Genre Fiction – Page 2 – Ash Clifton, Writer

What I’m Reading: “Mona Lisa Overdrive”

The great sci-fi writer Clifford D. Simak was known for writing novels and short stories with off-beat main characters. Often, his protagonists were cynical, working-class stiffs (often with a drinking problem) who stuck to their own, private, moral code, often at great cost to themselves. One of Simak’s editors once groused that all of his stories were about “losers.”

“I like losers,” Simak replied.

I just read this quote the other day, and I immediately thought of William Gibson’s books—specifically, Mona Lisa Overdrive. I first read MLO back in the early 1990s, just a few years after its publication, and I thought it was great. I never really thought of reading it again, but for some reason—perhaps because I’ve been a bit down, of late—I recently checked-out the book and re-read it. And I’m really glad I did. One of the foundational works of the cyberpunk sub-genre (along with Gibson’s Burning Chrome, Neuromancer, Count Zero, and other books), it still holds up, both as a work of speculative fiction as well as just a damned good, vividly imagined, human story.

A lot of people heap praise on Gibson’s novel—and on the Cyberpunk genre in general—because of their ideas, the thematic questions they ask about how humanity can relate in an age of overwhelming, dehumanizing technology. And what are the brutalizing effects of the ever-increasing disparity between the high-tech haves and the lower-tech have nots? Et cetera et cetera.

Myself, I like Gibson’s characters. Often, they are losers, of the sort Simak wrote about. Little people eking-out an existence on the fringes of society. MLO is no exception. The last of Gibson’s Sprawl trilogy, after Neuromancer and Count Zero, it’s set on a near-ish future Earth where mega-corporations, trillionaires, and criminal cartels have replaced all governments, and most of humanity muddles along in a rat-race of late-stage capitalism. The plot is a complicated skein of four interlocking narratives, each centered on a different character: Mona, a teenaged prostitute; Kumiko, the tween-aged daughter of a Yakuza boss; Angie, a beautiful young star of virtual reality films (“simstims”); and Slick Henry, an artist who sculpts robots and suffers from government-inflicted memory loss. I find it interesting that, of these four characters, two are children (Mona is sixteen), one is addicted to drugs, and one is brain-damaged. Additionally, two of them (Mona and Slick Henry) are poor, while the other two “rich” characters (Angie and Kumiko) are virtual prisoners of their wealth and position, separated from any real friendships or human connection.

Most notably, none of them have real families. Mona is an orphan; Kumiko’s mother died under mysterious circumstances, and her father is an aloof cypher.

In short, all of Gibson’s view-point characters are underdogs, one way or another. The closest he has ever come to a real, kick-ass hero is in one of his best supporting characters, Molly Millions, the cybernetically enhanced mercenary who figures so prominently throughout the Sprawl trilogy (not to mention Gibson’s landmark short-story “Johnny Mneumonic”, which first appeared in Omni Magazine in 1981; yeah, I read it fresh off the newsstand). And even Molly is more of an anti-hero, selling her services to the highest bidder, yet always displaying a basic, inner decency and compassion.

It is Molly, in fact, who becomes the physical catalyst that eventually brings the four narrative threads of the plot together in the MLO’s final chapters. I don’t want to spoil it completely, but the story involves a plot to kidnap Angie (the simstim star, whom Mona strongly resembles; hint, hint) and prevent her from reuniting with her boyfriend, Bobby Newmark, whose body lies comatose in Slick Henry’s art studio while his mind is busy in cyberspace. Kumiko, too, finds herself caught up in this plot, if only tangentially.

Having just re-read the book for the first time in thirty-odd years, I find myself liking it even more now than I did back then. I am awestruck by how deft Gibson’s prose is (he is surely one of America’s most underrated writers), as well as how quickly the story sucks the reader in. Almost every pop-novel out there these days is written from multiple, shifting points-of-view, but very, very few manage to draw their individual characters so vividly, or keep the reader as invested in the plight of each.

And, yeah, Gibson’s ideas are really, really cool. My favorite revelation in the book is when Slick Henry’s friend, Gentry, figures out that the L.F., the device attached to Bobby’s skull, is really an aleph, referencing the 1945 short story by Jorge Luis Borges. (If you read enough cyberpunk novels—or urban fantasy novels, for that matter—you’re going to run into Borges eventually.)

To sum up, Mona Lisa Overdrive is one of my favorite novels, sci-fi or otherwise. Check it out…

Classic Sci-Fi Book Cover: “The Martian Chronicles” (Again)

Bantam’s 1977 Edition of “The Martian Chronicles”

This 1977 cover for Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles is probably an off-beat choice for my Classic Sci-Fi Book Covers series. After all, it’s a pen-and-ink illustration, which is a very unusual choice for sci-fi art.

Unusual, that is, unless you’re the great Ian Miller, who does most of his work in pencil or pen. Miller did a lot of Bradbury covers in the 1970s and 80s, and I love every single one of them. They have a weird, surreal, almost cubist quality that evokes the sense of mystery and magic that the best sci-fi novels create.

Here is another great cover by Miller.

And here is a link to his website.

The Star Trek Scene that Became a Meme

It is almost a law of nature that if you scroll through Twitter for long enough, you will run across a Star Trek meme. And, if you keep scrolling, you will eventually run into a “There are four lights!” meme.

These memes are, of course, a reference to one of the most famous episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Entitled “Chain of Command,” it depicts the ordeal that Captain Picard must endure at the hands of a Cardassian interrogator named Gul Madred. It is one of the most famous (infamous?) episodes because of its brutal depiction of torture and humiliation, up to and including the truly shocking moment when Picard is hung naked by his wrists (thus cinematically immortalizing Patrick Stewart’s impressively muscular British arse). Despite the disturbing subject—or, perhaps, because of it—the episode has become one of the most beloved and acclaimed of the entire series.

I, for one, believe that “Chain of Command” deserves every iota of the praise it has received. It’s brilliantly acted, of course, by Stewart and his former Shakespearean colleague David Warner, who was one of the greatest actors of his generation. And it tackles a dreadful but important subject—the nature of political torture. Screenwriter Frank Abatemarco conducted research into the impact and nature of such torture as reported by Amnesty International, and the episode seems completely believable, not to mention chilling. It dissects the psychology of the victim but also of the torturer, with Warner brilliantly conveying how Madred, an intelligent man and, apparently, a loving father, is nonetheless able to rationalize his activities by dehumanizing his victim.

If one trawls the many Reddit threads and other chat-board threads that have been devoted to the episode, one learns that many of its fans—especially those former English majors, like myself—were quick to seize on its central homage to George Orwell’s 1984. Specifically, it echoes the climactic scenes in 1984 when Winston Smith is tortured by O’Brien, a man whom Winston believes to be a friend and fellow-revolutionary but who turns out to be a commander of the Thought Police.

As every Star Trek nerd knows, of course, the most direct parallel between 1984 and “Chain of Command” comes in the episode’s climax, when Madred shines four lights on the wall and asks Picard how many lights he sees. When Picard answers, truthfully, “four,” Madred shocks him.

In 1984, O’Brien lays Winston out on an electronic torture-rack and says to him,

“Do you remember,” he went on, “writing in your diary, ‘Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four?”

“Yes,” said Winston.

O’Brien held up his left hand, its back toward Winston, with the thumb hidden and the four fingers extended.

“How many fingers am I holding up, Winston?”

“Four.”

“And if the Party says that it is not four but five—then how many?”

“Four.”

The word ended in a gasp of pain.

The torment continues, with Winston replying “five” and “three” and anything else he can think of to stop the pain. At which point O’Brien pauses the interrogation and says, “Sometimes, Winston. Sometimes they are five. Sometimes they are three. Sometimes they are all of them at once. You must try harder. It is not easy to become sane.”

It’s this portion of 1984 that, to me, establishes O’Brien as the supreme villain of world literature. He is also its greatest nihilist. He seems to have no illusions about the purpose of Big Brother’s totalitarian rule—namely, for the rulers to partake of the ultimate sadistic pleasure in endlessly tormenting their subjects, forever. He blithely explains to Winston how the state will soon make things even worse for the common people, including modifying human anatomy so that people cannot even have orgasms. When O’Brien also suggests that the state might increase the pace of life so that people go senile at thirty, Winston pleads:

“Somehow you will fail. Something will defeat you. Life will defeat you.”

“We control life, Winston, at all its levels. You are imagining that there is something called human nature which will be outraged by what we do and will turn against us. But we create human nature. Men are infinitely malleable.”

Many dudes on Reddit have observed, correctly, that the scene with Picard and Madred are about mind control, and how strong people must fight to resist it. But the greater issue comes in the last scene of “Chain of Command,” after Picard has been freed and is safely back on the Enterprise. There, washed and fed, he meets with Counselor Troy and explains the worst part of his ordeal—namely that, in the delirium of his agony, he actually saw “five lights,” as he was commanded to do by Madred.

In other words, despite his great intellect and courage, Picard’s body began to alter his perceptions. He became, in O’Brien’s words, “infinitely malleable.”

In 1984, Winston experiences the same horrific revelation.

And he did see them, for a fleeting instant, before the scenery of his mind changed. He saw five fingers, and there was no deformity. Then everything was normal again, and the old fear, the hatred, and the bewilderment came crowding back again. But there had been a moment—he did not know how long, thirty seconds, perhaps—of luminous certainty, when each new suggestion of O’Brien’s had filled up a patch of emptiness and become absolute truth, and when two and two could have been three as easily as five, if that were what was needed. It had faded out before O’Brien had dropped his hand; but though he could not recapture it, he could remember it, as one remembers a vivid experience at some remote period of one’s life when one was in effect a different person.

I have written before about how the greatest themes in literature are best posed as questions. The question here is, “Is there really some indominable spirit in us that can’t be crushed and mastered by force and torture?” Or, put another way, “Are human beings really infinitely malleable, to the point that they can’t even trust their own senses?”

To many—and especially to those who adhere to a philosophy of materialism—this might seem a banal question. Their answer would certainly be: Of course, people are infinitely malleable; human beings are the product of their sensations, and if those sensations can be completely controlled (through drugs or torture or propaganda), then those beings can be complete controlled, too.

If this is true, I fear that the future of humanity is hopeless. We will, eventually, devolve into some kind of hive-mind existence (yes, rather like the Borg in Star Trek), which, even if it isn’t quite as hellish as the nightmare-state that O’Brien creates for the proles of 1984, would still be devoid of individuality or any authentic human experience.

Fortunately, I don’t believe it is true. For one thing, as a practical matter, I don’t believe that a ruling class whose only motivation is sadistic sexual pleasure could sustain itself. It’s too destructive, and its members would inevitably turn on each other. And even if they didn’t, they would die out, unable to create and nurture the most basic form of life—children. In other words, Big Brother can only destroy. It cannot create.

On a more philosophical note, I do believe that there is a “something called human nature,” as O’Brien puts it, that will inevitably rebel against tyranny. All the hero stories of world mythology reflect this, as do our own, modern mythologies. Like, for instance, Star Trek. Clearly, in the imagined universe of the twenty-fourth century, civilization has not devolved into some kind of soul-destroying dystopia. Quite the opposite. The Federation represents civilizations response to the ever-present threat of oppression, in all its forms, from fascist militarism (the Klingons), xenophobic isolationism (the Romulans), to full-on, cybernetic collectivism (the Borg). The Federation beats them all.

So, what is the Federation’s secret? Probably a lot of things. But, for my money, it’s that the Federation is a pluralistic society, open to all races, ideas, and voices.

Back in college, I studied the great Russian literary critic M. M. Bakhtin, who saw the greatest innovation in art as the novel. The novel represents a quantum leap in art because it is the greatest example of what Bakhtin called dialogism—the interplay of voices and perceptions from which our shared experience of consciousness emerges. This impulse toward dialogism—dialogue—is always set in opposition to the evil but omnipresent forces of monologism, which strive to establish a singular, monolithic truth on humanity and thus control it.

Big Brother’s IngSoc party might be the most monologic literary creation ever imagined by a writer (Orwell). Conversely, the Federation might be the most dialogic, combining not only an endless multiple of voices and point-of-view but actual sentient species from all over the galaxy, united by there shared…humanity? For lack of a better word, yes.

Let’s hope Star Trek’s vision of the future is the one that plays out.

My Christmas Sci-Fi List

For some reason, I read a lot of science fiction during the holidays. Maybe this is because I loved science fiction as a kid, and I had more time to read it during the Christmas break. At any rate, this year I decided to post a list of great literary science fiction novels.

I’m not qualified to give a meaningful explanation of the difference between popular and literary fiction. My old professor, Jonathan Penner has already done that in his fine essay “Literary Fiction Versus Popular Fiction” (which I cannot find on the Internets, alas). But suffice to say that popular fiction is defined by a formula. As Penner states, “Every work of literary fiction seeks to be like none other; every work of genre fiction seeks to be like many others. Genre fiction works for effects on which the reader knows he or she may rely. Literary fiction always tries to see the world freshly.”

The novels I list below certainly fall into the category of popular fiction. They all make use of the common tropes of science fiction stories: space travel, robots, aliens, and the end-of-the-world. So why do I call them literary? Because each one of them, while remaining on a generic level, is centered around a vivid and successfully realized characters. Also, each is written with a emphatic artfulness and grace.

So here’s the list:

The Left Hand of Darkness Strangely enough, I first got interested in Ursula K. Le Guin’s classic novel when I read a review of it by John Updike. It’s about a human envoy who is sent to a distant alien planet called Gethen. Gethen is remarkable not only for its isolation, but also because the locals, although descended from homo sapiens thousands of years of previously, are all hermaphrodites. Specifically, they function as men for certain part of their lives, and as women for the other. It sounds a bit hokey now (the plot was even ripped-off on an episode of Star Trek), but it’s a fine little novel, with some genuinely compelling drama. (It actually develops into a kind of wilderness adventure story when the main character gets entangled in the political intrigue of the Gethen government.)

Lord of Light Roger Zelazny was a hell of a good writer who is best known for his Chronicles of Amber series of fantasy novels. But my favorite is Lord of Light, which is the first novel I ever read that seems, at first, to be one genre (religious fantasy), but then reveals itself—convincingly—to be another (science fiction). Zelazny sets the story on an unnamed, earth-like planet where the gods of the Hindu pantheon (Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva, etc.) are real and very much alive. These dieties use their Godly powers to rule over a pre-literate culture of peasants (controlling them in ways that are often less-than-divine).

The story centers on Sam—who closely resembles Gautama Buddha but with a Marlowesque twist—who is trying to unseat the vain and profligate Gods from their position of power. Sam, we soon learn, is one of the original crew members of a starship called The Star of India, which crash-landed on the planet eons previously. Apparently, Sam and the other surviving officers used their technology to set themselves up as “gods” to rule over the other castaways, and eventually came to believe their own propaganda. It’s a far-out idea, which Zelazny delivers in a surprisingly subtle, vivid novel that is part epic, part spoof.

Virtual Light I think William Gibson is one of the best writers of his generation, literary or otherwise. He invented the term cyberpunk, and its attending genre, of which Virtual Light is my favorite example. It’s about a young bike messenger, Chevette, who spends her day cycling through the teeming, corporate-ruled streets of a future San Francisco. In a plot twist that is almost Dickensian in its lyricism, Chevette accidentally comes into possession of a very unusual pair of computerized sunglasses, which a villainous corporate hit-man is very anxious to get back. Gibson is a genius at mixing high-tech plots with low-tech heroes, and Chevette soon has to take refuge in an underground, DIY society based on the remnants of the Oakland Bay Bridge.

The Martian Chronicles Okay, it’s a stretch to put this one on the list, not because it isn’t literary, but because it really isn’t science fiction. It’s actually a collection of interlocking fables, all of which are based on Mars during the early phases of its colonization. Unfortunately, the planet is already occupied by an ancient race of Martians. If you substitute Illinois for Mars and the Sioux for the Martians, you get an idea of the feel of this novel, which Bradbury himself said was inspired by Sherwood Anderson’s classic collection, Winesburg, Ohio. Many of the stories are genuinely beautiful and haunting.

The Tripods If you didn’t read Samuel Youd’s trilogy when you were a kid, you should do so now, especially if you have a kid of your own. Earth has been conquered by aliens, and what remains of humanity exists in a servile, pre-industrial society. Young Will and his cousin Fritz escape their village and go on a quest for the fabled “White Mountains” where a human resistance is forming.

A Clockwork Orange The movie has outshone the book for most of my lifetime. But the book is actually better, written in the inimitable voice of Alex, a fourteen-year-old sociopath who is just trying to have a good time in an Orwellian England of the near future.

God Emperor of Dune The original Dune is a really cool adventure story. I always thought of it as Lawrence of Arabia in the 30th Century. But I think Herbert’s fourth novel in the series, God Emperor of Dune, is the best, from both a narrative and stylistic point-of-view. It focuses on just a couple of characters (as opposed to dozens) and it presents Leto Atreides (son of Paul) as genuinely sympathetic character.

Nova Samuel R. Delany could never decide whether he was a physicist or a mythologist or an literary fiction writer. Why limit yourself? Nova, the story of a mad space-captain seeking to fly through the center of an exploding star, is Delany’s tightest and most interesting novel.

Childhood’s End I hesitate to put this one on the list. I loved it as a kid, as I loved all of Arthur C. Clarke’s books. As a writer, he was very, very limited. But in Childhood’s End, he really outdid himself. It’s the first novel I ever read that broached the concept of a technological Singularity.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep I can’t help but think that, in some alternate universe much like those he described in his novels, Phillip K. Dick is alive and well and living as a respected and beloved literary fiction writer. In this universe, however, he wrote mesmerizing, almost hallucinogenic sci-fi novels about good and evil, the definition of “reality”, and what it means to human. His best book, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, is a haunting classic.

Author’s Note: This post first appeared some years ago on my old blog, Bakhtin’s Cigarettes.

Shameless Plug Sunday

Well, it’s another day of the week ending Y, so it’s time for another Shameless Plug! This one is not even original, alas. Even so, it’s pretty cool that you can listen to the first three chapters of my novel, Twice the Trouble, totally free on Youtube! And it’s legal, even! (I think.)

Do I Have the Gall to Post Another Shameless Plug? Yes. Yes, I do.

Just a heads-up…. My Edgar-nominated and Shamus-winning novel, Twice the Trouble, is a Kindle Deal all this month. You can get the ebook for just $1.99. That’s less than half the price of a Starbucks’ latte (and it will last a lot longer)!

Classic Sci-Fi Book Cover: “Babel-17”

I know, I know. This cover is a bit out-there. Not every sci-fi book cover, after all, has a spaceship hovering in a night sky over a plus-size female model in a metal bikini, go-go boots, and mail headdress. (But I kind of wish they did.)

Even so, this cover for Babel-17 by Samuel R. Delany is a bonafide classic by the great Spanish illustrator Vicente Segrelles, who has created a ton of great covers throughout his long and brilliant career. It was done for a series of Delany’s novels that were re-released by Bantam in the 1980s, all of which had great, subtle, off-beat covers.

Now, I’ve read a lot of snark about this cover on various chat-boards. Younger guys, especially, find it hilariously bad (and perhaps a lot of girls, too). I think this is because the woman depicted is not the usual, skinny, spandex-clad sci-fi babe. Personally, that’s one reason I like her. I think she’s mysterious, regal, and (yes) sexy.

More importantly, she captures the essence of the novel’s main character, Rydra Wong, who is not only the captain of a spaceship but also a master linguist. When government operatives seek her help in cracking an enemy, alien code called Babel-17, she discovers that it is not just a code—it’s an entire language. She promptly sets-off on a space-adventure to decipher the language, a quest that leads her into a war zone on the edge of the galaxy.

One of the things I love about Babel-17 is the way Delany, even way back in 1966, managed to push a message of tolerance and multi-culturalism. Wong’s spaceship is crewed by a rag-tag group of mercenaries, some of whom are not only transsexual but transhuman, opting for synthetically altered bodies that make them resemble wild animals or fairy tale creatures, and so on. Moreover, Wong’s desire to find the source of Babel-17—and, thus, better understand the aliens who are attacking humanity—suggests a deeper response to the usual fear and xenophobia that was so endemic in America at the time (and is again now, alas).

Babel-17 a classic sci-novel with a classic cover. Check it out…

What I’m Reading: “Paperbacks from Hell”

Having had exactly one book traditionally published, I am far from an expert on the world of publishing. Even so, I learned a lot more than I ever expected, and have since become fascinated by the industry as a whole. Also, I am currently working on a supernatural horror novel. So, it makes perfect sense that I would be drawn to Grady Hendrix’s excellent non-fiction book, Paperbacks from Hell, which examines (skewers?) pulp horror literature as it existed in the 1970s and 80s, both as a uber-genre and as an industry.

Let me say right up front that this is a very funny book. I found myself laughing out loud many, many times as Hendrix describes the trends and fads that overtook the genre. Take this passage where he introduces the wildly successful pop writer Robin Cook, whose 1977 book Coma is, in Hendrix’s words, the “source of the medical-thriller Nile.” As Hendrix goes on:

It all started with Robin Cook and his novels: Fever, Outbreak, Mutation, Shock, Seizure…terse nouns splashed across paperback racks. And just when you thought you had Cook pegged, he adds an adjective: Fatal Cure, Acceptable Risk, Mortal Fear, Harmful Intent. An ophthalmologist as well as an author, Cook has checked eyes and written best sellers with equal frequency. He’s best known for Coma (1977)…. Its heroine, Susan Wheeler, is one of those beautiful, brilliant medical students who’s constantly earning double takes from male colleagues or looking in the mirror and wondering if she’s a doctor or a woman—and why can’t she be both, dammit? On her first day as a trainee at Boston Memorial, she settles on “woman” and allows herself to flirt with an attractive patient on his way into a routine surgery. They make a date for coffee, but something goes wrong on the table and he goes into…a COMA!

Hendrix cleverly divides each chapter to a single, overarching trend in the pulp horror universe, with titles like HAIL, SATAN (novels of demonic possession and devil-sex), WEIRD SCIENCE (evil doctors and mad scientist-sex), INHUMANIOIDS (deformed monsters and mutant-sex), and so on. I was especially impressed by the way Hendrix explains each publishing fad as a symptom of a larger societal shift. For example, he explains how the white-flight phenomenon of the 1970s in which white middle- and upper-class families abandoned the big cities and moved to quaint, charming little towns in upstate New York or the mid-west or norther California or wherever, results in a surge of small-town horror novels like Harvest Home (wherein evil pagan matriarchs conduct human sacrifices to make the corn grow) and Effigies (wherein Satan is breeding grotesque monsters in the basement of the local church).

Another chapter entitled CREEPY KIDS, which deals with such diverse plot concepts as children who are fathered by Satan, children are who are really small adults pretending to be children, and children who, for whatever reason, just love to kill people. I particularly love this passage:

Some parents will feel helpless. “How can I possibly stop my child from murdering strangers with a hammer because she thinks they are demons from hell?” you might wail (Mama’s Little Girl). Fortunately there are some practical, commonsense steps you can take to lower the body count. Most important, try not to have sex with Satan. Fornicating with the incarnation of all evil usually produces children who are genetically predisposed to use their supernatural powers to cram their grandmothers into television sets, headfirst. “But how do I know if the man I’m dating is the devil?” I hear you ask. Here are some warning signs learned from Seed of Evil: Does he refuse to use contractions when he speaks? Does he deliver pickup lines like, “You live on the edge of darkness”? When nude, is his body the most beautiful male form you have ever seen, but possessed of a penis that’s either monstrously enormous, double-headed, has glowing yellow eyes, or all three? After intercourse, does he laugh malevolently, urinate on your mattress, and then disappear? If you spot any of these behaviors, chances are you went on a date with Satan. Or an alien.

One the many things I learned from reading the book was how the entire publishing world (not just horror) was permanently changed in 1979 by an obscure tax-law case called The Thor Power Tool Co. v Commissioner. In this case, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that manufacturers could not write-down poor-selling or slow-selling inventory and thus reduce their tax liability. The case was focused on unsold parts for power-tools, but the ruling equally applied to publishing houses, who had hitherto done the same kind of write-down on their slow-selling novels. As Hendrix explains: “Suddenly, the day of the mid-list novel was over. Paperbacks were given six weeks on the racks to find an audience, then it was off to the shredder.” And so, inevitably, came the frantic scramble to find those half-dozen or so “blockbuster” books each season, behind which publishers focused their resources. (A similar “blockbuster” effect ravaged Hollywood in the 1970s, in this case due to the success of summer films like Jaws and Star Wars.) Books got less pulpy and more sparkly, with foil covers and die-cast cutouts like those made famous by the V.C. Andrews novels (which continued to be published, zombie-like, long after Andrews’s death).

Whether you’re a writer or just a pulp-paperback fan, Paperbacks from Hell is a great read. Check it out…

Ten Things I Love About “The Day the Earth Stood Still”

Well, over a week has passed since Halloween, and I’m still working through the classic horror and sci-fi movies that I rewatch every year around this time. One of my favorites (heck, one of everybody’s favorites, as far as I can tell, assuming that everybody is a nerd of a certain age) is Roger Wise’s 1951 classic The Day the Earth Stood Still (henceforth, TDTESS). Here are ten things I love about it….

1.) The Opening

This movie doesn’t dick around. It opens with the frantic calls of radar operators across the globe tracking an ultra-fast UAP as it enters the earth’s atmosphere. Word leaks out to press, generating a world-wide media frenzy—the “media,” in this case, being radio. Wise cast several then-famous, real-life radio broadcasters to play themselves, and I simply love hearing their great, precise modulated voices as they simultaneously try to inform the public without causing panic. It’s hard to believe there was ever such a time when journalists were so revered and appreciated, with good reason.

2.) The Music

From the title sequence onward, the film makes great use of Bernard Herrmann’s brilliant score. Hermann notably employed electronic instruments, including a kind of stone-age synthesizer called a theremin. It’s the theremin that gives the score that haunting, weird quality that has since become synonymous with atomic-era sci-fi movies.

Speaking of atomic-era stuff, this leads me to my next item…

3.) Analog technology

I don’t know why, but I am fascinated by how the movie gives the viewer a glimpse—almost a cross-section, really—of the analog technology of the day. We see radio transmitters, of course, but also phone switch boards with dozens of (women) operators frantically switching lines, and people yelling into telephones. And, of course, we have all the accoutrements of World War II, which was still a recent event: tanks, jeeps, motorcycles, rifles (yes, rifles). There is something soothing about all this old-fashioned stuff, especially when it is contrasted with….

4.) Singularity Technology

When the UAP finally lands (in Washington D.C., naturally, near the Capitol), we see that it represents a kind of futuristic tech that is the diametrical opposite of the local analog, atomic-era tech. The ship is all smooth silver metal until a seam appears, and the seam opens smoothly to allow a ramp to extend. A door forms in the same way, and the alien pilot Klaatu (Michael Renne) emerges, dressed in a silver suit and a helmet that, one assumes, is made of the same silver metal. All of this seems magical, even now, and also presages the later sci-fi tropes of nanotechnology, lasers, force-fields, atomic energy, computers, etc. etc.

Of course, Klaatu’s most impressive piece of tech is….

5.) Gort

Why is Gort so damned cool? Because he’s terrifying. As a giant, lumbering robot, he evokes the golem myth of implacable, supernatural force that has no emotions and no fear. And, with his single, death-ray emitting eye, he also reminds us of another mythic archetype—the cyclops. And in the way he suggests enormous power, barely held in check, he anticipates The Terminator films of three decades later.

6.) Michael Rennie

As with most classic, once-in-a-lifetime performances, Michael Rennie’s portrayal of Klaatu is so good that it’s now impossible to imagine anyone else doing it. With his smiling, gentle, athletic demeanor, he projects a firm but benevolent presence. He genuinely wants to help humanity escape its seemingly inevitable fate (i.e., being destroyed, either at its own hand or that of Gort). Also, he seems genuinely curious and likeable, especially in…

7.) Klaatu’s Interactions with Danny

I love the scenes where Klaatu and Danny, the little boy whose boarding house Klaatu finds himself in, go on a site-seeing tour of Washington D.C. They are the emotional core of the movie. After all, in our world, Klaatu is very much like a little boy himself. His sense of wonder is almost as strong as Danny’s.

8.) Patricia Neal

Instead of casting some bombshell scream-queen in the role of Helen, Danny’s mother, Wise chose the formidable and mesmerizing Patrica Neal. She was a great actress who would later hold her own against Paul Newman in 1963’s Hud. As Helen, she exudes an intelligence and moral strength that not only saves Klaatu from capture and death; she saves the entire planet.

9.) How Much you Don’t See

I could write an entire post on the paradox of old thriller movies whose lack of CGI effects (TDTESS was made thirty-three years before Jurassic Park), was actually an advantage. The film is actually made stronger by how much Wise doesn’t show on-screen. That is, we don’t see how Klaatu stops all electrical stuff from working on the titular day. We don’t see Gort walking across D.C. on his way to liberate Klaatu’s body from its jail cell. You know, stuff that would be easy to render in the CGI era (and which would also be rather boring). After all, the ultimate special effect is the human imagination, which happily fills in the blanks better than any whiz-bang effect.

My favorite example of this in the film is when Danny secretly follows Klaatu to his spaceship one night. He watches as Klaatu uses a flashlight to wake-up Gort, who then knocks-out the two G.I. ‘s guarding the ship. The genius of this scene is that we don’t actually see Gort do this. We just see him lumber over to the two dudes. Then, at the last moment, the camera switches back to Danny’s horrified face as he watches the moment of (rather mild) violence. Then, the camera switches back to Gort as he stands over the crumpled, unconscious bodies of the soldiers on the ground. Brilliant.

10.) Multiculturalism

It’s important to remember that TDTESS is a cold-war era movie, produced at the very height of the Red Scare and its attendant paranoia and xenophobia. It also came out just a few years before the start of the American Civil Rights movie. So, I am always amazed, and even a bit moved, by how progressive Wise’s vision is. In the opening scenes, we see people from other countries—France, India, China, and even Russia—depicted in a sympathetic light, human light. At least once in the film, Wise goes out of his way to show some genuine, actual Black people in the crowd watching Klaatu’s spaceship land. (This might seem trivial, now, but it was momentous decision back then.) And, of course, the climax of the movie comes with a miniature U.N. assembly, arranged by Professor Barnhardt (wonderfully played by the great Sam Jaffe, incidentally), full of people of all ethnicities and cultures. The message is clear—it’s only by cooperation and friendship that humanity can survive. And it’s a message that is just as relevant now as it was back then, perhaps even more so.

See also this cool post from another blogger (from whom I stole one of the screenshots above)…

“The Day the Earth Stood Still” (1951): 70 years later, and still standing… – Musings of a Middle-Aged Geek

Shameless Plug Saturday

Ever since the paperback edition of my mystery thriller book, Twice the Trouble, came out in August, the price of the hard-cover edition has dropped through the basement. That’s bad for me but good for you (assuming you like hard-cover mysteries). It’s currently on sale for $6.00. Yes, that’s six Ameroes. Cheap!

It would make a great Christmas gift. I’m just sayin…