SEMIOPUNK (16)

By: Joshua Glenn
April 2, 2024

An irregular, ongoing series of posts dedicated to surfacing examples (and predecessors) of the sf subgenre that HILOBROW was the first to name “semiopunk.”

RIDDLEY WALKER

For far too many years of my life, I knew Russell Hoban only as the author of the charming children’s picture book Bedtime for Frances (1960, ill. Garth Williams) and its sequels, as well as for the older children’s fantasy novel The Mouse and His Child (1967).

I wouldn’t encounter Hoban’s Riddley Walker (1980) until I was in my late 30s or so; it was probably HILOBROW friend James Parker who put me wise to this extraordinary book — one of the greatest of all post-apocalyptic adventures, and over and above genre considerations a brilliant, deep, mysterious, tragicomic piece of writing that amply rewards re-reading.

“Our woal life is a idear we dint think of nor we dont know what it is”: Some readers, one hears, are put off by the narrator’s degraded dialect. That’s a shame, because — like A Clockwork Orange, Feersum Endjinn, etc. — the book’s language is immersive and seductive, it draws you ineluctably into the narrator’s worldview, until you’re seeing the world (paging Drs. Sapir and Whorf) through their eyes, even sympathetic to their values.

PS: Riddley Walker concordance here.

When twelve-year-old Riddley’s father dies, he becomes his community’s “connexion man” — tasked with teasing out the social, religious, and political implications of the ever-evolving puppet shows staged — in primitive towns across “Inland” (England; Riddley himself never leaves Inland’s south east region) — by church/government propagandists. (When I first read this book, I wasn’t aware of the ongoing popularity of British “pantos” — loud, fun musical-comedy theater productions. Lottie, my favorite contestant on the Great British Bake Off, helped to educate me.) Slowly we figure out that a cataclysm happened, a couple of thousand years earlier, reducing the world to an Iron Age level of technology.

A power struggle is going on, we discover — one whose outcome may lead to humankind’s progress forward out of the ashes, or to utter ruin. Humankind’s nomadic, foraging lifestyle is gradually being replaced by the more settled life of farming… but other evolutions are afoot too. The “Mincery” (government of Inland, based in Bernt Arse, a developing industrial center) has developed a keen interest in the “clevverness” of the old ways and knowledge. The chance finding of an ancient relic gets Riddley involved in this struggle… and sends him on the run.

What’s alluring for those of us with a semiotic “bent” is Riddley’s desire to make sense of the myths, apparently nonsensical turns of phrase (“hes getting his serkits jus that little bit over loadit”), and artifacts surviving from Inland’s pre-apocalyptic era. Fans of A Canticle for Leibowitz, say, or Engine Summer, among others, take note!

He broods over fragments, looking for patterns — how does it all fit together? This reader can relate. Early on, we find Riddley and others digging out of the muck “some girt big rottin iron think some kund of machine it wer you cudnt tel what it wer.” Which is a perfectly apt description of a “semiosphere” — a mechanism whose purpose and output require investigation… though even then, it will never fully reveal its secrets.

“London town is drownt this day / Hear me say walk a way / Sling your bundle tern and go / Parments in the mud you know.” Hoban is a terrific writer of doggerel — “good bad poetry,” as James Parker would say, which is so greatly preferable to “bad good poetry.” Riddley hears a group of men singing this song as they work, and wonders what it means. (London town — obliterated, even from memory. “Parment” — Parliament — if possible, even more so.)

Riddley puzzles, too, over the myth of “Eusa” (Jesus, but also St. Eustace — and is it just me, or is “USA” also folded into this mashup?); and over “the Little Shyning Man the Addom,” pulled in two by Eusa… and the “E qwations” which resulted in the “1 big 1” — a civilization-toppling catastrophe. We gradually realize that the traveling Punch & Judy show promotes the idea of a “second chance” for humanity with technology. Riddley, however, is more attracted to the “Eusa” folks who warn against the abuse of power that technology makes possible.

Fun facts: Winner of the John W. Campbell Memorial Award (recently renamed, because Campbell was a dick) for best science fiction novel in 1982. Harold Bloom included this book in his list of works comprising the Western Canon; and George Miller’s 1985 movie Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome pays homage to Riddley Walker — from which it borrows ideas, themes, and characterizations.

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SEMIOPUNK (16)

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