A MIRROR FOR OBSERVERS

Reviewed 9/10/2016

A Mirror for Observers, by Edgar Pangborn
Cover art by Daniel Schwartz
A MIRROR FOR OBSERVERS
Edgar Pangborn
Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, 1954

Rating:

5.0

High

ISBN-13 978-1-8829-6829-9 1
ISBN: 1-8829-6829-8 1 222pp. HC $25.00

In light of what he had heard from the Abdicator Namir, Drozma assigned Elmis to Latimer, a small city2 in Massachusetts, on an extended mission to Observe a 12-year-old boy named Angelo Pontevecchio. Drozma would have gone himself, but he was past 600 and nearing the end of his life, while Elmis was only 346.

Angelo was a brilliant boy, and as so often happens his intelligence put him at risk. It marked him as different from other humans: no specific threat, but threatening still because mere difference is regarded by so many as threatening. So great was his brilliance that, to the antagonists of the novel, it became the fulcrum on which their visions of the future trembled. For Elmis, it promised hope of the wiser human society he and other Observers had sought to foster since migrating from Salvay some 30,000 of our years ago. Namir, by contrast, saw Angelo's brilliance as a prime obstacle to his campaign, one which he must subvert or eliminate.

The nature of the goal sought by the Observers is crystallized in this dialogue between Elmis and Drozma, the administrator of Northern City:

"Is your work in such a state that you can leave it?"

"Someone else can always go on with it, Drozma."

"Tell me more about it."

"Still tracing ethical concepts as lines of growth. Trying to see through the broth of conflicts, wars, migrations, social cleavages, ideologies. I was restudying Confucius when you called me."

"Tentative conclusions?"

"A few, confirming your own intuition of a hundred years ago, that a genuine ethical revolution—comparable to the discovery of fire, of agriculture, of social awareness—might be in progress about 31,000, and might develop for the necessary centuries. The germs are present. Hard to see, but certainly present, just as the germ of society was latent in pre-language family groups. Of course one can make no allowance for such unpredictables as atomic war, pestilence, a too sudden rise in the water level. Fortunately, the dream of security is a human weakness we needn't share. As a very rash prediction, Drozma, I think union with them might be possible late in my son's lifetime."

– Page 15

Salvay, as we learn early on, is the planet Mars, and the calendar the Salvayans currently use dates from their arrival on Earth some 300 centuries ago. Thus, 1963 in our Gregorian calendar years is 30,963 in theirs.

Human history has dealt the Observers many defeats. Perhaps the greatest was their loss of Ocean City; it had been located in the Pacific near a place humans call Bikini Atoll. But that was not the last, and it requires extraordinary dedication to keep working for that long-sought advance in human ethical maturity. Some fail to muster the dedication; they become Abdicators, and work to undo everything the Observers have achieved. Apparently there are quite a few, although we never learn anything about the population of either Observers or Abdicators. By the law of 27,140 the latter group are guaranteed safe conduct in any Observer facility. Thus it is that Namir visits Drozma in Northern City, hidden beneath the tundra of Canada's Northwest Territory, and discusses his recent activities.

Once established in Latimer, Elmis reports regularly on the progress of his mission to Drozma, sending the reports through a drop box in Toronto. Living in the boarding house run by Angelo's mother Rosa after her husband died, he begins to make progress. He also chances to meet Sharon Brand, who has a gift for music, and makes it possible for her to continue piano lessons. However, Namir soon shows up and, with his son, manages to disrupt that progress. Ultimately, Angelo joins the son's gang and gets into a rumble. Rosa has a heart attack on learning of this, and Angelo runs off.

Elmis disappears too. There would be inconvenient questions about his part in the mess, since he tried to stop the rumble. He assumes another human identity and begins a search for Angelo. That search succeeds after nine years; but Angelo — now using the name Abraham Brown — has become a ward of Joseph Max's Organic Unity Party. That party is best described as atavistic, and Max as a demagogue lusting for power. Elmis is not surprised when he discovers both Namir and his son high up in the party hierarchy. They have a horrendous plan to assure victory for the Organic Unity Party. It goes horrendously wrong, and figuratively blows up in their disguised faces. However, after another year the result is not as bad as it might have been, and there is some hope that Elmis and the Observers may yet achieve their dream.

Pangborn is sometimes wordy in these pages (see pp. 147-149), but mostly keeps the plot moving along smartly. I would not call that plot cerebral, although intellect plays an essential part in it. As Pangborn has Elmis observe on p. 149, "Intelligence alone is nothing or worse." Rather, to shift into colloquialisms, what's needed is a blend of head and heart. Pangborn's beautiful, heartbreaking novel gives us this along with a gripping, well-crafted plot. For this reason I give it full marks, and lament only that it has not won more awards.3

1 The ISBNs and other data are for the hardcover November 2004 reissue by Old Earth Books.
2 There is no such city in Massachusetts, of course.
3 It won the International Fantasy Award in 1955. That seemed to me ironic, because there is nothing of fantasy about this novel, and not much of any kind of fiction. However, despite its name, the IFA explicitly included both SF and Fantasy. It was awarded by a panel selected from British professionals and prominent fans from 1951 through 1955, and last in 1957; from 1951 through 1953 the panel also presented an award for non-fiction.
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