The Steel Crocodile (The Electric Crocodile)

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The Steel Crocodile

by
D.G.Compton

general information | review summaries | our review | links | about the author

Title:	The Steel Crocodile
Author:	D.G.Compton
Genre:	Novel
Written:	1970
Length:	254 pages
Availability:	The Steel Crocodile - US
	The Electric Crocodile - UK
	The Steel Crocodile - Canada
	Le crocodile électrique - France
	Das elektrische Krokodil - Deutschland

US title: The Steel Crocodile
UK title: The Electric Crocodile

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Our Assessment:

B : solid; well-crafted

See our review for fuller assessment.

Review Summaries
Source	Rating	Date	Reviewer
SF Studies	.	(3:3) 11/1976	R.D.M.
Sunday Times	.	4/10/1970	Edmund Cooper

From the Reviews:

"A thriller (or perhaps one should say, an entertainment, since the influence of Graham Greene is obvious) (.....). More imaginative and persuasive than [Jack Finney's The Body Snatchers], though I continue to doubt that the thriller form is a proper form for serious SF." - R.D.M., Science Fiction Studies

"The Electric Crocodile by D. G. Compton is slow in development; but it is a very readable book. Its author brings style, subtlety and impressive expertise to a story that is SF today but could be everybody's nightmare tomorrow. The theme --computer as electronic bogyman -- is not new; but it is handled with authority and intelligence." - Edmund Cooper, Sunday Times

Please note that these ratings solely represent the complete review's biased interpretation and subjective opinion of the actual reviews and do not claim to accurately reflect or represent the views of the reviewers. Similarly the illustrative quotes chosen here are merely those the complete review subjectively believes represent the tenor and judgment of the review as a whole. We acknowledge (and remind and warn you) that they may, in fact, be entirely unrepresentative of the actual reviews by any other measure.

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The complete review's Review:

       The Steel Crocodile is set in some near-future, with Europe consolidated into a European Federation (and the mark the official currency), one of the major competing global blocs, along with the East and the Americas (though there is also an African Federation). The novel centers around Dr. Matthew Oliver and his wife Abigail. Matthew is a sociologist and ethnologist, and has been offered a position at the Colindale Institute -- apparently a great opportunity -- and the novel opens with him visiting an old friend from school, Edmund Gryphon, who is a member of an organization called the Civil Liberties Committee (CLC) that the government keeps close tabs on and whose activities it clearly is concerned about.
       Gryphon sees Matthew getting access to the Colindale Institute as a great opportunity as well; he's suspicious of the work being done there and wants Matthew to report to him and the C.L.C. about it. The next day, the police come to see Matthew -- to question him about the murder of Gryphon.
       Matthew takes the position -- learning also, however, that, as he tells his wife, his predecessor: "was burned to death in his motor car, Abigail. It wasn't an accident".
       Working at the Institute means also being closely if rather openly surveilled. In his previous work: "He had never had a tail" -- but now one is assigned to him --and another to his wife, and they are followed whenever they go off-site. Their house is also bugged -- but the general attitude about this is summed up by the description of Abigail finding the first batch of them:

It was pointless to be angry or disgusted. The hiding places were hardly more than a matter of form. The breach of etiquette was hers for having uncovered them.

The centerpiece of the institute is a supercomputer, and as the director of the institute explains to Matthew:

     "The Bohn is a remarkable device, Oliver. More remarkable than its designers imagine. It extrapolates. Is in fact a product of its own extrapolations. Extrapolates on a sufficiently wide base to appear creative. Human creativity works by selection, sorting through the individual's memory store and selecting items that interrelate unexpectedly, amusingly, interestingly, -- profitably. It is the subtlety of this selection process, the criteria it employs, that determines the creative ability of each individual person." He leaned forward across his desk to point his next sentence. "And the criteria we have given the Bohn are the subtlest we here at the Colindale Institute could devise."
     "You're saying that the Bohn invents."
     "I'm saying that the Bohn perceives relationships and extrapolates logically from them."

Yes, it's basically a super-LLM (Large Language Model) machine ! And, yes, some of the issues addressed here prove remarkably timely now, too, more than half a century after the novel was first published .....
As his assistant points out -- using the computer's popular nickname --: "Boney isn't an ordinary computer", and indeed, Matthew can't help but wonder about the uses it is being put to:

Impressive as this was, there was obviously more to the Colindale project than just this. Otherwise, why the strict, almost pathological secrecy ?

His assistant argues that the computer isn't really being creative -- "he only shuffles the possibilities", she insists -- but still sees some of the dangers, especially for those playing with it:

"It runs away with you," she said. "It’s important to keep a sense of proportion. Remember that there are limitations."

Abigail is a devout Catholic, but while Matthew accompanies her to church he can't really work himself up to properly join in, instead keeping himself: "warily separate" But Abigail is not the only one looking to a higher power: as the director of the institute tells Matthew:

We're leaderless, Oliver. And needing leadership. Crying out for a relevant messiah.

       The messianic, in its various forms, looms over the story. And added to the mix then is also Abigail's brother, Paul, involved in a cause and willing to do what is necessary to further it .....
       And so the story builds up to its conclusion, old Boney giving the various researchers a hard time with an output they can't crack and everything (and everyone) eventually coming to a head.
       An appealing feature of the novel is the way Compton overlaps his narrative from chapter to chapter, as the focus shifts from Matthew to Abigail and sections are repeated from their different vantage points. It's not so much two sides of the story, but juts a loose overlap of parts of it, but it's a neat narrative trick that gives the novel a nice flow.
       Good on character and analysis, The Steel Crocodile is a solid if, in its basics, unsurprising warning tale, nicely focused on the individuals rather than the ominous but well-kept-in-the-background threat(s). The intense -- yet presented as, in many ways, almost casual -- surveillance is also a particularly effective additional layer here, a neat spin on the usual take and presentation.

       [Note: The UK edition comes not only with a different title but also an epigraph, missing from the US editions:

“But to this day I wish I had known
the name of that excellent crocodile,
My mentor and friend, most proper enemy.”

(from WOULD'ST EAT A CROCODILE? by John Smith)

The crocodile-allusion of the title is, however, also explained in the story itself then.]

- M.A.Orthofer, 26 December 2024

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Links:

The Steel Crocodile:

Gateway publicity page

Reviews:

D.G.Compton:

D.G.Compton at The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction

Other books by under review:

The Continuous Katherine Mortenhoe (also: The Unsleeping Eye)

Other books of interest under review:

See Index of Science Fiction and Fantasy books
See Index of Contemporary British fiction

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About the Author:

British author D.G.Compton (David Guy Compton) was born in 1930.

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