W is for Wells, Welles and The War of the Worlds

So for today’s “W” post I want to talk about one of the most interesting literature-related stories I’ve ever heard . . .

In 1898, H. G. Wells wrote The War of the Worlds, one of the first novels ever to depict a battle between humans and an alien race – sometimes known as “invasion literature”. He uses the novel as a platform to discuss many of his political opinions on subjects including imperialism, unquestioning faith in military technology, evolutionary theory and the continuation of the human species. Here’s a brief synopsis:

It begins with a series of seemingly mundane reports about odd atmospheric disturbances taking place on Mars to the arrival of Martians just outside of London. At first the Martians seem laughable, hardly able to move in Earth's comparatively heavy gravity even enough to raise themselves out of the pit created when their spaceship landed. But soon the Martians reveal their true nature as death machines 100-feet tall rise up from the pit and begin laying waste to the surrounding land. Wells quickly moves the story from the countryside to the evacuation of London itself and the loss of all hope as England's military suffers defeat after defeat. With horror his narrator describes how the Martians suck the blood from living humans for sustenance, and how it's clear that man is not being conquered so much a corralled.

Needless to say, it’s a fascinating story, and the movie adaptations (particular that of Tom Cruise) didn’t do the book justice. However, one adaptation managed to capture the terror of an alien attack perfectly . . .

On October 30, 1938, actor/director Orson Welles did a radio broadcast for the Mercury Theater on the Air over the Columbia Broadcasting System, featuring Wells’ The War of the Worlds. It was presented to the audience as a news bulletin imitation. And was apparently very realistic.

The series was a “sustaining show”, meaning that there were almost no commercial interruptions during the broadcast. As people tuned in at various points throughout the show, missing the key introduction at the beginning of the program, many were convinced that the faux new reports were actually real, and widespread hysteria quickly ensued. Many fled their homes, terrified that the Martians were on their way. Panicked listeners began calling the studios in terror, and when they were assured that everything was fine, began to outrage at an intended “cover-up”.

CBS came under heavy fire after the incident. Though they argued that there were several announcements informing listeners that it was merely a performance, they still received a good deal of public censure.

Two years later, Orson Welles interviewed H. G. Wells about the event and ensuing panic. Wells admitted that he’d been shocked by the public reaction. But I’m not. I think it demonstrates a genuine fear of alien invasions – perhaps developed in response to our ever expanding technological and scientific progress. Each step bringing us further out into the reaches of space, and conceivably bringing whatever’s out there closer and closer to Earth. 

It just goes to show how fiction – or in this case, science fiction – can shake up our lives and teach us something about ourselves. Never underestimate the power of a good performance.

And when it comes to alien invasions, I always keep in mind the immortal words of Mad-Eye Moody, “Constant vigilance.”

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This post is part of the Blogging A through Z Challenge 2012. My theme is (in case you didn’t already guess) science fiction. Stay tuned for the rest of the alphabet, and if you’d like to check in on the rest of the participants, simply click here.

V is for Vonnegut and V for Vendetta: Visions of Dystopia

A concept that has proved very popularity within science fiction is that of the dystopian world. They're anti-utopias, dark visions of society. And the more I read about them, the more I think about their opposite. Utopia. How would they function? What would they resemble? How people would act? But I’ve recently come to a very important and revolutionary conclusion. Utopias do not – and more importantly cannot – exist.

A utopia is defined as a visionary system or state of political and/or social perfection. On the surface, it sounds ideal; who wouldn’t want to live in a perfect world? Except humanity isn’t perfect. We are an imperfect race. It isn’t within our capacity to live together in harmony. The differences that define us, that make us who were are, are at the root of our every conflict with one another. Religion, politics, race, ideology – we’re all different in some way. And these differences make us unique individuals. But our differences also tear us apart. It not pretty, but it’s human nature.

In order to create the perfect conditions necessary for a utopian world, one without conflict or strife, we’d need to eradicate difference. This is the point where science fiction comes in, giving us an idea of what that would look like – only when difference is ultimately stamped out, the world becomes decidedly dystopian.

To start off with, in utopian societies everyone would ideally be equal to one another. But how do we accomplish equality when some people will always be smarter, or more athletic, or artistic, or beautiful? In Kurt Vonnegut’s famous short story “Harrison Bergeron”, citizens above average in any way are given handicaps – doled out and enforced by the Handicapper General – as an equalizer. People with exceptional intelligence wear radios that broadcast sharp noises to break up their thoughts, citizens with outstanding good looks wear masks, those that are strong must carry heavily weighted bags, etc. The result is a society of “equal” citizens, or so the government says. But what’s equal about maiming and punishing people for their innate extraordinary qualities? And really, at the heart of it, is there any way to ensure equality without causing harm? Equal opportunity, yes, but equality of intelligence or strength? Absolutely not.

Utopias are just illusions. They’re dreams that can never be realized. Dystopias, though. They’re very possible. Even probable in a way.

Alan Moore and David Lloyd’s comic book series V for Vendetta shows a more straightforward dystopian vision, reaching its objective in a fashion congruent with Vonnegut’s vision. Following a nuclear war that ends in social and political catastrophe, a fascist state has taken over, promising to restore stability and peace. But it’s not really a shelter they offer . . . it’s a cage. Because in order to maintain their control, to maintain tranquility throughout Britain, the hegemonic government “purifies” the country of anyone different. Anyone whose differences might cause them to rebel against the party – including black people, Jews, lesbians, and potential political activists. It’s forced samenesss to ensure passivity and acceptance.

Again society is faced with the total annihilation of difference in order to maintain a peaceful society. Orwell’s 1984, Huxley’s Brave New World, Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, Lowry’s The Giver . . . these stories all tell us one thing. Utopias do not exist. The only recognizable vision is a dystopian one. Beware sameness disguised as equality. Beware the utopia.

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This post is part of the Blogging A through Z Challenge 2012. My theme is (in case you didn’t already guess) science fiction. Stay tuned for the rest of the alphabet, and if you’d like to check in on the rest of the participants, simply click here.

U is for Unbreakable

Okay, so here’s the thing. I like comic books. But more importantly, I’m fascinated by the relationship between superheroes and their nemeses. It’s basically the natural progression of all literature, which is itself no stranger heroes and villains. Beowulf and Grendel. Van Helsing and Count Dracula. Peter Pan and Captain Hook. Like comic books, these classical stories highlight the correlation between good and evil.

But what if there was no evil? Would we have need for heroes, if they had no one to vanquish?

This question lies at the heart of one of M. Night Shyamalan’s lesser known films, Unbreakable. When David Dunn miraculously walks away the lone survivor of a train crash, Elijah Price – a comic book enthusiast with a rare brittle bone disease – seeks him out, claiming that superheroes are real . . . and David’s one of them. With Elijah as a mentor, David learns to use his incredible strength and previously undeveloped psychic abilities to stop criminals.

Spoilers: However, at the end of the movie Elijah reveals that he was the mastermind behind several acts of terror, including David’s train crash. You see, Elijah believed that where he was fragile, his exact opposite existed somewhere. And so he caused accident after accident, sacrificing hundreds in order to find one person who was unbreakable. Which he did; and in finding David, he discovered a hero.

I think it’s clear that Elijah didn’t start out evil. But he did unspeakable acts of evil in his quest to find – or create – a real life superhero, becoming his villainous counterpart in the process. He tells David, “now that we know who you are, I know who I am. I’m not a mistake. It all makes sense. In a comic, you know how you can tell who the arch villain is going to be? He’s the exact opposite of the hero.” This quote – this belief, demonstrates just how closely linked heroes and villains really are. One defines the other. It wasn’t just Elijah that needed David in order to understand his place in the world. David needed Elijah as well. Heroes and villains are dependent upon one another for their purpose in life, their very existence.

DreamWork’s 2010 animated feature, Megamind, shares a similar theme. At a loss after the death or his archenemy Metro Man, supervillain Megamind decides to create a hero to battle against. It’s clear that both he and Elijah, aka. Mr, Glass, believe that their lives have no meaning without an adversary. And it makes me wonder, would we have need of superheroes without villains? Does good have context without evil?

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This post is part of the Blogging A through Z Challenge 2012. My theme is (in case you didn’t already guess) science fiction. Stay tuned for the rest of the alphabet, and if you’d like to check in on the rest of the participants, simply click here.

T is for The Terminator and Time Travel

Time travel is one of the most fascinating and widely explored themes in science fiction. But more to the point, it’s one of the most theorized subjects in the scientific field. For years the likelihood, rules, and shortcomings of time travel have instigated numerous debates, and while many agree that trekking forward seems reasonable, theories on backward time travel are mere conjecture at best. And yet speculation – and interest – continues to grow at a substantial rate.

There are more theories than can possibly be discussed in one short blog, so I’m going to focus on one I find particularly interesting: the Grandfather Paradox.

The Grandfather Paradox (which Rene Barjavel first described in his 1943 novel, Le Voyageur Imprudent), is based on one of the most debated hypothetical situations of backward time travel – what would happen if a traveler went back in time and attempted to kill their grandfather, preventing the traveler’s parent from ever being born, and by extension, the time traveler themselves? Some argue that the very possibility of this occurring means that going backward simply isn’t possible. Others state that it is possible to go back, but the past cannot be changed (unless, of course, there are “alternate/parallel universes”, but that’s a subject for another day). It is this second theory that science fiction writers often put to good use . . . like James Cameron's The Terminator.

Let me begin my saying that The Terminator is my all time favorite movie. Some of you might have noticed that I’ve been somewhat liberal with the term “favorite” over the course of this A-Z Challenge – possibly because I have many, many favorite books and movies. However, The Terminator ranks at the very top of the list. It has absolutely no equal.

But back to my original point. For those of you who’ve never seen it – first off, go watch it. Immediately. Secondly, the premise of the film revolves around an impending future where terminators (aka. machines) have become self aware and declared war on mankind. Their totally annihilation of the human race is prevented by one man, John Connor, who leads the resistance against them. The machines decide to send a terminator back in time to kill his mother, Sarah Connor, and prevent his from ever being conceived. In response, John sends back his own soldier – Kyle Reese – to protect her.

Major spoilers ahead: Now, if the terminator had managed to kill Sarah, it would fly directly in the face of the Grandfather Paradox. Instead, she survives and conceives her son with Kyle, following in the footsteps that the future already set in motion (as Barjavel stipulated). Furthermore, this acts as a Predestination Paradox – where a time traveler becomes caught in a loop that predestines them to travel back in time in order to fulfill their role in history (like Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, when Harry saves himself from the Dementors with the use of the time-turner). 

Continued spoilers: For the record, it's the addition of the photograph that makes this my favorite film. I find it incredibly lovely – and tragic – that Kyle stares at the picture of Sarah, wondering why she looks so sad, only for the viewer to later realize that it's capturing her grief at his death. It's such an elegant catalyst for the movie's plot. And though I think Terminator 2: Judgment Day is one of the best action films ever made (and perhaps my second favorite sci-fi movie), I love its predecessor more for its devotion to these small, but rich, details, and perfect demonstration of time-travel paradoxes. 

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This post is part of the Blogging A through Z Challenge 2012. My theme is (in case you didn’t already guess) science fiction. Stay tuned for the rest of the alphabet, and if you’d like to check in on the rest of the participants, simply click here.

S is for Sleep, Stealth and Body Snatchers

What if you woke up one morning and your spouse, or roommate, or loved one was gone, and in their place was someone – or something – else? And what if slowly everyone around you becomes replaced as well? And worst of all, what if no one believed you?

This is the challenge faced in Jack Finney’s The Body Snatchers and its most famous adaptation, the 1956 film (and perhaps even better 1978 remake), Invasion of the Body Snatchers. The story begins with Dr. Miles Bennell, who is somewhat confused and suspicious when several of his patients, his former girlfriend Becky, complain that their loved ones are imposters. However, he starts to believe that they’re not merely paranoid when his friend Jack discovers a body which, though not yet fully formed, bears a striking resemblance to Jack himself. His fears that the townspeople have been replaced in their sleep with copies are confirmed when duplicates of Jack, Becky and Bennell emerge from pods. Unfortunately, by the time they return with the police, the bodies have vanished and their desperate pleas as chalked up to just another case of hysteria. By the time anyone believes them, it may already be too late. It’s rather a genius plan on the pod-people’s part, I regret to say.

If you stumbled across something like this, would you be able to sleep at night? I certainly wouldn’t – which as it turns out, isn’t such a bad thing. Insomnia . . . aka. sole defense against alien replacement.

I think the creepiest part of the story is the pod-people’s utter lack of emotion. They remain completely passionless, seeming to only concern themselves with getting to every remaining human holdout. This lack of emotion – of love or anger or hatred – might make for a more peaceful planet, but as Yorish says in The Invasion (yet another Body Snatchers remake), “To imagine a world where every crisis did not result in new atrocities, where every newspaper is not full of war and violence. Well, this is to imagine a world where human beings cease to be human.” And these pod people are definitely not human. It makes me think violence might, in this one instance, be the answer.

I have to say that, as much as I love Donald Sutherland and Leonard Nimoy in the 1978 film, perhaps my favorite adaptation of the novel (which is actually more of a hybrid between Body Snatchers and Robert Heinlein’s The Puppet Masters) is the 1998 sc-fi/horror flick, The Faculty. It’s completely ridiculous and unreservedly campy, but I just love it. For those of you who’ve never seen it, let me sum it up in one quick sentence: Pod-people meet high school social hierarchy.

And yet, as absurd as the movie is, it doesn’t lose sight of Finney and Heinlein’s original themes: as destructive as they may be, humanity is lost without emotions. And more importantly, extraterrestrials may be stealthier than we ever imagined. It’s not all war of the worlds or Independence Day invasions. Sometimes they sneak in through the unsuspected back door, infiltrating the earth without causing any immediate alarm.

So whether it’s being taken over in your sleep or an ominous trip to the principal’s office, beware the pod-people. And from the body snatchers, may I say . . .

Sweet Dreams.

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This post is part of the Blogging A through Z Challenge 2012. My theme is (in case you didn’t already guess) science fiction. Stay tuned for the rest of the alphabet, and if you’d like to check in on the rest of the participants, simply click here.

R is for Ripley and Roswell: Close Encounters of the Alien Kind

I believe I’ve already mentioned what a HUGE fan I am of the Alien franchise in past posts. Ellen Ripley is, without a doubt, one of my heroes. But as much as I want to talk about what an action icon she is, this post (unlike this one) is devoted to her foe . . . the face-hugging, chest-bursting Xenomorphs. Thanks to their creators – Dan O’Bannon and Ronald Shusett – these are some of the scariest creatures in the film industry.

The aliens start out looking innocent and non-threatening; no one would suspect while gazing upon them in their un-hatched eggs that they’re natural born killers. But then the shell comes off and the little hell beasts come out to play. The image of one leaping out and attaching itself to a crew-members face haunted my eight-year-old nightmares for months (thank you so much for that one dad).

And yet, this terrifying scene is a picnic compared to what comes next. (Prepare yourself.) The alien implants an embryo into its victim’s stomach before falling off and dying, and then, just when you think all is safe, the now-matured embryo violently bursts through its host’s chest in one of the most iconic scenes of all time (I'll leave out the corresponding image for this one). It’s so shocking and disgusting that it’s incredible. You just don’t expect it to happen. And when it does, you simply have to scream and cheer at the same time. With their speed, strength and acid blood (which, unfortunately, they spit at their targets), these Xenomorphs are the crown jewel of deadly species and top of the extraterrestrial food chain.

But not all aliens are created equal (or equally petrifying). Some look remarkably . . . human. Like those from the 1999 TV series Roswell. They are able to blend in among the humans of earth, hiding in plain sight. Of course, Max, Michael and Isabel are only half alien. In fact, they’re hybrids. They maintain the gifts and abilities of their alien ancestors, such as the power to heal or mind-control, which looking like normal teenage kids.

Or nine-year-old Allie Keys from the TV miniseries Taken (played by Dakota Fanning). She too is a human/alien hybrid, and a product of decades of alien experimentation with both species DNA. This series, for those of you who’ve never heard of it, was a Sci-Fi channel sleeper-hit (produced by Steven Spielberg), and some of the best television I’ve ever come across.

There are of course many other alien designs, from the adorable E.T., to the Prawns of District 9 and tentacle-baring villains of Independence Day. But none of them will ever compare with the the masterful Alien franchise. 

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This post is part of the Blogging A through Z Challenge 2012. My theme is (in case you didn’t already guess) science fiction. Stay tuned for the rest of the alphabet, and if you’d like to check in on the rest of the participants, simply click here.

Q is for Quantum Leap

I was only recently introduced to the 1989 hit TV series Quantum Leap. In fact, I’d never seen an episode until about a month ago when I was struggling to come up with a topic for the letter “Q”. When my mom mentioned that the show was one of my aunt’s favorites, I immediately looked it up on Netflix Instant. It wound up being a lot of fun.

The show follows Dr. Sam Beckett, a physicist from the future who becomes lost in the past after a time travel experiment goes awry. He “leaps” from person to person, temporarily taking their place as he rights old wrongs with the help of his friend Al.

But how does this work? Sam theorized that life is like a piece of rope, with one end representing a person’s birth, and the other their death. If you tie the two ends together, they form a loop – a time loop. By balling the loop up in the palm of your hand, different “periods” of your life (aka. sections of the string) start to intersect, allowing you to leap across time almost instantly. And that’s what Sam does, with the use of his Quantum Accelerator. Through this machine he’s able to jump to any time period within his own lifespan.

What struck me most about this explanation of “quantum leaping” was how much it reminded me of the Tesseract from one of my favorite books of all time – Madeline L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time.

If you think about it, this is pretty advanced stuff for such a young audience. And while I've never been much of a physics buff, it's pretty interesting to partake in some of the science behind Science Fiction. Perhaps that's one of the reasons that Quantum Leap was voted a cult favorite. 

Though there are a few plot holes in the series – namely the disregard of basic time travel theories like “the grandfather paradox” (which I’ll be discussing in more depth under “T”) – it’s definitely entertaining. Check it out!

***Special thanks to Aunt Anna, Connor and Keegan for not only introducing me to a fun show, but also being such amazing followers.

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This post is part of the Blogging A through Z Challenge 2012. My theme is (in case you didn’t already guess) science fiction. Stay tuned for the rest of the alphabet, and if you’d like to check in on the rest of the participants, simply click here.