All About Science
IN THE YEAR 2889
By Jules Verne
Little though they seem to think of it, the people of this twenty-ninth century live continually in fairyland. Surfeited as they are with marvels, they are indifferent in presence of each new marvel. To them all seems natural. Could they but duly appreciate the refinements of civilization in our day; could they but compare the present with the past, and so better comprehend the advance we have made! How much fairer they would find our modern towns, with populations amounting sometimes to 10,000,000 souls; their streets 300 feet wide, their houses 1000 feet in height; with a temperature the same in all seasons; with their lines of aërial locomotion crossing the sky in every direction! If they would but picture to themselves the state of things that once existed, when through muddy streets rumbling boxes on wheels, drawn by horses—yes, by horses!—were the only means of conveyance. Think of the railroads of the olden time, and you will be able to appreciate the pneumatic tubes through which to-day one travels at the rate of 1000 miles an hour. Would not our contemporaries prize the telephone and the telephote more highly if they had not forgotten the telegraph?
Singularly enough, all these transformations rest upon principles which were perfectly familiar to our remote ancestors, but which they disregarded. Heat, for instance, is as ancient as man himself; electricity was known 3000 years ago, and steam 1100 years ago. Nay, so early as ten centuries ago it was known that the differences between the several chemical and physical forces depend on the mode of vibration of the etheric particles, which is for each specifically different. When at last the kinship of all these forces was discovered, it is simply astounding that 500 years should still have to elapse before men could analyze and describe the several modes of vibration that constitute these differences. Above all, it is singular that the mode of reproducing these forces directly from one another, and of reproducing one without the others, should have remained undiscovered till less than a hundred years ago. Nevertheless, such was the course of events, for it was not till the year 2792 that the famous Oswald Nier made this great discovery.
Truly was he a great benefactor of the human race. His admirable discovery led to many another. Hence is sprung a pleiad of inventors, its brightest star being our great Joseph Jackson. To Jackson we are indebted for those wonderful instruments the new accumulators. Some of these absorb and condense the living force contained in the sun's rays; others, the electricity stored in our globe; others again, the energy coming from whatever source, as a waterfall, a stream, the winds, etc. He, too, it was that invented the transformer, a more wonderful contrivance still, which takes the living force from the accumulator, and, on the simple pressure of a button, gives it back to space in whatever form may be desired, whether as heat, light, electricity, or mechanical force, after having first obtained from it the work required. From the day when these two instruments were contrived is to be dated the era of true progress. They have put into the hands of man a power that is almost infinite. As for their applications, they are numberless. Mitigating the rigors of winter, by giving back to the atmosphere the surplus heat stored up during the summer, they have revolutionized agriculture. By supplying motive power for aërial navigation, they have given to commerce a mighty impetus. To them we are indebted for the continuous production of electricity without batteries or dynamos, of light without combustion or incandescence, and for an unfailing supply of mechanical energy for all the needs of industry.
Yes, all these wonders have been wrought by the accumulator and the transformer. And can we not to them also trace, indirectly, this latest wonder of all, the great "Earth Chronicle" building in 253d Avenue, which was dedicated the other day? If George Washington Smith, the founder of the Manhattan "Chronicle", should come back to life to-day, what would he think were he to be told that this palace of marble and gold belongs to his remote descendant, Fritz Napoleon Smith, who, after thirty generations have come and gone, is owner of the same newspaper which his ancestor established!
For George Washington Smith's newspaper has lived generation after generation, now passing out of the family, anon coming back to it. When, 200 years ago, the political center of the United States was transferred from Washington to Centropolis, the newspaper followed the government and assumed the name of Earth Chronicle. Unfortunately, it was unable to maintain itself at the high level of its name. Pressed on all sides by rival journals of a more modern type, it was continually in danger of collapse. Twenty years ago its subscription list contained but a few hundred thousand names, and then Mr. Fritz Napoleon Smith bought it for a mere trifle, and originated telephonic journalism.
Every one is familiar with Fritz Napoleon Smith's system—a system made possible by the enormous development of telephony during the last hundred years. Instead of being printed, the Earth Chronicle is every morning spoken to subscribers, who, in interesting conversations with reporters, statesmen, and scientists, learn the news of the day. Furthermore, each subscriber owns a phonograph, and to this instrument he leaves the task of gathering the news whenever he happens not to be in a mood to listen directly himself. As for purchasers of single copies, they can at a very trifling cost learn all that is in the paper of the day at any of the innumerable phonographs set up nearly everywhere.
Fritz Napoleon Smith's innovation galvanized the old newspaper. In the course of a few years the number of subscribers grew to be 80,000,000, and Smith's wealth went on growing, till now it reaches the almost unimaginable figure of $10,000,000,000. This lucky hit has enabled him to erect his new building, a vast edifice with four façades each 3,250 feet in length, over which proudly floats the hundred-starred flag of the Union. Thanks to the same lucky hit, he is to-day king of newspaperdom; indeed, he would be king of all the Americans, too, if Americans could ever accept a king. You do not believe it? Well, then, look at the plenipotentiaries of all nations and our own ministers themselves crowding about his door, entreating his counsels, begging for his approbation, imploring the aid of his all-powerful organ. Reckon up the number of scientists and artists that he supports, of inventors that he has under his pay.
Yes, a king is he. And in truth his is a royalty full of burdens. His labors are incessant, and there is no doubt at all that in earlier times any man would have succumbed under the overpowering stress of the toil which Mr. Smith has to perform. Very fortunately for him, thanks to the progress of hygiene, which, abating all the old sources of unhealthfulness, has lifted the mean of human life from 37 up to 52 years, men have stronger constitutions now than heretofore. The discovery of nutritive air is still in the future, but in the meantime men today consume food that is compounded and prepared according to scientific principles, and they breathe an atmosphere freed from the micro-organisms that formerly used to swarm in it; hence they live longer than their forefathers and know nothing of the innumerable diseases of olden times.
Nevertheless, and notwithstanding these considerations, Fritz Napoleon Smith's mode of life may well astonish one. His iron constitution is taxed to the utmost by the heavy strain that is put upon it. Vain the attempt to estimate the amount of labor he undergoes; an example alone can give an idea of it. Let us then go about with him for one day as he attends to his multifarious concernments. What day? That matters little; it is the same every day. Let us then take at random September 25th of this present year 2889.
This morning Mr. Fritz Napoleon Smith awoke in very bad humor. His wife having left for France eight days ago, he was feeling disconsolate. Incredible though it seems, in all the ten years since their marriage, this is the first time that Mrs. Edith Smith, the professional beauty, has been so long absent from home; two or three days usually suffice for her frequent trips to Europe. The first thing that Mr. Smith does is to connect his phonotelephote, the wires of which communicate with his Paris mansion. The telephote! Here is another of the great triumphs of science in our time. The transmission of speech is an old story; the transmission of images by means of sensitive mirrors connected by wires is a thing but of yesterday. A valuable invention indeed, and Mr. Smith this morning was not niggard of blessings for the inventor, when by its aid he was able distinctly to see his wife notwithstanding the distance that separated him from her. Mrs. Smith, weary after the ball or the visit to the theater the preceding night, is still abed, though it is near noontide at Paris. She is asleep, her head sunk in the lace-covered pillows. What? She stirs? Her lips move. She is dreaming perhaps? Yes, dreaming. She is talking, pronouncing a name his name—Fritz! The delightful vision gave a happier turn to Mr. Smith's thoughts. And now, at the call of imperative duty, light-hearted he springs from his bed and enters his mechanical dresser.
Two minutes later the machine deposited him all dressed at the threshold of his office. The round of journalistic work was now begun. First he enters the hall of the novel-writers, a vast apartment crowned with an enormous transparent cupola. In one corner is a telephone, through which a hundred Earth Chronicle littérateurs in turn recount to the public in daily installments a hundred novels. Addressing one of these authors who was waiting his turn, "Capital! Capital! my dear fellow," said he, "your last story. The scene where the village maid discusses interesting philosophical problems with her lover shows your very acute power of observation. Never have the ways of country folk been better portrayed. Keep on, my dear Archibald, keep on! Since yesterday, thanks to you, there is a gain of 5000 subscribers."
"Mr. John Last," he began again, turning to a new arrival, "I am not so well pleased with your work. Your story is not a picture of life; it lacks the elements of truth. And why? Simply because you run straight on to the end; because you do not analyze. Your heroes do this thing or that from this or that motive, which you assign without ever a thought of dissecting their mental and moral natures. Our feelings, you must remember, are far more complex than all that. In real life every act is the resultant of a hundred thoughts that come and go, and these you must study, each by itself, if you would create a living character. 'But,' you will say, 'in order to note these fleeting thoughts one must know them, must be able to follow them in their capricious meanderings.' Why, any child can do that, as you know. You have simply to make use of hypnotism, electrical or human, which gives one a two-fold being, setting free the witness-personality so that it may see, understand, and remember the reasons which determine the personality that acts. Just study yourself as you live from day to day, my dear Last. Imitate your associate whom I was complimenting a moment ago. Let yourself be hypnotized. What's that? You have tried it already? Not sufficiently, then, not sufficiently!"
Mr. Smith continues his round and enters the reporters' hall. Here 1500 reporters, in their respective places, facing an equal number of telephones, are communicating to the subscribers the news of the world as gathered during the night. The organization of this matchless service has often been described. Besides his telephone, each reporter, as the reader is aware, has in front of him a set of commutators, which enable him to communicate with any desired telephotic line. Thus the subscribers not only hear the news but see the occurrences. When an incident is described that is already past, photographs of its main features are transmitted with the narrative. And there is no confusion withal. The reporters' items, just like the different stories and all the other component parts of the journal, are classified automatically according to an ingenious system, and reach the hearer in due succession. Furthermore, the hearers are free to listen only to what specially concerns them. They may at pleasure give attention to one editor and refuse it to another.
Mr. Smith next addresses one of the ten reporters in the astronomical department—a department still in the embryonic stage, but which will yet play an important part in journalism.
"Well, Cash, what's the news?"
"We have phototelegrams from Mercury, Venus, and Mars."
"Are those from Mars of any interest?"
"Yes, indeed. There is a revolution in the Central Empire."
"And what of Jupiter?" asked Mr. Smith.
"Nothing as yet. We cannot quite understand their signals. Perhaps ours do not reach them."
"That's bad," exclaimed Mr. Smith, as he hurried away, not in the best of humor, toward the hall of the scientific editors.
With their heads bent down over their electric computers, thirty scientific men were absorbed in transcendental calculations. The coming of Mr. Smith was like the falling of a bomb among them.
"Well, gentlemen, what is this I hear? No answer from Jupiter? Is it always to be thus? Come, Cooley, you have been at work now twenty years on this problem, and yet—"
"True enough," replied the man addressed. "Our science of optics is still very defective, and through our mile-and-three-quarter telescopes."
"Listen to that, Peer," broke in Mr. Smith, turning to a second scientist. "Optical science defective! Optical science is your specialty. But," he continued, again addressing William Cooley, "failing with Jupiter, are we getting any results from the moon?"
"The case is no better there."
"This time you do not lay the blame on the science of optics. The moon is immeasurably less distant than Mars, yet with Mars our communication is fully established. I presume you will not say that you lack telescopes?"
"Telescopes? O no, the trouble here is about inhabitants!"
"That's it," added Peer.
"So, then, the moon is positively uninhabited?" asked Mr. Smith.
"At least," answered Cooley, "on the face which she presents to us. As for the opposite side, who knows?"
"Ah, the opposite side! You think, then," remarked Mr. Smith, musingly, "that if one could but—"
"Could what?"
"Why, turn the moon about-face."
"Ah, there's something in that," cried the two men at once. And indeed, so confident was their air, they seemed to have no doubt as to the possibility of success in such an undertaking.
"Meanwhile," asked Mr. Smith, after a moment's silence, "have you no news of interest to-day'?"
"Indeed we have," answered Cooley. "The elements of Olympus are definitively settled. That great planet gravitates beyond Neptune at the mean distance of 11,400,799,642 miles from the sun, and to traverse its vast orbit takes 1311 years, 294 days, 12 hours, 43 minutes, 9 seconds."
"Why didn't you tell me that sooner?" cried Mr. Smith. "Now inform the reporters of this straightaway. You know how eager is the curiosity of the public with regard to these astronomical questions. That news must go into to-day's issue."
Then, the two men bowing to him, Mr. Smith passed into the next hall, an enormous gallery upward of 3200 feet in length, devoted to atmospheric advertising. Every one has noticed those enormous advertisements reflected from the clouds, so large that they may be seen by the populations of whole cities or even of entire countries. This, too, is one of Mr. Fritz Napoleon Smith's ideas, and in the Earth Chronicle building a thousand projectors are constantly engaged in displaying upon the clouds these mammoth advertisements.
When Mr. Smith to-day entered the sky-advertising department, he found the operators sitting with folded arms at their motionless projectors, and inquired as to the cause of their inaction. In response, the man addressed simply pointed to the sky, which was of a pure blue. "Yes," muttered Mr. Smith, "a cloudless sky! That's too bad, but what's to be done? Shall we produce rain? That we might do, but is it of any use? What we need is clouds, not rain. Go," said he, addressing the head engineer, "go see Mr. Samuel Mark, of the meteorological division of the scientific department, and tell him for me to go to work in earnest on the question of artificial clouds. It will never do for us to be always thus at the mercy of cloudless skies!"
Mr. Smith's daily tour through the several departments of his newspaper is now finished. Next, from the advertisement hall he passes to the reception chamber, where the ambassadors accredited to the American government are awaiting him, desirous of having a word of counsel or advice from the all-powerful editor. A discussion was going on when he entered. "Your Excellency will pardon me," the French Ambassador was saying to the Russian, "but I see nothing in the map of Europe that requires change. 'The North for the Slavs?' Why, yes, of course; but the South for the Matins. Our common frontier, the Rhine, it seems to me, serves very well. Besides, my government, as you must know, will firmly oppose every movement, not only against Paris, our capital, or our two great prefectures, Rome and Madrid, but also against the kingdom of Jerusalem, the dominion of Saint Peter, of which France means to be the trusty defender."
"Well said!" exclaimed Mr. Smith. "How is it," he asked, turning to the Russian ambassador, "that you Russians are not content with your vast empire, the most extensive in the world, stretching from the banks of the Rhine to the Celestial Mountains and the Kara-Korum, whose shores are washed by the Frozen Ocean, the Atlantic, the Mediterranean, and the Indian Ocean? Then, what is the use of threats? Is war possible in view of modern inventions-asphyxiating shells capable of being projected a distance of 60 miles, an electric spark of 90 miles, that can at one stroke annihilate a battalion; to say nothing of the plague, the cholera, the yellow fever, that the belligerents might spread among their antagonists mutually, and which would in a few days destroy the greatest armies?"
"True," answered the Russian; "but can we do all that we wish? As for us Russians, pressed on our eastern frontier by the Chinese, we must at any cost put forth our strength for an effort toward the west."
"O, is that all? In that case," said Mr. Smith, "the thing can be arranged. I will speak to the Secretary of State about it. The attention of the Chinese government shall be called to the matter. This is not the first time that the Chinese have bothered us."
"Under these conditions, of course—" And the Russian ambassador declared himself satisfied.
"Ah, Sir John, what can I do for you?" asked Mr. Smith as he turned to the representative of the people of Great Britain, who till now had remained silent.
"A great deal," was the reply. "If the Earth Chronicle would but open a campaign on our behalf—"
"And for what object?"
"Simply for the annulment of the Act of Congress annexing to the United States the British islands."
Though, by a just turn-about of things here below, Great Britain has become a colony of the United States, the English are not yet reconciled to the situation. At regular intervals they are ever addressing to the American government vain complaints.
"A campaign against the annexation that has been an accomplished fact for 150 years!" exclaimed Mr. Smith. "How can your people suppose that I would do anything so unpatriotic?"
"We at home think that your people must now be sated. The Monroe doctrine is fully applied; the whole of America belongs to the Americans. What more do you want? Besides, we will pay for what we ask."
"Indeed!" answered Mr. Smith, without manifesting the slightest irritation. "Well, you English will ever be the same. No, no, Sir John, do not count on me for help. Give up our fairest province, Britain? Why not ask France generously to renounce possession of Africa, that magnificent colony the complete conquest of which cost her the labor of 800 years? You will be well received!"
"You decline! All is over then!" murmured the British agent sadly. "The United Kingdom falls to the share of the Americans; the Indies to that of—"
"The Russians," said Mr. Smith, completing the sentence.
"Australia—"
"Has an independent government."
"Then nothing at all remains for us!" sighed Sir John, downcast.
"Nothing?" asked Mr. Smith, laughing. "Well, now, there's Gibraltar!"
With this sally, the audience ended. The clock was striking twelve, the hour of breakfast. Mr. Smith returns to his chamber. Where the bed stood in the morning a table all spread comes up through the floor. For Mr. Smith, being above all a practical man; has reduced the problem of existence to its simplest terms. For him, instead of the endless suites of apartments of the olden time, one room fitted with ingenious mechanical contrivances is enough. Here he sleeps, takes his meals, in short, lives.
He seats himself. In the mirror of the phonotelephote is seen the same chamber at Paris which appeared in it this morning. A table furnished forth is likewise in readiness here, for notwithstanding the difference of hours, Mr. Smith and his wife have arranged to take their meals simultaneously. It is delightful thus to take breakfast tête-a-tête with one who is 3000 miles or so away. Just now, Mrs. Smith's chamber has no occupant.
"She is late! Woman's punctuality! Progress everywhere except there!" muttered Mr. Smith as he turned the tap for the first dish. For like all wealthy folk in our day, Mr. Smith has done away with the domestic kitchen and is a subscriber to the Grand Alimentation Company, which sends through a great network of tubes to subscribers' residences all sorts of dishes, as a varied assortment is always in readiness. A subscription costs money, to be sure, but the cuisine is of the best, and the system has this advantage, that it, does away with the pestering race of the cordons-bleus. Mr. Smith received and ate, all alone, the hors-d'oeuvre, entrées, rôti and legumes that constituted the repast. He was just finishing the dessert when Mrs. Smith appeared in the mirror of the telephote.
"Why, where have you been?" asked Mr. Smith through the telephone.
"What! You are already at the dessert? Then I am late," she exclaimed, with a winsome naïveté. "Where have I been, you ask? Why, at my dress-maker's. The hats are just lovely this season! I suppose I forgot to note the time, and so am a little late."
"Yes, a little," growled Mr. Smith; "so little that I have already quite finished breakfast. Excuse me if I leave you now, but I must be going."
"O certainly, my dear; good-by till evening."
Smith stepped into his air-coach, which was in waiting for him at a window. "Where do you wish to go, sir?" inquired the coachman.
"Let me see; I have three hours," Mr. Smith mused. "Jack, take me to my accumulator works at Niagara."
For Mr. Smith has obtained a lease of the great falls of Niagara. For ages the energy developed by the falls went unutilized. Smith, applying Jackson's invention, now collects this energy, and lets or sells it. His visit to the works took more time than he had anticipated. It was four o'clock when he returned home, just in time for the daily audience which he grants to callers.
One readily understands how a man situated as Smith is must be beset with requests of all kinds. Now it is an inventor needing capital; again it is some visionary who comes to advocate a brilliant scheme which must surely yield millions of profit. A choice has to be made between these projects, rejecting the worthless, examining the questionable ones, accepting the meritorious. To this work Mr. Smith devotes every day two full hours.
The callers were fewer to-day than usual—only twelve of them. Of these, eight had only impracticable schemes to propose. In fact, one of them wanted to revive painting, an art fallen into desuetude owing to the progress made in color-photography. Another, a physician, boasted that he had discovered a cure for nasal catarrh! These impracticables were dismissed in short order. Of the four projects favorably received, the first was that of a young man whose broad forehead betokened his intellectual power.
"Sir, I am a chemist," he began, "and as such I come to you."
"Well!"
"Once the elementary bodies," said the young chemist, "were held to be sixty-two in number; a hundred years ago they were reduced to ten; now only three remain irresolvable, as you are aware."
"Yes, yes."
"Well, sir, these also I will show to be composite. In a few months, a few weeks, I shall have succeeded in solving the problem. Indeed, it may take only a few days."
"And then?"
"Then, sir, I shall simply have determined the absolute. All I want is money enough to carry my research to a successful issue."
"Very well," said Mr. Smith. "And what will be the practical outcome of your discovery?"
"The practical outcome? Why, that we shall be able to produce easily all bodies whatever—stone, wood, metal, fibers—"
"And flesh and blood?" queried Mr. Smith, interrupting him. "Do you pretend that you expect to manufacture a human being out and out?"
"Why not?"
Mr. Smith advanced $100,000 to the young chemist, and engaged his services for the Earth Chronicle laboratory.
The second of the four successful applicants, starting from experiments made so long ago as the nineteenth century and again and again repeated, had conceived the idea of removing an entire city all at once from one place to another. His special project had to do with the city of Granton, situated, as everybody knows, some fifteen miles inland. He proposes to transport the city on rails and to change it into a watering-place. The profit, of course, would be enormous. Mr. Smith, captivated by the scheme, bought a half-interest in it.
"As you are aware, sir," began applicant No. 3, "by the aid of our solar and terrestrial accumulators and transformers, we are able to make all the seasons the same. I propose to do something better still. Transform into heat a portion of the surplus energy at our disposal; send this heat to the poles; then the polar regions, relieved of their snow-cap, will become a vast territory available for man's use. What think you of the scheme?"
"Leave your plans with me, and come back in a week. I will have them examined in the meantime."
Finally, the fourth announced the early solution of a weighty scientific problem. Every one will remember the bold experiment made a hundred years ago by Dr. Nathaniel Faithburn. The doctor, being a firm believer in human hibernation—in other words, in the possibility of our suspending our vital functions and of calling them into action again after a time—resolved to subject the theory to a practical test. To this end, having first made his last will and pointed out the proper method of awakening him; having also directed that his sleep was to continue a hundred years to a day from the date of his apparent death, he unhesitatingly put the theory to the proof in his own person.
Reduced to the condition of a mummy, Dr. Faithburn was coffined and laid in a tomb. Time went on. September 25th, 2889, being the day set for his resurrection, it was proposed to Mr. Smith that he should permit the second part of the experiment to be performed at his residence this evening.
"Agreed. Be here at ten o'clock," answered Mr. Smith; and with that the day's audience was closed.
Left to himself, feeling tired, he lay down on an extension chair. Then, touching a knob, he established communication with the Central Concert Hall, whence our greatest maestros send out to subscribers their delightful successions of accords determined by recondite algebraic formulas. Night was approaching. Entranced by the harmony, forgetful of the hour, Smith did not notice that it was growing dark. It was quite dark when he was aroused by the sound of a door opening. "Who is there?" he asked, touching a commutator.
Suddenly, in consequence of the vibrations produced, the air became luminous.
"Ah! you, Doctor?"
"Yes," was the reply. "How are you?"
"I am feeling well."
"Good! Let me see your tongue. All right! Your pulse. Regular! And your appetite?"
"Only passably good."
"Yes, the stomach. There's the rub. You are over-worked. If your stomach is out of repair, it must be mended. That requires study. We must think about it."
"In the meantime," said Mr. Smith, "you will dine with me."
As in the morning, the table rose out of the floor. Again, as in the morning, the potage, rôti, ragoûts, and legumes were supplied through the food-pipes. Toward the close of the meal, phonotelephotic communication was made with Paris. Smith saw his wife, seated alone at the dinner-table, looking anything but pleased at her loneliness.
"Pardon me, my dear, for having left you alone," he said through the telephone. "I was with Dr. Wilkins."
"Ah, the good doctor!" remarked Mrs. Smith, her countenance lighting up.
"Yes. But, pray, when are you coming home?"
"This evening."
"Very well. Do you come by tube or by air-train?"
"Oh, by tube."
"Yes; and at what hour will you arrive?"
"About eleven, I suppose."
"Eleven by Centropolis time, you mean?"
"Yes."
"Good-by, then, for a little while," said Mr. Smith as he severed communication with Paris.
Dinner over, Dr. Wilkins wished to depart. "I shall expect you at ten," said Mr Smith. "To-day, it seems, is the day for the return to life of the famous Dr. Faithburn. You did not think of it, I suppose. The awakening is to take place here in my house. You must come and see. I shall depend on your being here."
"I will come back," answered Dr. Wilkins.
Left alone, Mr. Smith busied himself with examining his accounts—a task of vast magnitude, having to do with transactions which involve a daily expenditure of upward of $800,000. Fortunately, indeed, the stupendous progress of mechanic art in modern times makes it comparatively easy. Thanks to the Piano Electro-Reckoner, the most complex calculations can be made in a few seconds. In two hours Mr. Smith completed his task. Just in time. Scarcely had he turned over the last page when Dr. Wilkins arrived. After him came the body of Dr. Faithburn, escorted by a numerous company of men of science. They commenced work at once. The casket being laid down in the middle of the room, the telephote was got in readiness. The outer world, already notified, was anxiously expectant, for the whole world could be eye-witnesses of the performance, a reporter meanwhile, like the chorus in the ancient drama, explaining it all viva voce through the telephone.
"They are opening the casket," he explained. "Now they are taking Faithburn out of it—a veritable mummy, yellow, hard, and dry. Strike the body and it resounds like a block of wood. They are now applying heat; now electricity. No result. These experiments are suspended for a moment while Dr. Wilkins makes an examination of the body. Dr. Wilkins, rising, declares the man to be dead. 'Dead! 'exclaims every one present. 'Yes,' answers Dr. Wilkins, 'dead!' 'And how long has he been dead?' Dr. Wilkins makes another examination. 'A hundred years,' he replies."
The case stood just as the reporter said. Faithburn was dead, quite certainly dead! "Here is a method that needs improvement," remarked Mr. Smith to Dr. Wilkins, as the scientific committee on hibernation bore the casket out. "So much for that experiment. But if poor Faithburn is dead, at least he is sleeping," he continued. "I wish I could get some sleep. I am tired out, Doctor, quite tired out! Do you not think that a bath would refresh me?"
"Certainly. But you must wrap yourself up well before you go out into the hall-way. You must not expose yourself to cold."
"Hall-way? Why, Doctor, as you well know, everything is done by machinery here. It is not for me to go to the bath; the bath will come to me. Just look!" and he pressed a button. After a few seconds a faint rumbling was heard, which grew louder and louder. Suddenly the door opened, and the tub appeared.
Such, for this year of grace 2889, is the history of one day in the life of the editor of the Earth Chronicle. And the history of that one day is the history of 365 days every year, except leap-years, and then of 366 days—for as yet no means has been found of increasing the length of the terrestrial year.
JULES VERNE.
THE TALE OF A MISSING LINK FROM INDIANA
An analytical review of the five films known as THE PLANET OF THE APES
By Charles E.J. Moulton
Folks of all generations flock to see dragons fly and strange creatures in spaceships ruling topsy-turvy worlds. Science-fiction-fans can be categorized into three groups: those who dress up in the clothes of their idols, speak the language and collect the items, attend the congregations and sing the songs, those who see everything as pure entertainment, popcorn-fun below all Shakespearian tradition. Between the two lies a group who would gladly consider themselves analytical. Their chief characteristic is looking at the real background of the piece and are thus probe into the story like a gold miner looking for a treasure.
The original Planet of the Apes-Series (films dating from 1968 to 1973) entail a striking message. The dialogue a striking parody of all things human, all things civilized and racist, the humane plea against injustice seems imbedded within it like litmus paper. It is a wonder that the movies are not discussed at sociological seminars.
According to the original Apes-Quintology, scientists sometime in the 20th century found a way to send astronauts on a long trip in deep sleep to wake up the distant future. It can be argued that this horrific scenario that evolves into human apocalypse is a parellel reality.
Current civilization teaches us that dressing up is for fun and certainly anyone who dresses up as a monkey is not to be taken all too seriously. But rewind the tape: are they right? Theatre, like storytelling, shows the audience-member snip-bits from his own life from a new angle. Sci-Fi, especially, is able to use symbolism in order to map out the eternal allegory.
In the story, human astronauts from 1972 are frozen through deep space to arrive in the year 3955 on a planet ruled by monkeys. Only one survives, Taylor.
After torture and persecution he discovers that he is back home on Earth and the apes have simply taken over Earth after a nuclear catastrophe.
There are human survivors of this holocaust and they have worshipped the ultimate bomb for millennia. Taylor is witness to how the monkeys invade their underground city and ultimately destroy Earth by exploding the ultimate bomb.
Three apes escape in Taylor ship, arriving back in 1972 and find they are being treated the same way as Taylor was back home, only worse for it comes with intrigue. The one ape is pregnant and by fooling the police, she manages to rescue the baby, who grows up to start a revolt to found the Planet of the Apes.
The story is a vicious circle: A travels to B and creates havoc, which sets off a time warp that sends off A to B again. It is probably the most famous one in films. Had not Taylor decided to travel into the future, the apes would never have been able to travel to the past to found the future that Taylor discovered.
Ultimately, the proverbial dog chases his own tail until we sit there, blubbering and cooing like, well, a monkey in a tree.
But what does all this mean?
It means that Man (in reality and fiction) ultimately works against himself. He discovers something that he ultimately destroys. He won’t listen to truth because he is too caught up in his own desires and lack of honesty to admit that he has done things wrong.
To put this bluntly, he cannot let go of his own past mistakes. He regrets them so much that he lives not to better himself but to try to better his mistakes. If he could let them go, he would never have to fight the foes that arose from this action in the first place.
Some interesting dialogue from the film proves my point and how it is put across in a twisted manner. Take, for instance, the Gorilla General’s word in the second film. Centuries of slavery ring in his words:
“I am not saying that man is bad just because his skin is White. I am saying that the only good Human is a dead Human.”
It is protest in its purest form. You cannot critique humans on their own level like this (replace “Human” with “Negro” and “White” with “Black” and you’ll see what I mean). But you can put a human in a civilization of a different race and see how he reacts to this, thereby letting man point his own finger at himself.
The problem is that people don’t hear between the lines because the munching of the popcorn is too loud in their ears.
“Ignorance is Evil”
Doctor Zira says in the same film and mirrors the kangaroo trial that occurs in the previous film, where Colonel Taylor is held before a tribunal that only exists to hang the chimpanzees (who think he is a missing link) & the court (who won’t believe that he comes from Fort Wayne, Indiana). Neither side, however, is right. He is from humankind’s own past. The fact that the Gorilla-Army is blessed by priests in the movie & halted by pacifist chimps should be revealing to us humans. We have two parables here: the flower-power-generation who burnt their own draught cards & finally Nazi Germany, church blessing cannons.
So, the characters in the movie have the same problem as the human beings watching the story. They don’t listen. The characters in the movie are so caught up being mad at each other’s folly that they keep doing the same mistakes over and over. The people paying to see what they are doing, pay their popcorn and walk out just as oblivious to the countless divorces and badmouthing and intrigues that they are responsible for, not really interested in looking below the surface because they only do so in society-approved things of shiny surface and university approved dogma. But there are signs that try to help them, if they listened.
Shortly before the fourth film there was a racist riot in a city called Watts. Director J. Lee Thompson remodelled these riots, making the leader of the riots the Monkey Revolutionary whose parents were futuristic space travellers and thereby made him responsible for the proverbial dog we mentioned earlier chasing his tail in his own never ending vicious circle.
But we find a positive energy flowing from the remaining words of film 5:
“Life is like a highway. A driver in lane A might survive whilst a driver in lane B might not. By foreseeing his own future correctly he might plan his life better and change it.”
Accordingly, we see apes and humans sharing their lives at the end, giving us a possible hint that things maybe are not as bad as they look. The responsibility lies only in following your own good intuition.
It is up to you, dear reader of this article. Next time you go to a movie or a play, try to find messages within the storyline. Look closely, for you might find more than you think. Even if it is only the interesting analysis behind the bad acting.
Within everything … lies a message.
PLANET OF THE APES: Five Motion Pictures (20th Century Fox, ©1968, 1969, 1971, 1972, 1973) Directors: Franklin J. Schaffner, Ted Post, Don Taylor, J.Lee Thompson; Actors: Roddy McDowell, Kim Hunter, Charlton Heston, Maurice Evans, Ricardo Montalban, Paul Williams, Sal Mineo, John Huston; Based upon the book “Monkey Planet” by Pierre Boulle; Make-Up by John Chambers
Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina of Tuscany (1615)
(abridged) by Galileo Galilei
To the Most Serene Grand Duchess Mother:
Some years ago, as Your Serene Highness well knows, I discovered in the heavens many things that had not been seen before our own age. The novelty of these things, as well as some consequences which followed from them in contradiction to the physical notions commonly held among academic philosophers, stirred up against me no small number of professors-as if I had placed these things in the sky with my own hands in order to upset nature and overturn the sciences. They seemed to forget that the increase of known truths stimulates the investigation, establishment, and growth of the arts; not their diminution or destruction. Showing a greater fondness for their own opinions than for truth they sought to deny and disprove the new things which, if they had cared to look for themselves, their own senses would have demonstrated to them. To this end they hurled various charges and published numerous writings filled with vain arguments, and they made the grave mistake of sprinkling these with passages taken from places in the Bible which they had failed to understand properly, and which were ill-suited to their purposes. These men would perhaps not have fallen into such error had they but paid attention to a most useful doctrine of St. Augustine's, relative to our making positive statements about things which are obscure and hard to understand by means of reason alone. Speaking of a certain physical conclusion about the heavenly bodies, he wrote: "Now keeping always our respect for moderation in grave piety, we ought not to believe anything inadvisedly on a dubious point, lest in favor to our error we conceive a prejudice against something that truth hereafter may reveal to be not contrary in any way to the sacred books of either the Old or the New Testament." Well, the passage of time has revealed to everyone the truths that I previously set forth; and, together with the truth of the facts, there has come to light the great difference in attitude between those who simply and dispassionately refused to admit the discoveries to be true, and those who combined with their incredulity some reckless passion of their own. Men who were well grounded in astronomical and physical science were persuaded as soon as they received my first message. There were others who denied them or remained in doubt only because of their novel and unexpected character, and because they had not yet had the opportunity to see for themselves. These men have by degrees come to be satisfied. But some, besides allegiance to their original error, possess I know not what fanciful interest in remaining hostile not so much toward the things in question as toward their discoverer. No longer being able to deny them, these men now take refuge in obstinate silence, but being more than ever exasperated by that which has pacified and quieted other men, they divert their thoughts to other fancies and seek new ways to damage me. I should pay no more attention to them than to those who previously contradicted me-at whom I always laugh, being assured of the eventual outcome-were it not that in their new calumnies and persecutions I perceive that they do not stop at proving themselves more learned than I am (a claim which I scarcely contest), but go so far as to cast against me the imputations of crimes which must be, and are, more abhorrent to me than death itself. I cannot remain satisfied merely to know that the injustice of this is recognized by those who are acquainted with these men and with me, as perhaps it is not known to others. Persisting in their original resolve to destroy me and everything mine by any means they can think of, these men are aware of my views in astronomy and philosophy. They know that as to the arrangement of the parts of the universe, I hold the sun to be situated motionless in the center of the revolution of the celestial orbs while the earth revolves about the sun. They know also that I support this position not only by refuting the arguments of Ptolemy and Aristotle, but by producing many counter-arguments; in particular, some which relate to physical effects whose causes can perhaps be assigned in no other way. In addition there are astronomical arguments derived from many things in my new celestial discoveries that plainly confute the Ptolemaic system while admirably agreeing with and confirming the contrary hypothesis. Possibly because they are disturbed by the known truth of other propositions of mine which differ from those commonly held, and therefore mistrusting their defense so long as they confine themselves to the field of philosophy, these men have resolved to fabricate a shield for their fallacies out of the mantle of pretended religion and the authority of the Bible. These they apply with little judgement to the refutation of arguments that they do not understand and have not even listened to.
The Great Cormorant
By Bruce Edward Litton
Dry sand scrunched like popcorn under my boots, uneven steps carrying me south. A wet tongue where surf had pushed up on the beach probably covered broken shells near the churning wash. On other occasions, my son, Matt, dug through the like. The bits of calcium revealed shades of tan, but on this day, the weather was too cold for sunbathing.
I got to the wet stuff and my foot took hold. A wave rumbled like a kettle drum, grumbling like the empty stomach of a giant, making me wonder if no fish were in the surf. Matt walked a handful of paces ahead of a woman and a man belonging to a group of us. He called out, “Dad! Wait up!”
“I’m not going anywhere!”
Why did he care all of a sudden? I amused myself, thinking my thought of fish had to do with it. Unlike the eagerness he felt when I did take him fishing, he had been lagging behind sullenly. Now he was running, hair the color of sand riffling in the breeze before he settled alongside me for comfort. I stuffed my guilt for putting him up to birding, but when I looked again, I saw no interest on his face. His dejection placed a question mark above the hike.
The goal, Barnegat Inlet’s North Jetty, wrinkled in the distance like a heat illusion. Twenty yards ahead, the naturalist, Michael Pollock, stood taller than the three other participants
with him. Matt and I had joined him on other New Jersey Audubon outings. The suggested minimum age for a fossil-finding trip we attended four years prior was ten, but Matt’s mother managed to have him admitted at seven. He was a riveting little adventurer who distinctly impressed Michael.
Three miles of Island Beach State Park lay ahead. Time yet for interest to take hold. And despite bright sun promising to accompany us—Matt’s red coat reflected it loudly—perhaps Michael’s hands were becoming chapped. A brown parka with a feather-encircled hood protected him otherwise. I watched him mount a monocular on a tripod he dug into dry sand while I hoped the equipment would pique Matt’s interest.
“Those are gannets,” Michael said, gazing naked-eyed beyond breakers. They dove from twenty yards aloft straight into cold brine. “They’re devouring peanut bunker—first year menhaden.”
Matt and I knew striped bass devour peanut bunker, but this was the first either of us had taken conscious notice of gannets. Not a dour recognition for me, and I felt no absurdity while watching them, despite my son’s mood hinting otherwise.
Fellow members began taking looks through the scope. I let Matt go before me. When he stepped away, I asked, “What did you see?”
“I saw one dive,” he said indifferently.
“Did you see it take a fish? His eyes flashed. “No.”
I quickly looked to the right. An older man squinted at the eyepiece. I looked back at Matt. “What do you think of the monocular?”
“It’s pretty cool.” A moment of interest became indifference again.
I gazed through the glass after everyone else had enough. A gull-like gannet with a dagger for a beak plummeted at thrilling speed. I tried to zoom close, hoping to see a fish caught between edges of the beak, but I fumbled. Michael stepped in front of me, corrected something, then backed away so I could look again. The demand to trek onward made my view of a dive and zooming in close to watch the gannet’s reemergence feel especially dramatic. I didn’t see the fish the gannet surely caught, but that didn’t matter.
Scanning the beach as we trudged on, some of us noticed a loose aggregate of perhaps a dozen ring-billed gulls near dunes. Each brain processed more awareness than John James Audubon might have imagined, but a contemporary of his in England, William Blake, wrote, “How do you know but ev’ry Bird that cuts the airy way, Is an immense world of delight, clos’d by your senses five?” Empathy and a dose of science allowed me to imagine something approximate, but when I turned my look towards the surf near the edge of the wash, I felt astonished merely to see a bird I wouldn’t expect.
“Matt, a laughing gull!” The head dipped, the beak clipping and pointing skyward to allow straight passage down the gullet for whatever it got. My favorite kind of gull, now lifting wings to escape a surge of froth. I knew they migrate south, and I felt surprised because this one seemed out of place in the cold, straggling behind usual whereabouts in early November, lingering here while cutting its way to Virginia or perhaps further south to the Caribbean. Sanderlings nearby chased receding wash. They poked beaks like hypodermic needles in pasty sand, heads pressing like manic fingers on syringes, an alertness that did seem absurd.
+++
The endpoint was a black blur. An impressionistic image. We would take our time getting there—determined, but not without viewing more birds.
Again, Michael dug the tripod in. Red-throated loons in winter plumage—white throats and grey backs—paddled beyond breakers, disappeared behind swells, rose into view. Matt didn’t seem impressed, but when my turn came, the view penetrated any lingering defenses like a visionary experience, and yet despite luminosity, the grey back I saw, patterned by a web of white, prompted the thought of a fish net.
That fuzzy black patch we slogged towards anchored my awareness. I knew the rocks, had already been there on a different occasion, so the illusion of partial transparency didn’t fool me. Any of the boulders could anchor a ship. As if I obsessed on a deeply embedded and not fully accessible idea, the blackness against blue held promise in the vaguely grudging way of an endeavor that could fall into deeper trouble than my son’s displeasure. Requiring more difficult attention than a hike, an idea in my mental substratum involves years of careful excavation to bring it to light. Anyone who entertains subterraneous ideation might risk stability in any event, though an outing might raise an idea to competent awareness better than anything else.
I first stood on Barnegat Inlet’s other jetty in 1980. It leads out to sea at Long Beach Island’s northern end. I lived on that island—self-employed and free to spend time as I pleased—twenty-seven years before my first ride, along with Matt, through sand. My brother David drove, leaving tire tracks as we pursued bluefish and striped bass along the way Matt and I now walked. Besides one other bird hike with Michael and a visit as a botany student, my many visits to the park have involved surf fishing. To me, it’s an innocent place. The island to the south gave me questionable experience.
Over the South Jetty, as the other is named, Barnegat Lighthouse rises a hundred and sixty-nine feet. It would become clearly visible over dunes. The gull passing overhead could see it and surrounding structures, but Michael would name the town it rises over. A gull’s brain interprets pattern and density without the endearment language bestows upon a place, regardless of what Blake believed about a bird’s “delight.” Word counts for something more than focusing a monocular, because instrumental reason seems to resemble, at least to me, the nonhuman spatial grasp of a bird.
Michael mentioned the town, when he said, “A snowy was recently sighted across the inlet near Barnegat Light.”
I believed the owl would remain hidden from us, thinking of white as suggesting spirituality, the red paint of the lighthouse as suggesting power, and imagining the snowy flying invisibly. At age four or five, I drew a mandala with a red crayon, spontaneously inspired. I had never seen one. Structure, like a feather holding a bird’s body aloft. Coming out of nowhere.
Who would expect the arctic air mass to carry a rare sight other than a snowy owl? Michael didn’t. What are expectations, if not sprightly images attempting to leap away from memory? As if one gazes into water like Narcissus and sees no deeper than his reflected image. Even so, structure as underlying natural form is, I think, barren without personal style. When I first lay eyes on the jetty, the glory of my teenaged years gleamed on the rocks. It would soon be as if my life regressed twenty-five hundred years. Maybe for wisdom’s sake. Blake claimed he saw through the eye and not with it. By dependence upon physical sense, we see indifferently what we judge on past evidence; personal value needs to knock us awake, if we are to experience anything new or unusual. The thought might be ironic, considering how troubling the span of years I tumbled into, but for now, we waddled on, as if—unless that snowy owl surprised us—all we could hope for were gulls, gannets, and the occasional loon. Matt, who seemed to hope for nothing, frowned like an albatross.
Michael suddenly cried out, “Snow buntings!” When I spun around, having got ahead of him, he was looking upward, astonished. The flock had passed to his right. “I didn’t see this coming! This is almost the equal treat to spotting a snowy!”
Dozens of them glided low and alighted on the upper beach. White, finch-like birds with light brown markings matching rocky terrain, migrants from arctic tundra. Wintering on beaches as far south as Delaware and rarely on North Carolina’s Outer Banks, they blend in like ghost crabs. One species of about five hundred flying in a great swath as the season shifts, forming the Atlantic Flyway, a region far offshore and as far west as northeastern Ohio and West Virginia.
+++
Barnegat Lighthouse poked above dunes, rising slowly into majestic view as our pacing brought us closer. Boulders loomed close enough to make out individually, the goal easily attainable. My son had endured without verbal complaint.
I did take the opportunity to shift attention from birds when I began talking with fishermen sitting on tailgates and standing patiently beside long surf rods, telling Matt very few fish had been caught. He shied away from the men. But when at last we did get to the jetty, a pod of striped bass cornered peanut bunker between the beach and boulders, fishermen hooking up as the bass created boils on the ocean surface, taking plugs.
Matt said, “That’s a really good spot because the jetty is so long. The bunker can’t get around it.” His interest had mildly increased. He walked on ahead of me, onto flat-topped boulders, joining the majority of our group.
A dark-haired woman a few years my senior wore a rufous fleece over layers of other clothing. She appeared the classic outdoor type, but when she picked up a discarded metal lure,
the hook large and rusty, she turned and met my eyes fiercely, holding it like a hypnotist’s pendant before them. “Brutal!” she said, then tossed the metal aside contemptuously.
Fascinated by her passion rather than feeling any insult, I said nothing. My gaze was soft and open. Her eyes stayed fixed on mine as she backed away, afraid. She must not have expected my empathy. She abruptly turned, jaunting off to join the rest of the group. Matt stood beside an aging man in a blue overcoat and Michael with his hood down. Just as well my son had missed the drama.
When I joined everyone, I heard the elder man say, “What sort of sandpiper?” I turned and saw a bird the size of a flicker, which, for a sandpiper, impressed me as large.
Michael said, “It’s a purple sandpiper. You find them associated with rocks, eating periwinkles and snails. Not a common bird.” It busied about at the shifting edge of brine and barnacle-covered basalt, just a few yards from us. “They come from arctic or subarctic Canada.”
Michael bridged the age gap midway between me and the others, besides the woman who disagreed with fishing. I became intimately aware of their agedness. Then I noticed Michael looking seaward.
“There, atop the channel marker,” he said. I saw a large, black bird.
The marker rested on a platform constructed by evenly cut basalt supported by metal beams where the inlet becomes ocean. It was as if blue-black depths of surrounding water created the appealing isolation of its elevation, rather than dragged it under. The bird looked like a sentinel atop a watch tower, gazing endlessly over the brine. I vaguely felt as if the sight addressed the call of origin within me, my having read ancient Greek philosophy during the years I lived on Long Beach Island.
Michael set up the monocular. For once, the tripod erected on hard surface. Having viewed the bird closely, he said, “Great cormorant,” as if now perfectly certain.
“I’ve never heard of any but the double-crested,” I said.
“These are much less common.” He offered me a look.
I noticed off-white on the underside of a long, thick beak, before I beheld the majestic black creature in profile. A patch of orange at the top of the throat accented the ominous darkness, and a white patch on the bird’s visible left wing could have reminded me of bufflehead ducks’ flash of white during flight. For the great cormorant, the same likeness to a strobe sequence might suggest light is its internal nature. I couldn’t evaluate it as I do the double-crested cormorant, a slate-black bird that seems as common here as the crow at home in Bedminster, though I like crows and detest the cormorants. But the deep wonder the great cormorant provoked would never leave me. As for crows, they remind me of a novelist I admire. I revel in the call: “ka! ka! ka!”
Franz Kafka wrote in his journals, “I am a jackdaw.” The jackdaw’s range includes Europe, Asia, and northern Africa—as members of the crow family. The urgency of Kafka’s name in short form, expressed by a crow, isn’t lost on me. Nothing could be more urgent than a reminder of getting words right as he did. I am patient. My journals can always absorb handwritten impulses. Kafka spoke to me with exquisite personal clarity a week or two before my twenty-second birthday. I found the two journal volumes in the Ship Bottom Library while living alone on Long Beach Island during the fall of 1982, knowing nobody there. Having pulled one of them from the shelf, I read, “I am literature,” and proclaimed that, no, I am literature. At some time or other associated with this encounter, I remembered a close high school friend nicknaming me “Lit,” although my presumption primarily stemmed from my youthful sense of
unlimited potential. In the next moment, I contemplated a photo of Kafka and saw his head drop, dejected. I tried to ward off desperate guilt he seemed to forgive, and while I read in the house I rented, we seemed to become the best of friends.
A metal hook is brutal, but impulse can knock the soul out of a picture. After my son was born, I deeply considered the likes of that attack. I would never unleash such antagonism upon him. The hallucinatory intensity of my imagination I would always welcome, but it, too, is problematic, involving an attempt to unify a double life.
+++
No doubt, we witnessed a great bird, rather than an ordinary cormorant, a common crow, or a jackdaw, but when I do see a crow, I often notice the cleverness. At work, when taking lunch in my car, I toss bread out the window. A crow will watch me until it swoops down when I’m not looking. But crows don’t have the stately presence of the great cormorant, which winters in New Jersey, southward along North Carolina’s Outer Banks, and rarely in northern Florida, breeding from New England to Canada’s Maritime Provinces. A devourer of fish. I could have seen any number of them during fall or winter when I lived on the island, none during the crowded summers. Distinctly solitary, the one we viewed appeared to me as no representative of a species, looming high over the ocean as if judging the world alone.
If I had done that as a young man, I no longer do. Besides, if I play with any comparison, it would be hard to read The Castle while knowing about Kafka’s ordinary work and family life and not feel awe for the breadth of his achievement in isolation. My life among society has affected me like a net thrown across the abyss, catching me like a fish that would have fallen forever into a bucket without bottom. I thrive on connections. My son needed some, and here at
our goal, Michael had a proposition: “Would Matt be interested in caring for the reptiles at Sherman-Hoffman Center?”
I called Matt over, and said, “Matt, how would you like to care for the reptiles at Sherman-Hoffman?”
“Sure!” His face beamed, keenly alert.
On a strap, I carried my son’s Nikon camera. He habitually photographed many species of snakes, lizards, turtles, salamanders, and frogs. Michael was well aware. He got news from one outing about him coming upon an uncommon pine snake; on another, he found a timber rattlesnake. I had borrowed shots from the camera little over the course of our walk, no reptiles or amphibians here for him to capture on pixels. Why—had I the requisite eight-hundred-millimeter lens—capture the cormorant? It haunts my memory like books drawing me into ancient depth.
Matt would volunteer for several years, and I would feel grateful to Michael for more than his leadership on outings. Perhaps we four confided together at the end of Island Beach. As if the great cormorant’s left eye turned to join us.
May 2023
The Mystery of the Ages
The Life and Times of Voyager
Television Review by Charles E.J. Moulton
We could be watching Harrison Ford running through the wilderness hunted by U.S. Marshalls, we could be following Charlton Heston lost in the future hunted by apes or just following Thelma and Louise on their road toward crime and debauchery.
Then again, we might be travelling with Captain Kathryn Janeway and her crew lost 70 000 lightyears from home.
However we choose to experience our lust of joining mutual seekers of the journey, the result of that search is the same. The road is the way.
We all love seeing people travel, but why are we drawn to stories about seekers?
If we don’t travel ourselves, we do so through others. That conveys movement and there’s nothing we love so much as movement. Many people are lost, many people hope to find something real beyond that proverbial rainbow. Then, of course, there is the afterlife. We really belong somewhere else: in heaven with God. Every life we lead here on Earth really brings us back to work on some task or solve some problem.
“Star Trek: Voyager” ran for seven seasons and the reason for its success is the fact that it really is an extended road movie. So, here it is: a team of space explorers is sent out on an away mission, prepared to be away a couple of months at the most. Among them are talented prisoners on parole, fresh graduates and experienced veterans. The ship, however, gets catapulted through the galaxy 70 000 lightyears from home by mistake and so the crew has to find another way home.
On their way home, they encounter a hundred species, visit hundreds of distant planets and ultimately change the course of time.
The fascinating aspect in general is the eternal question we always ask ourselves every time we read a book or watch a film: what if? What would a world based on interstellar communication look like? What might aliens look like? What would their world be like? We know how it is to travel between New York and Rio, but what would a world look like that is based on travelling between planets on a regular basis. Roddenberry continues on a very old tradition that Homer, Voltaire, Melville and Verne dwelled in: the journey.
Captain Janeway is a future day Don Quixiote. Encountering barbarians and killers just as much as benevolent philosophers on her seven year odyssey, she perseveres in spite of incredible setbacks. Actress Kate Mulgrew’s uncanny resemblance to Katherine Hepburn got her the job portraying the famous thespian in a one-woman show. It is also Mulgrew’s almost painful and ruthless, Hepburnesque, honesty that keeps the spaceship going and eventually takes the weird and wonderful crew home to Earth, eventually happy, eventually joyous.
Robert Beltran’s extraordinary mixture of internal depth with an angry command, as First Officer Chakotay, gives Janeway’s Sherlock her conscience of an eternally wise Watson. In more ways than one, we here have a resiliant team that would not survive as a singular unit. Even when they are stranded alone on a lonely planet, their almost marital team inspires Chakotay’s Adam to create an unusually resistant Eve. Only toward the end of the episode, when Janeway gives in to her quiet seclusion, are they saved to return to Voyager. Adam and Eve again, willingly unwilling, become Bill and Hillary.
Robert Picardo breathes life into The Doctor in a role that couldn’t be more different than his most famous portrayal as the Cowboy in “Innerspace”. For those of us who followed Voyager through its journey, the holographic doctor’s love of opera he presents created episodes like “Virtuoso”, where Verdi could be introduced to viewers and aliens alike alongside simple songs like “Someone’s in the Kitchen with Dinah”. The Doctor also becomes an author, a husband, a commanding officer and an advocate of human rights. Wonderfully holographic.
I remember seeing Tom Paris-portrayer Robert Duncan McNeill in a Twilight Zone-episode named “A Message from Charity”. Since then, he has come a long way. His matter-of-fact-way and almost functional form of acting grew in time and became a real jewel of storytelling toward the sixth and seventh seasons of Voyager. McNeill’s very American truthfulness is sympathetic and his cute and constant reparté with Harry Kim in the Captain Proton episodes are worth while to say the least.
Jeri Ryan’s looks have been described as worthy of expressions like “Va-Va-Voom”. Although rather sterile a role, she manages to unify moments of tenderness with a cyborg’s hard battle for individuality as “Seven of Nine”. Tender episodes such as “Someone to Watch Over Me” give us that sweet sneak-peeks of viewing other talents emerge other than looks and strong acting. Her duet with Picardo makes the listener wonder what she would do as the vocalist of a big band. Maybe she already is one. If that is the case, a fellow big band vocalist like me would like to hear her perform songs like “Fly Me to the Moon”.
No Star Trek-ship is complete without a Vulcan. So it is actor and Blues-singer Tim Russ that gives us his constant concentration as Tuvok. The moments when Tuvok is allowed to step outside his own controlled boundaries, however, are the most memorable. Russ is allowed to become a tender and angry soul, happy and enthusiastic, and we find much more beneath that controlled enigma.
Shakespearian actor Ethan Phillips turned Talaxian tour-de-force and Janeway-Alter-Ego Neelix into a weirdly wonderful Pumbaa-like caleidoscope of alien and gastronomical wit. I know he has spent years doing Star Trek, but I also know he is a playwright and the owner of a Master’s Degree in Fine Arts from Cornell University.
UCLA-student Garrett Wang became everybody’s favourite little beginner as Ensign Harry Kim. His smart and honest portrayal was believable enough to inspire people to review the episodes in which he played the focal part. He is and remains Voyager’s charming conscience.
Roxann Dawson created a feisty, angry character with a sensitive core in B’Elanna Torres. As with many of the portrayals in Voyager, we see the development with the oncoming years. We, as actors, do grow with our assigments. Roxann presented superior theatrical skills even in her first episode in addition to being what you could label as versatile and supremely interesting.
Jennifer Lien’s work as Kes unified strength with tenderness. Of all the characters in Voyager, hers is the most feminine, the one with the most thespian introspection.
On the surface, Star Trek Voyager is a sitcom, a soap-opera set in space. At a closer glance, it is a deep and heartfelt plea to enjoy the knowledge the ride itself provides. It is the discoverer’s dream, the seafarer’s love for eternal wisdom.
As I said, we are all seekers and we all love to see that other enjoy seeking, as well.
We Wondered … and Found Out!
Surreal Universal Parable
By Charles E.J. Moulton
***
Dear Human,
Beyond the river, there’s a stream. Beyond the stream there’s a rainbow. Beyond the rainbow, there’s a sun. Beyond the sun, there’s a solar system. Beyond the solar system, there’s a galaxy filled with a hundred billion stars. Beyond the galaxy is another galaxy, filled with a hundred billion stars. Beyond that other galaxy are a hundred billion other galaxies filled with a hundred billion stars. Beyond those hundred billion galaxies there’s the wall of the soap bubble all these galaxies are inside. Beyond that soap bubble there is the vortex of space, before another soap bubble can be found with another hundred billion galaxies inside it.
There are a hundred billion of these bubbles around, floating in this space of quantum candy. All these bubbles float together in that raindrop that landed on your window during the storm last Tuesday.
You didn’t realize it, but you wiped out a trillion lives when you washed the windows the next day. It didn’t matter, though. Because time doesn’t really exist, the space-time-continuum just switched all those bubbles to another reality.
That happens through love, really. When someone loves someone, all that can be repaired. The energy sort just exuded out of your heart because of your new girlfriend. So your angels could actually retrieve all those lives and put them all in another bubble in another universe.
But we are worried about the dog that is about to sneeze in front of your house in a few minutes. He doesn’t know that the universe he is living in actually has landed inside the dog biscuit he couldn’t digest.
So we are actually writing to you, dear maker, to consider preventing the dog from sneezing. It will likely cause some sort of galactic storm. All you have to do is to love the dog. Pet it and you will all be saved.
Maybe he then could just somehow breathe out the crumb and we could then let a butterfly by and pick it up. Maybe we even could put it on your window. If you promise not to wash your window for a week, the time of your world will have passed for a thousand generations and will have transported into other realities, anyway.
Let us know what you decide to do.
You don’t realize it, but you are all creators. The aura of your house is a whole universe and it would be nice if you considered which raindrops you wipe away.
Sincerely yours,
God
