The Hopkins Manuscript by R.C. Sherriff is a 1939 dystopian science fiction novel. Scientists discover that the moon is going to collide with Earth. We watch events unfold via the memoirs of one Edgar Hopkins, former school teacher, now retired to a West Country village, pursuing interests in poultry breeding and amateur astronomy.

This is not a story that makes sense on a realistic level. The process of the Moon crashing into Earth, and its aftermath, is plainly ridiculous. But then a lot of old science fiction is ridiculous, as is a lot of new science fiction, if not now then in a few years time. Not much science fiction will remain scientifically accurate, even if it was somewhere close in the first place. This is fitting really, when truths in science always tend to be replacing earlier truths.

So is that a problem? Is it a problem that Shakespeare in As You Like It refers to the world as almost six thousand years old, because that was the prevailing wisdom in his day?

Maybe there is something else about a story that lasts better than the facts of it. For example, we could look at The Hopkins Manuscript as allegory. I wouldn’t be the first to suggest that the Moon disaster might be intended to symbolise World War One, followed by reconstruction, followed by people engaging in absurd nationalism, causing a slide towards another war. Of course you could question the value of complicating the issue by getting all enigmatic and symbolic. Why not just write about World War One? Well, maybe you could answer that in terms of putting a manuscript into a different font to help check for mistakes and typos. The change helps you look with new eyes, and possibly see errors more easily

So there may be some historical allegory going on. Personally I prefer to see the story’s factually absurd events as standing in for the more realistic experience of witnessing a falling apart of what we assume is stable and permanent. We all have our own universes where reliable moons sit in steady skies. It’s impossible to think of the Moon falling. And yet it does. I think we all know that feeling, or we will know it at some point.

So, The Hopkins Manuscript is ridiculous. And yet maybe there is something to be said for ridiculous – when life is like that sometimes.