Among the innovations bequeathed to us by the nineteenth century, the broadest is surely the idea of progress, with both the development of technology and new ideas of biological evolution introducing the possibility of a world which changes over time, as opposed to having remained stable and essentially the same since origins described in the Bible. Much science-fiction has tackled the discovery of progress by one means or another, either as a warning or else as basic cheerleading. Hoyle is an oddity in that he seems almost to belong to the other tradition, the one mostly supplanted by science as progress. Among his best known achievements as an astronomer was the development of the steady state model of the universe in which the cosmos is understood to have neither a beginning nor an end with expansion explained by the continual and spontaneous creation of matter. The steady state theory was seemingly discredited* by the big bang theory; and in these two conflicting models I see a curious echo of variant ideas concerning evolutionary theory, specifically the regular Darwinian version which proposes a more or less constant rate of change conflicting with Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge's punctuated equilibrium wherein lengthy stable states are punctuated by short periods of rapid change which, curiously, seems somewhat descended from the catastrophism which predated Darwin.
The parallels aren't a perfect fit but, to get to the point, the world to come as Hoyle saw it in 1959, was one in which progress was very much an exception to the rule. Science-fiction has a generally lousy record in terms of prediction, but Hoyle's rural Ireland of 1980 is strikingly undeveloped given that electric power had begun to reach even the most isolated communities in the fifties, and his England of 1980 is familiar mainly from black and white movies, which at least contrasts with the promise of his futuristic Ireland, if not its description once we get there.
Ossian's Ride aspires to espionage, a technological spy thriller because we all want to know what's been going on in Ireland behind the Erin Curtain, as Fred calls it. We have reports of fantastic buildings and moving mountains, but the Emerald Isle is no longer so welcoming to visitors as was once the case, so British Intelligence sends a young mathematician to get to the bottom of it. What we find at the bottom of it is that the Irish government now puts everything into the development of science, meaning it has become a technocracy, if that's actually a word. So, while parts of Ireland remain rustic and without electricity or even basic plumbing, some areas have fantastic buildings a bit like Canary Wharf, and those moving mountains are actually huge nuclear powered machines the size of ocean liners which roam across the land depositing futuristic buildings hither and thither.
Our mathematician eventually deduces the mission of the Irish government and that some of the more futuristic ideas come from an alien mind sent from a distant star inhabiting the body of a human woman - an idea which Hoyle developed to better effect in A for Andromeda - most of which emerges during the final chapters. Up to that point, although competently written and certainly engaging, our boy's mission is mostly himself travelling across rural Ireland on foot, occasionally by public transport where he's able to obtain a bus timetable without arousing suspicion. There's an occasional skirmish with representatives of ICE, the Industrial Corporation of Ireland, but nothing of consequence beyond reminding us that our guy is a spy and it's mostly on the level of what happens in Famous Five yarns where crooks are defeated by ingenious use of jam jars and elastic bands. A lot of time is spent fixating on stuff about hiking, rucksacks, bed and breakfast, and where our boy eats that evening - sometimes a hotel restaurant, sometimes just a sandwich, sometimes breakfast at a farmhouse. I have to assume Fred had recently enjoyed a hiking holiday in south-west Ireland if the level of detail is any indication. In the books' favour, if less than gripping and carrying a significant tang of Bob Mortimer's Graham Lister, Hoyle at least keeps the greenface to a respectable minimum, so beyond a few references to Guinness, it's mostly just low-level stereotyping expressed as bewildering speech patterns, such as when Cathleen admits, 'It's sorry I am about those papers,' because that's how Irish people talk, see.
Ossian's Ride, which never quite gets around to explaining the reference made by its own title, is written with just the sense of poetry you might expect of a mathematician, but for all it's walking into walls on almost every other page, it has some interesting things to say once it stops banging on about what it had for breakfast and has a certain clunky charm which is difficult to dislike with conviction.
*: I say seemingly because I honestly don't feel qualified to weigh in on this. The big bang probably wins, but I nevertheless have a soft spot for Hoyle.
