Annihilation Factor

 

Barrington J. Bayley Annihilation Factor (1972)
Bayley's second novel features one of those star spanning galactic empires loosely resembling Tsarist Russia wherein different planets are ruled by kings and daily life occurs with a sort of imperial elegance, although thankfully not to the point of delineating those most delightful and diverting excursions of a gentleman with an ostentatiously elaborate name who conducts his business whilst rather fancifully attired in a bronze top hat to which the contents of a grandfather clock have been most felicitously affixed.

Ahem.

The presence of Castor Crakhno, a character alluding to Nestor Makhno - a founding father of the anarchist movement - presents the possibility of commentary on either the Russian revolution or some episode of equivalent vintage, as does King Maxim - Maxim being short for Maximilian, because I'm sure there was an historical Maximilian in there somewhere; but it's either way above my head or I'm simply spotting patterns which probably aren't there. The novel seems to be about free will - possibly - in how it may relate to the transcendence of the material plane 'n' stuff.

'You fool, there is no freedom,' Peredan chuckled. 'The material universe is a trap whose meshes we cannot escape, however much we try. Throughout history men have held such ideas as you have belatedly discovered, due to some fastidious aversion you appear to have. But the universe always mocks at these ideas. It always has something more strange, more monstrous than we can deal with—such as the Patch.'

Bayley's novels always seem to be spun upon a single and cinematically weird element - sentient hosiery, war waged between different eras, funny animals piloting spaceships or whatever. In Annihilation Factor it's the Patch, a vast presumably sentient field which moves through space devouring everything in its path. The Patch turns out to be something akin to Phil Purser-Hallard's City of the Saved but spends most of the novel as some remote nihilist force feared from afar - one which can be controlled by masturbation; despite which Bayley still doesn't quite manage to achieve escape velocity with this one.

It may be that I wasted too much time trying to decode Castor Crakhno, leader of a nihilist anarchist movement called Death to Life, which doesn't really work for me because the two tendencies would appear to contradict one another, at least here, and Death to Life sounds a little too close to a Two Ronnies take on placard waving revolutionary politics - Down With Knickers and that sort of thing. Also, the novel is so bogged down with endless exposition of one form or another that it becomes difficult to keep track of who is who and what's happening. It all pulls together in the end as we discover what the Patch is supposed to be, but it's a satisfying ending to an otherwise underwhelming, if mercifully short, novel. I still say Bayley was one of the greats, but Annihilation Factor isn't one I'd put forward in support of the argument, which is a pity because it should have been, given what it tries to do.