Review by D. D. Shade   —   December 22, 1998

Before I delve too deeply into "The Disappearance" I would like to mention that this book was recommended in a kind response to another review. I would like to thank the person here in this review but I have lost the email that brought me to "The Disappearance." Although "The Disappearance" has won no awards or recognitions for writing excellence that I've been able to uncover, it was indeed good company and often rose to the profound. I enjoyed reading this book immensely and note that it can be found in various places on the web. I liked it so much that I shelled out fifty dollars for a first edition. I got extra paperbound copies easily from Bibliofind ranging between four and ten dollars.

I also want to mention that I am working without a net. You see, in the course of the five reviews done previously to this one, I have formed a habit of making all my notes and references in the margins of a beat up old paperback (sometimes wondering if my children would someday treasure those old paperbacks with my scribbled notes even though I can't bribe them to read one for $100.00 today). I took my note filled copy of "The Disappearance" to a conference in Minneapolis and was nearly finished by the return flight. I must have left it on the plane because when I got home it was gone. After two weeks of frantic searching, I broke down, ordered my 1^st edition from Bibliofind, finished reading, and vowed to write the review from memory. I feel like I'm taking my comprehensive exams again. So, please read on but have mercy.

Philip Wylie was considered a controversial writer in his day. The main thesis of this book, "what makes us male and female (although Wylie also attacks the double standard regarding what is appropriate behavior for men and women) seems to have been typical of his writing. Wylie contrives to study this concept by splitting the universe into two parallel universes. In the male universe it appears as if the women just disappeared at about five minutes after four. All humans of the female gender disappeared: wives, mothers, sisters, girls, and babies. To the women, in their universe, the effect was exactly the same. At about five minutes after four, all men disappeared, even the male infants they were nursing. Having been trained in the methods of social science research, this would be the perfect experiment, somewhat unethical, but perfect. Just as any behavioral scientist would have in the same conditions, Wylie has complete control over both universes. He can, and does, show us what we would do without the opposite sex. His vision of a world without women, where men are alone with themselves, is very sad to me. I've long recognized the powerful influence of my wife in my life and I fear I would be lost without her. It's my own theory, after reading this book, that the main reason women live longer than men is because they are better suited to handle the separation. The duration of the separation in Wylie's book was two years.

My 3.5 star rating is an effort to reflect fairness. This was an excellent book to read but there were times when reading "The Disappearance" was much like the academic reading I do daily at work. Therefore, I could not rate it as high as some of the other reviewed books and yet it was often better than "good company." One possible reason for some of the reading difficulty lies in Wylie's choice for his main characters - an academic couple. The husband, Robert Gaunt, is a philosopher with several degrees and his wife, Paula, also holds a doctorate degree but has chosen to remain at home (this is where Wylie really hammers away on the double standard for men and women's lives that was preeminent before the woman's movement of the 70's and yet still prevails today).

For most of the book our viewpoint character is Robert and it is those sections where he is trying to think through to a solution of the book's crisis that the reading bogs down. Robert tends to be long winded. I must point out that things are not nearly so taxing to read, yet are just as scholarly, when we read from Paula's viewpoint. I have no way of knowing if this was intended as a way to show that women in the 50's were at least as intelligent as men or perhaps superior. Or, Wylie could simply be as prescient as he proved in 1945 when his novel "The Paradise Crater" described a post-WWII 1965 Nazi attempt to rule the world with atomic power. His prescience was good enough then to cause his house arrest by the federal government. ⁽¹⁾ In other words, what we have only recently learned or allowed about women, Wylie already knew.

However, I must say that in every case where the reading became somewhat text like, I was rewarded for my diligence every time with another profound, head shaking idea. It would also be fair to say that I came to look upon the chapters from Paula's viewpoint as a great relief. However, given the story Wylie wished to tell, a philosopher was his best choice for a viewpoint character. A physical or social scientist would look for quantifiable ways to explain the disappearance and bring the women back. The stereotypical physical scientist would never leave his lab as he heated potions over a bunsen burner looking for an answer like an alchemist for gold from lead. The social scientist, though she might actually contact people and survey their observations, opinions, and conjectures, would still return to her office to churn out volumns of statistics giving us tons of information about what happened and perhaps even allowing us to understand the phenomenon. But a philosopher allows Wylie to take a qualitative approach to the problem. It allows him to suggest origins and solutions that make the book, to be redundant, border on the profound. As a qualitative scientist, Gaunt spends his time trying to get outside of his own viewpoint. To see the problem in new ways that might perhaps cast some light on the truth for the first time. Although it is still only one viewpoint, it is my opinion that Dr. Gaunt achieves his goal. But I leave it for you to read and discover how he comes to his conclusions about human sexuality and exactly what they are.

Wylie covers a lot of ground in this novel and there are many fresh, new ideas for a book written in 1951. Since I'm without notes, we'll go by what still lingers in my mind. First off, I was quite intrigued by the idea of comparing a world run by women to a world run my men. Herein lies the most disastrous aspects of the book. I was totally unprepared for the havoc that such a catastrophe would cause. Because in the fifties men were in control of nearly everything, they didn't have to suffer as much as quickly. Yes, they had to find all the male babies who had been deserted but the factories ran, water poured from kitchen taps, trains kept their schedule and the government was a resilient source of support. However, there was also rioting, looting, and the resurgence of gang violence.

In the woman's universe things are much better socially but fall apart functionally. According to Wylie, because men had kept women home and ignorant of the way the world works, even keeping them out of careers that would have kept the turbines generating electricity, the trains running and the water on, the women suffer more and it comes quickly. Yet he doesn't leave us to think that women are incapable. There are many that have the necessary training or are willing to learn what it takes to keep things running. Wylie's women do a great job but are limited by how society has dominated them. Even today, were the same phenomenon to occur, given the few women senators and congressmen we would have little government left in spite of the fact that we currently have a first lady well suited to taking on the role of president. Wylie clearly argues that we are fools to allow the intellectual potential of women go to waste.

Finally, both sexes have to deal with an atomic threat from the Russians after the disappearance occurs. This is just one of many vehicles Wylie uses to point out differences between the sexes.

1951 Ideas that seem somewhat relevant for 1998

I make no judgement on the homosexuality that occurs in "The Disappearance." Homosexuality is to be expected in a book where genders find themselves alone. I am rather surprised that Wylie was able to publish a book that contains so much about homosexuality in such a homophobic period of time. Homosexuality occurs in both universes and I bring it up here, not by way of condemnation, but because I feel Wylie was trying to say something in his 1951 novel. The minority of men who do so, seem to go about their sexual orientation change in a highly immature manner. Whereas the women are more serious, looking for long term, supportive relationships, and are more sensible about how they approach one another. Wylie shows us few women parading around in men's clothing or forcing compliance. But this is not new, we've seen women forced to become homosexual and even develop ways to procreate in science fiction before. Joanna Russ', "The Female Man" or in her short story "When It Changed." The one thing Wylie could not have anticipated was the development of the AIDS virus and the effect it would have on the homosexual community. Had he anticipated AIDS, his novel might have been more about the end of the world then just the splitting of it. Did Wylie have a message for the future regarding homosexuality - read and decide for yourself.

Perhaps one of the most unique conclusions that Robert Gaunt (Philip Wylie) arrives at is that there are no gender differences. Males and females both have the same organs, just specialized for related functions. We begin life with an identical set of genitials up until the third month of prenatal development. It is only then, due to prenatal conditions caused by the presence of a Y chromosome, that our mirrored organs begin their differentation. Some become ovaries or testes others a uterus or urethra. There is only one sex, Gaunt tells us, and without a partner, you are only half a sex. This is somewhat insensitive of the prevalence of single parenting in today's society, but we must remember that Wylie is writing in the 50's when single parent households were unusual (or at least invisible - and that's a discussion for another day). Paula discovers this one genderism within herself when she is approached by a lovely young woman for whom she has provided a home. After turning down the offer of a sexual relationship, Paula begins to recognize the maleness within her - the drive, the confidence, and many of the other traits so often associated with men. Clute and Nicholls tell us that Philip Wylie, "became notorious for his penetrating surveys of US mores and behavior, and who coined the term "Momism" to describe the US tendency to sacralize motherhood, thus making family dynamics and morality impenetrable to reflection." Well, Phil, if you wanted to unveil Momism "The Difference" does a magnificent job of swinging the door of debate wide open.

Finally, if I use my own definition of what speculative fiction is I have an urge to declare "The Disappearance" as a fundamental science fiction novel everyone should read. My definition of speculative fiction goes something like this - speculative or science fiction has never been so much about bug-eyed monsters, ray guns, and spaceships but rather a means of allowing the writer to set up whatever conditions are necessary to pit human beings against the worst possible odds and allow us, the reader, to observe how we react to and overcome those odds. Yes, there are spaceships but they are merely vehicles for transporting the reader to the author's created worlds. If there are gadgets, they exist to support the story. We only need to think of young Ender Wiggens getting the crap kicked out of him at battleschool and how he learns to cope, Ripley rescuing Newt from the alien hive, an unstoppable terminating machine sent back from the future to kill mankind's only hope and the human sent back to protect her, genetically engineered humans so superior they are outlaws on earth and the Cop who must terminate them no matter how human they seem, gentle aliens at the bottom of the sea with only an oil drilling team standing between them, the US Navy and a nuclear device, and Snake Plissken.

All of these, with perhaps the exception of Snake, are stories of the human adventure. Stories where the heart is the most powerful muscle we possess, the mind our only ally, and our hands have the gift of healing . "The Disappearance" by Philip Wylie is such a story and worth reading. I promise.

     ¹ Clute, John & Peter Nicholls (1995). The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, pp. 1352-1353.

Please contact D. D. Shade to discuss this review. See the books I've set free at: Bookcrossing.com Add Your Comments in the Forum