It's worthwhile taking a step back to consider how quietly and quickly cameras have become an everyday part of private life. How many photos do you take of quotidian, personal things—per day? More broadly, what percentage of online content is based around private lives published in the public space? Regardless the actual percent, the underlying message seems: intentional voyeurism sells. There is something that wants to both present and consume private lives—the more dramatic the better, we animals us. Riffing off this atavistic aspect of human nature is D.G. Compton's quiet masterpiece The Unsleeping Eye (1974).
The Unsleeping Eye predominantly rotates around two characters. First is Katherine Mortenhoe. What would in modern parlance be called a romance AI prompter, Katherine uses computer algorithms to generate romance fiction, and is one of the most well known and popular for it. At the start of the novel she learns she is terminally ill, with only 4 weeks to live. The other main character is Roddie. He is an NTV television reporter who, unbeknownst to everyone save his producer, has had an invisible camera installed in his eye that records everything he sees. Terminal illness a thing of the past in the book's future, Roddie's producer has the brilliant idea of inserting Roddie into Katherine's life and creating a documentary of her final days—the sadness, grief, drama, and all. Thing is, Katherine is not interested in signing the agreements which would give NTV the rights to film and broadcast, meaning NTV need to find alternate ways of getting the footage.
Overall, the story is one human at heart but stabbed occasionally through with knives of satire. Despite being published in 1974, there is still a strong echo of 60s counter culture. Roddie and his producer, in their efforts to exploit Katherine, represent the greed of immoral capitalism. Compton takes a couple strong swipes at the economic model by portraying its darker side, including a weird sex orgy at an oligarch's house and an even weirder murder at the scene of what would be a Just Stop Oil or Extinction Rebellion march. And Katherine, for her computer-assisted efforts at story-creation, is portrayed as being a partially empty soul in need of nourishment. Her struggles with the news of imminent mortality resonate with the reader, but are only the launching pad for the story. The journey she undergoes thereafter is where the reader will find her confronting the realities of life beyond computer-generated fiction in adult, in emotional, and in introspective fashion, a fashion that sometimes feels a bit outdated given how far in the rearview 60s and 70s culture now are. Corporate greed too has taken on different forms.
I bounce a bit off the counter-culture/anti-corporate dichotomy of The Unsleeping Eye. The sentiment is nice, but I dare say the real world is more complex. What I will sing the praises of, however, is Compton's prose. The novel is masterfully written—a clinic in indirect exposition and dialogue. Like John Bonham, the diction rocks off-beat. It will sound subconsciously odd to the reader's ear at first, but once they catch the rhythm, away they go. While a short novel at only ~220 pages, it packs a good amount due to the succinct prose.
I like commenting on the title choices for novels which have been published under two, and I'm not going to shy away here, either. This book is a rare case where I can't seem to fall on one side or another. Both titles are fitting. The Unsleeping Eye captures the aspect of humanity which soothes its own anxiety by viewing the private lives of others, while The Continuous Katherine Mortenhoe captures the arc of humanity inherent to a woman's life, an arc miniaturized in her coming to terms with mortality. If Mortenhoe were the main character, I might side with the matter, but Roddie and his experiences with viewing life both through the camera and his own eyes is likewise critical to the novel. The fence it is.
On top of the rather limited play of extreme consumerism vs hippie values, there is another bone to pick with The Unsleeping Eye: the broader setting is not integrated well with story, particularly in the early going. It's a struggle to understand why the public is chasing Mortenhoe like the paparazzi chased Princess Diana. Compton doesn't put much effort into conveying the idea of how rare illness is in her world, which would have more naturally framed Mortenhoe as the unicorn he intended her to be.
Save these shortcomings, The Unsleeping Eye remains one of the best science fiction novels of the 70s. Compton caught a wave and rode it til the end, such is the sophisticated style of the story as well as the mature manner in which the two main characters' humanity resolves itself. While likely a touch over-indulgent in its politics—a piece of its time, it's heart is in the right place when portraying the increasingly virtual nature of life. A two-edged sword if ever there were, the questions around the morality of cameras in peoples lives has only multiplied a thousand-fold in the half-century since. If you like Ballard, have a read. Compton is his own writer, but there are many parallels between the two.
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