"Reviews" of Fictional Books -- M. R. James & more

[Extollager]

Quite a few years ago, the Charles Williams* Society invited members to create "reviews," for fun, of imaginary books mentioned in stories by CW.

Interested?

It occurred to me that Chronsfolk might enjoy playing this game. My sample below relates to Williams's thriller about the Holy Grail, War in Heaven, from the early 1930s.

I've read the book several times and would not endorse the image as an illustration! Anyway, here is the spoof review. I have taken the liberty of attributing the review to a real person.


Review: Historical Vestiges of Sacred Vessels in Folklore by Sir Giles Tumulty.

Students of ethnography and ecclesiastical history have long needed an account of surviving pre-Conquest liturgical vessels. They will not find it in this tendentious monograph. The author has prosecuted his researches with a "zeal not according to knowledge," his preoccupation with "occult energies" supposedly resident in such objects and his readings of the Arthurian romances as sober history persistently distorting his findings. Moreover, his sources are largely works in his private library, some of which are treasures rightfully belonging to the nation, others mere trash -- in either case, unavailable to serious scholars.
M. R. JAMES

*Author, as well, of The Place of the Lion, All Hallows' Eve (perhaps the two best to start with), Many Dimensions, Descent into Hell, etc. and a sequence of Arthurian poems.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

Fun idea. Stanislaw Lem has two collections of such reviews: A Perfect Vacuum and One Human Minute.

Here's something I dug up from an old, yellowing journal.

A Century Hence: A Tale of the Year 2000 by Rev. Horace Thopping.

This bold and imaginative tale of futurity shall not, perhaps, reach as wide an audience as the "scientific romances" of Mister Wells, or the voyages extraordinaires of Monsieur Verne. Time will tell, however, if the denizens of that distant time used by Reverend Thopping as the setting for his novel will revere his name above those two scriveners of the fantastic.

An unnamed clergyman (perhaps a self-portrait of the author) is drawn through the black curtain of time to a future world of wonders. Electrical airships traverse the globe in as little as a fortnight. Money has been eliminated as a mechanism of exchange, replaced by citizens of the world state (called here "Elysium") educated in true love and concern for one's fellow man working for the good of all. Disease has been nearly elminated through a program of vigorous exercise, a sensible diet composed primarily of fruit and grain, and several hours each day of exposure to the benign rays of the sun.

We confess that the Good Reverend's fancy oversteps the bounds of reason when he introduces a member of the fair sex as a member of the World Parliament. Although the narrator is careful to explain that she was elected to this exalted post as a result of her extraordinary beauty, grace, and virtue, and not for any aptitude at the workings of government, it strains credulity to imagine tomorrow's electors would be even more foolish than those of our own benighted day.