『A critique of "The Hieros Gamos of Sam and An Smith," by Josephine Saxton』のカバーアート

A critique of "The Hieros Gamos of Sam and An Smith," by Josephine Saxton

A critique of "The Hieros Gamos of Sam and An Smith," by Josephine Saxton

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Do you or someone you know need professional tech guidance for your author, coaching, or independent publishing business? If so, check out our sponsor Cloudessy, providing fractional Chief Technology Officer services. Simplify your tech stack, prevent launch failures, and build systems that actually support growth.https://marketing.cloudessy.com/30-minute-tech-stack-update/Text of original article:In 2023, Josephine Saxton won the Cordwainer Smith Rediscovery Award, which elevates the work of deserving, but lesser known, science fiction and fantasy writers.When Saxton’s The Hieros Gamos of Sam and An Smith hit bookstore shelves in 1969, it did in fact carry the imprint name “Doubleday Science Fiction.”It’s not science fiction. Not by today’s standards, at least. If this book were published in 2026, the publisher would almost certainly label it “magical realism.”Ostensibly, what we have here is a post-apocalyptic narrative. A boy (but no dog, sorry) makes his way through the countryside of a nearly deserted England.So far so good. And at first the world seems very post-apocalyptic indeed. In the first few pages we learn the boy is traveling alone and on foot. The environs through which he walks are very quiet. So quiet, in fact, that the song of a bird causes him to cry with joy.“This morning he had seen a bird, and it had been singing, and the sound had excited him until he had tears running down his face, and he had been very happy. It was a long time since he had heard anything at all, except the sounds that he himself made.”What sort of apocalypse is this, that leaves a country so barren even sound is all but extinguished?We might think a boy stranded in such a situation would be seeking help—perhaps an adult who could offer food and shelter. But the opposite is true.“…if he ever saw another human being, and sometimes he did, he would avoid contact, and he knew that this was right, for in this way, trouble was avoided.”What do we have here? A plague? Perhaps a zombie plague? George Romero’s original Night of the Living Dead came out just a year before this book.Soon the boy hears a sound he attributes to some sort of animal—perhaps a rabbit. At least we know there are animals (other than the occasional bird) left in this strange world! But Saxton quickly minimizes even this slight consolation:“…it might be a rabbit although he knew this was a remote possibility, as he had only had one rabbit in his whole life.”Thanks for reading The Cosmic Codex! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.In any case, the “rabbit” turns out to be a newborn baby girl, umbilical cord still attached to her dead mother. Here we get some insight into the boy’s response to mortality.“Death and the dead must at all costs be avoided,” he thinks, and backs away “full of shock and distress.”Then Saxton throws us a curve ball.“The boy was fourteen years old. He had been walking alone now for ten years…”Wait…this kid has been walking through a nearly silent world, avoiding people whenever possible, since he was four years old?Subsequent events increase our perplexity. Against his better judgement, based on “rules” he’s learned (apparently at the age of three and four) from someone, the boy chooses to rescue the baby—even though he has no idea how to care for her.He carries her to an empty town, finding a grocery store with an automatic door (that still functions after a decade) and shelves still stocked with soda water and condensed milk.Later, he locates a bathhouse with functioning toilets and a pool still filled with chlorinated water heated to “a temperature of about eighty-three degrees Farenheit.” Eventually he discovers an indoor shopping mall (also fully stocked) where the heat and even a coffee machine still work.This is a very odd apocalypse.That’s because we aren’t reading a science fiction novel. We’ve been hoodwinked by Doubleday’s late-60s marketing department. Instead of a literal end-of-civilization scenario, this apocalypse is a stand-in for something else.The Hieros Gamos of Sam and An Smith is about the differences between boys and girls on the one hand, and women and men on the other. The empty world, seemingly devoid (or nearly so) of adults is more a representation of how the grown-up world is largely invisible to children, who are primarily the inhabitants of their own needs, desires, and imaginations.Thanks for reading The Cosmic Codex! This post is public so feel free to share it.This is symbolized by a monument the boy finds in the empty village.“...he came upon a statue of a man on horseback, with an inscription beneath it. The inscription thus:“’To the memory of those brave men of the town of Thingy, who gave their lives in the First World War.’”Here it’s important to understand the meaning of the word “thingy” in British English:“a person or thing whose name one has forgotten, does not ...
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