Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} by In the Wet. All our eBooks are FREE to download! sign in or create a new account. EPUB 340 KB. Kindle 470 KB. $2.99. Support epubBooks by making a small PayPal donation purchase . This work is available in the U.S. and for countries where copyright is Life+50 or less. Description. Shute’s speculative glance into the future of the British Empire. An elderly clergyman stationed in the Australian bush is called to the bedside of a dying derelict. In his delirium Stevie tells a story of England in 1983 through the medium of a squadron air pilot in the service of Queen Elizabeth II. It is the rainy season. Drunk and delirious, an old man lies dying in the Queensland bush. In his opium-hazed last hours, a priest finds his deserted shack and listens to his last words. Half-awake and half-dreaming the old man tells the story of an adventure set decades in the future, in a very different world… 443 pages, with a reading time of. 6.75 hours (110,983 words) , and first published in 1953. This DRM-Free edition published by epubBooks , 2015 . Community Reviews. Your Review. Sign up or Log in to rate this book and submit a review. There are currently no other reviews for this book. Excerpt. I have never before sat down to write anything so long as this may be, though I have written plenty of sermons and articles for parish magazines. I don’t really know how to set about it, or how much I shall have to write, but as nobody is very likely to read it but myself perhaps that is of no great consequence. The fact is, however, that I have been so troubled in my mind since I came back from Blazing Downs that I have not been able to sleep very well or to work wholeheartedly upon my parish business, and my services in the church have been mechanical and absent-minded. I think it will help me if I try to write down what it is that has been bothering me, and then I think that I may send it to the Bishop for him to look over. Perhaps the trouble is that I am getting a little old for duty in this somewhat unusual parish, and if that should prove to be the case I must accept whatever he decides. Writing materials are not very easy to come by here, because Landsborough is only a small town. I went down to Art Duncan’s store just now to buy some paper, but all he had was pads of thin airmail paper and these exercise books that Miss Foster uses for the older children in the school when they have got past using slates. I got six of these books and I expect I shall want more before I have written all that I have to say, but that only leaves nine books in the store and I would not like to think that I was running the school short. I have asked Art to get in some more, and he will send an order out to Townsville by next week’s aeroplane. In fairness to anybody who should read what I am writing I think I should begin by putting down something about myself, so that he can form his own judgment on the credibility of my account. My name is Roger Hargreaves and I have been ordained as a priest in the Church of England for forty-one years; I was sixty-three years old last month. I was born in the year 1890 at in the south of England and I was educated at Portsmouth Grammar School. I was ordained in 1912 and became curate of St. Mark’s, at Guildford. In 1914 when the war broke out I went into the army as a chaplain, and I saw service in Gallipoli and in France. I was very fortunate in the war, because although I was blown up by a shell at Delville Wood during the Somme battle I was only in hospital for a few weeks, and I was able to return to the front line in less than four months. After the war I was rather unsettled, and disinclined to return to parochial work in an English town. I was twenty-eight years old, unmarried, and with nothing very much to keep me in England. It seemed to me that while I was still young and vigorous I should give a few years of my life to service in more difficult places, and after talking it over with the Bishop I left for Australia to join the Bush Brotherhood in Queensland. I served in the Bush Brotherhood for fourteen years, travelling very widely from Cloncurry to Toowoomba, from Birdsville to Burdekin. During that fourteen years I had no settled home, and I did not very often sleep more than two nights in one place. I drew fifty pounds a year from the Brotherhood which was quite sufficient for my clothes and personal expenses, and I had a small expense account for travelling though I seldom had to draw upon it. The people of the outback were most generous in helping me to travel from station to station for my christenings and weddings and funerals and services. They would always take me on to the next place in a truck or a utility, and in the wet when the roads are impassable to motors because of the mud I have been given the loan of a horse for as long as three months, so that I have been able to continue with my duties all through the rainy season. Nevil Shute. Nevil Shute lived, in some ways, as two very different people: Nevil Shute Norway, the successful airplane engineer and business entrepreneur, and Nevil Shute, the author of escapist adventure novels and science fiction. He was careful to keep the two separate, writing under a shortened version of his full name, fearing that his reputation as a best-selling novelist would undermine his credibility as an engineer whom people would trust with their lives in his airplanes. By the end of his unusual and successful career, however, he had made significant and enduring contributions to both aeronautical design and popular fiction—a claim that few others, if any, can make. Works in Biographical and Historical Context. A Taste for Adventure Nevil Shute Norway was born on January 17, 1899, in Ealing, west of London. He spoke with a stutter, a problem he never completely overcame. His father became the head of the postal service in Ireland, and in 1912 the family moved to Dublin. Shute served in the medical corps during the Easter Rebellion in Ireland, during which Irish rebels supporting independence from England occupied some key government offices; in the ensuing conflict, Shute's father's post office was burned. He enlisted in the infantry just before World War I ended. Shute began work as an engineer at the Aircraft Company in 1922, where he learned to fly. While at de Havilland, Shute bought a typewriter, perhaps encouraged by the writing activities of his family: His grandmother had been a writer of children's books, his father had published travel books, and his mother edited a volume of correspondence about the family's experiences in the Irish rebellion. All of these genres influenced his later novels—the simple adventure narratives owe a debt to adolescent fiction, travel and life abroad is represented throughout Shute's novels, and the experiences of determined individuals confronting violence and the threat of death appear in many of Shute's stories. An Amusing Pastime In 1923 and 1924 Shute's first two novels were rejected by publishers, but he had learned that he enjoyed writing and could do it quickly, and he was determined to keep at it. He later spoke of his early work as not being particularly good, but Shute's novels come from the perspective of someone who found writing to be mostly a relaxing and amusing pastime to do after work. The many novels Shute wrote between 1924 and 1930 are often easy-to-read adventure stories about pilots, as Shute often flew a small plane himself during this time. Some of them did address serious issues, however, such as (1928), which expressed his concern for pilots who, after serving in World War I, were now poorly paid. The American edition was published as The Mysterious Aviator . Wartime Efforts and Inspiration After 1938, Shute's novels began to show the political tensions of the period. When the war began, Shute was highly critical of America's refusal to come to the aid of Great Britain and its European allies. Pied Piper , about an elderly British lawyer who rescues refugee children from France just before the German invasion, was one of the books Shute aimed at American readers, hoping that the United States would end its isolation. After the war, Shute traveled to Burma to briefly work for the ministry of information, and he returned to England and his full-time writing career in 1945. The Chequer Board (1947) grew out of his time in Burma. In 1947 Shute traveled by car around the United States, seeking a firsthand glimpse into the real America so he could better describe it in several of his novels (written with an eye toward the American movie industry). Futuristic Visions In 1950 Shute and his family moved permanently to Australia. During this period, in spite of his stammer, Shute began to lecture on professional writing. Among the topics he discussed were the elements he believed fiction readers want: information, romance, heroism, and a happy ending—even if it involves death. As Julian Smith points out, Shute's next novel, In the Wet (1953), supplied those four things, plus a fifth element—relevance to current events, in particular the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. Moreover, In the Wet includes a vision of the 1980s, in which Australia is the center of a thriving British Empire free of socialism. The 1950s saw the rise of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, and with it the constant threat of nuclear annihilation. In his best-known work, , Shute takes up his most ambitious subject yet: the destruction of the world in a nuclear holocaust. The novel tells how in 1962 a nuclear war begins with the bombing of Tel Aviv and ends thirty-seven days later, presumably in total devastation. Southern Australia is the last part of the world to be affected by the spreading deadly radioactivity. The novel depicts the things people focus on in their final weeks and days—alcohol, auto racing, church attendance, vegetable gardens, and suicide drugs. On the Beach was not the first novel to address this topic, but Shute's treatment of the subject was noteworthy, both for the vividness of his depiction of the war's human consequences and for the remarkable popularity of the book. It was made into a star-studded movie in 1959, although Shute was unhappy with certain changes made to the story and characters. Shute finished only two novels in his last four years, returning to subjects that had sustained him throughout his long career: The Rainbow and the Rose (1958), about a pilot reviewing the life of his mentor, and Trustee from the Toolroom (1960), which opens in Shute's birthplace of West Ealing, and is about an accomplished engineer. His work on the latter was impaired somewhat by a stroke he suffered in December of 1958. He began a new novel that was to metaphorically depict the Second Coming of Christ in the southern Australian wilderness, and he was working on it when he died on January 12, 1960. Works in Literary Context. Shute did not write “literary” novels, so academic critics and Shute have largely ignored one another. According to Julian Smith, the leading authority on Shute and his works, “If Nevil Shute ever influenced another writer or the course of English literature, there is no evidence to that effect.” Still, Shute was very much a product of his times. Best sellers can often reveal aspects of popular culture that wider literary trends cannot —for example, while literary authors of the world-wars era such as Virginia Woolf and Graham Greene were exploring complex characters and lyrical prose styles, Shute was content to just tell good stories that let people escape from their troubled times for a few hours. “His prose was never exciting, nor was it ever dull,” writes Smith. “It was simply as functional as the aircraft he built in his engineering days.” Aviation As a pilot and aeronautical engineer himself, it is not surprising that many of Shute's characters are pilots, and the majority of his tales deal with flying in some respect. For example, his first several novels are all adventures centered on pilots. The main character of In the Wet is a member of the Royal Australian Air Force, while the narrator of is an aeronautics engineer. The main character of is an engineer and pilot who becomes something of a religious leader. Pulp Fiction Conventions The trends in popular fiction of the 1930s–1950s tended toward heroic adventure stories, westerns, mysteries, and (from the 1950s onward) science fiction. These novels, and the short stories that filled the sensationalistic magazines of the era, are often called “pulp fiction” after the cheap wood-pulp paper on which they were printed. While Shute did not write westerns, he did set some of his novels in the Australian outback and in the American Rockies. He did not write mysteries, but his novel Requiem for a Wren (1955) does tell the story of a young lawyer investigating the supposed suicide of a parlor maid. What Shute does share with the pulp fiction tradition is an attraction to stories of noble middle-class heroes winning success through hard work and commitment, grand adventures to exotic locations, and futuristic tales of impending disasters. Human and Societal Ideals The future, for Shute, was a setting that allowed him to consider how the world could be a better or worse place as a result of moral and political decisions that we make today. For example, while it is true that On the Beach is about a nuclear holocaust, it is mostly about the ways in which the best aspects of human nature—especially tolerance for other races and religious beliefs—are a key part of mankind's redemption from our primitive instincts for violence and revenge. Similarly, In the Wet explores a unique idea for maintaining the spirit of democratic ideals: a government that allows its citizens to earn more than one vote by meeting certain conditions, such as achieving higher education or raising a family without divorcing. LITERARY AND HISTORICAL CONTEMPORARIES. Shute's famous contemporaries include: Amelia Earhart (1897–1937): Famed pilot and the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean. During an attempt to fly around the world in 1937, her plane disappeared over the Pacific near Hawaii. It has never been found. Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875–1950): Author of over seventy novels, most of them fantasy adventures or science fiction. His best known work, Tarzan of the Apes , has been adapted in countless sequels, films, and television shows. Harry S. Truman (1884–1972): The thirty-third president of the United States. Just four months into his administration, he ordered the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, which effectively ended World War II. Howard Hughes (1905–1976): An eccentric, brilliant, and enormously innovative multimillionaire who designed and built several experimental aircraft and broke many speed records, later moving to commercial aircraft and founding Trans-American Airlines. Glenn Miller (1904–1944): One of the best-selling musicians of the World War II era. He joined the army in 1942 so he could lead a band to entertain the troops and raise morale. His plane disappeared over France in 1944 and was never found. Works in Critical Context. Shute did not attract much literary attention while he was alive, but after he died, critics began to assess the role he had been playing in popular culture. There were relatively few serious book reviews of his works as they came out, but when he died in 1960, there was a flurry of respectful obituaries such as the one in Time magazine that concluded that “later years may find [his novels] a remarkably reliable portrait of mid-20th century man and his concerns.” Edmund Fuller wrote in the Saturday Review: “Nevil Shute will be missed. He was one of our most prolific and diversified storytellers. His twenty novels varied widely in tone and pace, as well as in scene, and time, ranging from his own Australia, where he lowered the curtain on the human race, to England and America, and from a little into the future back to the Vikings.” Shute did attract the attention of several important literary figures. George Orwell appreciated Landfall: A Channel Story (1940), saying that it brought out “the essential peculiarity of war, the mixture of heroism and meanness.” C. P. Snow wrote in 1970 that Shute was a rare bridge between two very different cultures, engineers and general readers. In recent years more has been written about Shute, including a book-length study by Julian Smith in 1976. The most attention is given to On the Beach because of its treatment of nuclear war and role in the history of British science fiction. Other recent critics are more interested in Shute's later novels and their portrayal of Australia and South Asian locales. Responses to Literature. Is someone who is able to design a good airplane likely to be able to design a good novel, too? Are there basic thinking skills common to all construction, whether it be something mechanical or something literary? What assumptions are you making about engineers and novelists as you form your answer? In the 1940s and 1950s, it was unusual for novels to emphasize how personal and political actions at home can have far- reaching influences all the way around the world. How does Shute deal with this theme in his novels? Is this theme more or less relevant today, in the age of the Internet and instant communications? Research some of the government propaganda about nuclear war created during the Cold War of the 1950s and 1960s. (The film The Atomic Café is a good place to start.) Does Shute's treatment of nuclear holocaust in On the Beach seem more or less extreme to you when seen in this wider cultural context? Read one of the books by Shute that was adapted into a film, and then watch the film. How faithful is the movie to the book? What was added or left out, and to what effect? What did the critics, and Shute himself, have to say about the movie? COMMON HUMAN EXPERIENCE. The prospect of nuclear war, and the possible total annihilation of the human species that could very easily come with it, have cast a haunting shadow over the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Here are some works that consider the aftermath of nuclear attacks, both fictional and nonfictional: Hiroshima (1946), a nonfiction work by John Hersey. At 8:15 am on August 6, 1945, nearly one hundred thousand people in this Japanese city died suddenly in an attack like no other. The book chronicles the lives of six ordinary survivors, tracing their will to survive, lifetime plights, illnesses, and fears. A Canticle for Leibowitz (1960), a novel by Walter M. Miller Jr. This science fiction classic and Hugo Award winner is set in a monastery in the aftermath of an apocalyptic nuclear war. The Day After (1983), a made-for-television movie directed by Nicholas Meyer. The broadcast of this movie was a huge television event at the time. It gives a small-town perspective on the possible aftermath of a nuclear war. The Great Fire (2003), a novel by Shirley Hazzard. The “great fire” of the title is the bombing of Hiroshima. The novel by National Book Award winner Hazzard centers on a British soldier in Japan after the Allied victory to study the effects of the bomb on the country. If You Love this Planet (1982), a documentary directed by Terre Nash. This short film won an Academy Award for its illustration of the potential medical and social results of a nuclear war. BIBLIOGRAPHY. Books. Bennett, Jack. “Beyond Britain: Nevil Shute's Asian Outlook.” In Perceiving Other Worlds . Ed. by Edwin Thumboo. Singapore: Times Academy, 1991. ———. “Nevil Shute: Exile by Choice.” In A Sense of Exile: Essays in the Literature of the Asia-Pacific Region . Edited by Bruce Bennett and Susan Miller. Nedlands, Western Australia: Centre for Studies in , 1988. Higdon, David Leon. “‘Into the Vast Unknown’: Directions in the Post-Holocaust Novel.” In War and Peace: Perspectives in the Nuclear Age . Edited by Ulrich Goebel. Studies in Comparative Literature 18. Lubbock: Texas Technical University Press, 1988. Smith, Julian. Nevil Shute . English Author Series, 190. Boston: Twayne, 1976. ———. Nevil Shute: A Biography . Kerhonkson, N. Y.: Paper Tiger, 2002. Periodicals. Erisman, Fred. “Nevil Shute and the Closed Frontier.” Western American Literature 21, no. 3 (November 1986): 207–17. Martin, David. “The Mind That Conceived On theBeach .” Meanjin 19 (1960): 193–200. Smith, Julian. “On the Beach at Amchitka: The Conversion of Nevil Shute.” South Atlantic Quarterly 72 (1973): 22–28. Tor.com. Science fiction. Fantasy. The universe. And related subjects. The future of the Commonwealth: Nevil Shute’s In the Wet. I first read In the Wet , along with most of Shute, in the seventies when I was a kid. Nevil Shute was, according to his fascinating autobiography Slide Rule , an oddly technically and scientifically minded man for a member of the British upper-middle classes in the twenties and thirties. He spent much of his life around flying machines (airships as well as planes) and when he came to write popular fiction, flying machines featured heavily in it. Some of his work is clearly science fiction, On the Beach is probably the best known, and the rest of it tends to be interested in science and engineering in just exactly the way in which SF is and mainstream fiction isn’t. Shute flourished from the thirties to the seventies, he was a bestseller. He’s always a comfort read for me, and I am especially fond of the work he produced at night during WWII, when he has no idea who was going to win, while working designing planes all day. His best work I think is Requiem for a Wren (aka The Breaking Wave in the US, in a particularly stupid example of “what were they thinking” retitling) a novel about getting over WWII, and (aka Legacy in the US, because how stupid can you get to replace a terrific title with a bland one) a novel about how civilization works. I’m delighted to see that all these books are in print from Random House UK—though they’re also the kind of thing your library may well have, and which you can pick up secondhand easily because they were printed in vast quantities. Shute has huge quantities of the elusive “IWantToReadItosity” that I talked about with reference to Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire series. It doesn’t matter how many times I’ve read his books, once I pick one up and read a paragraph I always want to read the whole thing again. Having said all this, it’s only fair to say that viewed objectively, In the Wet is a very odd book, and clearly influenced by the British upheavals I talked about in the cosy catastrophe post. This is not the kind of book where spoilers matter. In the Wet begins with 80 pages (in the Canadian hardcover) of setup. A British Church of England parson explains, in first person, that he’s spent much of his life in Australia, that he has malaria, and the circumstances in which he meets a drunken old man called Stevie, and then comes to be at Stevie’s bedside during the wet season, as Stevie is dying. Stevie relates his life story—only he doesn’t, the priest has malaria and is delirious, a nurse who was also present the whole time heard nothing. Also, the life Stevie tells is a life that takes place in the future—the book was published and this frame is set in 1953, the main part of the story takes place in 1983. It’s Stevie’s next life as David Anderson that we hear about. This isn’t a frame a science fiction writer would have found necessary or desirable, and it opens up questions about reincarnation that somewhat get in the way of the actual story. Having said that, H. Beam Piper wrote about reincarnation in an entirely SFnal (as opposed to fantastic) way, so it isn’t inherently an illegitimate subject. Shute returns to the frame briefly in the middle, as David Anderson’s nightmare, and at the end, where the priests christens David as a baby and gets enough evidence from external sources to convince himself that what he has heard is true. It works surprisingly well, though it puts the happy ending in an odd place. So, we have a story set in 1983. In the afterword to this Canadian edition (which I’m sure wasn’t in my old British paperback) Shute says he intends this as speculation about the future of the British Commonwealth. That strikes me as an odd thing to want to do. The US is mentioned twice in the book, once geographically (they’re flying over part of it) and once politically—an Australian is asked if he’d want Australia to leave the Commonwealth and join with the States, and reacts with horror. While and other Commonwealth countries get more prominence, this is really a speculation about the future of the two countries Shute knew well—Britain and Australia. Now, the Commonwealth does still exist, and it is of course utterly different from the way Shute imagined it. The Royal Family still exists, as well, but is probably if anything even further from what Shute imagined. The story of In the Wet concerns David Anderson, an Australian pilot who gets a job with the Queen’s Flight at a time when Canada and Australia and the rest of the Commonwealth love the Queen and Britain doesn’t. There’s a constitutional crisis, Britain gets a Governer General, Australia gets the Queen, David Anderson falls in love and becomes engaged to a British girl. It’s essentially a sweet love story against a science fictional background, though there don’t seem to have been many technological or social changes since the fifties—people still change for dinner, for instance. Shute’s future Britain is one in which housing prices have collapsed to nothing because of massive emigration, Britain has a shrinking population due to massive emigration, and the country has been socialist for thirty years. It has however remained a world leader in technological advances, despite everyone being pale and pasty and still living on badly managed rations. (He was so wrong about rations. WWII rationing produced the healthiest generation ever.) He simultaneously says that the working classes have had their standard of living raised so it’s very high, and talks about how underfed and poor everyone is compared to Australia. This 1983 is an “if this went on” of the post-war settlement taken to great extremes—and also one in which Britain remained economically part of the Commonwealth and not part of Europe, despite geography, while having no immigration at all. Rosemary, the British heroine, has never seen a new house. Shute seems to think it’s very important that the British population shrink until the island can feed itself. I don’t know why importing food isn’t the trivial matter it is in reality. And while I have myself emigrated, Britain has generally been a magnet for immigration. There’s an interesting point here which again demands comparison with Piper. (I wonder if Piper read Shute? Or Shute read Piper either?) Gumption is not in fact genetic. If all your people with gumption emigrate, you’ll have just as many people with gumption in the next generation. The same goes with engineering skills. As long as you still have your school system working, it doesn’t matter in the long term if you lose technically trained people. Shute’s Britain, unlike Piper’s Sword Worlds, manages to retain technology, indeed their ability to technologically innovate goes far beyond the real 1983. Japan doesn’t seem to be significant in this world. We don’t actually see any technology, except for the planes, but there are constant mentions in the abstract of British innovation and engineering. What we don’t have, oddly, considering, is any aerospace—this is a 1983 where there hasn’t been a moon landing and there are no rockets. Australia, where Shute emigrated at about the time he was writing this book, is thriving. The reason it’s thriving is because it’s had a lot of immigration from Britain (but not from elsewhere in Europe or Asia, unlike in reality) and also because it has thrown out the system of “one man, one vote” and replaced it with a system in which everyone has one vote, and then people get extras for being nifty. It’s stated outright that this has produced a better kind of politician, handwave handwave, and this is why Australia has more food, a better climate and new housing developments. The votes are quite explicitly social engineering. Everyone gets one vote. Then you get another for higher education. (David, who has none, got that for becoming a flying officer, which is considered equivalent, and probably is.) There’s one for working outside the country for two years—David got that in the war. (Oh yes, BTW, WWIII has happened, we don’t know who participated but it wasn’t nuclear and seems a lot like WWII in terms of theatres and scale.) Then there’s a vote for raising two children to the age of fourteen without getting divorced—husband and wife both get it. There’s one for being rich—if your personal income is above a certain high figure. There’s one for church officials—any Christian churches. And the Seventh Vote is a special honour, like a knighthood, awarded in special cases to recognise excellence. David would have three votes in this system, and so would I—do take a moment to calculate how many you’d have, and whether you think the world would be better if you had that much more input. (I think it’s reasonable to consider the “wealth” vote at $60,000.) This is a direct response to the “Oh no, the working classes are people!” effect. A typical working class person isn’t going to get more than a maximum of two votes. It’s also not as totally bizarre as it looks today—I mean it is, but it wasn’t in the context in which Shute was writing. Until 1950, there were additional MPs for university graduates and in Ireland even now, Trinity College Dublin has its own Seanad member. This does mean that qualified people had an extra vote, as Trinity graduates do today. (The present Trinity Seanad member, David Norris, is so cool that it’s hard to argue against.) So Shute’s idea was an extension of this, and not something completely out of the air. He says that women voting and the secret ballot were first introduced in Australia and then spread to Britain. Of course, while Australia does have compulsory voting, they just have one vote each like other democracies. All of this is interesting and weird background, but the thing that makes reading In the Wet painful now is David Anderson’s unfortunate nickname: “Nigger.” Shute may have been prejudiced against the working classes, but he really was vastly less racist than was average for his time. Indeed he was miles ahead of almost everybody on not being racist—for 1953. There’s a thing that happens sometimes where people are way ahead of society on some issue like this, where because they’re out there alone they’ve made up their own rules, which look much odder to us (who have advanced with society or been born since) than the default ordinary racism (and see also sexism) of the time, which we’re at least used to. David Anderson is “a quadroon”; his mother was a “half caste” Aborigine. David has a “built in tan.” Now in some ways, Shute deals with this excellently, even by today’s standards. He has David say proudly that his he’s “an older Australian than any of them,” his “grandmother’s tribe ruled the Cape York Peninsula before Captain Cook was born or thought of.” Shute’s reason for making David a quarter-Aboriginal is intended to demonstrate that people of colour are as good as anyone else, and also to give David a disadvantage that he’s overcome—he was “born in a ditch in North Queensland” and he is entirely self-made. It’s hard to think of another character of colour done this well in popular fiction at this time. I think David must have been quite a surprise to white readers in 1953. I have no idea how Aboriginal readers, or people of colour from other backgrounds, would have taken him, but it was a time when it was notable to have a non-white character visible at all. David is an entirely admirable character, and the book’s hero and romantic hero, and the Queen’s own pilot. Also, Shute doesn’t make this easy by making it a world where colour prejudice has disappeared. David’s had to deal with racism all his life. He explains his origins twice in the book, once when offered a job and again when he meets a girl. He says the reason he hasn’t married is the colour problem. (That everyone immediately reassures him that he doesn’t look all that dark is another indication that prejudice hasn’t gone away.) David’s main way of dealing with prejudice is to get it right out into the open by using the nickname “Nigger,” so as to have the issue of his mixed- race origins in people’s faces. The text seldom or never refers to him that way, but his friends do. It wasn’t a nice word in 1953, and Shute was clearly trying to show a world where things were better, and it might be a nickname like “Blondie” and the word has been reclaimed—though it does say that David used to fight people who used it in an unkind way. However it is surprisingly difficult for a modern reader (well, me anyway) to read sentences like “Good night, Nigger darling,” without wincing. The word hasn’t become neutral, hasn’t been reclaimed and is so much more unacceptable now than then. As for actual racism, there are two bits of it. There’s the one sentence where David gets to be a “magical negro”—David has an instinctive feeling that something is wrong aboard the plane: “He was one quarter Aboriginal, not wholly of a European stock, and in some directions his perceptions and sensibilities were stronger than in ordinary men, which possibly accounted for his excellence in flying and his safety record.” It’s only one sentence, but it’s pretty bad. There’s also the implication that Stevie’s rebirth will be lower down the karmic chain, as Stevie has been an alcoholic wastrel, and I’m not sure the Aboriginal blood isn’t supposed to represent that. But anyway, it’s in print again, and there certainly isn’t anything else like it. Jo Walton is a science fiction and fantasy writer. She’s published eight novels, most recently Half a Crown and Lifelode , and two poetry collections. She reads a lot, and blogs about it here regularly. She comes from Wales but lives in where the food and books are more varied. Die größten Hörerlebnisse nur bei Audible. Erlebe Audible auf dem Smartphone, Tablet, am Computer oder deinem Amazon Echo. Auch offline. Die größten Hörerlebnisse. Entdecke genau das, was du hören willst: Wähle aus 200.000 Titeln und inspirierenden Audible Original Podcasts. Natürlich werbefrei. Genieße dein Hörerlebnis ohne Unterbrechung. Einfach ausprobieren. Teste Audible 30 Tage kostenlos. Du kannst jederzeit kündigen. Hör die Welt mit anderen Augen. Mit Audible Originals und exklusiven Geschichten. Wir können dich kaum erwarten! Entdecke Audible einen Monat lang völlig kostenlos. Genieße jeden Monat ein Hörerlebnis deiner Wahl - und so viele exklusive Audible Original Podcasts, wie du willst. Keine Bindung, keine Frist – du kannst dein Abo jederzeit pausieren oder kündigen. In the Wet by Nevil Shute. About this Item: Paperback. Condition: Good+. Reprint; First Printing. Light reading creases, sticker ghost with tiny associated surface tear to front cover, some identation to rear cover, edge worn spine, some foxing to endpapers, paper starting to tone. ; Nice tight copy, no names inside. ; 288 pages; The fate of the monarchy and a love story are combined in this brilliantly imaginative novel, set in two different times, and two different but strangely joined lives. Mass Market PB. Seller Inventory # 23190. In the Wet. Nevil Shute. Published by The Book Club, London (1954) From: Book Souk (Porstoy, United Kingdom) About this Item: Hardcover. Condition: Good. 290 grams. Seller Inventory # 008684. In the Wet. Shute, Nevil. Published by Heinemann. From: Goldstone Rare Books (Llandybie, CARMS, United Kingdom) About this Item: Hardcover. Condition: Acceptable. Photograph available on request. Seller Inventory # mon0001289692. In the Wet. nevil shute. Published by Heinemann, London (1957) From: Saturday Books (Dudley, United Kingdom) About this Item: Hard Cover. Condition: Good. 357 pp. Seller Inventory # 11353. In the Wet. Nevil Shute. Published by Heinemann, (1953) From: SmallWorksBooks (Ayrshire, Scotland, United Kingdom) About this Item: Hardcover, Condition: Good/. First Edition, Seller Inventory # 011164. In the wet / by Nevil Shute. Nevil Shute. Published by william heinemann. From: Goldstone Rare Books (Llandybie, CARMS, United Kingdom) About this Item: Hardcover. Condition: Acceptable. Photograph available on request. Seller Inventory # mon0001307652. In the Wet. Shute, Nevil. Published by William Heinemann, London (1953) From: YesterYear Books (Dunstable, BEDS, United Kingdom) About this Item: Hard Cover. Condition: Good. No Jacket. First Edition. In this speculative glance in to the future of the Empire an elderly clergyman stationed in the Australian bush is called to the bedside of a dying derelict. In his delirium Stevie tells a story of England in 1983 through the medium of a squadron air pilot in the service of Queen Elizabeth II. Good clean hardback with light wear to spine ends. No jacket. Previous owner's details on front endpaper. 335 pages. Prompt dispatch. Size: 8vo. Seller Inventory # 066537. In The Wet. Nevil Shute. Published by The Book Club (1954) From: BoundlessBookstore (Wallingford, United Kingdom) About this Item: Hardcover. Condition: Good. DJ has a few tears but is complete - protected by a removable plastic cover. Cover may have general wear. Pages are clean but lightly tanned throughout - previous owner name to ffep. Seller Inventory # 9999-9990502606. In the Wet. Nevil Shute. Published by Book Club, London (1954) From: Hinch Books (Brighton, United Kingdom) About this Item: Hardcover. Condition: Good. Dust Jacket Condition: Good. Book is tight and square with no inscriptions. Pages are tanned. Jacket (by Val Biro) is worn around edges but la nice solid copy overall. Seller Inventory # 4431. In the Wet. Nevil Shute. Published by The Book Club (1954) From: Yare Books (Great Yarmouth, United Kingdom) About this Item: Hard Cover. Condition: Good. No Jacket. Book Club (BCE/BOMC). A good readable copy Size: 12mo - over 6�" - 7�" tall. Seller Inventory # 000069. In the Wet. Nevil Shute. Published by William Heinemann Ltd (1953) From: World of Rare Books (Goring-by-Sea, SXW, United Kingdom) About this Item: Condition: Good. 1953. First Edition. 355 pages. No dust jacket. Red cloth. Book is in better condition than most examples of this age. Neat, clean, well bound pages with very minimal foxing, tanning and thumbing. Small inscriptions and neat labels may be present. Boards have moderate shelf wear, with rubbing and marking. Heavy bumping to corners and crushing to spine ends. Book has noticeable forward lean. Boards are slightly bowed. Seller Inventory # 1603961154IEV. In the Wet. Shute, Nevil. Published by Heinemann (1953) From: M Godding Books Ltd (Devizes, WILTS, United Kingdom) About this Item: Hardcover. Condition: Good. Dust Jacket Condition: Acceptable Jacket. First Edition. First Edition. Previous owner's ink inscription. Posted within 1 working day. 1st class post to the UK, Airmail worldwide. Robust recyclable packaging. Picture is the actual item. Seller Inventory # 214048. In The Wet. Shute, Nevil. Published by The Book Club (1954) From: WeBuyBooks (Rossendale, LANCS, United Kingdom) About this Item: Hardcover. Condition: Good. Dust Jacket Condition: Good. A good condition copy with dust jacket. Light wear, some rubbing to edges and tan to pages. Well presented. Good condition is defined as: a copy that has been read but remains in clean condition. All of the pages are intact and the cover is intact and the spine may show signs of wear. The book may have minor markings which are not specifically mentioned. Most items will be dispatched the same or the next working day. Seller Inventory # mon0017041632. In the Wet. Nevil Shute. Published by Permabooks (1960) From: World of Rare Books (Goring-by-Sea, SXW, United Kingdom) About this Item: Condition: Fair. 1960. Second Printing. 280 pages. Pictorial paper cover. Heavy tanning and foxing, with marking to pages and text block edges. Light cracking to hinges, with heavy tanning and foxing to reverse side of covers. Small pencil inscriptions to front endpaper. Paper cover has moderate edge wear with light rubbing and creasing. Small tears and chipping, with heavy tanning and marking overall. Book is slightly curled. Seller Inventory # 1607099562DPB. IN THE WET. Shute, Nevil. Published by Pan Books London (1969) About this Item: 1st in imprint, paperback, 283pp, pictorial wrappers, the wet season in Australia and a strange tale of second sight and/or a dream of the future during a fever, roll and slant to spine with light vertical creasing, nick at tail of upper hinge, rubbed at extrems., light creasing to wrappers, edges tanned, reading copy only, Seller Inventory # 70620. In The Wet : First printing. Shute, Nevil. Published by Heinemann, London, United Kingdom (1953) From: PW Books (Andover, HANTS, United Kingdom) About this Item: Hardcover. Condition: Very Good. Dust Jacket Condition: Fair. 1st Edition. True first British printing with original clipped jacket. Jacket has numerous faults - namely patchy loss, tears, few marks, browning, rubbing, edge/shelf wear and is generally a little fragile. Boards are good with a crease to spine, pushing/bumping to corners, a couple of scratches/marks, one very small hole to front and a little pushing/rubbing to head/tail of spine. Pages are generally clean and the binding is solid. Previous owner's name in pen to front end-paper. Top of pages little dusty. Occasional mark/scratch to page edges (nothing much). Small tear to head/tail of half title page near spine. No other faults. A solid copy. All books described honestly and accurately. Paypal accepted. Seller Inventory # 002310. In the Wet. Nevil Shute. Published by The Book Club (1954) From: Yare Books (Great Yarmouth, United Kingdom) About this Item: Hard Cover. Condition: Good. Dust Jacket Condition: Poor. Book Club (BCE/BOMC). Size: 12mo - over 6�" - 7�" tall. Seller Inventory # 003274. In the Wet. Nevil Shute. Published by The Book Club (1954) From: Yare Books (Great Yarmouth, United Kingdom) About this Item: Hard Cover. Condition: Good. Dust Jacket Condition: Good. Book Club (BCE/BOMC). Size: 12mo - over 6�" - 7�" tall. Seller Inventory # 014762. In the Wet. Nevil Shute. Published by The Book Club (1954) From: Yare Books (Great Yarmouth, United Kingdom) About this Item: Hard Cover. Condition: Good. Dust Jacket Condition: Good. Book Club (BCE/BOMC). Size: 12mo - over 6�" - 7�" tall. Seller Inventory # 014763. In The Wet : Australian edition : First printing. Shute, Nevil. Published by William Heinemann Ltd, , Australia (1953) From: PW Books (Andover, HANTS, United Kingdom) About this Item: Hardcover. Condition: Good. Dust Jacket Condition: Fair. 1st Edition. True first Australian printing, 1953. With original unclipped jacket (13/6). Jacket has faults - namely patchy loss (mainly to head/tail of spine and to corners), tape reinforcement to reverse (white side), few marks, edge/shelf wear, creasing/rubbing to edges, pushing/bumping to corners, patchy browning (including to spine), few tears and is a little fragile. Green boards are very good (having been well protected by the jacket) with a little pushing/bumping to corners, the odd small bump to edges, crease to spine (book has been read), the odd small mark and a little pushing/rubbing to head/tail of spine. Some spine lean. Pages are generally clean and the binding is tight. End-papers bit tanned. Top of pages little dusty. Page edges little tanned. Previous owner's name and date in pen to front end-paper. Odd minor scratch to page edges (nothing much). Occasional small mark to pages (not major). No other faults. All books described honestly and accurately. Paypal accepted. Seller Inventory # 003871. In The Wet. Nevil Shute. Published by William Heinemann Ltd. (1953) From: World of Rare Books (Goring-by-Sea, SXW, United Kingdom) About this Item: Condition: Good. 1953. First Edition. 355 pages. No dust jacket. Red cloth. Pages and binding are presentable with no major defects. Minor issues present such as mild cracking, inscriptions, inserts, light foxing, tanning and thumb marking. Overall a good condition item. Boards have mild shelf wear with light rubbing and corner bumping. Some light marking and sunning. Boards are slightly bowed. Seller Inventory # 1622113698IEV.