SCIENCE AND THE LITTLE MAN

New Zealand Listener, Volume 28, Issue 721, 8 May 1953, Page 13

SCIENCE AND THE LITTLE MAN

THE NET, by John Pudne x {8 Michael Joseph. En§lish price, 12/6. SPOLETTA STORY, by James White; Heinemann. English price, 12/6. THE STRUGGLES OF ALBERT WOODS, by William Cooper; Jonathan Cape price, 12/6. THE ‘EXPERI. MENTS, by Stephen Gilbert; Faber and Faber. English price, 15/-. (GENERALLY speaking, novels about science ate more interesting than novels about scientists. Science, after all, represents Discovery with a capital D; scientists are only dull people with heads full of mathematics. It’s pleasant, therefore, to find a book like The Net which reverses things. Here, the lives of scientists working under the strain of modern secret research are absorbingly dealt with. We are shown, not the fabulous results of research and experiment, but their effects on the minds and lives of those whose task it is to bring them about. In these effects John Pudney finds the roots of pride, love and treachery. Pride, love and treachery figure largely, too, in The Spoletta Story, James Dillon White’s account of the last days of a Sicilian bandit. Through the (continued on next page) "

BOOKS (continued from previous page) eyes of.a captive English journalist, the author shows the gradual fading away of power, the slow weakening, and the steady approach of @ nemesis which had been catching up with the bandit ever since he led his first ‘raiding party out of the hills. Although this is only a second novel, the author shows considerable maturity in his handling of sustained suspense. With the aid of a few light-almost skittish-touches, William Cooper has made his story of The Struggles of Albert Woods the story of the struggles of Everyman. Who has not imagined some mystery about his birth? Who has not beeh’ exceedingly secretive. about his humble beginnings during his youth, and outrageously proud of them (provided that he has been successful enough) during his old age? Albert Woods is ‘no exception. His progress from a bunsen burner in a Polytechnic school to a Fellowship in the Royal Society .is marked with all the discon--certing ups and downs which Fate re--serves for the mediocre who are determined to disprove their mediocrity. Albert Woods is, in fact, the Little Man. The Burnaby Experiments, by Stephen Gilbert, is a queer’ tangle of scientific spiritualism, psychology and _pantheism. The story starts convin'cingly enough, and it is undoubtedly well written, but its conclusion is weak. 'The contrast between the adolescent | Marcus and the elderly: Mr. Burnaby is | sympathetically drawn, but the Jekyll | and Hyde confusion of character at the ,end of the book is, even on the story’s | own premisses, impossible.

PIC