Expendable - Influence

Influence

Though one of the Explorers refers to the glass people of Melaquin as "Eloi" and "Morlocks", there is little sign of any overt influence from H. G. Wells, or indeed any other specific science fiction author, in Gardner's novel. Gardner takes ideas that are of general currency in the genre, and employs and develops them in original ways. (His League of Peoples concept allows Gardner to avoid the hoariest sci-fi cliché, warfare in outer space.)

One possible relationship with the work of an earlier writer may be worth noting. Gardner's character Oar is not only the main source of the novel's comedy; she is also a highly distinctive creation. Many writers, both before and after Wells, have explored the idea of invisibility...but few have created characters that are visible but transparent. One rare precedent lies in L. Frank Baum's creation of the Glass Cat in his The Patchwork Girl of Oz (1913). The Glass Cat is also ridiculously vain about its tranparency—a trait that it and Oar have in common. Oar lives in a domed underwater town made of glass—which suggests the submersible island-city "with glass walls and a high glass dome" in Baum's Glinda of Oz (1920). The people in Baum's glass city have submersible boats; Oar travels in a coffin-shaped glass submersible of her own.

Other examples of submarines and domed submarine cities certainly exist in works of fiction; but transparent living beings are more rare. Whether the commonality between Gardner and Baum is direct and deliberate, or inadvertent and mediated through other works, seems impossible to judge from the books themselves.

The novel also features repeated references to Shakespeare's Henry V.

Gardner continues the story of Festina Ramos and Oar in his 2001 novel Ascending.