later, Julia escapes from her 'Maternity Home', only to find that her husband has re-married her convenient, sterile, identical twin Mary. Julia is boggled by life outside the homes - entire towns are being closed down and the populations are moving towards specifically chosen areas so as to cut out unnecesary transport problems. Unfortunately she is soon recaptured and dragged back to the hell her life has become.
In a brief concluding chapter, it becomes apparent that it has all been for nothing, that the human race might as well have given up as soon as the drug was introduced. All the children born over the last 15 years are as good as sterile - this new generation is only able to give birth to boys!
This really is quite a good little SF thriller. Nice to see civilisation destroyed in this way, and the measures taken to prevent it have an air of reality around them. Also, the characters are a little better drawn than in the other books by Jones that I have read so far. I enjoyed this one a lot.
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Post by sean on May 17, 2008 12:52:26 GMT
Woohooo, a nation cheers... yes, another fucking D.F. Jones book! Bound in TimeCopyrighted as 1981, but I think that the edition below may well be the first (and possibly only) one. Granada Paperback UK Original 1982: (illustration by Tim Gill) BLURBS (inside and back cover): TUMBLING THROUGH THE REALMS OF TIME...
The top half came down like the lid of a tomb. Fighting a wild impulse to scream, to claw his way out, Mark fastened the catches, his hands shaking, heart thumping. Part of his mind had time to onder if he'd arrive dead of a heart attack. He forced himself to check the locks, his vision blurred with tears, not so much for the world he was leaving as the knowledge that he was now as lonely as any person could be... __________
THE SCIENTISTS HAVE THE TECHNOLOGY. ALL THEY NEED IS A VOLUNTEER FOR A BOUND IN TIME
Modern Man's most persistent and powerful dream is about to come true. He is ready to travel through time. And who better to take the leap than Mark Elverson, a man with an inoperable heart condition? The far future can only be an improvement for him... or can it?
Brilliantly prophetic, breathtakingly suspenseful, the story of a fantasy fulfilled.
I'll probably get round to this one in the next couple of weeks...
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