Customer Reviews

The Hieros Gamos of Sam and An Smith

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This first novel by Josephine Saxton may have been published as science fiction, but it's as far from spaceships & rayguns & robots as you can get. One of the most fascinating & sadly neglected of the New Wave SF writers who flourished briefly in the late 1960s, her work is avant-garde & has more in common with Surrealist writers such as Leonora Carrington. Even in those heady days of experimentation & shattering genre boundaries, this was uncommon work.

Yet the narrative is simple, straightforward, matter-of-fact, and written with an utter clarity & attention to everyday detail. It has a certain dreamlike quality, in that it makes perfect emotional sense ... unless you start thinking too much about certain logical inconsistencies. Given the SF label, you'll start wondering what's going on behind the scenes: manipulation of reality? some strange scientific study? alien intervention? a post-apocalyptic scenario?

Let me warn you right now -- while the final pages transition seamlessly into the (then) modern world, there's no scientific explanation, no deus ex machina to resolve everything. Nobody appears to tell us reassuringly, "Here's what happened & why." But there doesn't have to be that sort of explanation, because it makes sense at a very deep & primal level.

So let's look at the actual story ...

The nameless boy is 14. He's been walking through a wasteland by himself since he was 4. He's seen a bird once, maybe twice in all those years. Yet he always wears clean, fashionable clothes & thinks in an educated manner, even though many things familiar to the reader are utterly foreign to him.

From time to time, he passes through empty towns. Nobody has been there in years. Yet the food in the stores is always fresh, the coffee makers still work, the water still runs. He takes all this for granted. When he does talk to himself, it's in a rather formal manner:

"'This is very annoying. I must remember that this door is not personally attempting to frustrate me,' he said, and walked away backwards from the unhelpful door."

His life changes when he stumbles across a dead woman who has just given birth to a baby girl. Despite his own fear & revulsion, he takes the baby with him. The reader might expect some grim, hardscrabble struggle for brute survival ... but that's not the case. The boy simply finds another town & raises the baby there for a few years, living in the Universal Goods Store, Ltd.

As the two grow older, there are occasional brief appearances by strangers in the distance. The two often wake to find telegrams of encouragement left at their bedsides. And they gradually become aware of their own budding sexuality.

At this point, let's remember that the Hieros Gamos of the title means "sacred marriage." It's both a mythological & psychological term. Let's also remember that one of the primary themes of New Wave SF was inner space, as opposed to outer space. This provides us with the necessary reading of this wondrous novel, which presents the universal journey of the human being, so familiar to everyone, and makes it new, giving it an unearthly beauty & power.

I've searched the internet for information about the author, but there's a dearth of it. All of her books seem to be out of print, and almost none of them have online reviews. This is a shame, because she's a superb writer, one who has the rare gift of both unsettling & enlightening the reader. When I began reading this novel, I had no idea where it was going -- but I couldn't put it down. And when I finished the last page, I simply sat in silence for awhile, mulling it over, knowing that I'd be reading it again before long.

"Not for every taste" is often used for unorthodox works of art, but it especially applies here. In these more literal times, where inner space is the last place anyone wants to go, I can't imagine much of an audience for such a novel. Again, that's a shame. It's truly stunning work, sure to appeal to the adventurous reader -- those of Surrealist tastes in particular. Definitely & desperately in need of reprinting!

As for me, I've already ordered more of her work & can't wait to read it. Meanwhile, I've scanned in the author's picture from the book jacket, which you can find elsewhere on this page (see all 2 customer images). It captures the tone of those times perfectly: hairstyle, clothing, cigarette, all radiating style, smarts, cool & confidence to spare. An extraordinary talent, one I'm so happy to have discovered at last!