Yes, that's right - 24 pages.
Now, many great works of past and present are on the shorter side, it's true. But usually something of this length would be described as a 'short story', rather than a 'book'. A book needs to have enough heft to it to prop up a wonky dining room table in an emergency. 24 pages of pulp fiction is simply not enough to do it.
According to a quick Google search I've just done, The Floating Island Of Madness was originally published as a short story in one of these Astounding Fiction type magazines. So why wasn't it then included in some 'best of ... ' collection of their short stories and novellas? That would have made a lot more sense than reprinting it as a standalone.
But then, what do I know? I'm not what Ben Aaronovitch would no doubt refer to as one of the gibbons of the publishing trade.
To compound the offence, they then had the cheek to describe it on Amazon as a 'classic'.
It isn't!
It's pants!
Well, I did warn you that if it continued to keep up the good work, then I would probably let you know all about it. If we swap the word 'good' for the word 'bad', then I can in all conscience keep my original promise to you.
You'll no doubt recall that author Jason Kirby prefers not to bother himself with those extraneous little fripperies of the story-telling trade such as character and motivation. He is also enough of a radical to dispense entirely with narrative tension and an action-packed ending as well.
Returning to the story at the point where we left off last time, after the three captive secret agents had injected themselves with harmless vials of water in order to pretend to be mad, they were summoned before mad Algy Fraser (makes him sound like he's Franky's brother or cousin, doesn't it? Have visions of him parading down the East End in the Sixties, dressed up to the nines in the sharpest cut and narrowest lapelled of Italian-tailored mod suits, and drinking at the bar of the Blind Beggar, arm wrapped firmly round Barbara Windsor's waist. But anyway!).
Fraser naturally wants to make sure that the official insanity juice is taking its due effect.
Luckily Foulet the French agent has already studied abnormal psychopathology in some depth, being a pretentious Gallic intellectual by trade, and so the other two decide to copy him in both gesture and word, just to be on the safe side.
Fraser appears to be reasonably satisfied with progress so far, but informs the three that Brice the Brit has to undergo a second dose of loopy latte at the hands of Doctor Semple because his brain is much tougher than those of the other two (yes, you heard it here second).
Meanwhile, Fraser will put Ainslee the Yank and Foulet 'under the nourishment ray'.
This involves installing them in a tiny room kitted out with a device similar to a sunray lamp that bathes them in a deep orange light which feeds, waters and relaxes you all at the same time. Quite why Fraser couldn't have flooded the market with these marvellous contraptions, even back in the Thirties, and made an absolute mint we don't know. But then, he is supposed to be stark, utter, raving bonkers, so perhaps a bit of simple market research and business forecasting might be slightly beyond his mental capabilities at the moment.
Once they have topped up their stomachs and their tans sufficiently, Fraser starts interrogating them. He insists they tell him what their respective countries have found out about him and his evil plans for total world domination. Naturally he’s extremely proud of his nefarious plots, so he doesn't exactly neglect the full and detailed explanations of them that we have all come to expect from the malevolent mad genius of popular imagination.
Of course they realise that being ‘mad’, they are now supposed to have forgotten everything about their previous lives. So they look really vacant and don't reply.
Then Fraser demands to know whether the nations are afraid of him. Do they realise that it is he who brought about the Wall Street crash? (This is seriously no joke - he most definitely claims that he and his agents were the ones responsible, rather than the world's bankers and politicians, or the global economy buffeted by the vicissitudes of recent history.)
The men answer in dull monotones.
But does the world KNOW that Fraser is its master?
"Master," drones Foulet, just to drive the point home.
Abruptly, Fraser announces he has now changed his mind, and takes them outside again.
There he releases a secret catch.
A trapdoor swings open in the bottom of the island.
They peer through it at the desert plain two thousand feet below. Surely mad Algy is not going to pitch them straight through the opening to their certain death?
Er, no.
Even Algy Fraser is a bit too subtle for that.
Instead, he points to a small metal ladder running down from the trapdoor to who knows where.
He forces them to climb down this into a small chamber that hangs off the underside of the island just like a gondola off the bottom of an airship.
Then he locks them in there for the next three days.
Because they suspect that Fraser may have also invented his own version of CCTV and even now be monitoring them round the clock, they still have to pretend to be mad. This involves looking dense as pigshit whilst moving and speaking as little as possible. Again, Ainslee follows Foulet's expert lead.
Due to the need for caution, conversation is necessarily somewhat limited.
On the third day, Fraser returns.
Addressing them as sane men this time, he demands to know how they are now feeling. Apparently, the first dose of the madness serum only last three days. However, successive doses will prove cumulative in their effects. As he has so abundantly proved already with all the prisoners he took earlier. So - are they finally ready to talk?
At this point, the modern reader may be heartened by such splendid evidence of devious mind-screws and good old-fashioned emotional manipulation. Perhaps Algy will match Hannibal Lecter and co yet!
Ainslee and Foulet both vow never to give in to the demands of the 'cruel, power-loving, scientific machine', even if they have to die in order to save their respective countries from the depredations of his vile plots.
Coming as it does after a soothing session in the tanning salon and three whole days vegging out in the Thirties version of an isolation tank, you would hope (indeed, you would probably be praying by this juncture) that this difference of opinion might do something to rachet up the emotional tension level a bit.
Basically, their dilemma boils down to this.
Fraser will only let them out if they talk. If they don’t, then he will use his handy mad genius Swiss pocket knife to cut through the four cables that attach the isolation pod to the underside of the island.
No prizes for guessing that Fraser rejects Foulet’s attempts to reason with him, fearing a trick. The men both refuse pointblank to talk – and so he starts cutting the cables, one by one.
Just as he has almost finished severing the third cable, rescue arrives!
Yes, it’s Brice the Brit.
Clamping a handy pair of steel cables to the roof of the pod, he opens the roof hatch and proffers them a ladder. While Algy is distracted with his efforts to cut through the final cable, they climb out back onto the island.
He launches forthwith into his lengthy explanation of events. (Lengthy explanations of events seem to be a favourite narrative device in pulp sci-fi from the Thirties, judging by the various short story collections I’ve downloaded from the Manybooks site so far. More on this topic at a future date, maybe.)
While they were locked away in the isolation chamber, Brice did receive a second injection of the madness medicine – but this didn’t bother him because he’d spotted a phial of the antidote just casually lying on barmy Dr Semple’s desk. Why Fraser isn’t concerned about the possible security ramifications of such terrible carelessness isn’t explained, though I suppose if you happen to be a mad genius, locking dangerous medications away safely when not in use probably isn’t high on your agenda of things to do to achieve total world domination.
When the doctor was distracted, Brice simply injected himself with this to reverse the effects. Wonder how he knew for sure that this was the antidote? Was the bottle clearly labeled ‘ANTIDOTE TO MADNESS SERUM – DO NOT EXCEED STATED DOSE’?
Next he spent the next three days doing his best impression of Foulet’s Method acting style ersatz insane slave. This seems to have gone down pretty well with the captive audience, as he was given liberty to go wherever he liked around the island.
He discovered that in fact the weight of all the people and machinery is not sufficient to keep the island from flying all the way up into space. Four giant lamps situated at each corner of the desert beam up more of the mysterious rays discovered by Fraser. The rays meet just underneath the island and combine their forces to anchor it down into a stationary floating position (technical explanation courtesy of Jason Kirby and his personal interpretation of Seriously Bad Science).
Yes, there is an off switch. Yes, Brice discovered where it was. And yes, he’s just managed to turn it off.
Without losing any time, he urges them to climb into the plane they originally came in.
As the island and its inhabitants soar off to their certain deaths in space, the agents calmly fly off into the sunset. Brice jumps off the edge – but he’s okay because he’s managed to find a parachute and attach it to his back without anyone noticing. The other two simply land on the desert floor and pick him up when he touches down.
And, that’s it, folks.
So, let’s take a moment to quickly summarise what we’ve just learnt:
1.) If you are a genius, no one else understands what the hell you are on about – including the author. Therefore, you tend to talk in what sci fi great Larry S. Niven refers to as ‘bolonium’ (aka industrial strength professional jargon bollockese).
2.) When you are mad, you tend to do things just for the sheer hell of it. Your normal powers of logic have been suspended for the duration. Therefore, you build a floating island and live and work on it purely because it seems incredibly cool, not for any scientific or strategic benefits that this might bring you.
3.) Mad people deserve no understanding or sympathy. Even though most of the nutters living on the island were brought there against their will and have been driven insane thanks to regular doses of the medically unlikely serum, none of the three agents makes any attempt to help or save them. This is despite the fact that Brice has discovered the antidote. Instead, they must all fly off to their death along with Fraser and the island.
4.) Either the local tribespeople living in the desert underneath the floating island haven’t noticed anything out of the ordinary (very unlikely indeed, when you consider the fact that Fraser has installed four enormous arc lights in each corner of their domain) – or nobody in the English-speaking world of the Thirties considers their opinions to be worth listening to.
5.) Many readers during the Thirties must have thought that pulp fiction counted for nothing as an art form. Hence the endless proliferation of tired tropes, such as mad scientists, and constant lapses in narrative logic, like the business with the insanity serum antidote.
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