The Alteration

this was not at all the science fiction I expected after the previous reviews...very disappointed

Amis gives us a very strange 20th century: Since the fundamentalist Martin Luther was elected pope and the Church was reformed, all Europe (including Great Britain) remained Catholic. Science and the laws, hemmed by theological traditions, have not developed to a form we are used to nowadays. The musical prodigy Hubert Anvil, aged ten, excels with his pure soprano voice and early compositions. So the pope wants to have him alterated to preserve this wonderful voice for his Sistine Chapel. Two emissaries, also alterated, shall test the boy. Here Amis is at his wittiest: Fredericus Mirabilis translated is the famous German tenor Fritz Wunderlich, and the other one, addressed only as Lupogradus, is in German "Wolfgang" (Amadeus Mozart, about sixty years old). Through alteration he lost all his abilitites as a composer, and predicts this sad fate to Hubert, too. We find a lot of descriptions and disputes about the different kinds of love - carnal, spiritual, and infantile - none which is funny, sometimes cruel, and the boy is interested to hear much about the love he is still too young for, and the joys he will be missing. When he tries to escape his fate with the help of the dissident American ambassador he falls ill and can only be saved by the removal of his testicles - alteration. Miracle, act of God? A very strange end of the book indeed.

Kingsley Amis is best known as a satirist -- Lucky Jim is one of the funniest books since World War II -- but he always had an interest in science fiction (according to his son Martin, one of his favorite movies was The Terminator), and this book presents an alternative history in which Britain remained a Catholic country, and Martin Luther was reconciled to the Church. Other changes including Bethoven writing 20 symphonies and Mozart dying even earlier than in real life. The main character is a boy (Hubert) about to lose his voice because of puberty; the "alteration" of the title is castration to preserve that voice. Amis presents a well-thought out altenrate version, and the adventures of Hubert to escape his alteration are both interesting and used to further explain this alternative history. Unfortunately, the book is out of print in the U.S.; I got my copy on a trip to Britain. Almost anything Kingsley Amis wrote is interesting, and it is our loss that more of his works are not available in the U.S.