Morgan's Reviews > The Man with the Strange Head and Other Early Science Fiction Stories

I'm finding it hard to write any sort of review that doesn't make it sound like I hated it. I didn't hate the stories, but I found them dry and dated.

For the time, I can understand how this was influential. It does fit the time period.

It's not so much the science fiction that bothers me, actually, it's the writing. And I'm sure I would have liked this more if Breuer had been a better writer or even had a modicum of finesse in his craft. I mean, the world of Paradise and Iron was rather well-constructed, I just couldn't stand any more of Davy's American stoic heroism, which goes for most of the other main characters as well. Pip-pip, hooray, all sort of machismo.

Granted, this does cycle back around to it being dated. And trust me, I'm not one for faulting men because they are men and they write for a masculine audience, but the treatment of women in this as pretty, frail, helpless things with such homely names as Mildred (who started out as a particularly strong character and became more subdued over the course of the novel) was dated unto offensiveness.

Onto his endings. I actually liked the ending to the first story, thought it worked rather well in its abruptness, but then as the stories continued I discovered that all of them came to a rather abrupt, almost brusque, end. Rather as if the writer had figured he'd wrapped up all the ends nicely in a bow, and had nothing else to say or do, and without any finesse simply up and stopped. Pip-pip. Hooray.