Novel Review: Limbo by Bernard Wolfe

Apocryphal

Limbo by Bernard Wolfe, 1952, 413pp
TLDR: An intriguing speculative fiction novel about the nature of violence, unfortunately mired in philosophical monologues and marred by a 50's attitude toward women.

This is my third reading of a Gollancz SF Masterworks novel so far this summer. This book was first published in 1952, and it's the only SF novel that American author Bernard Wolfe ever wrote, those he wrote diverse other books and some short stories, and he has quite an interesting biography. Wolfe definitely comes across as an learned man - the books is full of interesting concepts, but is loaded with philosophical musings and dialogues which take up about a third of the book and frankly get in the way of the story. Wolfe was also a secretary (or bodyguard?) to Trotsky during his time in Mexico.

Though the last book I read in the SFM series (The Demolished Man, by Alfred Bester, 1953) really read like a pulp novel from the 50's; Limbo absolutely did not! In terms of the writing style and overall choice of subject matter (disarmament, personality cults, extremism), it feels much more current. If I hadn't read the date of publication, or been led to believe it was a classic by its inclusion in the series, I wouldn't have guessed that this wasn't a much more current book. In may ways, it's quite topical today - it's an anti-war novel pitting, in a way, an ascendant Eastern Union against a misguided Western Strip. Automation and the dangers of Artificial Intelligence are major themes. He describes flying buzz-bombs hovering over bunkers, and broaches the topic of Orientalism, 25 years before Said's famous essay on the subject. He's also quite free in his discussions of sex and orgasms, while many other SF books from the 50's are still dealing with 'rocketships'. But that said, Limbo is still built on ideas from the 50's (disarmament, lobotomies, ideas around gender equality) so your mileage may vary.

SYNOPSIS
What's the book about? It opens on a remote Indian Ocean island, where Dr. Martine, a brain surgeon who fled the nuclear conflagration of WW3, has been living for the last 20 years. He's made a home on this island, has a partner and is raising a son. For the last 20 years, he's been helping the locals improve their ancient tradition of Lobotomy to remove the aggressive part of the brain from anyone who shows aggression, by improving their methods to help the survivability of the patient. Through this work, he's beginning to see the damage done by lobotomization as well, to the patient's creativity and libido.

Then one day, some Americans show up on the island. At first they seem to be tourists - or athletes - or something. Something about this unsettles Martine, and he decides to head back to America to see what's been happening there for the last 20 years. What he finds is an authoritarian and idealistic society dedicated to the nebulous notion of Immob - Immobility. Much of society have become Vol-Amps - volunteer amputees, who have willingly had their arms and legs removed in the name of, well, literal disarmament! These limbs have been replaced by mechanized prosthetics, and the vol-amps spend much of their time perfecting athletics and dexterity. The metal needed for these is scare in the world, so they've gone out in search of it and this is why they arrived on Martine's island. The Eastern Union (what's left of the other side from the war) is also looking for this prosthetic metal, and the new America has once again found itself locked in an 'arms race' - this time a literal one.

As Martine starts to navigate this society he makes a few discoveries. The people at the head of it are people he used to know. And their manual of doctrine is based on Martine's own note book from days gone by. And, just as he's starting to deal with the implications of all this, the Eastern Union rears it's head.

ANALYSIS
This is a really intriguing book. I thought the set-up was clever and it has some thought-provoking ideas. I also really liked how prescient it seems in certain ways. That said, it spends a lot of time (much of the whole second quarter) on philosophical musings inspired by Rousseau and Freud, and frankly these were not very entertaining. The book also has some misogynist content, including an attempted rape scene, and more broadly ignores women's perspectives altogether. In this sense, and in its theme of lobotomies and the nature of its philosophical machinations, it's very much still a product of the 50's.

The presence of a rape scene will be a non-starter for most readers, but if you can bear the discomfort of that, there are interesting things in the novel. A sharp editing of the work to remove the misogyny and reduce the overall length to about 250 pages would result in quite a good book, I feel. Apparently there's an abridged version, but I haven't seen it. As it stands, if you can put up with the flaws and if copious philosophical discussion in an SF novel appeals to you, then by all means "Register Now For Immob!"

If, on the other hand, you just want an entertaining story without lengthy digressions or uncomfortable moments, then you'll definitely want to "Dodge The Steamroller!"