The Man Who Fell To Earth by Walter Tevis
The Man Who Fell To Earth by Walter Tevis
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Friday, 04, Sep 2009 09:36
Published by Penguin Modern Classics, out now, paperback, 185 pages, £8.99.
In a nutshell...
'Magic' America revealed by an alien
What's it all about?
Great science fiction is always about the telling, not just the storyline. So, there is more to the eye than just a storyline.
The author deliberately plays with an old sci-fi concept and strips out ray guns and little green men who strut around making beep beep noises.
The Man Who Fell To Earth is about an alien from a dying race coming to Earth on a mission to earn enough cash through introducing new technology to build a inter-planetary ferry boat to bring his compatriots back.
The alien - Newton - has learnt all about Earth and America from television - and he is disappointed when he arrives.
Meanwhile he struggles with new amino acids in sausages and heavy gravity that threatens to snap his bones.
All goes well, with the help a chemist suspicious to know how such advances are made and a welfare-dependent woman who teaches the alien the joy of gin, until the FBI move in.
But it is far more than that. The book is about identity in an alien culture, being cast adrift from home, but never fully moored or accepted - for all three characters.
Written in the 1960s, the book is set in the 1980s and author manages to capture elements of the decade perfectly.
The criticism of US society on decline in the 1960s is also strong. Of a growing middle class and industrial under class living from the state.
In 1976, the film, directed by Nicolas Roeg (Don't Look Now), stared David Bowie as Newton the alien.
Who's it by?
Walter Tevis only ever published six novels - and couple of dozen short stories. However, his works are well known.
Besides The Man Who Fell To Earth's 1976 (and possible remake), he also wrote the novel The Hustler - which was the source for Paul Newman's iconic performance in the movie - and the 1984 sequel The Color of Money.
His 1983 The Queen's Gambit has long been lined up to be filmed - with Heath Ledger at one point pencilled in to make a directorial debut with its screen version.
Penguin is publishing The Queen's Gambit and The Hustler this month alongside The Man Who Fell To Earth.
As an example...
"He looked like the sort of man who would sit by a fire, wrapped in a shawl: thin, pale, cold-blooded.
"He might be a vaguely foreign count in an English comedy, or an ageing Hamlet; or the mad scientist planning discreetly, to blow up the world.
"At this moment almost anything seemed possible; it was not so ridiculous that, he might be drinking wine and eating cheese with a man from Mars. Why not?"
Likelihood of becoming a Hollywood blockbuster
Despite Roeg's Man Who Fell To Earth in 1976 being a cult classic, a remake is in the pipeline for 2011.
So is it any good?
A reissue by Penguin as a classic, means a few people already reckon it is alright.
And it certainly stands the test of time some 40-odd years after being published. The issues facing America discussed remain as pertinent now as when Vietnam was being fought.
The look into the mirror of the alien and America is as needed now as ever.
Tevis has an engaging style that should be read by anyone struggling to become a write. There is a lightness to the writing which defies the many layers held beneath.
From the beginning we know Newton is an alien, but Tevis draws the reader into the characters and their point of view so well that one forgets and starts to doubt where the story is going.
The Man Who Fell To Earth is truly a classic across all genres - and not to be ignored for the sake of fear of sci-fi aliens.
9/10
Daniel Barnes