Revisiting Ben Elton's Stark

Why the comic's 1989 debut was years ahead of its time...

Reading Ben Elton’s very enjoyable recent autobiography (‘What Have I Done?) reminded me of an often overlooked aspect of his work: his career as a novelist.

Ben Elton was pushing thirty and still close to the peak of his first wave of fame when his first novel, Stark was published in 1989. He was a very familiar figure, both as a smart-suited stand-up (Channel 4’s Friday and Saturday Live had recently finished), and as a stand-in, filling in for Terry Wogan on his holidays from his thrice weekly chat show. Elton was also known as a writer: he had co-written The Young Ones and the three good series of Blackadder, the last of which was soon to air. He had also earned the ultimate status symbol of 1980s fame: he had his own snazzily-dressed, miniature puppet on TV’s Spitting Image.

He was something of a trailblazer then. Comedians turned novelists are everywhere these days: look at Bob Mortimer, Graham Norton or Jo Brand. But in 1989, they were rare. Even Stephen Fry hadn’t written any books then.

The original cover of Stark showed a giant aerosol can flying through space. This was a symbolic way of showing the book had an ecological theme. There was a brief surge in interest in such issues at the end of the 1980s, described then as “the green revolution.” Aerosols and their perceived connection to the growing hole in the ozone layer was very much part of the discourse then in a way which they are not now. I don’t remember aerosols featuring much in the novel.

Spaceships did though. In envisaging a reality in which a malevolent cabal of billionaires plotted to abandon a doomed Earth in a fleet of ‘star arks’ (hence the book’s title), Ben was way ahead of his time. Stark was the first thing which ever made me realise that humanity’s environmental impact on the world might well end up having apocalyptic consequences. I was about 16 when I read it (in 1992 or 1993, in good time for the TV version I’d heard was coming) and the book’s downbeat ending genuinely shocked me.

I enjoyed the book with two minor reservations. As a reader of sci-fi comic, 2000AD, I didn’t appreciate Stark’s mockery of adult comic fans in general (though I was not yet an adult myself) and ‘Judge Dread’ (as it is misspelt in the novel) in particular. I also noticed a few passages were taken verbatim from Ben’s own stand-up routines. Given how much he was writing back then, however, perhaps we should cut him some slack.

I remember Clive Anderson asking Ben why his next two books (Gridlock and This Other Eden) also had an environmental theme. Why didn’t he write about something else, for a change?

At the time, I agreed with him. More than thirty years later, I think Ben Elton deserves credit for banging that particular drum, so much earlier than most.