Dystopian Fiction Review - "Travels in Nihilon" by Alan Sillitoe

Last year, Bombasticus from Future Sound of Lisbon lobbied me to start writing comic book reviews. He's going to have to keep waiting for those, but I thought I might like to occasionally write about some of the books I read. The first series of these will be dystopian novels, starting with Travels in Nihilon by Alan Sillitoe, best known to Belle & Sebastian fans as the author of The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner, and best known to everyone else as, {checks notes} um, {cricket noises}, well.

 
Travels in Nihilon was published in 1971, and the text represents itself as a non-fictional travel guide, assembled from the notes and reports of five correspondents by an unnamed editor. The editor gives us a taste of things to come in the introduction, when after extolling the excitement of freedom-loving, capitalist, nihilist Nihilon, he mentions that "it will be necessary to adjust the prose here and there, since the styles of the reports too often betray touches of panic and hysteria, a tone that may not commend itself to the general reader."

Structurally, each chapter follows one journalist with close third-person narration, and the viewpoint passes between them, although not in a strict order. The chapters are quite short, so we keep moving between the viewpoints. I would describe this book as a comedy, although it's not overtly funny. It is absurd. The events described are so extreme as to be surreal; the way the native Nihilonians instantly recruit the journalists into their various schemes gives each journey a dreamlike quality. Aside from the fact that the country itself is as dysfunctional as Freedonia in Duck Soup, the humor comes from the dry delivery of events that would indeed be "panic and hysteria" inducing to experience firsthand.

The journalists are right to feel overwhelmed, because they're each in over their heads from the moment they cross the border. The Nihilonian police insist each of them is carrying a fake passport. The journalists come with 2000 klipps each, and while I suppose 2000 dollars was quite a bit of money at the time, the prices they're charged suggest that a klipp has the spending power of more like a dime or a penny. It's also a problem that everyone wanting a bribe, and the name of the currency keeps changing, from "klipps" to "klopps" to "kricks" etc, which is either because there are multiple currencies in circulation, or simply because everyone is a liar and a thief. Nihilonians are also all drunk at all time on Nihilitz, which is about the only beverage it's possible to purchase, and sounds to be either a schnapps or a full-on hard spirit. They also all carry guns. Oh, and there's a war on, a revolution against the government and counter-revolution against the populace that starts up the moment the journalists arrive, and each of them gets swept up into it in their own way.

You'd be panicked and hysterical too, and perhaps ready for a stiff drink of Nihilitz, if you'd just survived a direct assassination attempt, indirect exposure to a bombing, you'd just spent all the money that was supposed to last you the whole two weeks of your visit, and you checked your watch and realized you'd only been there an hour. It's laughable how unprepared and out of their depths they all are, leaving for what they assumed was a cushy gig reporting on a free summer vacation, and finding themselves in a war-zone and conscripted into the action.

The journalists arrive by bike, car, boat, train, and airplane. They have somewhat distinctive personalities, with Adam being especially naive and Benjamin particularly grizzled. I kind of liked Edgar, who is relatively passive and ineffectual and ends up tagging along with a strong and stout-hearted Nihilonian lady who's instantly smitten with the poor dope. I also felt kind of badly for Jacqueline, because for her the danger is sexual peril and not just the usual mobs and explosions; she toughens up the most, the quickest. Adam, Benjamin, and Richard all end up heavily inveigled in the conflict, and they all prove relatively willing to let themselves be pulled into the heart of combat. (That aspect of the story is also a bit like Duck Soup, now that I think about it.) Ultimately, the story being told is about the revolution much more than it is about the journalist's individual trips, and so the book doesn't just end with them leaving the country at the end of their assignment, it also ends with the resolution of the war.

I feel comfortable calling Travels in Nihilon a dystopian novel, but it's almost difficult to describe what's dystopian about the country of Nihilon. It's not necessarily reducible to any simple, single thing. The government is a dictatorship masquerading as an illiberal democracy, but its control is not totalitarian. There are a lot of bad laws, truly insane laws with draconian prison sentences, like ten years for driving while not intoxicated on Nihilitz. But the biggest problem with Nihilon is its nihilism which seems to mean something like a combination of laws that enforce chaos, rapacious capitalism run truly amok, and citizens who are generally apathetic or complicit in one or both the other issues.

There's a town by a lake, for example, whose dam is failing, so that at any moment the town might be swept away by floodwaters and all the townspeople might be drowned. It's one of the nicest places in Nihilon, because the prices are so low, and because the mortal terror of being seconds from death every second of every day is considered relaxing by the Nihilonians who live there. That feels like a metaphor for something, but I'm not sure Sillitoe could have possibly been thinking about climate change when he wrote it. Maybe he was thinking of nuclear annihilation. Likewise, Nihilon itself seems vaguely Eastern European, and the fact that it's a failed state that's run badly by an incompetent strongarm thug while businesses at every possible level kleptocratically snatch up anything that's not nailed down feels like a prescient warning about the fate of former Soviet republics after the fall of the USSR, and the consequences of imposing of Reagan-Thatcher era free markets and austerity ... but could Sillitoe really have anticipated events happening 20 years after his book was published?

First, let's look at a couple examples of Nihilon's laws. These are both from chapter 25:

"I'm just out of prison. I was awarded twenty-five years because I exposed the manager of the factory I worked at for swindling. The factory was going bankrupt, so I made a formal complaint. I had irrefutable proof that he was ruining the firm, but when I presented it I was arrested, and given twenty-five years as a misguided idealist. Strangely enough, even though the manager kept on with his dishonesty, the firm did not go bankrupt. It even prospered after I was sent to prison, so I hear. People won't rebel against this government, because they see that God is on the side of the Nihilists."

"It's always been hard to get people to work in Nihilon. Naturally, nihilism and work are not compatible, but President Nil, damn him, came up with the following solution. A man was granted permission to kill somebody if he paid a hundred thousand klipps into the private account of President Nil at the State Bank. On receipt of this payment, the man was given a revolver and a Killing Certificate, with the name of the person inscribed on it whom he wished to put an end to. So everyone has an incentive to work, and save, because there is no one, in this country at any rate, who doesn't have someone he wants to kill. Many people fervently saved in order to get their hundred thousand, and therefor a Killing Certificate. There was no need to produce houses or cars for them to spend their money on. True, a lot of people die, and sometimes whole families are wiped out, but people are cheap."

Tldr; in Nihilon, murder is allowed as long as you bribe the president first, but blowing the whistle on corruption is illegal.

Next, I want to look at Nihilonian capitalism. One notable thing is the absence of any kind of insurance or safety equipment anywhere in the country. Even car repair kits are illegal for motorists to carry. It's an exaggeration of the idea that we can save money by not paying for preventative medicine, even though we'll pay a thousand times more later, after an un-prevented illness has become serious enough to warrant an emergency room visit. It's less like we're saving money, in fact, and more like we're paying extra to ensure that poor people suffer. Here's the safety announcement from Nihilon's airline in chapter 10:

"In case of emergency, passengers are kindly requested to carry on talking, reading, eating or sleeping, because though your lives are in our hands, and we will do our best to preserve them, there will be nothing anybody can do about it. Like all other airlines of the world we carry highly inflammable petrol, fly at a great height, and do not provide parachutes, so in the event of an emergency it is highly unlikely that either passengers or crew would survive."

There's also a kind of parody of the way we allow businesses to nickel and dime us with fees that are over-and-above the purchase price, that appear on our bills only after we agree to buy, and that are unavoidable, even if they're for "services" we didn't really use and don't really want. From chapter 20:

"The ticket collector apologised, and said that there had been a mistake. Instead of having the compartment to herself, she was to share it with another woman. He then demanded a supplement of fifty kricks because, he explained kindly, she would have company all the way to Nihilon City instead of travelling alone as hertofore, and all such extra comforts were provided at nominal cost. She gave fifty kricks to the ticket collector, who departed grumbling and swearing because she hadn't given him anything extra."

Sillitoe also seems prescient in anticipating the push for tiered services. After all, how can you really know that you're being treated well unless you can see someone else being treated badly? What does it even mean to be rich if poor people are still treated with dignity and respect? What good is all your money if it doesn't buy you the opportunity to watch someone starving to death with rickets in a sewage-filled gutter for your amusement? In Nihilon's airlines, second-class is what we'd consider "normal" service. On a first-class plane, there are no seats, you spend the whole flight ballroom dancing in formal-wear while being served gourmet food and champagne by naked flight attendants. And third-class? From chapter 10:

"Third-class tourist-economy night-flight in ten miserable hours? Yes, people are towed in huge gliders by obsolescent bombers, or so I hear. They sit on the floor with luggage at their feet and packets of sandwiches in their hands. A continuous tape of crying babies is played from stereo-speakers to make them feel more uncomfortable, and smells of fatty stew emerge from the end of a pipe near the tail of the plane as it goes through air pockets above mountain tops. Not very nice, I must say. During the flight passports are collected, and hardly distinguishable false ones are handed back before landing on an improvised field in some remote area fifty kilometers from the main airport, so that people have to make their ways to Nihilon City by a very irregular bus service on bumpy tracks, or walk through unmapped forest, if and when they get by the police and customs tent at the side of the field. Even disorganisation is well organised in Nihilon. The aim of our government is absolute chaos meticulously regulated."

Surely arranging this level of misery is more expensive for the airline than equality would be, but people are willing to pay extra to get the things they really want.

Finally, let's look at Nihilon's government. Unsurprisingly, there's propaganda instead of news and state-run media controls the airwaves, as seen here in chapter 18:

"Visitor to Nihilon! In order to find out about our country, you may wish to tune-in to the seven o'clock lies on Radio Nihilon. This is the most important information bulletin of the day. Regarding its curious opening of 'Here are the lies', tourists are earnestly requested not to be duped by it. They may be reminded, in fact, that the inhabitants of Nihilon take it very seriously. This National Bulletin owes its inverted title to the genius of President Nil, when he realised that the people of Nihilon were no longer interested in the News. He therefore proclaimed that henceforth all news would be lies. Thus, when people flocked to hear these lies they soon realised that they were, in fact, serious truth. But whereas before they had contemptuously referred to the News as lies, they could no longer do so, because Lies became its official name."

Also unsurprisingly, Nihilon gives the appearance of being a democracy, holds sham elections with fixed results, and insists that its dictator is really a president, as explained in chapter 22:

"Elections? Not any more, my friend. There were, at first, very early on, but the people were in such a euphoric mood of don't-care and don't-know, that vast deputations went to the government building and said: 'We don't want any more voting. We're happy. So after all, what does it matter?' And the government said: 'It does matter. It's democracy. It's your right to vote. It's your duty. So if you won't vote, we'll vote for you.' And that's how it's been ever since. At every general election the people get into great moods of excitement, wondering which way the voting will go, staying up all night to hear the results. And then at six in the morning, the government breaks the tension by announcing that it has got in once more, after which it declares a public holiday, so that the grateful people, secure in their very own and latest victory, can either go to sleep or continue their celebrations."

Maybe the most frightening, most dystopian thing about Travels in Nihilon, though, is the evidence throughout that the nihilists really have won in a very profound way. The ordinary people of Nihilon are by-and-large happy with their fate. Most of the people we meet don't just accept the arbitrariness of their laws, the thievery of their economy, and the brutality of their government - they like it, they prefer it to the alternatives, and they fight to defend it. Among those who dislike nihilism, a feeling of helplessness prevails before the revolution, expressed here in chapter 24:

"For years I've been disillusioned with nihilism, at having to get up every morning and invent more novelties of disorder for the pampered populace when President Nil forgets to send his own suggestions through. I've known for a long time that it was retrograde and immoral to live under such a system. My wife has often seen me breaking my heart at the waste and burden of it all. I've been secretly praying for a safe and orderly existence, but I was so influenced by President Nil and his philosophy, which said that life should be a great lawless adventure, that I never knew how to try and change it."

In the end, the revolution appears to be successful, but we're left with real doubts about whether and how the new government will be different, and about what it will mean to live in a country that is still filled with nihilists. From chapter 29:

"I like things to stay as they are, all mixed up and dangerous. That's normal now, isn't it? I'll always vote for normal, no matter what it is."