Book Review – The Children of Men by P. D. James

For the first of my new series of book reviews I have chosen a curiosity. A futuristic, uncharacteristic sci-fi work by a well known crime writer. Now many have been trained to regard science fiction as for nerds, a clever way of keeping people reading about consumerist materialist values if ever I saw one. But P. D.  James' 1992 work The Children of Men is close to a masterpiece, definitely out of its time when written, and well due a revival of interest.

Like many children, I loved science fiction and fantasy. Most contemporary art concerns itself with the present, especially the banal present. Without penetrating into the depths of what makes life interesting and worth living, just regurgitates it. I'm not even having a go at Big Brother or other celebrity 'reality TV' fiascos. At least those can be entertaining, in a slow-motion car-crash kind of way. The self-referrential empty fiction of the Martin Amises of this world is far more poisonous. Give me pop culture over most 'high art' any day.

Our culture is dying through universal sterility, and The Children of Men, in a way is all about this. It is possible to test contemporary reality so deeply and so bravely that reality is transfigured. Then you have the great novelists, like Dickens or Dostoyevsky. But its a rare gift, and getting rarer. To get context on the present, humans love to trace current preoccupations to the past, or extrapolate to the future. We seek our cultural and spiritual origins in myth, and our future in technology and its social consequences. Some of the most interesting works blend the two – a trend most obvious in Star Trek and the associated TV and film genre of mythic sci-fi. A future blog will concern Ursula K Le Guin, who is one of the great masters of both genres.

The shocking premise of The Children of Men is a world in which, mysteriously, human beings become infertile. The last children were born in 1995 and all the nations of the world gradually realise there will be no more people, no future. James' portrayal of the effects of this universal sterility is shocking and believable: Britain becomes a dictorship run so that the last generation of humanity can live out its existence in meaningless comfort, with criminals exiled and menial work done by mistreated foreigners. The desire for sex gradually withers as people realise that, even if they did not want sex to produce offspring, knowing that it never could destroys the erotic impulse. People lose interest in politics, leaving power in Britian in the sole hands of the narrator's cousin.

Theo Faron, the self-centred and cold narrator, is a memorable creation. An Oxford History don who has never known love or intimacy, but held a privileged position through his relation to the dictator, or Warden, he is drawn into a surprising position of challenge to the State. It is typical of P. D. James' skill that the absurd and depressing scenario of the book becomes fascinating and we empathise with the unlikably protagonist caught in the Middle Class establishment world she draws so aptly in her crime fiction.

Of course, the reason the book is so haunting, and prophetic for 1992, is that we do indeed live in an age of sterility. The 'First World' ethos, which wants few children, lots of money and comfort, where all pleasures are available but meaningless, where we live in an endless war with mysterious nature, is what passes for reality, but it is life without a future. James digs deep into the roots of the religious image of the Virgin and Child. Although it is the men whose sperm is believed to be infertile, women respond psychotically by bringing up dolls, baptising them and taking them around in prams. 

There is much that could be said about the waning of science fiction and what it says about out loss of faith in the future. In 1980s Britain, at the same time that tradition was being destroyed with unprecedented speed, Television was filled with nostalgic portrayals of British life, the conservatism that Thatcher's Toryism, ironically, was busy abolishing. The Children of Men is a short read but I came away from it determined to keep my imagination fixed on the future, yet never forget we cannot control the simplest forces of our life, those of procreation, and without gratitude and awe there is only sterility and slow death. Read the book and the surprise ending will stay with you.