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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Difficult, but rewarding, 29 Jan 2006
I remember reading this novel when I was about fifteen. I liked it, although I didn’t understand it one bit. I’d previously enjoyed Aldiss’ short stories and had read ‘Earthworks’. Thinking about it now, why, if Earthworks at the time had seemed a more satisfactory novel, can I remember very little about it, while ‘Report…’ hangs in my mind like a stubborn dream?
These days, it makes a lot more sense to me, but the persistent dream element is still present.
In some ways it is reminiscent of Ballard’s ‘Concrete Island’ in its minimalist setting and is one of those books that should have been a cult classic. If it ever was, it was a very minor one, which is a bit of a shame. As strange and surreal as it is, it’s a brave and oddly compelling novel which begins on an ordinary suburban setting, bordering on the banal, and grows steadily weirder.
Written in the form of a report, it is composed in the main of a third person monologue of obsessive detail, following the movements of three men who inhabit various outhouses in the garden of a Mr Mary. These men are known respectively as G, S & C.
They spend their day watching the house, each of them obsessed with observing the mysterious Mrs Mary.
The report is being analysed by humans in a parallel universe, who themselves are being watched by another group who are also under observation. The chain, we are led to believe, continues into infinity.
It is a tribute to Aldiss’ power of narrative that the very obsessiveness and banality of the observed ‘probability’ detailed (literally) in the report becomes an intriguing portrait of a world in which the process of Time has broken down. The various characters are trapped in their respective roles while the world decays around them. G is an ex-Gardener, bound to his garden shed where his clocks have wound down and stopped. S is Mr Mary’s dismissed Secretary, living in the attic of an old coach house and re-reading the same episode of a Boy’s magazine adventure serial; ‘The Secret of The Grey Mill’. C is a Chauffeur who lives out his dream of driving Mrs Mary about while sitting in his garage home, behind the wheel of a car which will never leave the garage again.
Outside the grounds of the house, the world becomes even more surreal. The men in turn visit Mr Watt’s café across the street and engage in stilted conversations about – ironically – the price of fish and a possibly non-existent strike at a local factory. Mr Watt also watches Mr Mary’s house while his customers eat poached haddock.
The link between them – which is a metaphor for the universe in which they exist – is the painting ‘The Hireling Shepherd’ by pre-Raphaelite artist, Holman Hunt, a copy of which hangs in each of their respective domiciles. It depicts an ambiguous relationship between a hired hand and what might be (as is suggested in the text) the wife or possibly daughter of the employer. It is obvious that the shepherd has an interest in the woman. He has his arm around her and is attempting to show her a deaths-head moth he has in the palm of his hand. She is not looking at the moth. She is looking at him, but whether with a look of romantic interest or amused contempt is not clear.
Like the painting, the universe of these people has become fixed at a point of potential. They are trapped in their roles, but unable to function or progress.
They seem to be all waiting for Mrs Mary to initiate something, just as the Hireling Shepherd is waiting for the woman in the painting to give him some sort of sign.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
..this is not a novel.., 28 Feb 2002
By A Customer
This is not a novel. Not really.Here is what happens: three men named G., S., and C. watch a house. Other people watch them. The end. Well, see, there's people watching people. And more people watching those people. And more people watching them. And you, reading the book. Or not. And no, there is no point. If you read this book you may come to the last page and get angry. You may wish to know what the point is. That's fine. That's a good question. This is a perfectly normal reaction. The book functions in the same way as a painting which recurs as an image throughout: we perceive things in one limited snapshot of time. We are asked to provide our own context. We are asked to decide what happens next ourselves. Aldiss was one of the science fiction "new wave" authors of the 60s, trying to reconfigure science fiction from its pulp roots to a form which would serve to deal with people. I believe it was JG Ballard that coined the term "inner space" for this sort of thing. Whatever. 'Report..' is a fantastic, flawed examination of what a novel is in relation to the reader, shored up somewhat by the hokey old science fiction concept of the parallel world. And in its own way, hilarious.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
All the more relevant in this current 'Big Brother' climate, 29 Jun 2003
Penned by legendary sci-fi writer Brian Aldiss (Hothouse and Non Stop), this obscure novella must go down as one of the most challenging pieces of imaginative fiction ever conceived in my opinion.Withdrawn from print in 1962 for being 'too radical' (re-released in 1968 and 1999), Report on Probability A is ostensibly the story of three unknown individuals' bizarre, and often disturbing, surveillance of subject: Mrs. Mary Forget 'story', forget 'narrative arc', RoPA breaks just about every convention we adhere to in modern fiction. At all times, the protagonists remain singularly abstruse, and this situation is made even more baffling when it is revealed that the three nameless 'watchers' are being 'watched' by somebody else, who in turn is being watched by somebody else, and somebody else... Interested in something entirely removed from the clichéd fiction we are so often plied with these days? Give this tale of paranoia, altered perception and relative viewpoint a chance: I guarantee you will not be disappointed.
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