The Last Refuge: by John Petty

First published in 1966 and reprinted in paperback by Penguin in 1968, John Petty's The Last Refuge is a strange fusion of dystopian and post-apocalypse fiction, almost as forgotten as the good earth beneath the concrete which entirely covers the country within the novel. Following a worldwide nuclear war during the 1970s, which sees the USSR, the US, and much of Europe destroyed, Britain leads the way in establishing a post-ideological nightmare for survivors. I suggest post-ideological because this new normal has a touch of neoliberal bastardy about it - its excesses are drawn from the playbooks of both extreme left and right: a rigid, bureaucratic social structure; high rise tower blocks; repressive police and military; an obsession with security to the exclusion of liberty; mass surveillance; holiday camps for proles; state-sponsored prostitution; etc, etc. And, predictably enough, the year is 1999.

As small consolation, the third person narrative rewards us with James Muller, perhaps the last writer in Britain, living in the last tenement, which is about to be pulled down, as is Muller himself. Deemed a hopeless though harmless subversive by Security Chief Jallen, Muller is condemned to live in Block Y, Arm T, which is, in effect, a vertical concentration camp. Muller is here subjected to every indignity, consoled only by the suicide capsules he has hidden in his hair - but as his hair begins to thin under pressure, he worries about those too. Muller is reunited with his closest friend, ex-teacher McAllister, who had been disappeared years before, now much changed by life in Block Y. McAllister's escape plans are not much more advanced than Muller's, and he forces the issue in an extraordinary display of temper that sees both men hiding hopelessly in a lift-shaft, continuing their old arguments as though nothing but a brief interruption had occurred. They are quickly recaptured. Jallen judges McAllister to be a real threat and he is quickly disposed of. A bizarre fate, however, awaits Muller - he is treated to a form of internal exile and is released into the wilds of concrete Britain. Jallen expects Muller will die fairly quickly, of exposure or despair; instead he receives some help from passersby and displays a deal of courage and ingenuity in his efforts to forge a new identity and escape to the coast. The Security Chief takes this as evidence of a conspiracy against the state, rather than admit that he has simply misread Muller's character. The last, striking section of the book sees Muller hunted mercilessly across a relentless concrete vista, cleverly remiss in his ability to stay alive.

There's no doubting that there is power in Petty's novel - his clean-living prose is somehow twisted into unrecognisable structures by the confessions and evasions of the characters. Muller is not interested enough in his own survival to make a going concern of his incarceration; it falls to Jallen to create a bogeyman, which he does, but he falls when Muller, after much vicious prodding, rises to the occasion. McAllister is, perhaps, the most interesting character - he appears only briefly but acts as the ignition to Jallen's creation. Somewhere within his tortured fit of pique, which sees him shoot two guards, is the real point of the novel - it's an extended letter to the council which has turned dystopian by way of revenge fantasy. The demolition of Muller's house, the tower blocks, and the complete concreting of Britain (an absurd notion but perhaps a literal realisation of Orwell's Airstrip One), can only be taken as references to the rather high-handed post-war slum clearance programme, as well as motorway construction (Petty rather prettily renames the motorway network the Magnostrat). Beyond this there is a kind of official sneer around the fact that Muller describes himself as a writer - society as it is now has no use for such indulgence, and words, if they were ever white hot, have fossilised into useful implements of torture, to be handled only by those with grim enough clearance. Ultimately the novel gives the impression of a man far gone in his fantasies; and perhaps this is the point. Petty was very much a dissenter, often living rough in circumstances of extreme poverty. He understood well that, in our society, the rewards for conformity are wildly out of proportion to the punishments for dissent, and The Last Refuge puts that notion to the extreme test. As ever, winner takes all, including your life.

The Concrete Horizon: by Dan Morgan

It is the twenty-first century and the social order is in crisis. The great urban experiment, the monad cities, is in the process of collapse beneath the weight of its own organisation, and under the increasing pressures from the agricultural complexes Outside. In a last endeavour to restore the situation, SARA, a computerised project with a human personality, is developed. This is the Sociopathic Anomaly Re-Adjustment project, and its first trial run is scheduled for Middlesex Two. Unfortunately SARA is all too human, and 'she' falls in love with her controller... the result is catastrophic. Set in the form of a historical montage looking into the disaster at Middlesex Two, The Concrete Horizon is a grim parable of megalopolis gone mad. It is also a sad and touching love story, a compassionate story of ordinary people driven in bewilderment and panic into actions of extraordinary savagery and heroism.

The above paragraph is the jacket blurb from The Concrete Horizon - I have quoted it in full as it is a useful backup summary: In late 21st Century Britain life has polarised into two distinct factions - there are the Monads, clusters of high-rise blocks which are self-declared corporate cities and which house huge populations of a million people each; and then there are the Outsiders, which are small rural and agricultural communities, run by the Unions. These two factions co-exist on uneasy, often hostile terms; the Outsiders claim the Monads take too much in the way of duty from their communities; the Monads claim the Outsiders are starving their populations - both parties are bound together by antiquated notions of nationhood and patriotism which belong to a nation-state no longer extant; but in reality the Monads exist to pillage the Outsiders of resources and wealth, while offering only the prospect of cannibalism and euthanasia to their inhabitants. The corporate city of Middlesex Two is no exception in this regard. Perhaps aware that it is approaching the end of its useful life, the city's administration has sunk into nepotism and corruption. Mindful of this, the Sociopathic Anomaly Re-Adjustment computer, SARA, recruits a number of assassins, known as proxies, to remove anti-social and sociopathic elements among the population. However, as she proceeds, she becomes more and more unstable, turning her proxies into murderous psychopaths and ultimately threatening the very existence of the city. Meanwhile Charles Gaillard (a wonderfully drawn character) has his own problems as head of the Department of Genetics - his ambitious assistant, Swearinger, has written a new white paper offering extended lifespans to the city's aging administrators, at the expense of the longevity of others - horrified by this betrayal of the social contract, Gaillard commits himself to an assassination of his own...

Morgan takes a number of very familiar sf concepts - the high-rise dystopia, the rogue computer, hate weeks - and deftly works them into a very human narrative; each of his characters' dilemmas are wholly organic in that they transcend plotting and are instead embedded into each other as cause and effect - regardless of however tired the reader finds the premise, there is always concern for those caught within its shadows. And there are many, many shadows here, as Morgan seeks to frame socialism gone wrong in stark terms of mindless, bureaucratic care from cradle to mass grave. There are, of course, many problems with extrapolating this kind of future from the state of 1970s Britain - one of which is how so many authors, in seeking to critique social democracy, got it so wrong, considering Britain's direction of travel since 1979. Or perhaps these works were part of concerted attempt at propaganda to destroy socialism in Britain, by portraying its likely futures as almost certainly dystopian (though it is always useful for authors to critique the prevailing orthodoxy of their times). There can be no doubt that some of the most high profile public works of post-war Britain - for example, the wholesale demolition of the country's Victorian housing infrastructure and its subsequent replacement by high-rise monstrosities - lend themselves very easily to satire because they play on genuine grievances; and the tower block is an easy target. However, none of this detracts from the achievement of The Concrete Horizon - it is an excellent piece of fiction which holds the attention while pinching the nerves - leaving aside the dystopian elements, it is, in effect, an old-fashioned apocalypse thriller and the conclusion, when it escapes from the timing errors of the plot, does not disappoint; particularly as the author appears to booby-trap his characters near the end, to great effect.

Published in 1976 by Millington, The Concrete Horizon seems to have been Dan Morgan's last novel. As a science fiction author he had been active in the genre since the early 50s, penning many short stories for the usual pulps and also a number of series in collaboration with John Kippax. His 1971 novel Inside garnered a good deal of acclaim and, perhaps encouraged by this, he went on to pen two further solo novels, High Destiny and The Concrete Horizon. His sudden silence thereafter is something of a mystery and, as the author died in 2011, will probably remain so. A further thought is that The Concrete Horizon has a good deal of authorial heart, even if it is broken by the end.