1979: Under the Mountain
June 16, 2025
By AHNZ
The writer Maurice Gee (1931-2025, Artist: Phoenix Generation) wrote many acclaimed novels. Especially between 1972 to 1990 there were short stories, novels, and children’s books.
Best known is Under the Mountain (1979) which I read as an allegory for The State vs. humanity. It became a TV show and a film so that along with the novel many GenX and Millennial kids know of Gee’s work. What they probably don’t know, or don’t agree with, is that the alien slugs are the perfect analogy for unfeeling, unthinking, political actors who only want to extract and waste humanity. Just like our State, no care is given for who is helped or hurt just so long as their ‘side’ is winning. Like JAWS, they are simply a mechanical “eating machine” that would crash and kill a busload of children into a milk tanker just to be able to get some of the frothy cream from the wreckage for their morning coffee.
The Under the Mountain kids need to come to terms with that against the temptation to think that the bad guys might be people too. As if they could be reformed, bargained with, co-existed with. The ghastly Oliver Driver as Mr. Wilberforce is like that deadly shark, or the T-1000 from Terminator 2 in the 2009 film adaptation. Whereas, Sam Neill is Mr. Jones: the old codger alien trying to explain to the kids “That Terminator is out there, it can’t be bargained with, it can’t be … will not stop… EVER, until you are dead!”
That was the Terminator (1984) version. What Jones actually says is: “You might just as well try talking to a school of sharks” (p 85). They are intelligent, lethal, and amoral. The amorality is key – the Wilberforces have no better nature to appeal to, no pity and no kindness. Yet neither do they appear to have any malice. They kill out of instinct, living up to their name: “the People who conquer and multiply”. They don’t kill for pleasure or for vengeance, and neither do they kill unnecessarily. Ref. Nexus Zine (2010)
THIS is the light in which we should view the behavior coming out of the Beehive. Every Department, every Ministry. Every Luxon, Ardern, Key, Clark, Bolger,….They’re not fictional CGI space aliens but real psychopaths walking among us.
But it sounds like less mainstream works he has left us are even more interesting…
“His great work, the Plumb trilogy, based loosely on the life of his grandfather, traces the generational shifts in the family of George Plumb, a stern Presbyterian clergyman. Plumb’s rectitude and high morality make him unsuited to connect emotionally with lesser beings, such as some errant family members, a disjunction that raises broader questions about New Zealand society and its well-documented Puritanism.” – Mark Williams (2016)
“Under the Mountain was more surreal science fiction about our nation’s doom. Alien slugs “Wilberforces” with no feelings or conscience seek to conquer and multiply to the destruction of New Zealand and the entire galaxy itself. In other words, says Gee, they’re just like some politicians on Earth! They can no more be reasoned with or appealed to than a school of sharks. The Generation X kids have figure out to distrust them and align instead with the elder “Mr Jones” before the North Island volcanic cones blow us all away. It’s basically the moral dilemma of Charlie Sheen’s character in Wall Street (1987) picking between contemporary ‘shark’ Gordon Gekko and elder Lefty dad Martin Sheen.” – 1989: Idiot Played Rachmaninov, AHNZ
“Considered one of New Zealand’s greatest novelists, his work extended over 50 years. He wrote about ordinary people and ordinary lives, often with the narrator looking back at events that caused damage and unhappiness. “I don’t deliberately set out to do this, but the stories turn in that direction following their own logic,” he said. “All I can do about it is make the narrative as interesting as I can and give those people lively minds.”” – Respected Kiwi writer Maurice Gee has died, aged 93, RNZ (2025)
“I just want to tell good stories. I put numbers of people together and see what happens, and what happens is the story. I want to show people in particular situations behaving in relation to each other, and I want to examine their behaviour and see where it comes from, and where it leads, and why they do what they do.” – Department of Education poster (1989,) Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections
Gee evidently used his characters as a virtual social laboratory to work out who he was and who New Zealanders were. The books are his experiments and the results.
New Zealand is now running low on its stock of Silent Generation (Artist) and especially of their great writers. C.K. Stead remains.
The new Artist generation to replace them are our Zoomers but it remains to be seen what they will contribute to rival the contribution of Mr Gee.
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Image ref. From Department of Education poster (1989,) Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections
Ref. Leaving the Highway, Mark Williams (2016)
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