deus ex machina n a plot device in which a seemingly hopeless situation is saved by the introduction of an unexpected power or event that has not featured previously in the story. It is generally regarded as a poor storytelling technique.


With the exception of David Pelham's departure, 1979 was something of an annus mirabilis for Penguin sf, with more titles released than any other year in the company's history. Eight of the ten John Wyndham titles with Peter Lord covers appeared that year, plus nineteen titles in a new series with a new sf logo in the top right corner of the cover: a little coloured box with the SF letters sporting go-fast stripes on their trailing edge and a penguin sandwiched between them.

The series was intended to demonstrate Penguin's renewed commitment to its sf list, which had all but dried up over the past few years, and it was backed by a marketing campaign that included advertisements, competitions, bookmarks, posters and other promotional material. Four new titles and a reprint of Alfred Bester's Tiger! Tiger! launched the series in June 1979, although the timing was anything but arbitrary, as two months later the World Science Fiction Convention made its third visit to the UK. For Penguin's sf editor, Paul Sidey, this meant a trip to the seaside, for unlike the London Worldcons in 1957 and 1965, this one was in Brighton on the south coast of England.

The series eventually grew to 29 titles, with all but one featuring artwork by Adrian Chesterman, a graduate from the Royal College of Art in London, whose agent was a friend of Pelham's. The latter had commissioned the covers prior to leaving Penguin and the books came out over the next few years with the final one appearing in 1982.

Chesterman's airbrushed covers drew on the full gamut of sf paraphernalia, from astronauts and aliens to androids and cyborgs, or rockets and ray guns to silver machines and space opera. This boyish appeal was reinforced by Chesterman's women, whose clothes were so tight they almost seemed painted on, while a naked girl on The Traps of Time added further spice. The artworks continued on the spine and back cover, and several were produced as posters. One of these was 'sci-fi city', a futuristic metropolis featuring rockets as skyscrapers which was used for the cover of The Space Merchants and also for a stunning 35 x 55 cm poster promoting the new sf series as The Best of All Possible Worlds.

There can be few better examples of that frowned-upon plot device, the deus ex machina, than the one at the end of In Solitary, though it is not the only surprise to be found in Kilworth's first novella. For it is hard to see how pint-sized aliens who are not very bright have developed interstellar travel, or how these gullible, bird-like creatures have ruled the Earth for over 400 years. And what has happened to the human race? The few that remain are a docile, dispirited bunch who have regressed to a naked and almost bestial state. Then at the age of twenty the last human is banished from 'Brytan' and sent into exile on the mud flats of what was once the English Channel. It is a miserable, solitary existence, for apart from mating every few years all contact between adults is forbidden. So he escapes to Polynesia, but things just go from bad to worse and it seems that, like the story, the human race is about to end. Then out of the blue, the gods descend in their machines and the reader's suspension of disbelief crumbles quicker than the aliens' defences.