Copyright © A.P. Fitzgerald
T’pockit, t’pockit, t’pockit, BARSOOM!! The dreaded mind numbing warning that
often preceded landing came `a juddering through Blodwin’s Osiris Space Pod
like a muted sonic boom. As the sleek craft spurted into the hovering
mists swathing Gannymede Minor his mind raced:
“Must be the Sniveling factor,” he thought as his steel grey orbs fell upon
the Hawking Temporal Differential Extrapolator stapled to his wrist. The
zirconium HTD had been a grateful gift from Kud, king of the ruminant Klingons
from the bicuspid stellar artery of the Anthrax Nebula. These unfortunates he
had saved from the Ringworld Moorlocks of Epsilon during the Sirocco and the
Fohn Wind Wars. He gulped down his fear and flicked a thoughtful glance at his
pregnant wife Barbarella that was glued to the computer console.
“Say it with flowers: give her some Triffids,” piped in the mincing voice of
JCN the super computer, who, like his second cousin HAL from 2001 was named as
an Irish acronym for IBM and could read human thought with consummate ease.
Meanwhile, back on Eo, the Gamma Mutants of the Omegatron had penetrated the
Sony Cobalt shield, and Hydra Blue and the Sleep Wizards were interfacing with
Kurt Vonnegut’s Tralfamadorians…… who could only communicate by farting and tap
dancing at the same time… which explains why when the first peaceful
Tralfamadorian landed on Earth and immediately ran to a nearby alfalfa farm to
warn the Scientologist occupant that his house was on fire, the redneck beat him
to a pulp with a nine iron and……and..”
And, like garlic pizza, yodelling and boot scooting, SF is an acquired
taste, even though in a sense it’s been with us since most human beings lost
their tails, learnt to perambulate as bipeds and started telling the first mono
syllabic tales, probably with the visual aid of a dead gecko. According to the
mythologist Joseph Campbell, there are only twelve stories, and each is
borrowed from, warped, tweaked, and often immersed in loghorraeic jargon
and pseudo-science to become hi fi sci fi.
Humanity’s search for worm-holes and the meaning of the universe, its desire to
transcend its mortal coil and the constraints of gravity, or even its need to be
able to walk and chew betel-nut at the same time, reaches back to an era when
fire-side chats constituted not only the main form of entertainment but also the
best opportunity of learning how to survive puberty. When the greater part of
every day equated with a sustained sprint through an over-crowded zoo without
bars, when a twenty eight year life span qualified you as a geriatric, and
when death by tusk, tooth, claw, or simian SARS, was virtually guaranteed,
it’s not surprising our venerable ancestors wanted to escape to some imaginative
place, a better place or a more interesting place in their imaginations.
Freedom of flight: `here’s a cliff, so make like a Pteradactyl Grug’; or Icarus
attempts the Immelman turn with the wax in his ears; immortality (`Methuselah
makes a horse’s bottom of himself at his 601st birthday bash); and enterprising
sand viper snaffles Gilgamesh’s tad-awkward-to-replace elixir of life; conquest
(Charlemagne’s Paladins: Have Armies Will Travel); Heaven (a celestial
place with a good dental care system and no sabre toothed tigers); Xenophobia
(stranger danger)and the riddle of the stars, represent some of the themes
and ideas in the earliest Science fiction.
Way, way, back in time, when “Fast Food” was a reference to speedy gourmet
Marsupials or monitor lizards, the pride of the tribe were the story tellers,
but the only sure-fire method of curbing the wandering ways of these
yabberers was to poke out their eyeballs with a burnt stick. This
practice of the blind leading the bland became so widespread that the Celtic
word `bard’ for a story-teller also meant `blind’. These days Hollywood gives
these hacks three million smackers and locks them in a piano bar at the Beverley
Wiltshire with a laptop and ten crates of DOM for six months at a time to punch
out humanistic SF like Star Troopers and Cyborg, originally titled Jo Zeff and
his Full Metal Jacket.
All ancient societies had their concepts of Creation, ranging from the sexually
charged Big Bang theory to the more scientifically convincing Rainbow Serpent
and Ra. Astronomer, novelist and futurist Arthur C. Clarke even speculated that
nebulous cloud floating in the seventh heaven viewed through the Hubble Bubble
Technical Trouble Telescope may actually be composed of amino acids, those
gregarious little boogers that are the building blocks of life. He further
speculated that if he is correct, it could mean the universe was seeded, much
like your Johnny Apple-seed, but on a more ambitious scale. Let’s hope that if
he’s right, that most of the potential weeds get winnowed in the direction of
the sun or some lunar icescape with a diurnal range of 2000 degrees.
Likewise in his follow up novel 2010, Clarke opined that Europa, a celebrated
moon of Jupiter, might support life. This theory, like Europa, and the beers
served at my pub – “The Wookie and Child” – is said to hold substantial water.
The recent finding of a bottle of Mylanta tablets on Pluto have engendered a
Scientific rethink on the matter.
Unfortunately, with much SF today, the reader or watcher often gains a nagging
feeling of déjà vu…..didn’t I just say that? I mean, it’s always the twenty
ninth century (and I thought MY watch was fast), youth is still rebellious, more
of those ratbag gung Ho Outcasters want to take over the planet and vaporize
anyone with a mullett, essentials such as Moet and other creature
comforts still cost a fistful of plastic, there’s yet another heretical mystic
on the Jihad horizon, and as Woody Allen once avowed, Epsilon girls still prefer
French kissing to hand shaking. I also have to agree with him that what most
people want to know about the universe is not so much whether there’s life in
outer space, but, do they have Ray Guns?” Film title idea flash: Venus in Blue
Genes AKA Sheer Folly.
Science Fiction as a genre is a shape changer and a shameless plunderer of
everything from myths and magic to high science. Science versus Creationism led
to ripping yarns like the one about that big goombah, Frankenstein’s monster, a
man of many parts. Unknown to many SF afficionadoes is the fact that the first
SF story was not Goethe’s cerebral talking food opus “Die Meisterschnitzel”
but the sublime novella “The Dream of Ogg”, a pat mini epic written in
tapir-stool. Its protagonist was a precocious prehistoric Neanderthal Goliath
with halitosis -a “C’ Class Honours student of the University of Tundra and
Cavern who attempted to build a space ship made out of a mussel and oyster shell
midden to carry him out of the Dordogne Valley to greener pastures and forty
leagues closer to the burgeoning Pinot wine district. Not surprisingly the
would-be astronaut died of bivale cigeuretea just before blast off.
Given the onerous task of identifying some very readable SF literature (a
Visigoth to a Vandal: eaten any good books lately Genseric?), even
devotees, Sfans, Trekkies, Vogons and the like, would vacillate, obfuscate and,
most likely, oscillate before plumping for SF such as:
Edgar Rice Burroughs’ John Carter of Mars series (Tarzan masters Physics) Wells’
Time Machine (Eloi! Eloi! oi oi oi! AKA “Cannibal Tours”; Herbert’s DUNE
(The Worm Turns); Robert Heinlein’s “Stranger in a Strange Land” (a Literary
companion for celebrity assassins in the U.S); Paul Theroux’s “Ozone” (3 Mile
Island goes continental); Orwell’s “1984” (Mogadishu on a Sunday night); “The
Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” (A “How To” book for restaurant bolters at the
end of the universe); or Dan Simmons’ Hugo and Nebula award winning “Hyperion”,
in which budding Starship captain Het Masteen twigs that it’s time his tree ship
Yggdrasil branched out for Hyperion, where hurricanes hoften happen in pursuit
of the deadly Shrike…(I kid you not).
So when the temperature reaches “Fahrenheit 451”, drop the burning book and
seek out searing titles like H Potter inspiration “A Wizard of Earthsea” where
you’ll find Ged, a “Speaker for the Dead” who’ll tell you to head to Westworld
thence navigate the drowned “Riverworld” und……blah blah “und zo it goes” alzo
sprach sour kraut Vonnegut. Ergo, if you’re gonna read a classic, gonna read a
Jurassic, gonna read it in an attic…better read the guide first.
On celluloid though, the SF best” lists could comprise: “Metropolis” (New York
without the traffic snarls); The old eastern bloc’s Solaris (Spaced out Spouse);
“The Omega Man”(Charlton Heston’s last Swiss watch); “Logan’s Run” (The Old and
the Dutiful)”; “Village of the Damned” (Cuckolds Anonymous); “A for Andromeda”
(a B.B.C dramatization of the alphabet); “2001” (My Mentor Woth a Monolith, or
1470 man finds atomic inspiration before lunch); Ridley Scott’s “Alien” (Jaws on
acid); “E.T.(a Bell TELEPHONE CO promo spectacular);”Blade Runner”(`I Robot You
Jane)”; “Star Wars” (Merlin, Arthur and Mordred transmogriphy in a galaxy far,
far, away); the mind boggling 3D PANDORA (“Dances with Wolves” reconstituted
meets The Navii Gator and Beyond Blue); and the high tech/low plot Arnold
Schwarzenbeefeneggenberger blockenbusters “Total Recall” and the Terminators
(“It’s not a toomer!” I tink maybe it is) The sequels were both scary: “The
Governator”; and The Presidentinator”
Another film that could be included is the Close Encounters of the Worst
Kind megahit was “Independence Day – I.D. 4”. essentially summarised as follows:
(U.F.O’s. stop./ NYC RSVP E.T’s. Stop./ FBI, CIA S.N.A.F.U stop./ E.T’s
S.O.B’s. stop./ S.O.S I.B.M, F18’s. stop./ E.T’s D.O.A. stop/ U.N. A.O.K.stop.
Over and out.
Or, also on ID 4: Israelis, Palestinians and interested parties vigorously
reject Alien Middle East solution; Inter Galactic Terra-formers Poleaxed by
Computer Nerd; or “Feisty President kicks arses of Aliens with Altitude Problem”.
And as for the genetic engineering romp “Jurassic Park”, basically it was “What
Dinah Saw”.
Then there were major Directors’ shots at the genre:
Spielberg’s “Minority Report”-(Foxy Precog gets bad vibe about Cruise marriage);
SIGNS (Mel’s Field of Bad Dreams – If you build crop circles They Will Come);
and “Matrix Reloaded” and “Matrix Revolution” (NEOphyte Computer Whiz Hacks Into
Techno Babble and SFX MOTHERLODE). And with “I Robot”, “the first two rules of
robotics are that a robot cannot harm a human”. Riii—ight, Even Godiva’s Peeping
Tom, Blind Pugh at the Admiral Ben Bow Inn and Tutenkamen’s mummy saw that
one coming!
Steven Spielberg’s disconcertingly discomforting take on H.G Wells’ “War of
the Worlds”, however, managed to be something altogether different again: a
chilling thrilling visual parable for the holocaust and other genocides from the
primordial murk of human behaviour and history.
Every viewer of this film possessing a modicum of grey matter and humanity,
regardless of their ethnic and cultural origins, was left in absolutely
no doubt about what genocide must be like for the victims.
And just like the S.S and all malevolent maggots before them and after them,
Spielberg’s alien Martians articulated the same timeless catch cries of all well
armed, strongly motivated and viscerally ambitious “Visitors”: We come in peace,
come in peace: Shoot to kill! Shoot to Kill!
In the past half dozen years the SF fare has been popularised and diversified
immensely, in terms of imaginative scope not so reliant on SFX. Of course
when you’re on a good thing in terms of Box Office receipts, general advice
says don’t mess with it! Which is why “Star Wars” released prequels like “Attack
of the Clones”, and why Terminator and its kind become franchises that could
even release Parts 11 and 12 if they so wished. There will, however, always be
some adolescent pap with laconic heroes comprised of teak or mahogany
propped up by high tech SFX excess as in “Transformers”, and a spate of teen
angst SF like “Twilight”-inspired “I am Number Four” (I vote to retitle it, “I
am Number two”)and forget the spate of expensive Hollywood schlock stuff based
on join the dots, writing by numbers scripts like “Battle for Los Angeles” and
“Chronicles of Riddick”. That said, there is also a growing number of thought-
Provoking and insightful audio-visual material for viewers who are tired of
seeing a predictable plot plodding from A to E, and who really hope for a plot
ranging from A to J via P and a secret LBJ home movie and the discovery of giant
mutant marine life in Fukushima.
There is arguably a rising standard in the best of SF branching into hybrid
genres (not “Cowboys and Aliens so much), including Comedy, Drama and
Psychological genres.
Other relatively recent offerings like SF comedy “PAUL” managed to break some
new ground despite trotting out myriad homages to so many Alien on
Earth stories that came before it, which included the story of Jesus.
The best SF comedies so far were the laugh out loud John Carpenter film
“Dark Star”, whose evil alien closely resembles a large $4 K Mart beach ball
with legs and attitude.
He deviously and hilariously torments the space ship’s crew, whose job entails
an endless trip through the galaxies exploding potentially unstable stars and
this crew’s very existence has been forgotten by NASA decades earlier. They
encounter an unexpected problem though when one of their talking bombs develops
a “personality disorder” and starts to channel Rousseau, Sartre and a plethora
of other philosophers and argues the logic of “his” purpose and his very
existence shortly after being armed for release and detonation. The countdown
continues with the increasingly “ticked off” and terrified crew desperately
trying to convince him his purpose is to head for the targeted star immediately
or “stand down”.
The ironic and darkly hilarious South Efrikaaner Dramedy/mockumentary “AREA
9” is almost as good. It features giant intelligent prawn-like aliens
incarcerated in a Soweto style township outside Johannesburg after their
space ship encounters mechanical trouble. Seeing these repugnant and terrifying
looking monsters being racially maligned by their intolerant tawny Soweto human
neighbours, and watching them having their citizenship documentation checked by
dull Government officials who address them by their newly allotted names, such
as Charles Potts or Alistair Smith, produced much spontaneous audience laughter
in the movie session I attended and was well worth the price of the ticket.
The new Tom Cruise SF film “Oblivion” is close to being the goods but some
critics and audiences have targeted a few the script’s burgeoning black holes
and that appears in Act 2, as well as its unevenness.
The film “Gravity”, by Alfonse Cuaron, is, however, a breath of fresh air
for SF lovers – though not so fresh for its two protagonists – and this
inventive original audio-visual alchemy truly mines space-junk for a golden seam
and it is film storytelling at its finest.
So, irrefutably, SF is a rapacious looter of the entire world catalogue
of histories, mythologies, yarns and ideas, but it has also added a new
dimension to literary storehouses for an aeon and a millisecond; and inarguably,
in Hollywood, When an Alien Stalks, Money Talks.
