Project X the movie vs. The Artificial Man

The Artificial Man by Leslie Purnell Davies

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


This book was the basis of a favorite science fiction film of mine called Project X. That was what made me interested in reading the book. Project X tells an interesting story with a very limited budget.

While the character names and some of the premise is similar, the book is quite different from the movie.

In the movie Hagen Arnold is a secret agent sent to Sino Asia to learn about their advances in genetics. He escapes from that country after sending the message "The West will be destroyed in fouteen days, repeat fourteen days!" When he returns to the U.S. he has no memory, the result of a drug that destroys memory in secret agents who are tortured, in order to prevent the enemy from learning their secrets. The scientist Doctor Crowther must find a way to recover those memories so they can figure out the meaning of Arnold's last message while there is still time. Crowther tries to do this by convincing Arnold he is a bank robber in the 1960's.

The book is, again, very different. The story takes place in England, and the hero thinks he is a science fiction author living in the 1960's in a small village. We soon discover that the year is in fact 2016 and Britain is a dictatorship with food rationing and government mandated birth control, etc. Hagen Arnold is a secret agent who has lost his memory, and the village is a way to try and learn what those memories are, just like in Project X, but the difference is that nobody is in any particular hurry to find out what those memories are, and the whole false identity being given to Arnold may have a motive besides getting those memories.

So with the movie the premise is used for suspense, whereas the book goes more for mystery. Unfortunately, the solution to the mystery is disappointing.

I regret to say that the movie is much more interesting than the book.



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