Moebius Strip
By Dominic Rivron
July 15, 2023
July 15, 2023
My father wrote science fiction. His best work – a few of his short stories, that is – has been compared to Isaac Asimov and Robert A. Heinlein. Unfortunately – for him and for us – most of his work fell short of his best. He was just well-enough known to be considered second-rate. Had he been more successful, his cat-and-dog relationship with my mother would be the stuff of endless biographical speculation although, when I think about it, had he been more successful they might well have got on fine. As it was, he drank, mainly to blot out the feeling of failure that became harder to ignore as the years went by. He did drugs, too, mostly of the psychedelic variety, in an attempt to generate ideas. He made a little money from his writing but never enough to justify his decision to do it full time. The only life he could face living, my mother's fond of saying, was that of a successful writer, so he decided to live it, whether he was one or not. My mother struggled on for years, trying to keep us all fed and clothed, infuriated by his self-absorption. She worked part-time as a cleaner in a local school, took in lodgers – anything she could think of to bring in the money needed to keep us all. Then, one day, she inherited her parents' house. They'd both drifted off together as they sat watching TV, killed by a build-up of carbon monoxide caused by a faulty gas-fire. It was a tragedy and, of course, my mother was devastated, but she was practical, too, and determined to do her best for us. She got a new gas-fire for the place and had the whole system checked. Then, taking me and my sister with her, she moved in, leaving our father behind to fend for himself. He stumbled on for a few years, but then died of an overdose. Whether his death was an accident or whether he'd intended to commit suicide was never clear.
What I've just said, I hope, explains why, for years, I never read nor wanted to read anything my father wrote. All that has begun to change though. I've been an adult for a while now – I've just turned thirty – and I've discovered for myself how being a responsible adult can be hard work, and that perhaps I shouldn't judge people too harshly for not getting it right all the time. As a result, even though I'm quite prepared to believe he was the self-absorbed jerk of family legend who'd driven my mother to distraction and left her with no option but to leave him, I wish now I'd known him better and got to spend more time with him. For all I know, I might even be a bit of a jerk myself. I know, too, that legends invariably grow in the telling. Was he really as bad as all that? When I think about it, I do have some good memories of the time before we left him, as well as bad ones. Like the time I got given one of those books for boys you used to get, full of illustrated stories. It included a page full of magic tricks. One of them, called the magic loop, looked easy to do and captured my imagination. You had to make a long strip of paper, twist it once, then glue the ends together. If you then cut it down the middle to make it into two loops, it said, all you ended up with was one bigger loop. The trick was in the twist. I made one and showed it to my father. I was old enough to know it was the sort of thing he'd find interesting. I found him where he usually was to be found on nice days: sat in the back yard on a kitchen chair, writing. He put down his pad and biro and gave me his full attention.
“It's called a Moebius Strip,” he said. “Look...” he added, taking it off me, “if you run your finger along one side” – here, he ran his finger all along the strip of paper – “ it becomes the other side and, in the end you get back to where you started. It's a piece of paper with one side – which is really weird, in a world full of two-sided pieces of paper! Imagine if the universe is like that. A three-dimensional Moebius Strip. You go off in a space ship trying to reach the end of the universe and find yourself back where you started!”
He had me spell-bound. Had he not been so fixated on becoming a famous writer, he could've made a career as a teacher.
My sister and I moved out years ago, but my mother still lives in her parents' old house. It's not far from where I live and I go to see her most weeks. She always insists on making me lunch. Last week, I told her how I'd been thinking more about my father recently. I asked her if she'd ever read any of his books. She had just made us both a plate of bread and cheese and was busy chopping a tomato. She pulled the same face she always pulled when anyone mentioned my father's name: a wan smile combined with a raising of the eyebrows. It could be interpreted any number of ways.
“I flicked through one once,” she said. “Not an experience I intend to repeat.” Her chopping became a little more vigorous than necessary. “He never did have a very firm grip on reality. What's brought all this on, anyway?”
“Oh, I don't know,” I said. “Getting older. Thinking about things.”
“At least you both got sensible jobs,” she said, meaning me and my sister.
She was right about that. And it was all down to her. Through all the difficult times she made sure we kept going to school and did our homework. When we were still at school, she badgered us into getting Saturday jobs. She did everything she could to ensure that, despite everything, things turned out okay for us. My sister, Stella, went to university to do law. I did English. My mother was a bit dubious about my choice there – I think she thought something ominous might be stirring in my genes and that, like my father, I might be seduced by the written word. When I left university and went into teaching, she breathed a sigh of relief.
“I've spent so long trying not to think about him but it just won't do. I need to find out a bit more about him,” I said.
“You look very like him,” she said, with a smile that suggested that despite everything, she'd retained a soft spot for the man.
“I know,” I said. Of course, I'd always known. So had she. “You can't go through life pretending someone who's part of you never existed.”
“Of course not,” she said. “I think about him myself, most days.” She corrected herself. “Every day, actually. While I think about it...” She rinsed her fingers under the tap and dried them on the kitchen towel. “Here...” she opened a drawer and took out a tin. “I don't think you've got one...” She opened the tin. “A photograph of your dad.” She took one out and handed it to me. “Take it. Don't worry, I've got several.” She closed the tin and put it back in the drawer.
I stood perusing the photo for a minute or two. She was right, I didn't have one. A young man in a baseball cap, stood by a tropical-looking tree, high on a hill, taken back in the days when photos came on glossy paper.
“Backpacking in Morocco,” she said. “Another life. Before either of you were born. Stick it somewhere safe, won't you?”
She rinsed her fingers again, then divided the tomato slices between our two plates. We sat down to eat. I laid the photo down carefully, next to my plate.
“He hadn't thought of writing back then,” she said. “Or, if he had, he'd not told me about it.”
I bit into my sandwich and looked into his eyes or, rather, the dark place under the peak of his cap where his eyes must've been. He smiled back up at me.
#
I tried searching for my father's work online. No luck. So much of the world's literature has been digitised but not that much. Most of what he wrote took the form of short stories. These had been published in SF magazines and some of them, the best, had been anthologised – sometimes alongside more famous authors. His magnum opus was the four novels of The Neptune Quartet. He was working on it around the time my mother left him. He had high hopes for it but when it came to, he found it impossible to find a publisher for it. He ended up publishing it himself. Either because it was no good or because he had no head for business (or a combination of the two), hardly any copies got sold. One thing I did come across online was mention of a complete set of all four novels for sale, for £300. That anyone should think anyone else would pay so much for it left me wondering if my father had a niche following I knew nothing about. I considered buying it, but £300 is a lot of money. If I had to, I'd cough up for it, but I intended to explore other possibilities first. For a start, I wondered if my sister had any of his books. I called her.
“Dad's books?” she said. “No way!”
“Have you never felt the urge to read one?” I asked.
“Absolutely not,” she said. “(a) because he wrote them and (b) because they're science fiction,” she added, answering a question I never asked.
I told her I'd looked online but had found nothing except for the over-priced Neptune novels.
“That's because they weren't even good science fiction,” she said.
I wondered how she knew, since she hadn't read one, but didn't ask. We both have plenty to be angry with our father about and we both have to deal with it in our own way.
“If you want to read one, you'll just have to traipse round a few second-hand bookshops till you find one,” she said, answering another question I hadn't asked – one which I'd already worked out the answer to.
#
The obvious place to start was only a short walk from where I live. Unicorn Books is one of the few shops left in a run-down street a couple of streets up from the sea-front. It's the sort of second-hand bookshop everyone hopes to find when they visit a place for the first time, a labyrinth of shelf-lined rooms packed with the eccentric acquisitions of an eccentric owner who seems to consider the shop more a work of art than a retail outlet. The books go from floor to ceiling and there are even wooden ladders for more intrepid customers who want to explore the upper shelves.
I asked the owner, Ray, if he had – or had ever come across – any Lucas Hoffman. (This was my father's pseudonym: I've no idea how he came to choose it). Ray, a well-built man with a curly red beard that covers most of his chest, was sat on a high stool behind the till, his arms folded, looking out of the window. He has a penchant for grungy tartan shirts.
“Can't say I've heard of him,” he said. “What did he write?”
“Science fiction, mainly,” I said.
“You'll have to take a look for yourself,” he said. “I don't know half of what's here.” He nodded towards the top shelf opposite, by the window. “Up there's all science fiction. Loads of paperback anthologies. If I've got any, it'll be up there.”
I went over, moved the ladder along and climbed up. He was right: there were loads of well-thumbed paperbacks there. I worked through them, pulling them out one at a time and checking the contents pages. I was just about to give up – my plan was a long-shot and, as I told myself, I was unlikely to hit the jackpot on my first afternoon's browsing – when I came across my father's pen-name. A short story, somewhere in the middle of an anthology called Destination Sagittarius. The cover showed an intricate spaceship with tiny, brightly-lit windows, cruising through a starry expanse. The sweet, mildew smell of second-hand book rose from its yellowing pages. The story itself was called Moebius Strip. I nearly fell off the ladder. Had my childhood fascination with a paper loop inspired him to write it? It was serendipitous that, having gone off in search of his work, this was the first thing I found. I made my way back down the ladder and paid Ray the £2.50 he'd penciled on the flyleaf.
Once back out of the shop, I turned to the story and started to read it as I walked:
MOEBIUS STRIP
My father wrote science fiction. His best work – a few of his short stories, that is – has been compared to Isaac Asimov and Robert A. Heinlein. Unfortunately – for him and for us – most of his work fell short of his best...
What I've just said, I hope, explains why, for years, I never read nor wanted to read anything my father wrote. All that has begun to change though. I've been an adult for a while now – I've just turned thirty – and I've discovered for myself how being a responsible adult can be hard work, and that perhaps I shouldn't judge people too harshly for not getting it right all the time. As a result, even though I'm quite prepared to believe he was the self-absorbed jerk of family legend who'd driven my mother to distraction and left her with no option but to leave him, I wish now I'd known him better and got to spend more time with him. For all I know, I might even be a bit of a jerk myself. I know, too, that legends invariably grow in the telling. Was he really as bad as all that? When I think about it, I do have some good memories of the time before we left him, as well as bad ones. Like the time I got given one of those books for boys you used to get, full of illustrated stories. It included a page full of magic tricks. One of them, called the magic loop, looked easy to do and captured my imagination. You had to make a long strip of paper, twist it once, then glue the ends together. If you then cut it down the middle to make it into two loops, it said, all you ended up with was one bigger loop. The trick was in the twist. I made one and showed it to my father. I was old enough to know it was the sort of thing he'd find interesting. I found him where he usually was to be found on nice days: sat in the back yard on a kitchen chair, writing. He put down his pad and biro and gave me his full attention.
“It's called a Moebius Strip,” he said. “Look...” he added, taking it off me, “if you run your finger along one side” – here, he ran his finger all along the strip of paper – “ it becomes the other side and, in the end you get back to where you started. It's a piece of paper with one side – which is really weird, in a world full of two-sided pieces of paper! Imagine if the universe is like that. A three-dimensional Moebius Strip. You go off in a space ship trying to reach the end of the universe and find yourself back where you started!”
He had me spell-bound. Had he not been so fixated on becoming a famous writer, he could've made a career as a teacher.
My sister and I moved out years ago, but my mother still lives in her parents' old house. It's not far from where I live and I go to see her most weeks. She always insists on making me lunch. Last week, I told her how I'd been thinking more about my father recently. I asked her if she'd ever read any of his books. She had just made us both a plate of bread and cheese and was busy chopping a tomato. She pulled the same face she always pulled when anyone mentioned my father's name: a wan smile combined with a raising of the eyebrows. It could be interpreted any number of ways.
“I flicked through one once,” she said. “Not an experience I intend to repeat.” Her chopping became a little more vigorous than necessary. “He never did have a very firm grip on reality. What's brought all this on, anyway?”
“Oh, I don't know,” I said. “Getting older. Thinking about things.”
“At least you both got sensible jobs,” she said, meaning me and my sister.
She was right about that. And it was all down to her. Through all the difficult times she made sure we kept going to school and did our homework. When we were still at school, she badgered us into getting Saturday jobs. She did everything she could to ensure that, despite everything, things turned out okay for us. My sister, Stella, went to university to do law. I did English. My mother was a bit dubious about my choice there – I think she thought something ominous might be stirring in my genes and that, like my father, I might be seduced by the written word. When I left university and went into teaching, she breathed a sigh of relief.
“I've spent so long trying not to think about him but it just won't do. I need to find out a bit more about him,” I said.
“You look very like him,” she said, with a smile that suggested that despite everything, she'd retained a soft spot for the man.
“I know,” I said. Of course, I'd always known. So had she. “You can't go through life pretending someone who's part of you never existed.”
“Of course not,” she said. “I think about him myself, most days.” She corrected herself. “Every day, actually. While I think about it...” She rinsed her fingers under the tap and dried them on the kitchen towel. “Here...” she opened a drawer and took out a tin. “I don't think you've got one...” She opened the tin. “A photograph of your dad.” She took one out and handed it to me. “Take it. Don't worry, I've got several.” She closed the tin and put it back in the drawer.
I stood perusing the photo for a minute or two. She was right, I didn't have one. A young man in a baseball cap, stood by a tropical-looking tree, high on a hill, taken back in the days when photos came on glossy paper.
“Backpacking in Morocco,” she said. “Another life. Before either of you were born. Stick it somewhere safe, won't you?”
She rinsed her fingers again, then divided the tomato slices between our two plates. We sat down to eat. I laid the photo down carefully, next to my plate.
“He hadn't thought of writing back then,” she said. “Or, if he had, he'd not told me about it.”
I bit into my sandwich and looked into his eyes or, rather, the dark place under the peak of his cap where his eyes must've been. He smiled back up at me.
#
I tried searching for my father's work online. No luck. So much of the world's literature has been digitised but not that much. Most of what he wrote took the form of short stories. These had been published in SF magazines and some of them, the best, had been anthologised – sometimes alongside more famous authors. His magnum opus was the four novels of The Neptune Quartet. He was working on it around the time my mother left him. He had high hopes for it but when it came to, he found it impossible to find a publisher for it. He ended up publishing it himself. Either because it was no good or because he had no head for business (or a combination of the two), hardly any copies got sold. One thing I did come across online was mention of a complete set of all four novels for sale, for £300. That anyone should think anyone else would pay so much for it left me wondering if my father had a niche following I knew nothing about. I considered buying it, but £300 is a lot of money. If I had to, I'd cough up for it, but I intended to explore other possibilities first. For a start, I wondered if my sister had any of his books. I called her.
“Dad's books?” she said. “No way!”
“Have you never felt the urge to read one?” I asked.
“Absolutely not,” she said. “(a) because he wrote them and (b) because they're science fiction,” she added, answering a question I never asked.
I told her I'd looked online but had found nothing except for the over-priced Neptune novels.
“That's because they weren't even good science fiction,” she said.
I wondered how she knew, since she hadn't read one, but didn't ask. We both have plenty to be angry with our father about and we both have to deal with it in our own way.
“If you want to read one, you'll just have to traipse round a few second-hand bookshops till you find one,” she said, answering another question I hadn't asked – one which I'd already worked out the answer to.
#
The obvious place to start was only a short walk from where I live. Unicorn Books is one of the few shops left in a run-down street a couple of streets up from the sea-front. It's the sort of second-hand bookshop everyone hopes to find when they visit a place for the first time, a labyrinth of shelf-lined rooms packed with the eccentric acquisitions of an eccentric owner who seems to consider the shop more a work of art than a retail outlet. The books go from floor to ceiling and there are even wooden ladders for more intrepid customers who want to explore the upper shelves.
I asked the owner, Ray, if he had – or had ever come across – any Lucas Hoffman. (This was my father's pseudonym: I've no idea how he came to choose it). Ray, a well-built man with a curly red beard that covers most of his chest, was sat on a high stool behind the till, his arms folded, looking out of the window. He has a penchant for grungy tartan shirts.
“Can't say I've heard of him,” he said. “What did he write?”
“Science fiction, mainly,” I said.
“You'll have to take a look for yourself,” he said. “I don't know half of what's here.” He nodded towards the top shelf opposite, by the window. “Up there's all science fiction. Loads of paperback anthologies. If I've got any, it'll be up there.”
I went over, moved the ladder along and climbed up. He was right: there were loads of well-thumbed paperbacks there. I worked through them, pulling them out one at a time and checking the contents pages. I was just about to give up – my plan was a long-shot and, as I told myself, I was unlikely to hit the jackpot on my first afternoon's browsing – when I came across my father's pen-name. A short story, somewhere in the middle of an anthology called Destination Sagittarius. The cover showed an intricate spaceship with tiny, brightly-lit windows, cruising through a starry expanse. The sweet, mildew smell of second-hand book rose from its yellowing pages. The story itself was called Moebius Strip. I nearly fell off the ladder. Had my childhood fascination with a paper loop inspired him to write it? It was serendipitous that, having gone off in search of his work, this was the first thing I found. I made my way back down the ladder and paid Ray the £2.50 he'd penciled on the flyleaf.
Once back out of the shop, I turned to the story and started to read it as I walked:
MOEBIUS STRIP
My father wrote science fiction. His best work – a few of his short stories, that is – has been compared to Isaac Asimov and Robert A. Heinlein. Unfortunately – for him and for us – most of his work fell short of his best...
Dominic Rivron writes mainly short stories and poetry. He also writes reviews. His work has been published in a number of print and online magazines, including The Beatnik Cowboy, International Times, The Milk House, Fragmented Voices and Stride Magazine. He lives in the North of England.
He blogs at https://asithappens55.blogspot.com/ |