Nightwalk – Bob Shaw, 1967 ★½

Crossing the Genre Streams

Science fiction stories fall into two broad camps: fantastic adventures and conceptual thinkpieces. What happens when someone brings them together by writing a captured-spy escape adventure that incorporates abstract theories about human vision and infinity?

Give Bob Shaw credit for never taking the easy way. Nightwalk may not be engaging or convincing, but the author’s ambition to blend the categories of rugged adventure and quantum physics is something to behold.

Never mind its jerky pace, strained narrative, thin setting, and dull characters; you do go on a ride.

Physicist turned super-spy Sam Tallon works for something called “the Block” running espionage assignments for his Earth masters. Tallon’s current job involves getting the coordinates for a null-space continuum discovered by rival planet Emm Luther that leads to a new habitable world. Blinded by a cruel policeman, Tallon is thrown into Emm Luther’s version of Alcatraz, an island bastion called Pavilion.

The core concept in Nightwalk is something called “portals,” tiny openings in the universe which facilitate quick travel across the chasms of space. Taking enough of them in the right sequence can land you on an Earth-like planet, unspoiled by human habitation, which was how Earth’s breakaway colony of Emm Luther came to be:

There are roughly eighty thousand portals between Emm Luther and Earth. To make the journey home you must pass through all of them, regardless of how afraid you become, regardless of how far you feel body outstripping soul during the flicker-transits across the distant reaches of the Rim.

Nightwalk employs the concept of hyperspace, though the word itself is never used: "Millions of tons of freight and passengers passed through the zigzag routes of galactic commerce every hour, so at any given instant there were thousands of human beings in the null-space continuum."
Image from https://stock.adobe.com/search/images?k=hyperspace

The other key concept in Nightwalk is Tallon’s blinded condition. Emm Luther might think this makes him a safer prisoner, but Tallon is motivated to prove them wrong. In a tiny capsule locked in his brain he holds Emm Luther’s greatest secret, portal coordinates to a brand-new habitable planet which promises to remove the burden of overpopulation. Tallon wants to get back to Earth and deliver the coordinates so his bosses can take the planet for themselves.

In the 1960s, people had wonderfully weird ideas about what the future would hold, ideas that seem quaint today, like flying to the Moon on Pan Am in 2001: A Space Odyssey. In Nightwalk, Emm Luther is run by a cadre of radical Protestants, salaries are paid out by increments of time, people travel the planet across one globe-spanning rail line, and the police weapon of choice is something called a “hornet gun,” unleashing dozens of non-lethal but painful projectiles in one blast.

Another favorite police tool is the brain brush, used by Emm Luther counterintelligence enforcer Lorin Cherkassy on Tallon in a moment of pique to rob him of his memory of a long-lost lover.

“I never fail to be astonished at what this little box of tricks can do,” Cherkassy brags. “You know, it makes libraries unnecessary. All anyone has to do is get one book he really likes, then he can go on reading and erasing, reading and erasing for the rest of his life.”

Emm Luther gives its enforcers a free hand crushing dissent, though their religious principles bar outright killing. Tallon is told: "Considering the sort of information you had, any other government in the universe, including that of Earth, would have executed you immediately."
Image from https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-8112819/PETER-HITCHENS-fear-dissents-PC-visited-Thought-Police.html

Cherkassy is obviously bad news, a fact he ratifies by zapping Tallon’s eyes with his hornet gun after the two tussle. For the rest of the novel, Tallon must get by without his natural vision, using an invention of his own design shaped like heavy spectacles that captures and transmits sights into his optical nerves from the working eyes of those around him.

It is a fascinating idea, playing with such notions as perception and subjectivity. One ponders the cinematic possibilities; think The Lady From Shanghai on acid. To get anywhere, Tallon must use his “eyeset” to latch onto nearby sighted creatures and effectively eavesdrop on whatever they happen to see:

When Tallon selected his bird’s visual signals on a proximity basis, he felt as though the top had been lifted from his head, letting the light pour in. The bird’s widely spaced eyes provided Tallon with a brilliant 360-degree view of land, sea, and sky. This vision, which enabled the bird to spot hunters and other enemies, gave Tallon a feeling of being hunted.

There are many ideas and moods in Nightwalk; but none really gel or inform a coherent narrative. The book begins with Tallon a hunted spy, having bleak thoughts about his assignment. Later we see him in prison, his warden a mysterious woman with whom he falls in love. Then he’s a desperate escapee, crossing a deadly swamp dodging robot rockets and muck spiders. Later he finds himself in the clutches of a demented woman who threatens to turn him in if he doesn’t accommodate her convoluted sexual desires.

A muck spider attack is depicted on the cover of this early paperback, illustrated by legendary adventure artist Frank Frazetta (familiar to Conan fans). Tallon's entire swamp journey lasts only a few pages but shows up on the cover of several book editions.
Image from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_Walk_%28novel%29

Shaw gives none of these promising ideas time to develop or resolve satisfyingly on their own. It could almost be a string of short treatments for a television show about some blind adventurer where the supporting characters change out completely at the end of each episode. All the time, Shaw tables a central problem, that Tallon is the bad guy, stealing a planet’s only way of escaping its overpopulation crisis. I kept waiting for Shaw to address this, but he never did.

The people of Emm Luther are either awful or nondescript, not people you care about. The population problem is depicted in a flat, abstract manner, not as a crisis so much as a curious zoning problem:

Seeing it from the point of view of a pedestrian, Tallon was aware, as never before, of Emm Luther’s desperate need for land. The density of population was not particularly high, but it was completely uniform – the residential developments, interspersed with commercial and industrial centers, went on without end, filling every square mile of level land the continent had to offer.

As I wrote at the outset, Shaw is respected by those who know him for combining high-concept science fiction of the Arthur C. Clarke school with the more fantastical and adventurous storycraft of Ray Bradbury. He does this here, too, only the blend is off and the tone wrong.

A two-time Hugo Award nominee, Bob Shaw's impact on science fiction was also strong as a commentator on the genre, both at fan conventions and in journals. Born in Northern Ireland, Shaw may be best known for his "Land And Overland" trilogy. He died in 1996.
Image from https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/130541.Bob_Shaw

Tallon is a thinly veiled superhero, overcoming his blindness to invent his amazing eyeset and beating anyone he encounters with his martial-arts expertise. But he is dull as paint, forming perfunctory attachments at best, even with a friendly dog. Shaw sets up a romantic storyline that dominates the second half but never feels anything other than tacked on.

The book makes its big statement in its final section, which sends Tallon off literally to where no man has gone before...or at least returned from. Here Shaw lays into the science, with terms like “Kummer surface” and “double tangent planes.”

In other Shaw books I read, Wreath Of Stars and Who Goes Here?, challenging scientific ideas are laid out early in the narrative and developed in a way that informs an engaging story or ties to some real human interest. Here the terminology flies at you like a burst from Cherkassy’s hornet gun.

Nightwalk was published a decade earlier than those other Shaw novels. Wikipedia indicates it was his first novel. If so, you can see where the craft and polish hadn’t quite caught up with his imagination. There are amusing moments and witty asides, but the richer vein of humor which made Shaw so unique in my science-fiction reading experience had not yet been tapped.

But what is evident this early in Shaw’s career is that desire to bring together two schools of science fiction: stories about big concepts and stories where wild things happen. Writing a novel where the two are blended together – very imperfectly and with an ending so flat I’m tempted to spoil it except I don’t quite know how – is no mean feat. Nightwalk is a chance to catch a legend before he arrived.