In this monthly series reviewing classic science fiction books, Alan Brown looks at the front lines and frontiers of science fiction; books about soldiers and spacers, explorers and adventurers. Stories full of what Shakespeare used to refer to as “alarums and excursions”: battles, chases, clashes, and the stuff of excitement.
Can one man stand against an entire planet? You might not think so, until you consider the fact that a tiny wasp can distract a driver and cause him to destroy his vehicle. Many works of fiction center on irregular warfare, as the subject offers myriad opportunities for tension and excitement, and I can’t think of any premise as engaging and entertaining as this one. In portraying many of the tactics of irregular warfare, however, the book also takes us into morally dubious territory—a fact made even more clear in the wake of recent events.
Wasp, written by Eric Frank Russell in 1958, is a classic from science fiction’s golden age. The novel demonstrates the type of havoc that a well-trained agent can unleash behind enemy lines, and illustrates the tactics of irregular warfare in a way that is informative as any textbook. Russell’s voice keeps the narrative interesting and exciting, and it stands as one of his best-remembered works.
About the Author
Eric Frank Russell (1905-1978) was the son of an instructor at the British Royal Military College at Sandhurst. In the late 1930s, he began contributing to American pulp science fiction magazines, most notably Astounding. One of his stories was featured in the first issue of Unknown, a magazine intended to serve as a fantasy companion to Astounding. He was a devotee of the works of Charles Fort, an American writer who was interested in the occult and mysterious phenomena, the paranormal, and secret conspiracies, and Fort’s theories influenced many of his tales. He wrote in very clean, crisp American-inflected prose that was often colored with a satirical tone. He became a favorite author of Astounding’s John Campbell, and his work frequently appeared in the magazine. He was a WWII veteran, but there are conflicting stories about the nature of his service—some sources claim he worked in communications for the RAF, but others say he worked in Military Intelligence. After the war, he became a prolific writer of science fiction in both short and long forms, and in 1955 his story “Allamagoosa” won the Hugo Award.
My own initial exposure to Russell consisted primarily of three works. The first was “Allamagoosa,” the story of a crew of a starship that falsifies an inventory report to try to hide a discrepancy, only to create problems far worse than any that would have resulted from an honest report. That story stuck with me, and during my own military career, I thought of it every time there was a choice between making an honest report that might lead to trouble, and a false one that might have obscured a problem. The second work was the story collection Men, Martians and Machines, which followed a ship with a crew of robots, humans, and Martians sent out to explore new (and often hostile) worlds. I probably read that one at too young an age, because some of the images of those hostile worlds stuck with me for years. And the third work is the subject of this essay: the espionage tale Wasp, which is probably Russell’s best known book. Wasp is a compelling story whose movie rights have been optioned twice, without ever being filmed. The first time was by Ringo Starr on behalf of the Beatles’ Apple Corps in 1970, and the second time by author Neil Gaiman in 2001. The NESFA press, in its efforts to keep older SF works available in collector’s editions, has published two volumes of Eric Frank Russell’s work, Entities (which contains Wasp, among other novels) and Major Ingredients (a collection including many of his short stories).
Wasp
The book opens with the protagonist, James Mowry, being called into the office of a government official named Wolf, who wants him to go behind the lines and impersonate a member of the Sirian Combine. The Sirians are at war with the Terrans, and things are not going well for humanity, which needs time to build up its forces and prevent them from being overwhelmed. Sirians are similar enough to humans that some minor plastic surgery and skin dyes can allow a human to impersonate them, and their level of technology is very close to that of the humans, as well. As someone who lived on a Sirian planet before the war, speaks the language, and has the right physique and temperament for independent duties, Mowry is asked to volunteer for training in irregular warfare, preparing him to infiltrate and disrupt the war effort, buying the time that Terra so desperately needs. After a short training course, Mowry is dropped into a wooded area on the planet Jaimec, where he establishes a base in a cave. He has printed materials purporting to be from a Sirian anti-war movement, significant amounts of counterfeit cash, a variety of identity papers, weapons, and explosives.
His main opponents will be the Sirian secret police, the Kaitempi, an organization that is not above using brutal tactics to crush dissent. His own efforts will be focused on convincing the officials and population of the planet that the Dirac Angestun Gesept, or Sirian Freedom Party, is a real and viable organization (and not just a single man running a massive con game out of a cave). His first efforts consist of spreading rumors and distributing stickers around the city. On a trip to another city, Mowry runs into a Kaitempi Major, who he trails to his home and kills. The identification documents and other material he steals will become important to his future successes. He evades attempts by the authorities to capture him, and begins to see signs of his success in increased police activities. Mowry also makes contact with members of the criminal underground, who he hires to start assassinating officials listed on materials he took from the Major. He sends out threatening letters to government officials and organizations.
Mowry lies, manipulates, and deceives everyone he encounters. He begins to jump from identity to identity, and lodging to lodging, as the Kaitempi increases its efforts to neutralize the mythical D.A.G. He hires criminals to plant devices that will make the Sirians think their communications have been compromised; when one of his criminal associates is captures, he engineers a jailbreak that generates all sorts of chaos among local officials. While the Sirians continue to insist that the war effort is going well, Mowry is able to read between the lines and see the truth. When he’s told that invasion is imminent, he steps up his efforts, mailing explosive packages to various locations and planting explosive mines to destroy commercial shipping. By ramping up his efforts, however, the dangers also increase, and it is very likely that he will not survive to see the fruits of his labors.
Irregular Warfare
Irregular tactics have always been part of warfare, as opponents work to find and exploit any advantage over their foes. A newer term is “asymmetrical warfare,” which makes it clear that the goal is to apply your strengths to the enemy’s weaknesses. Instead of utilizing conventional military forces in order to attack similar competing forces, this type of strategy often involves personnel in disguise operating behind enemy lines. It is a tactic that favors offense, as the attacker gets to pick their targets, while the defender must apply efforts across the board. There were many irregular forces deployed during World War II, including Germany’s Brandenburg Division, the American Office of Strategic Services, and the British Special Air Service. Many of the tactics violate the Laws of War, and those caught engaging in irregular tactics can be subject to immediate execution. When tactics expand to include indiscriminate attacks, or deliberate attacks on the innocent and non-combatants, they cross the line into what we today call terrorism.
In his works on protracted warfare, Mao Zedong made it clear that irregular tactics cannot win the conflict, but they can disrupt the opponent’s efforts while building capabilities to challenge the enemy in a conventional conflict. And this is precisely the tactic Mowry’s handlers explain to him: the Terrans need breathing space to build up their strength, which the “wasps” can provide. We see Mowry walking through the various stages of irregular tactics, from disinformation to assassination and finally to indiscriminate attacks using package and letter bombs, and deliberate attacks on civilian shipping. By the time Mowry has moved on to tactics that violate basic moral principles as well as the established Laws of War, we have already grown to sympathize with him as a character—but it is clear he has completely crossed those lines by the end of the book.
A Whole New Perspective
Sometimes, you re-read a book and find things just the way you left them. Other times, you find surprises—and it’s not the book that has changed, it is your viewpoint that has changed. When I first read Wasp as a high school student, I think what attracted me to the story was that James Mowry was yet another example of an archetype often encouraged by John Campbell: the “competent man,” who might not fit in well with normal society, but who could be counted on to get the job done in whatever situation he finds himself. The plucky earthman, whose wits and determination could be counted on to prevail over even the most technologically advanced alien societies.
Unsurprisingly, the book has not held up well in assuming a paper-based bureaucracy, and many of the tactics it portrays would be impossible in a computerized information-based society. The book also had a completely all-male cast of characters, not unusual for a war story in its day, but totally jarring today.
The information that Neil Gaiman liked the book enough to option its film rights also triggered a realization. As shown by the large roles that Loki and Anansi play in American Gods, Gaiman clearly has a soft spot in his heart for trickster archetypes, and I am sure this is one of the aspects of Wasp that appealed to me during my teen years—the idea of someone cleverer than those around him creating chaos, and turning adult society all topsy-turvy. Gaiman abandoned his efforts to write a script for the story after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, which leads me to my final point.
The biggest change in the years since the book was written is that, from a modern viewpoint, it is impossible for the reader not to sympathize with the Sirians. After all, we have recently seen international rivals attempt to disrupt elections with disinformation. We’ve also seen far too many indiscriminate attacks on civilians over the past few decades. No longer are the enemies portrayed in the book faceless opponents, alien and unsympathetic. Instead, they look and feel a lot like us. The moral ambiguity of the book now feels like a punch in the gut, and overshadows any admiration we might have for the cleverness of Mowry and the organization that trains and supports him. He might be fighting for “our” side, but does so in ways that make us deeply uncomfortable.
Final Thoughts
Eric Frank Russell is not a name that is instantly familiar to younger readers of science fiction today, but he was a major voice in the field during his heyday. His works were clever, witty, and thoughtful. If you haven’t read them, they are certainly worth a look.
And now, as always, I relinquish the floor to you. If you have read Wasp, what did you think of it? I’d also be interested to hear when you read it, and if that had an impact on your opinion of the work. Do the ends pursued by the “wasps” justify their means, in your opinion? And if you want to talk about any other works by Russell, I’d be glad to hear that as well.
Alan Brown has been a science fiction fan for five decades, especially science fiction that deals with military matters, exploration and adventure. He is also a retired reserve officer with a background in military history and strategy
EFR is one of my favorite authors – I have both of the NESFA books and pretty much everything else I could find.
Wasp is very much a book of its time, reflecting the times during and just after WW2, but its still a solid novel. I think it could be adapted in the modern world if such tactics were strictly limited to actions against military targets…
EMA
I haven’t read WASP since high school – or if I had the reread wasn’t memorable. Oddly it’s one of those books that I just assume nobody else had ever read, interesting to hear that it was well received in its day.
I’d imagine that the conflict between deciding who is “us” and who is “them” in an otherwise black and white story could work quite well regardless. This writeup is inspiring me to dig out my copy and read it with middle-ages eyes.
73 years.
I have read a few of Russell’s books (including the most recent edition of Wasp) but I’m not really sure what to think about them. I think part of the problem I have is that I often end up asking “why is this story science fiction?”. It wouldn’t be too hard to make Wasp into a book about a WWII saboteur (where the real-world context could make our main character more sympathetic to a modern audience) or “…And Then There Were None” a look at non-violent resistance without invoking SF tropes at all. Of course, that would have made the stories harder to sell and, since SF famously doesn’t have an expiry date but a half-life, we probably wouldn’t be talking about them today if Russell had… That said, reader reaction will vary and this may be the reason for the success of stories such as “Allamagoosa”.
I suppose that the sample of Russell I have read is arguably not representative of the whole: I haven’t, for example, read Men, Martians and Machines or Sinister Barrier. I suspect they would shift my overall opinion.
Men, Martians and Machines is wonderfully funny. Yeah there’s an all male (and mostly white) cast and their first contact protocols need help but if you can turn off your PC filters you’ll love it.
I’m kind of surprised Gaiman didn’t switch to Next of Kin instead, given their similarities – Leeming shares Mowry’s trickster nature, but his skills in lying and deception are only used against prison camp guards, so it doesn’t have the worrying implications of Wasp’s attacks on civilians.
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#3 I remember Men, Martians and Machines very fondly, and am tempted to give it another look. In researching this article, I read somewhere a comment that having a spaceship with a mixed race (and even mixed species) crew made Russell very progressive for his time. But it actually portrayed the way crews on a British warship were composed in those days, with each race in its “appropriate place,” with robots and Martians functioning as analogs for English officers and navigators, Scottish engineers, and Asian cooks and stewards. Not very progressive at all.
I dunno, I think that for exactly the reasons you are sceptical of this book’s reception with a modern audience, it could be an extremely successful exploration of the moral concessions we make in times of war. I haven’t read it, but it certainly sounds prescient of our current political climate. Strip off the old value judgments of who the good guys are, or are supposed to be, and just tell the story, and see how it resonates!
I’d say any discussion of the writings of Eric Frank Russell that so much as alludes to any laws of war really should mention I am Nothing from 1952 in some detail.
Given the extent to which the Kaitempi are modeled after WWII reality I do not find myself in sympathy with the society. With individuals but not the society. But then I am more of an old curmudgeon than a modern viewpoint. I’ll stop there; I might want to apply to Harvard someday.
In a context of special ops it is hard verging on impossible to distinguish say the Brandenburg and the Jedburgh. Yeo-Thomas famously spoke in defense of Otto Skorzeny. Speaking as the famous and lauded White Rabbit he promised/threatened if you will to testify for the defense in any trial of Skorzeny. The offer of testimony was that the Allies did everything Skorzeny did and more. And so I refer back to my first sentence.
The line about irregular warfare reminds me of a line in LILO AND STITCH.
“His (Stitch’s) destructive programming is taking effect. He will be irresistibly drawn to large cities, where he will back up sewers, reverse street signs, and steal everyone’s left shoe.”
The bit about the left shoe always makes me laugh.
It’s kind of difficult to live in a world where the wholesale slaughter of entire cities by a single warhead is rehearsed every day and consider a retail bomb killing a few people to be beyond the pale. I mean, it is, but so is nuclear war.
An interesting comparison might be the sort of wholesale murder which forms the prehistory of John Barnes’ Thousand Cultures series and the more retail atrocities shown in his Meme War series. Which is worse? My answer: Both are worse.
I read Wasp sort-of recently (last year). Other than enjoying it tremendously, finding it a very funny action romp/ deadpan black comedy, I found a minor yet crucial plot point quite intriguing, and probably the reason why I think it would be interesting for a modern re-read. It is something that you didn’t end up bringing up in your analysis, and that changes radically the moral stance of both Mowry and the human race in the novel. See, the funny thing about Mowry’s induction as a wasp is that it is completely involuntary. Mowry’s first reaction to Wolf’s offer is to politely decline, moment in which Wolf reminds Mowry that, as a full bodied adult during wartime, he is subject to consrciption. And if so, he *might* find himself in one of those frontlines where survival tends to be somewhat difficult. Mowry accepts, not as a patriotic decision, but as an act of pure self-preservation, since in his role as a wasp he has better chances to survive than as a mere grunt. From the perspective of the novel and the protagonist, both humans and Sirians are equally dangerous for his long-term survival; both sides in the war represent an authoritarian, faceless form that can crush him in their heels without hesitation; both are equally dehumanised (no Sirian has a proper name other than the demeaning nicknames that Mowry chooses for them, and there are only two human characters in the novel: the nameless pilot that picks Mowry at the end, and Wolf, an stereotypical faceless inteliggence office). The novel, from that angle, becomes something else: not a chronicle of sabotage or terrorism, but a darkly funny tale of individual survival portraying the efforts of Mowry to wade between these two bodies that can squash him without effort. And from this vantage, the hilarious ending is very apropriate: after escaping by the skin of his teeth from horrible death and countless dangers, almost killed by mistake by his own allies, instead of the glory and gratefulness that Mowry expects the only thing waiting for him at the end is a grumpy pilot chastising him for not making contact before and telling him they are departing inmediately for another planet that will be (predictably) the next one in a Sisyphean string of campaigns behind enemy lines that will last, probably, the rest of his life. It is this moral ambiguity, very deliberate and clear, what warrants a critical re-reading from a modern point of view.
WASP is one of the best examples Eric Frank Russell’s apparently favorite theme of “clever human outwitting aliens,” one that he also used in THE SPACE WILLIES and numerous short stories. I’ve read that John Campbell disliked stories where aliens were depicted as superior to Terrans, and that was why he would publish so many of Russell’s works.
I’d agree that the seams show after so many years. One of Russell’s biggest weaknesses was in “building” a cohesive future setting. In WASP, although the Sirians are conducting an interstellar war, the description of the cities where Mowry is operating seem more like typical mid-20th century urban societies in both technology and design.
Re the comment upstream about MEN, MARTIANS AND MACHINES, while the cast is all male, it should be noted that the ship’s doctor is African-American and is depicted as an equal to the rest of the crew in a totally non-stereotypical way, something highly unusual in SF at that time.
“Kempeitai” was the name for the military police corps in the Japanese Imperial Army. Sounds a fair bit like Russell’s “Kaitempi”. I can’t offhand recall any other strong resemblances between Imperial Japan and the Sirians, but it’s been a long time since I read the book.
@7: and USN warships, where some races were restricted to being stewards, mess attendants, and cooks.
@6: who is or is not a terrorist is largely a political decision. We see that in the US now, where one group of armed men taking over a federal facility wasn’t labeled as terrorists but another group of unarmed people protesting a project was.
I’ve thought of that novel quite often in the last decade – wondering that same question.
@15 swampyankee
“Terrorist” can be a political description, meaning “someone I don’t like”. “Terrorism”, however, can also refer to a strategy of attacking an enemy by using terror against their civilian population.
The political description is often misused as shorthand for “bad person”, but the strategic description is still valid.
Can we agree that a ‘strategy’ of attacking civilians is a Bad Thing?
@18 That’s a good starting point.
@17
dptullos, certainly the Sirians could, and probably would, label Mowry as a terrorist; equally certain the Terrans wouldn’t. The two would maintain that dichotomy whether Mowry was doing little more than putting up anti-war stickers (peaceful protest) or bombing day care centers. One wonders if EFR considered writing a story about the Terran secret police hunting Sirian saboteur/terrorists….
@6, Mr Six, while EFR was probably not directly involved in anything like the SOE, he most certainly would have heard about various resistance movements in occupied Europe, and may have known people who were involved with the SOE, especially after the war, when he may have heard some stories…
@20: Russell probably didn’t think of the reverse story; Damon Knight did (e.g., “The Rithian Terror” (IIRC) et al), and was scathing about the stupidity of Earth-based humans versus the level-headed colonists in evaluating the threat.
There’s an obvious difference between Mowry’s mostly focused attacks (remember that he starts by offing undercover Kaitempi officers, then sending dummy bombs to high brass) and the attacks aiming at maximum civilian casualties that we see here and now. One can argue whether “terrorism” is a fair label for both, but the fact that Assad has used the term indiscriminately for anyone who opposes him suggests that it has been stretched beyond meaning. (The preface to the NESFA edition, written not long before 9/11, does call Wasp terrorism; I wonder what Chalker would still have said so afterward.) The real outrage wrt Wasp vs the present day is that Russell gives us an opponent so vile that a Wasp is an appropriate, unthinking response; this mirrors the tarring-of-the-enemy that has now become necessary as a preceder of war rather than just to rouse the population once war is declared. (Consider the known-to-be-lies-at-the-time about Hussein’s nuclear weapons.) This is very much in line with Campbell’s desire for aliens that were not just stupid but brutal; Russell could at least write other kinds of stories (even outright anarchism as in “And Then There Were None”), where this seems to have been about all some other of Campbell’s stable (e.g., Christopher Anvil) could do.
I have Wasp and Men, Martians, and Machines in my library; I reread MM&M now and then, but haven’t read Wasp recently. I will now. I remember that my sympathies were with Mowry and Earth! And the premise is good.
First off—going after civilian targets was SOP in WWII, for all sides. US submarines in the Pacific would go after anything flying the Japanese flag, from the IJN Yamato on down to a fishing sampan. Huge bombing raids, in Europe and Japan alike, were intended to “de-house” enemy civilians, as much as to take out enemy war production.
Secondly, Mowry is by no means a mad, indiscriminate killer. He does not kill Sirians for being Sirians. The Sirians he kills directly are either threatening him directly, or are members of the Kaitempi—a secret police fully as nasty as the Gestapo or the Japanese Kempeitai, on which it was modeled. When he sends mail bombs, it is to government offices, not to random recipients.
I’ve ordered _Entities_, & it’s all your fault.
:)
@23, terrorists need not be “mad, indiscriminate killers.” While there have been terrorist organizations that just randomly kill people — I tend to place daesh in this category — most terrorist groups have specific individuals or groups they target, e.g., the IRA, the Border Ruffians, Irgun, the Klan, inter alia, all had or have specific criteria for their targets. “Terrorist” has been an increasingly politicized term, so there are going to be many cases where terrorist is used or avoided improperly.
Going after civilians was pretty common in occupied areas in WW1, too. Check out Germany’s occupation of Belgium during WW1.
Before then, well, Tamerlane was extreme but his tactics were not unprecedented.
Here’s a link to an interesting article on the subject of sabotage:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/atlas_obscura/2015/12/08/the_simple_sabotage_field_manual_the_early_spy_manual_from_the_office_of.html
@26, I suspect that conscripted and enslaved people working for the nazis figured out quite a few of those before the OSS wrote a manual.
Thanks to everyone here who mentioned the Men, Martians & Machines series: today I read the entertaining “Jay Score” in Ballantine/Del Rey’s The Best of Eric Frank Russell.
I will never forget the first time I read “Jay Score.” Great twist at the end!
You mean to didn’t see it coming?
Personally I just love Sarge’s narration, very snarky.
@30 In my defense, I was 12 when I first read it! ;-)
And yes, the narrative voice was great–Russell had a knack for that. Come to think of it, John Scalzi, who certainly owes a lot of his success to his snarky narrative voice, kind of reminds me of Russell.
Ah, that explains it. I was closer to twenty than twelve. I had this ratty old sixth hand paperback that was literally falling apart on me. But a few years ago I quite serendipitously found a good as new hardcover in a used book store and nearly expired from excitement on the spot.
Wow, I was sure late to the party with this guy. I hadn’t read a word of his until NESFA’s Entities. So, I read Wasp and his other short novels at a time when the dated aspects that you refer to were certainly obvious to me. But, besides being able to accept things in the context of their time of writing, I have a dreadful weakness for morally compromised anti-heroes. I don’t have a Manichean world view and I’m fonder of fiction which doesn’t either.