The Secret People
The Secret People (1935) is a science fiction novel by English writer John Wyndham. It is set in 1964, and features a British couple who find themselves held captive by an ancient race of pygmies dwelling beneath the Sahara desert. The novel was written under Wyndham's early pen name, John Beynon.
- For the Audrey Hepburn film of the same title, see Secret People (film).
 First edition | |
| Author | John Beynon |
|---|---|
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Science fiction |
| Publisher | George Newnes |
Publication date | 1935 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback) |
| Pages | 256 |
Plot summary
The Sahara is being flooded to create a new sea when the protagonist of the novel, Mark Sunnet, crashes his private rocket plane into an island of what is currently little more than a large lake. He soon finds himself; his female companion, Margaret Lawn; and a stray cat that they call Bast sucked into a cavern in which they are promptly captured by mysterious pygmies.
The diet of little people is centred on large fungi. The captives speculate that stories that reached the surface of the little people and their giant mushrooms may have led to the myth of gnomes.
Sunnet finds that a tiered community has evolved in the caverns, the pygmies inhabiting a large underground collection of natural and artificial caverns and tunnels, and the captured humans are in a deliberately-isolated subsection of the caverns. He is also surprised to learn that family life exists in the caverns: "natives", children of captured humans who were born and have lived all their lives in the caverns exist, and are generally happy with their life and have no wish to escape.
By virtue of being accompanied by Bast, the pygmies consider Margaret to be divine and keep her isolated in a separate area of the caverns.
Most of the captured humans wish to escape, and two different methods are being tried. Both are tunnels, one going up at an angle to try to break through to the surface and another on a level in the hope of intersecting a pygmy tunnel or cavern from which to make their way to the surface.
The pygmies are distressed, and it is Sunnet's arrival that reveals the reason to the captives. The pygmies fear that their environment will be flooded and destroyed by the newly-formed Saharan Sea. Their fear is well founded, and the waters break through into the pygmy caverns and eventually flood the entire ecosystem. Sunnet, Margaret, Bast and a handful of others survive. The story finishes with sunburn after years of subterranean life, and the establishing of a new company based on the primitive but unique technology that the escapees brought with them from the caverns.
Predictions
Set in 1964, the novel correctly identifies Queen Elizabeth II as the reigning monarch of Britain although she was only third in the line of succession when the novel was published in 1935 and became queen only in 1952.
An early passage in the book describes the comic-military reactions of Germany, which in 1935 was under Nazi rule, towards potential violations of their airspace by the protagonist's descending rocket plane. That suggests Wyndham considered it possible that the Third Reich would survive at least another 30 years into the future, an expectation of totalitarian regime longevity that is mirrored by his similar projections of the continued existence of the Soviet Union into the 21st century in The Outward Urge.
The novel also references the Piltdown Man, which had not yet been exposed as a hoax at the time of publication.[1]
References
- Wyndham, John (1977). The Secret People (8th ed.). Coronet. p. 107. ISBN 0-340-15834-4.
Bibliography
- Bleiler, Everett (1948). The Checklist of Fantastic Literature. Chicago: Shasta Publishers. p. 50.