The Time Before This

by Nicholas Monsarrat

On the icy slopes of the great ice-mountain of Bylot Island, set against the metallic blue of the Canadian Arctic sky, Shepherd has a vision of the world as it used to be, before the human race was weakened by stupidity and greed. Peter Benton, the young journalist to whom Shepherd tells his story, is dramatically snapped out of his cozy cynicism and indolent denial of responsibility, to face a dreadful reality. He discovers that he can no longer take a back-seat in the rapid self-destruction of the world, and is forced to make a momentous decision.

Genres: Fiction, Science Fiction, Fantasy

70 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1962

About the author

Born on Rodney Street in Liverpool, Monsarrat was educated at Winchester and Trinity College, Cambridge. He intended to practise law. The law failed to inspire him, however, and he turned instead to writing, moving to London and supporting himself as a freelance writer for newspapers while writing four novels and a play in the space of five years (1934–1939). He later commented in his autobiography that the 1931 Invergordon Naval Mutiny influenced his interest in politics and social and economic issues after college.

Though a pacifist, Monsarrat served in World War II, first as a member of an ambulance brigade and then as a member of the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve (RNVR). His lifelong love of sailing made him a capable naval officer, and he served with distinction in a series of small warships assigned to escort convoys and protect them from enemy attack. Monsarrat ended the war as commander of a frigate, and drew on his wartime experience in his postwar sea stories. During his wartime service, Monsarrat claimed to have seen the ghost ship Flying Dutchman while sailing the Pacific, near the location where the young King George V had seen her in 1881.

Resigning his wartime commission in 1946, Monsarrat entered the diplomatic service. He was posted at first to Johannesburg, South Africa and then, in 1953, to Ottawa, Canada. He turned to writing full-time in 1959, settling first on Guernsey, in the Channel Islands, and later on the Mediterranean island of Gozo (Malta).

Monsarrat's first three novels, published in 1934–1937 and now out of print, were realistic treatments of modern social problems informed by his leftist politics. His fourth novel and first major work, This Is The Schoolroom, took a different approach. The story of a young, idealistic, aspiring writer coming to grips with the "real world" for the first time, it is at least partly autobiographical.

The Cruel Sea (1951), Monsarrat's first postwar novel, is widely regarded as his finest work, and is the only one of his novels that is still widely read. Based on his own wartime service, it followed the young naval officer Keith Lockhart through a series of postings in corvettes and frigates. It was one of the first novels to depict life aboard the vital, but unglamorous, "small ships" of World War II—ships for which the sea was as much a threat as the Germans. Monsarrat's short-story collections H.M.S. Marlborough Will Enter Harbour (1949), and The Ship That Died of Shame (1959) mined the same literary vein, and gained popularity by association with The Cruel Sea.

The similar Three Corvettes (1945 and 1953) comprising H.M. Corvette (set aboard a Flower class corvette in the North Atlantic), East Coast Corvette (as First Lieutenant of HMS Guillemot) and Corvette Command (as Commanding Officer of HMS Shearwater) is actually an anthology of three true-experience stories he published during the war years and shows appropriate care for what the Censor might say. Thus Guillemot appears under the pseudonym Dipper and Shearwater under the pseudonym Winger in the book. H.M. Frigate is similar but deals with his time in command of two frigates. His use of the name Dipper could allude to his formative years when summer holidays were spent with his family at Trearddur Bay. They were members of the famous sailing club based there, and he recounted much of this part of his life in a book My brother Denys. Denys Monserrat was killed in Egypt during the middle part of the war whilst his brother was serving with the Royal Navy. Another tale recounts his bringing his ship into Trearddur Bay during the war for old times' sake.

Monsarrat's more famous novels, notably The Tribe That Lost Its Head (1956) and its sequel Richer Than All His Tribe (1968), drew on his experience in the diplomatic service and make important reference to the colonial experience of Britain in Africa.

Reviews

[Ian Laird · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is quite a strange - and very short – almost book, an unsatisfying story which takes a long time to get going and then doesn’t get going to any real extent.

The following contains spoilers.

In a nutshell, reporter Peter from the Toronto Journal, a newspaper of repute, finds himself in remote frozen Canada, on assignment. Assisted by Ed, the taciturn pilot, Peter sees a lot of the country and ends up in a bar observing a drunken old man babbling incoherently about some sensational discovery he’s made. The old man gets beaten up for his trouble by the ignorant, coarse locals. Peter and a thin woman, Mary, (note the names) seemingly the only friend of the ‘Mad Trapper’, tend to his needs. However, he dies from this rough treatment, but not before he has told his story; decades earlier he happened upon half a dozen humanoid figures, frozen in attitudes of surprise and dismay, standing guard mutely over an immense underground refrigerator full of preserved foodstuff, mainly from the sea and kept fresh by an extraordinarily sophisticated refrigeration system. What happened to those aliens, for indeed they are such, remains unknown.

The major mystery is not so much what happened in the far north so long ago, although it would have been rewarding for us to find out, but exactly what Monsarrat had in mind. There is a lack of tension. The narrative takes an eternity to get to the revelation of the alien presence, so our interest wanes. The characterisation is pretty ineffective as well. I thought this might be an early work, but it turns out to be middle to late career and follows Monsarrat’s great success with The Cruel Sea and The Ship That Died of Shame. This being the case I assumed The Time before this must be a kind of meditation on the nature of humanity and perhaps a message to us all. Well, in order to work the message has to be more involving: the Mad Trapper’s story takes too long to emerge. This is remarkable as the book is only 125 pages long.

Once we get there the revelation is quite intriguing – the description of the massive refrigeration complex is quite compelling with the alien technology required to operate it. It whets our appetite, but for what? Is Peter to journey north to find the installation? What would happen then? The discovery or re-discovery would be sensational, but is that enough? The aliens are long gone, so there could be no further action beyond letting the world know what had happened once long ago. It is apparent that Monsarrat realised he had a problem - an ill-fated premise with nowhere to go. He contents himself with having Peter determine to look for the hidden place, having been moved to do so in a life changing way. This is not at all convincing. He says at several points that the experience he is undergoing is powerful and life changing, but it not really apparent why. He details the horrible death of his young father on the Burma Road (should be Burma Railway not Burma Road) in World War Two, beaten to death by a cane wielding Japanese officer. Peter sees himself as anti-war, and comes to regard the happenings in the remote northern ice as a warning against the continued belligerence of humankind.

The story has biblical feel to it - our putative hero is ‘Peter’, helped in his ministrations by Mary the prostitute who brings to mind Mary Magdalene; the trapper (what is he? A saviour? A martyr?) is beaten up by the Philistines in the bar and the Mad Trapper, Grant ‘Shepherd’ by name, is cruelly treated by his miserable landlady, Mrs Cross, as apt a name as I have seen.

So, we don’t get much of a story, just a set up for an adventure, with a pious warning about being cruel to each other and where this might lead. There are some interesting characters like Mary and Ed the pilot with nowhere to go. Two stars with a struggle. The Cruel Sea is much better.

[Sportyrod · Rating 3 out of 5]

A jaded journo flies to the Canadian north to do a culture piece for his newspaper. At the local bar he is initially repulsed by the behaviour of a drunken, old fool but gradually warms to him after the fool is beaten up, looking after him and hearing his story. After all, his story is about finding an ancient civilisation who have lived alongside us all along until…

The short story was published in 1965. From memory this was a time when sci-fi was in its early or emerging stages (could be wrong). So there is some of that mixed with the grappling of theological ideas of faith vs proof and the wastage of over abundance vs sustainability. There are some small-time events that trigger the reflection of how horrible humankind can be that can lead to bitterness yet being reminded that those who are hard-done-by can be forgiving/empathetic of the wrong-doers as though to say, ‘the perpetrator has suffered enough in life, why get angry at them and make things worse?’. Another issue was how war is pointless, so don’t worry who did what and just be. It’s perhaps a strange idea but I think it was one of the edges the author was going for.

I enjoyed reading this, it was easy to read. I also wanted more, perhaps a longer story and more adventure around the civilisation than one recollection and pensive application. But I think a lot of readers would enjoy the contemplative aspect of the story. A talented writer.

[Graham Alston · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was an intriguing book. One would have thought that it would have been about the wild north of the Americas but it was more about people and their responses to a message. It might even be a prophetic book in the sense that it has a message about a past civilization that annihilates itself either by incredible weaponry or by hiding like an ostrich from the on going fratricidal bickering. It is 'Doomsday Preppers' writ large. Its context is the 50's and 60's at the height of the cold war where the warning signs of mutually assured destruction (MAD) were on the cards and stories of a military centre being dug into the Rockies proliferated. it doesn't have the inevitability found in the ending of Neville Shute's 'On The Beach' - its ending is rather more hopeful as the narrator begins his own quest to bring the message to the society of his day.
The writing is extremely good with a good understanding of human nature.
I liked it very much as parable or fable of a time when ...

[Matthew Rands · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked it, short but makes you think.

[KeenReader · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thought it was going to be an action adventure, but it is really an allegory. It was written in the 50's when people were very concerned about the possibility of nuclear war and it had a clear anti-war message. However, what really struck me was how cruel people can be when someone is trying to tell them something that scares them.
It is really a novella, but it packs a real punch and I have been thinking about it for a few weeks now. Mr Monsarrat had the ability to write quite simple sentences that were very evocative and got to the heart of quite complex situations.
This is a book I will re-read and I will not be surprised if in future, I will be thinking about a different aspect of the book after i have read it.

[Paul Spencer · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this on the recommendation of my Dad, who read it as a teenager. Author Monsarrat has an enjoyable writing style, ably painting a picture of location in the Canadian Arctic. The story of a slightly aimless journalist who discovers a drunken old man with a strange story to tell takes its sweet time despite the short length of the novel - it exists on hints of something larger and the old man doesn't begin until well over half way through. His discovery of a futuristic storehouse deep in the arctic mountains is a very memorable one, but it's the only truly memorable part of the novella.

[Katherine · Rating 3 out of 5]

Allegories and parables from the past make interesting reading. This one is from the 1950s and fears of nuclear war and the possibility of humanity destroying itself. Atmospheric, especially the set up, but the pay-off teeters a bit too close to the absurd.

[Brian · Rating 2 out of 5]

There is something endearing about the breathless adventure story writer. This has a lovely premise but just a refrigerator full of food? Leaves you under nourished