Report on Probability A by Brian Aldiss

This window was different from the others of the house.  The other windows were wooden framed; this was a window with metal frames.  The metal frame was longer than it was high and supported three sub-sections, each of which carried six panes of glass; of these three sub-sections, the middle one was a fixture, but the two on either side of it opened, and had perforated metal bars to secure them when they were open.  The window on the right was open at present, and secured on the third perforation of its metal bar. 

Let's take a break from the 1930s and read a paperback I purchased in August for one dollar at the I-76 Antique Mall in the state that is hi in the middle and round at both ends.  My copy of Report on Probability A, printed by Lancer in 1970, has beautiful purple edges and on its front cover a ringing endorsement from Library Journal: "...no science fiction collection should be without...this book."  I'm relieved to know that the MPorcius Library, here in the lonely mountainous region a hundred miles west of America's ruling conurb, is up to code!  Aldiss dedicates the novel, originally published in magazine form in New Worlds in 1967 and then in British hardcover in 1968, in poetic fashion to New Worlds editor and Elric of Melnibone scribe Michael Moorcock, and offers an epigraph from Goethe before the main text that suggests looking behind phenomena is fruitless, that phenomena are themselves instructive.  

Part One of Report on Probability A consists primarily of a detailed description of the milieu and commonplace life of a gardener who lives in a decrepit one-room bungalow on the grounds of the house owned by a Mr. Mary.  The report describes the bungalow and surrounding yard in astoundingly, encumberingly, great detail, and I guess the tone is meant to be one of decay and perhaps failure and impotence: there is a leak, the paint is peeling, grass refuses to grow in one section of the yard, the rugs are faded, the front page of a newspaper hung up inside the bungalow has stories about a warship that caught afire while at port, a murder and a price rise resulting from a "fish famine."  The gardener, called "G" in the report, has an old clock that needs to be wound but G never winds it.  In the first of Part One's six chapters G sits in his old worn out chair and looks out the window and then pets a cat (G has run out of the milk he sometimes feeds the cat); Mrs. Mary walks by as he is shaking out one of the rugs and they have a brief, pointless conversation during which she does not stop nor even look at G.  There are some surreal touches--that newspaper front page hung on the wall has a story about a garden hose in America which apparently came to life, and while in chapter 1 we were told the clock has not been working for eleven months, the first line of chapter 2 hints that it is working.  More importantly, italicized passages about the two men reading the report about G, Midlakemela and Domoladossa, indicate they live in a different universe from G.  Perhaps the portions of the report reproduced in chapters 1 and 2 describe slightly different dimension, one in which G does not wind, and one in which he does wind, that clock.

Later in Part One we are introduced to another man, S, and are offered an exhaustive description of the attic of an old brick couch house on the Mary property in which he lives and from which he spies on Mrs. Mary with a telescope while she washes dishes. 

At the end of Part One, in an italicized passage, we meet "The Distinguishers," who it seems are from a third universe and are watching Domoladossa as he reads the report about G, S, and the Marys.  One of Aldiss's jokes, I guess, is that the Distinguishers find it fascinating to watch a guy sit at a desk reading a sheaf of paper, just as Domoladossa finds the report about G's boring life fascinating--is Aldiss poking fun at us for finding the report fascinating, or not finding it fascinating?  Is Aldiss hinting that reading fiction is fundamentally absurd, a waste of time when we could be out living real lives with real people?  By presenting to us a boring novel about impotent people, instead of a thrilling novel about heroic people, is Aldiss making it more starkly clear that reading books is a sterile exercise?  (S does read some popular fiction, part of a magazine serial of which he does not have all the episodes.)

The big theme of the novel, as the text on the front and back covers alerts you, is the act of watching.  All through the book people look through lenses, mirrors and windows, and Aldiss describes these glass objects in repetitive detail, as well as lines of sight and points of vantage--what a person can see from a particular place and what he cannot--meticulously taking account of the effects of physical obstructions as well as reflections, light levels and precipitation on vision.  

You know how Magritte's painting of a pipe is supposed to make you question the relationship of art to reality and Duchamp hanging a urinal on a gallery wall and Warhol painting a can of soup are supposed to make you question what sort of object counts as art?  Maybe, in Report on Probability A, Aldiss wants us to question the relationship of what we see through panes of glass and lenses to reality and what sort of writing counts as science fiction.  What do we really know about the people and things we see; don't the limitations on our vision and our own various hopes, fears and prejudices compromise our ability to interpret what we see?  Is this novel, which is like a modern literary story that describes in boring detail the boring environment and boring activities of very ordinary people, science fiction because of a few italicized passages about other dimensions?  

Covers of British editions of Report on Probability A, like that of my American paperback,
show altered versions of William Holman Hunt's 1851 painting The Hireling Shepherd

Part Two of Report on Probability A serves up fare similar to Part One, more exacting and repetitive descriptions of a room and a guy looking through windows, this time focusing on S.  S has a black and white print reproduction of William Holman Hunt's 1851 painting The Hireling Shepherd hanging in his attic.  Wikipedia says of Hunt's painting "The meaning of the image has been much debated," so it suits Aldiss's theme of our questionable ability to interpret what we see.  We get an inkling of how different Domoladossa and Midlakemela's universe is from ours when we learn that in their world The Hireling Shepherd was painted not by an Englishman but a Russian-born German, Winkel Henri Hunt.   

Besides watching, other themes of the novel include time and scale--e. g., The Hireling Shepherd, the report argues, depicts a single moment of time, but provides clues as to what may happen at a later time, while some of the observers suspecting that in the world they are watching time is advancing at a different rate than it does in their own, and/or that the people of the other world are very small, even subatomic. 

As Part Two proceeds we learn of still more universes in which live people who are observing the universes we already know about, universes which have their own versions of The Hireling Shepherd.  Perhaps hinting that the name of the family which G and S are spying on is a reference to the Virgin Mary, in one of these universes the watching and reporting is done by a psychic woman called The Wandering Virgin.  We also get some clues about S's relationship with the Marys--he used to be Mr. Mary's secretary (Mr. Mary is some kind of writer), is in love with Mrs. Mary, and is apparently squatting in that coach house attic without the Marys' permission, perhaps even without their knowledge.  And we learn that living above the garage next to the house is another man, a former chauffer of the Marys', C, also squatting without permission.  

In Part Three, the concluding part of the novel, we watch as C looks out the window of the little cramped loft above the garage with an improvised periscope, and kills time by pretending to drive the broken down car on the ground floor of the garage.  This joker is also in love with Mrs. Mary.  The plot, such as it is, advances a little.  The cat finally catches that pigeon we have been hearing about throughout the book, and C is spotted and Mr. Mary grabs his rifle, though he doesn't fire it and C isn't moved to flee the garage, but just goes to sleep in the oft-described loft.  We get clues that suggest the Marys' marriage is a troubled one, they having lost a baby and there being, it seems, some physical abuse between them.  The italicized portions about the other universes stress their differences from our own; polygamy is apparently the norm in one, for example.  Then the novel ends as the sun goes down.  Is there any climax or resolution?  For the pigeon and the cat, maybe--right before it gets dark C watches G acquire some milk for the little bird killer!  

Report on Probability A is one of those works that is admirable and impressive, but not actually very fun.  By page 100 (there are about 150 pages of text) I was getting kind of tired of reading again and again about the peeling wallpaper in the attic of the old coach house or how many thicknesses of glass S was looking through and so forth.  I wondered how many people who had read this book in the past had started skimming by this point.  (I promise that I, hoping for more surreal incidents like the animate American garden hose or a clue that somebody had done something interesting, like the single reference to the dead baby, did not skim!)  I am glad I have read Report on Probability A, but I was also glad when it was over.