I’ve been remark­ing that some of the best writ­ten books, in recent times, have been pub­lished in the “juve­nile” mar­ket. This book proves my point. It’s a beau­ti­fully writ­ten, emo­tion­ally pow­er­ful, and high­ly imag­i­na­tive demon­stra­tion of what it means to be a slave. No top­ic is clos­er to my heart, and, frankly, I wish that I had writ­ten this book. “47” is a plan­ta­tion slave, who, in the 1830’s, encoun­ters an alien being who is strand­ed on earth. He tells his tale from the view­point of now, since he has become effec­tively immor­tal, and still retains the 14-year-old body. But the sci­ence fic­tion ele­ment of the sto­ry is under­played. Mosley con­cen­trates on mak­ing the read­er hear, taste, smell, and feel the real­ity of slav­ery. It’s a fine piece of work.

The first item, the essay “On Fairy Sto­ries”, is essen­tial read­ing for any­one with a seri­ous inter­est in Tolkien. It makes clear exact­ly what he was doing, and why. It was writ­ten dur­ing the height of the dom­i­nant posi­tion of “real­ism” in lit­er­a­ture, when any­thing even remote­ly imag­i­na­tive was con­sid­ered trash by lit­er­ary peo­ple. Tolkien was par­tic­u­larly annoyed by those who saw fan­tasy, espe­cially the par­tic­u­lar kind of fan­tasy that he called “fairy-sto­ry”, as exclu­sively for chil­dren. He writes:

Among those who still have enough wis­dom not to think fairy sto­ries per­ni­cious, the com­mon opin­ion seems to be that there is a nat­ural con­nex­ion between the minds of chil­dren and fairy-sto­ries, of the same order as the con­nex­ion between children’s bod­ies and milk. I think this is an error; at best an error of false sen­ti­ment, and one that is there­fore most often made by those who, for what­ever pri­vate rea­sons (such as child­less­ness), tend to think of chil­dren as a spe­cial kind of crea­ture, almost a dif­fer­ent race, rather than as nor­mal, if imma­ture, mem­bers of a par­tic­u­lar fam­ily, and of the human fam­ily at large. Actu­ally, the asso­ci­a­tion of chil­dren and fairy-sto­ries is an acci­dent of our domes­tic his­tory. Fairy sto­ries have in the mod­ern world been rel­e­gated to the ‘nurs­ery’, as shab­by or old-fash­ioned fur­ni­ture is rel­e­gated to the play-room, pri­mar­ily because adults do not want it, and do not mind if it is misused.

Touché. I can still remem­ber when that atti­tude was gospel, when a good sci­ence fic­tion writer like Kurt Von­negut had to vocif­er­ously deny that he wrote SF so he could be tak­en seri­ously, and the ency­clo­pe­dias described H. G. Wells as the author of Tono Bun­gay, Mr. Brit­tling Sees It Through, and, embarrass­ingly, “some sci­en­tific romances”.

con­tents:

14691. [2] (J. R. R. Tolkien) On Fairy Stories
14692. [3] (J. R. R. Tolkien) Leaf by Niggle

I’ve enthused before about the work of Tim Wynne-Jones. This is an ear­ly nov­el of his. His writ­ing was not quite as sharp as it has since become, but this nov­el still held my atten­tion. In part, it’s because the sto­ry (a sort of fusion of Charles Dick­ens and Ray­mond Chan­dler) focus­es on my own neig­bour­hood in Toron­to, and con­cerns the under­side of that neigh­bour­hood at the very time when I was myself part of that under­side. I rec­og­nize and remem­ber almost every phys­i­cal fea­ture in the book. Some of the places, build­ings, and social con­fig­u­ra­tions no longer exist, but read­ing this nov­el brought them back to me with the inten­sity of the smell of piss in a dark city alley.

14657. (Dan O’ Neill) The Fire­crack­er Boys
14658. [2] (William Shake­speare) Hen­ry V [play]
(Groff Con­klin –ed.) 5 Unearth­ly Visions:
. . . . 14659. (Eric Frank Rus­sell) Leg­work [sto­ry]
. . . . 14660. (Wal­ter M. Miller, Jr.) Con­di­tion­al­ly Human [sto­ry]
. . . . 14661. (Ray­mond Z. Gal­lun) Stamped Cau­tion [sto­ry]
. . . . 14662. (Damon Knight) Dio [sto­ry]
. . . . 14663. (Clif­ford D. Simak) Shad­ow World [sto­ry]
14664. (Michel Trem­blay) Quar­ante-qua­tre min­utes, quar­antes-qua­tre secondes
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Of all places in the world, Tibet has attract­ed the most fan­tas­tic mys­ti­fi­ca­tion. Mar­tin Brauen’s book is a study of the bizarre images, dreams, and super­nat­ur­al fan­tasies that peo­ple have pro­ject­ed on this land. He explores the var­i­ous themes, start­ing with Renais­sance spec­u­la­tion about a hid­den Chris­t­ian king­dom in the Himalayas, and pro­ceed­ing through the fan­tasies of Madame Blavatsky and her Theosophists; the fic­tion­al Shangri-la of James Hilton’s Lost Hori­zon (and the won­der­ful Frank Capra film made from it); the racist pseu­do-sci­ence of the Nazis, who were fas­ci­nat­ed with Tibet; the absur­di­ties in the immense­ly pop­u­lar books by “Lob­sang Ram­pa”; to mod­ern adver­tiz­ing that exploits the image of the Dalai Lama, and cur­rent movies that still insist on see­ing only the reli­gious and “spir­i­tu­al” side of Tibetan life.

The author is not actu­al­ly angry about all this non­sense, but he is painful­ly aware that few peo­ple are inter­est­ed in the real­i­ty of Tibet, or the peo­ple of Tibet. Read more »

At first glance, Hen­ry V seems to be one of Shakespeare’s sim­pler plays. It is often inter­preted as straight­for­ward patri­otic pro­pa­ganda. Lau­rence Olivi­er treat­ed it more or less this way in his bril­liant 1944 film ver­sion. But the play con­tains many ele­ments that don’t fit into this inter­pre­ta­tion. I’m more inclined to see it as a study of how a charis­matic fig­ure can delude oth­ers and him­self, using var­i­ous tech­niques of manip­u­la­tion. Shake­speare was always aware of these tech­niques. Marc Antony’s speech to the plebs in Julius Cae­sar is prac­ti­cally a text­book on how to manip­u­late a crowd. Hen­ry uses sim­i­lar meth­ods to keep his war in France rolling, and Shake­spear iron­i­cally points out the end results for the ordi­nary men who are caught up in his ambi­tions. He does this very sub­tly, how­ev­er. The play also con­tains the ances­tor of all those Amer­i­can World War II movie scenes where the infantry pla­toon has a guy from Texas, a guy from Iowa, a guy from New Eng­land, and a guy from Brook­lyn, each with his accent and com­ic shtick. In this case, it’s Gow­er (Eng­lish), Fluellen (Welsh), Mac­mor­ris (Irish) and Jamy (Scot­tish) each play­ing out their eth­nic stereo­types which, appar­ent­ly, have remained unchanged for the last five hun­dred years.

Edward Teller in a Lawrence-Liv­er­more Labs pub­lic­i­ty photo.

In 1958, the Atom­ic Ener­gy Com­mis­sion made a con­certed effort to con­vince the cit­i­zens of Alas­ka to allow them to explode a series of nuclear weapons on the north­west­ern coast of that state. The effort was direct­ed by Edward Teller, the “father of the hydro­gen bomb”, who trav­elled to Alas­ka to pro­mote the idea. Teller was a for­mi­da­ble oppo­nent of the nuclear test ban treaty. Pres­i­dent Eisen­hower, already extreme­ly dis­trust­ful of what he was already begin­ing to think of as the “mil­i­tary-indus­tri­al com­plex” and expe­ri­enced in the real pol­i­tics of war, was not swayed against the treaty, but he was amenable to Teller’s claims that nuclear weapons could be used for peace­ful pur­poses. The Alas­ka project was at first dubbed “Ploughshare” and then lat­er changed to “Char­i­ot”.

The project was to use nuclear weapons to exca­vate a huge har­bour in a place where it had no con­ceiv­able eco­nomic util­ity, and where it would wreak spec­tac­u­lar destruc­tion of both the ecosys­tem and the human com­mu­nity. It was pro­moted to the Alaskans with raz­zle-daz­zle, con­stantly chang­ing jus­ti­fi­ca­tion, and a land­slide of bare-faced lies. Teller him­self appears to have been an almost path­e­l­og­i­cal liar. Alaskans were told the most fan­tas­tic and absurd things imag­in­able, any con­coc­tion of untruths and half-truths that would pla­cate doubts or shut up oppo­si­tion. Pre­dictably, the local Cham­ber of Com­merce types, the Press, and State leg­is­la­tors jumped on the band­wagon. Here is an exam­ple of the kind of think­ing dis­played by the Anchor­age Times: “Ask­ing Alaskans for a deci­sion on this pro­posed atom exper­i­ment is like a doc­tor ask­ing his patient whether he wants an oper­a­tion. The eas­i­est answer is ‘no’. The doc­tor usu­ally tells the patient he must have one for his own good, and the patient does as the doc­tor says. The atom sci­en­tists are the doc­tor in this case. If they say that ade­quate safe­guards for life and prop­erty have been pro­vided, how can lay­men say oth­er­wise?” Wow, there’s some rugged indi­vid­u­al­ism and crit­i­cal jour­nal­ism for you. Read more »