Narration in the 1950s Scifi Book: The Power 

In this next edition of my graduate school work, we are talking about some technical ideas in a great 1950s scifi book, The Power. The Power is a book that not too many people know about but it is one of the most important scifi books from the 1950s. Enjoy!

    In The Power, Frank M. Robinson uses internal dialogue as a clever form of narration to add the internal reactions of the main character, Professor Tanner. 

The first example of how this internal dialogue interacts with the main plot is when Professor Tanner is mind-tricked (the power) into nearly committing suicide at a pier. The only way we know that he is under the influence of someone is through internal dialogue, “He was sweating. His hands shaking, and the salt perspiration crept down his forehead and beaded into the corners of his eyes. He had a headache, a whopping big headache, and somewhere lost inside him, a voice was crying: not the lake, not the lake, not the lake!  and again, we get another tad-bit: “Hey mac, don’t do it! For God’s sake, don’t go off!” 

Throughout the book, we get moments where he is in front of his colleagues on his government project. The internal dialogue offers the writer a chance to take us inside the mind and away from the third-person limited point of view used in regular writing. The effect on the reader is a story within a story. There’s the main plot as it goes along, and then there are the internal machinations of Professor Tanner. This also serves as a juxtaposition between what the characters are telling him and what he knows. He often knows much more than the people around him, but because the reader has a little door into his mind, the reader has more information than the characters. This actually serves the main plot wonderfully because it is much of the story’s thrust: the fact that someone with a power to control people’s minds is slowly erasing and isolating Tanner. As a person in society with a job, bank account, etc., his very existence begins to evaporate. This furthers the conflict because while the world acts like he basically doesn’t exist, he knows different, and it pushes him to figure out who or what is going this to him. 

If it were written without the internal dialogue, the story would be a bit ridiculous, and it wouldn’t really pull the reader in. Instead, using internal dialogue, we experience frustration and fear, and it adds a whole new dynamic to the story. For example, when he goes to the bank and finds out that they don’t have his money and they have never heard of him remarks to himself, “You can’t run far without money.” (pg.47) And, when he is investigating John Olson’s death and speaks to his high school basketball coach, he realizes that many in his hometown just don’t understand the stakes of what their man had gotten into, “Except one night when he couldn’t make it, the night that Olson played that terrible game.” (pg. 68) In the course of his investigation into the untimely and mysterious death of his colleague, the reader is almost invited to start piecing together the mystery with Tanner. This makes this story compelling to read. It also reinforces another main plot point: a man named Adam Hart/Eddie Falco who can control people’s minds to do whatever he wants and possibly all of society. We are pulled in and out of the world of the mind with internal dialogue. 

This reading selection is a great reminder of the tools of internal dialog in storytelling. I don’t often get into my characters’ heads. I usually use their behavior and words to demonstrate a point or create a subtle illusion of something. This is definitely motivation to do more with internal dialogue across all my projects.