The Shrieking Pit by Arthur J. Rees (first published 1918) is another murder mystery set in the UK - this time a remote and wild part of Norfolk. After a man is killed for his money in a seldom-visited inn, suspicion falls on a shell-shocked former soldier who was in the wrong place at the wrong time - but if he didn't commit the murder, who did? All the evidence seems to point to him, and the police have no doubt they've found their man ... except that some things don't add up in the astute mind of celebrated detective Grant Colwyn, who investigates the crime at a deeper level (in more ways than one).
There's a lot of entertainment in this story of crime and detection from an earlier era, reminding us of the competence and cleverness of the successful detective novelists not named "Arthur Conan Doyle" who were writing in the later part of the Sherlock Holmes era. As he investigates the multiple possible interpretations of the crime's circumstantial evidence, Colwyn also has to sort out the mystery of the shrieking pit, supposedly the home of a powerful ghost whose appearance brings death to those who see her. What lies within the pit, and whence the source of the hideous shrieking? You'll have to read the book to find out.
As with The Crowned Skull, which I reviewed yesterday, The Shrieking Pit is quite a romp, though its connections to science fiction or modern fantasy are rather tenuous. Not so for my next post in this series ... when I have a minute or three I'll be writing about one of the standout works of early Australian science fiction, James Morgan Walsh's Vandals of the Void. This is number 3 in the Classic Australian SF series (The Shrieking Pit is number 2). Stay tuned, y'all.
About Me
- Russell Blackford
- Australian philosopher, literary critic, legal scholar, and professional writer. Based in Newcastle, NSW. My latest books are THE TYRANNY OF OPINION: CONFORMITY AND THE FUTURE OF LIBERALISM (2019); AT THE DAWN OF A GREAT TRANSITION: THE QUESTION OF RADICAL ENHANCEMENT (2021); and HOW WE BECAME POST-LIBERAL: THE RISE AND FALL OF TOLERATION (2024).
Sunday, September 19, 2010
Saturday, September 18, 2010
Reading: The Crowned Skull by Fergus Hume
Fergus Hume's The Crowned Skull (originally published 1908) is the first volume in the Classic Australian SF (for "speculative fiction") series from Chimaera Press. To be honest, I think it's an odd choice: there are no science fiction elements in this particular book, and any elements of fantasy are just for colour. A couple of characters dabble in the occult, but it's not clear that their efforts play more than a cosmetic role in the course of events. Though the extraordinarily prolific Fergus Hume did, in fact, influence his peers, and probably helped shape the directions of Australian science fiction with such novels as The Expedition of Captain Flick (1896), I'm not sure why The Crowned Skull, in particular, has been chosen by the editors for this new series.
That said, it's a great yarn which shows only mild signs of dating since it appeared over a century ago. It's a murder mystery set on the coast of Cornwall. As the narrative unfolds, all the evidence tells against Sir Hannibal Trevick - a handsome-but-ageing widower with an aristocratic title to his name but very little money - after his one-time business associate, Bowring, is shot in the head. When they were younger, they were involved in shady dealings in the diamond trade in Africa, and these now come back to haunt poor Sir Hannibal.
One of The Crowned Skull's most engaging aspects is its presentation of two beautiful heroines who don't much like each other: Sir Hannibal's twenty-year-old daughter, Dericka, and his love interest, Anne Stretton, who isn't all that much older. Both are presented as clever, no-nonsense "modern" women who are every bit as capable as any man. Though Sir Hannibal is gradually revealed as being not quite so silly as he first appears, usually having reasons of some kind for his various actions, even if he's secretive about them, he is no match for the sharp, practical intellects of his daughter and his young girlfriend. Fortunately, Dericka has his best interests at heart, as does her impoverished yet omnicompetent lawyer boyfriend, Oswald Forde ... and as does Anne. Or does she?
As the plot twists, turns, and thickens, it can be hard to be sure, chapter by chapter, where the characters' ambitions lie, who is on whose side, and whether Sir Hannibal himself is as innocent as he first seems.
Although Hume must have written this book at great speed - since he dashed off several books each year, and 1908 was not an exception - it is well-constructed and satisfying. Each chapter ends on a note of drama and suspense, and the whole thing is wrapped up neatly (though with a lot of talking from the main villain of the piece). My suspended disbelief came crashing back to earth only a couple of times, most notably when Oswald turns out, at just the right moment and with nothing to set it up for the reader, to be well-trained in ju-jitsu. That must have been the thing to do for a hard-up barrister early last century, waiting to receive some briefs to appear in court: you could use the spare time for a few handy lessons in the martial arts! Such skills are not entirely implausible for a young man like Oswald, I suppose, but the lack of any set-up takes the reader surprise, and it gives the impression, probably correct in this instance, of an author making stuff up as he goes along, without time to revise and integrate his later thoughts earlier in the narrative.
Still, this is book is a lot of fun. If you're interested in the series as a whole, The Crowned Skull will certainly entertain you ... even if its connection to speculative fiction in Australia is actually rather tenuous.
I'll be back soon to talk about the second book in the Classic Australian SF series, The Shrieking Pit, by Arthur J. Rees.
That said, it's a great yarn which shows only mild signs of dating since it appeared over a century ago. It's a murder mystery set on the coast of Cornwall. As the narrative unfolds, all the evidence tells against Sir Hannibal Trevick - a handsome-but-ageing widower with an aristocratic title to his name but very little money - after his one-time business associate, Bowring, is shot in the head. When they were younger, they were involved in shady dealings in the diamond trade in Africa, and these now come back to haunt poor Sir Hannibal.
One of The Crowned Skull's most engaging aspects is its presentation of two beautiful heroines who don't much like each other: Sir Hannibal's twenty-year-old daughter, Dericka, and his love interest, Anne Stretton, who isn't all that much older. Both are presented as clever, no-nonsense "modern" women who are every bit as capable as any man. Though Sir Hannibal is gradually revealed as being not quite so silly as he first appears, usually having reasons of some kind for his various actions, even if he's secretive about them, he is no match for the sharp, practical intellects of his daughter and his young girlfriend. Fortunately, Dericka has his best interests at heart, as does her impoverished yet omnicompetent lawyer boyfriend, Oswald Forde ... and as does Anne. Or does she?
As the plot twists, turns, and thickens, it can be hard to be sure, chapter by chapter, where the characters' ambitions lie, who is on whose side, and whether Sir Hannibal himself is as innocent as he first seems.
Although Hume must have written this book at great speed - since he dashed off several books each year, and 1908 was not an exception - it is well-constructed and satisfying. Each chapter ends on a note of drama and suspense, and the whole thing is wrapped up neatly (though with a lot of talking from the main villain of the piece). My suspended disbelief came crashing back to earth only a couple of times, most notably when Oswald turns out, at just the right moment and with nothing to set it up for the reader, to be well-trained in ju-jitsu. That must have been the thing to do for a hard-up barrister early last century, waiting to receive some briefs to appear in court: you could use the spare time for a few handy lessons in the martial arts! Such skills are not entirely implausible for a young man like Oswald, I suppose, but the lack of any set-up takes the reader surprise, and it gives the impression, probably correct in this instance, of an author making stuff up as he goes along, without time to revise and integrate his later thoughts earlier in the narrative.
Still, this is book is a lot of fun. If you're interested in the series as a whole, The Crowned Skull will certainly entertain you ... even if its connection to speculative fiction in Australia is actually rather tenuous.
I'll be back soon to talk about the second book in the Classic Australian SF series, The Shrieking Pit, by Arthur J. Rees.
Friday, September 17, 2010
Classic Australian SF
Chimaera Publications has recently republished a series of six classic speculative fiction novels dating from the 1880s to the 1930s. I think this is a wonderful idea and wish the project well, though the titles chosen may not all be ideal for the purpose).
Over the next week or two I'll post some reviews of these works. In order, the series is:
1. The Crowned Skull by Fergus Hume.
2. The Shrieking Pit by Arthur J. Rees.
3. Vandals of the Void by James Morgan Walsh.
4. A Bid for Fortune or Dr Nikola's Vendetta by Guy Boothby.
5. A Week in the Future by Catherine Helen Spence.
6. Out of the Silence by Erle Cox.
Over the next week or two I'll post some reviews of these works. In order, the series is:
1. The Crowned Skull by Fergus Hume.
2. The Shrieking Pit by Arthur J. Rees.
3. Vandals of the Void by James Morgan Walsh.
4. A Bid for Fortune or Dr Nikola's Vendetta by Guy Boothby.
5. A Week in the Future by Catherine Helen Spence.
6. Out of the Silence by Erle Cox.
Causing offence to Catholics and atheists
Nor should they: generally speaking, mere offence is not a good reason to ban speech and expression. In so far as the above image makes a visual pun in advertising the product (a brand of ice cream), it's amusing and artistic. To the extent that it expresses derision towards Catholicism, that is the kind of speech that should be especially protected - we should be free to express our feelings about powerful institutions such as the Catholic Church and its doctrines, and it's nice to know that even advertisements for ice cream can be good for something.
The Pope should, generally, be able to say what he wants, however obnoxious and meretricious. Thus, I defend his legal right to say such outrageous things as this:
Even in our own lifetime, we can recall how Britain and her leaders stood against a Nazi tyranny that wished to eradicate God from society and denied our common humanity to many, especially the Jews, who were thought unfit to live. I also recall the regime’s attitude to Christian pastors and religious who spoke the truth in love, opposed the Nazis and paid for that opposition with their lives. As we reflect on the sobering lessons of the atheist extremism of the twentieth century, let us never forget how the exclusion of God, religion and virtue from public life leads ultimately to a truncated vision of man and of society and thus to a “reductive vision of the person and his destiny” (Caritas in Veritate, 29).
He should not be able to destroy the lives of individuals by saying, for example, "Stanley Snark is a Nazi" or "Betty Boojum is a pedophile." But he should be free to deride or criticise atheism, even if he says despicable and ludicrous things in the process. It's well known - and should be uncontroversial among reasonable people - that Nazism was not an atheistic philosophy, and, indeed, that its extreme anti-Semitism was grounded more in Christian history and specifically Catholic doctrine than in anything that Hitler might have gleaned from the great secular tradition of Epicurus, David Hume, and John Stuart Mill. The Pope should be legally free to make such bigoted and deceptive speeches, but he should also expect to be repaid with outspoken criticism and outright mockery of his organisation and its cruel moral doctrines.
Meanwhile, the UK's ban on the relatively harmless ice cream advertisment should be lifted. There is a good chance that it would not survive legal challenge, especially if taken all the way to the European Court of Human Rights (which has been strong on defending such images). But it should not come to that. Good sense should prevail, and the Advertising Standards Authority should withdraw its ban.
Thursday, September 16, 2010
Moderation still on
Although I'm back home and at a computer screen more often, I've decided to leave moderation on for now. It's not ideal - people overseas, in particular, will not always be able to see other comments before commenting themselves. But maybe we can get by with the slight inconvenience. If it turns out to be too difficult over time, I'll consider moving to a platform with more functionality. Meanwhile, moderation does enable me to weed out spam, death threats, crazy rants, etc. That's kind of nice, especially when the death threats mention not only me but also members of my family.
I'll publish legitimate comments as quickly as possible, but if you're in a very different time zone (as most of my readers seem to be) forgive me if there's some delay.
I'll publish legitimate comments as quickly as possible, but if you're in a very different time zone (as most of my readers seem to be) forgive me if there's some delay.
Comic-book time: Spider-Man, Mary Jane, and all (2)
Once again, I don't really have a dog in the fight about whether it was a good idea to get Spider-Man and Mary Jane unmarried, or even whether or not the method adopted was aesthetically pleasing. Although I did read Spider-Man when I was a kid, that's a long time ago, and I'm not especially a fan of the franchise - in fact, I still haven't seen the third movie. I doubtless will sooner or later, but I haven't got around to it yet. I'm more interested in Marvel's thinking behind this ... and the opposed thoughts and of the many angry fans who have expressed feelings of grief and betrayal. This seems like a teachable moment in the field of cultural studies. (I'd have a more emotionally-invested response to a similarly controversial story arc in X-Men, and probably will some time in the future.)
To understand how it all works, and my thoughts that follow, you need to have a sense of Marvel's floating timeline policy. All stories, when they are first published and read, take place more or less now, i.e. at the time of publication; however, all inevitably drift into the past, and all inevitably have to be silently retconned to at least some extent if only because of decor changes and the like which lead to anachronisms in older issues; and the current Marvel timeline from the events of Fantastic Four #1 (published in 1961) to now is 13 years. Thus, the Marvel superhero universe as we know it got underway in the readers' world in 1961 but the initial events - involving the space journey of Reed Richards, Ben Grimm, Sue Storm, and Johnny Storm - must currently be thought of as happening in 1997. That date will keep changing. Marvel is currently leaning against allowing the 13-year period to increase, though that will probably cause it some problems and I expect that it eventually will be allowed to increase to some extent.
In 1987, Marvel depicted the marriage of Peter Parker and his girlfriend Mary Jane Watson. Within the diegesis, this happened just a few years ago. Peter was only a teenager when he was bitten by the famous radioactive spider (depicted in 1963) and he is now supposedly in his mid-20s. He must have been in his early twenties when Marvel married him off. We might well ask, in retrospect, what Marvel thought it was doing when it took that decision, but I suppose it was thought at the time that it was a great wish-fulfilment thing to marry our harried hero to a beautiful, sexy, and surprisingly resourceful actress and model.
Since then, many fans of the franchise have grown up in a world where the marriage of Peter and Mary Jane is long-established within the original Marvel continuity, and the adventures of the couple together have been standard fare. The two heroes were seemingly inseparable. For longer-standing fans, Peter's character had developed well beyond what it had been in the 1960s, when he was portrayed as a teenage boy with all the associated growing-up troubles. He was a "nerd" (note my inverted commas!) who was continually picked on by bullies, though obviously, after the radioactive spider bite, he was well able to punch the lights out of any high-school bully if he wanted to. The appeal of this to bright teenage boys is obvious. He had many of their problems ... but also a secret identity as a costumed, superpowered crimefighter (far from the most powerful character in the Marvel Universe but one of the coolest). It was some kind of reward to loyal readers when he got the beautiful girl, and the franchise has continued successfully since then: even if it looked like a mistake to give him such a traditional home life (albeit an uber-glamorous version), the Spider-Man comic books continued to be successful over the next couple of decades.
So what was Marvel thinking, making another drastic alteration in 2007 to a successful product that seemed to be well-received by the fans? Note the means used: a powerful demon, Mephisto, offers Spider-Man the continued life of his elderly Aunt May, on her death bed, in exchange for his marriage. Peter and Mary Jane agree, and Mephisto engineers things so that time is changed and they never did get married several years back, but just lived together. Eventually, they actually break up, so Peter is now not only a bachelor but also decidedly single, able to have other love interests.
The reasoning is that Marvel wanted to be able to offer a Spider-Man who is not "old" to future generations of readers - to a young teenager, at least, being married automatically makes you old even if you are only 25 or 26 or whatever. They didn't want Peter and Mary Jane to fight and get divorced, because being divorced carries even more stigma of being "old", so it was necessary to create a situation in which the marriage retrospectively did not happen at all. The past has changed, the marriage is retrospectively erased, and no one remembers it (except, I suppose, Mephisto) because it did not happen. Marvel sees youth as of the essence of Spider-Man's character, and the senior editorial staff clearly want to be able to write soap-opera stories of a kind that would be impossible as long as he is in a faithful monogamous relationship. Whether all this works remains to be seen over time, but it does mean that Spider-Man can now be written in a way much more like it was back in the 1960s and 1970s.
Of course, those fans who are angry see the destruction of a status quo in which they were emotionally invested, and they see the step as retrograde, reversing years of character development (I sense that some of them would have been happier if a series of events over time had produced some estrangement between Peter and Mary Jane and they'd eventually have ended up divorced; that is, of course, an all-too-realistic scenario compared to the pact-with-
One interesting point about all this is that Marvel has been very astute in realising that 26 is the new 16. Twenty years ago, and certainly forty years ago, the cultural meaning of being a mid-20s man was very different. You were expected to be in a stable relationship by that time, well into a long-term career that was supposed to be your only career (though times had already changed on the ground), and certainly you'd have moved out of home and away from your parents. These days, you can be in your early or mid 20s and still be living at home, or certainly turning up on your parents' door from time to time, maybe still figuring out what career to pursue, and possibly still playing something like the teenage dating and mating game. Though teenagers are more precocious than ever, the effect is that something like late-teenage life has now been extended at both ends.
Thus it's become viable for Marvel to make a decision to present Spider-Man in a way fairly like his original incarnation, while also presenting him as a decade or so older than when he first appeared and became such a popular character. Like it or not, that's very smart, and I, at least, find it interesting to see a major comics group latching on to such a sociological point. The move that's been made in "One More Day" and "One Moment In Time" may lose Marvel a lot of readers in the short term (though the sheer notoriety of those arcs will also bring sales), but the opportunity is now there to gain new and younger fans with an updated version of more classic Spider-Man stories - which is precisely what has been happening for the past two or three years.
Note that Marvel has made a strategic decision here with perhaps its best-known character - it won't necessarily be undoing the marriages of any other characters. Youth and its problems are not of the essence of Storm or the Black Panther, so their marriage is probably safe.
While I'm impressed by the sociological smarts shown by Marvel, and I think this massive retcon could be a worthwhile commercial risk - possibly even allowing for better stories in the longer term - I'm also intrigued by the idea of what a comics franchise, or anything similar such as a long-running TV show (Doctor Who, anybody?), owes to loyal fans who may be invested in aspects of character development or other points of continuity. Marvel insists that no one is entitled that anything stay the same, no matter how invested fans may be in it. If you are entertained on each occasion when you buy the product, nothing further is owed to you - so the argument goes.
There's some force in that, I suppose, but do the creators of an ongoing storyline such as Spider-Man (comics version) or Doctor Who (TV version) really owe nothing more to loyal fans or, in some sense, to the general culture? In the particular case in point, Marvel could say that this is not character derailment: it is merely returning its character to something more like the original conception (and thus also more like the movies), so it is not breaking any implied trust put in it by the readers.
Obviously, however, many loyal readers of the comics (as opposed to the separate diegesis of the movies) don't see it that way. They believe they are investing in an ongoing story whose ending they may never see but which at least involves incremental developments along the way, in which characters and situations change and what comes later builds step-by-step on what has come before. When a loyal fan buys a new issue, he or she expects to see some sort of plausible progression, and much of the entertainment value is delivered to those fans by skilled presentation of established characters, getting their voices and attitudes (as established to date) correct. If something as well-established as Spider-Man's marriage is written out without a fairly long process of attitudinal changes brought on by the characters' depicted experiences, it can seem like a cheat.
As I say, I don't have a dog in this fight, but the attitudes taken by the fans are at least understandable, and anyway I think this is a fascinating situation - as I said, a teachable moment.
I mentioned above that the 13-year duration of Marvel's main timeline will probably cause some problems in the future. One is that the 13 years has already been mentioned in one recent issue of Fantastic Four, so a time will come when many, many issues have appeared long after the 13 years has passed. Perhaps this will be ignored, but perhaps not.
Another is that keeping all the character fairly young (with even Reed Richards only in his early 40s) has the effect that very young characters such as Reed/Sue's kid, Franklin Richards, can't grow up (though versions from the future can be introduced now and then). If Marvel ages these very young characters, soap-opera style, without extending the duration of the timeline, then the consistency of the diegesis, which has been maintained to a considerable extent, will break down. There are already characters who seem be too old for their histories, such as the group of young villains who call themselves the Bastards of Evil, though Marvel is at least aware of the problem and has even alluded to it in-world. In any event, there will always be characters for whom further character development means getting older - but that then puts pressure on the age of characters like Spider-Man, whom Marvel would ideally like to keep forever young. Perhaps further changes in society will allow for new possibilities over the coming decades (if 26 is now the new 16, what will 36 be ... come 2050 or 2060?).
So, no strong opinions here - but some interesting phenomena and particularly some fascinating relationships between popular culture and the society that partly shapes it and in which it is received. I don't have a lot to add for now, but all this will be worth watching over the next few decades. I hope that teachers of cultural studies are onto what's happening here; it's a good opportunity for students to get into discussion and debate over aspects of popular culture and society that tie in with nuts-and-bolts issues about the workings of pop-culture narratives.
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Back to Newcastle tomorrow - well, technically today
Since it's after midnight, I'll be going back to Newcastle today ... technically speaking. But first some sleep.
The trip to Melbourne ended tonight with a very, um, lively gig. I gave a talk to the local Atheist Society about living in a world without objective values/morality, putting a similar line to that which I've given in a number of talks in the past to other forums, though with a different emphasis that involved some new arguments. I obviously pushed a few buttons this time, though, as some of the audience members (well, one in particular) used question time in ways that I found objectionable. Somebody later accused me of having a short fuse, but question time is a time for asking questions, not for making speeches that would be better as infuriated blog posts, berating the speaker for dishonesty or other personal failings, refusing to listen to answers, asking questions on totally different topics, and the like. Beyond a certain point, I don't have to put up with this ... and I didn't.
My only regret is that some listeners thought I was angry: actually, I wasn't particularly. I was annoyed at the behaviour of the last questioner in particular, but I felt quite calm. But people who come along to a talk don't get to be obnoxious to the speaker in question time without receiving a firm response. Once again, it's a time for asking questions. Objections can be made, but they should be expressed thoughtfully and politely. If I'm asked a question, or an objection is put to me in the proper spirit, I'll always give the best and most honest answer I can - not a merely rhetorical one - and I'll frankly admit it if I don't understand what is being asked or if I don't see a clear answer. I'm there to consider and discuss, as well as to put my own viewpoint. But if I'm berated, cut off when I try to give answers, or personally attacked, I'll give the questioner short shrift. Some people need to learn a few manners.
The trip to Melbourne ended tonight with a very, um, lively gig. I gave a talk to the local Atheist Society about living in a world without objective values/morality, putting a similar line to that which I've given in a number of talks in the past to other forums, though with a different emphasis that involved some new arguments. I obviously pushed a few buttons this time, though, as some of the audience members (well, one in particular) used question time in ways that I found objectionable. Somebody later accused me of having a short fuse, but question time is a time for asking questions, not for making speeches that would be better as infuriated blog posts, berating the speaker for dishonesty or other personal failings, refusing to listen to answers, asking questions on totally different topics, and the like. Beyond a certain point, I don't have to put up with this ... and I didn't.
My only regret is that some listeners thought I was angry: actually, I wasn't particularly. I was annoyed at the behaviour of the last questioner in particular, but I felt quite calm. But people who come along to a talk don't get to be obnoxious to the speaker in question time without receiving a firm response. Once again, it's a time for asking questions. Objections can be made, but they should be expressed thoughtfully and politely. If I'm asked a question, or an objection is put to me in the proper spirit, I'll always give the best and most honest answer I can - not a merely rhetorical one - and I'll frankly admit it if I don't understand what is being asked or if I don't see a clear answer. I'm there to consider and discuss, as well as to put my own viewpoint. But if I'm berated, cut off when I try to give answers, or personally attacked, I'll give the questioner short shrift. Some people need to learn a few manners.
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Comic-book time: Spider-Man, Mary Jane, and all (1)
I've been thinking a lot lately about the general issue of series or franchise continuity, which was certainly on my mind when I wrote a number of tie-in novels some years ago now. It arose again in one of my panels at the World Science Fiction Convention (though the latter was mainly about Arthur C. Clarke and the various continuations of the book and movie versions of 2001: A Space Odyssey).
Continuity issues become especially interesting in comics, where the same characters may be used in the same essential form over a period of many decades. To take an extreme example, Superman was created in 1938. Even if we assume he doesn't age beyond a certain point, the merely-human characters around him should age, so why isn't Lois Lane in her 90s by now? And yet, we want to be able to tell stories about these more-or-less mythic characters indefinitely into the future - don't we?
Frankly, I have no understanding of the methods that DC has used to solve this problem, though - setting Superman aside - it has often involved new characters and younger characters taking on the identities of costumed heroes as older characters retire. If anyone can give me a concise explanation of how it hangs together, or point me to a link that does so, I'll be delighted.
I do, however, think I understand how Marvel Comics handles these sorts of issues, and I've been sharpening up my understanding by reading what Tom Brevoort (one of the Marvel executive editors) has to say on his formspring page, where he has answered thousands of questions about how things work at Marvel. This provides outsiders with a fascinating insight into the way Marvel's continuity is shaped by commercial and broadly aesthetic considerations, which are not easily separated, and Brevoort certainly deserves plenty of kudos for taking on such a Herculean task (especially given the rudeness and obsessiveness of many of his interlocutors!).
If I've got it right, it basically works like this. First, all stories are taken to be happening pretty much now, i.e. at the time they released to the public. Exceptions to this are rare and minor: sometimes it is necessary for storylines to get slightly out of kilter with each other, as when a story arc that is told over a period of many months covers only a few days' events or if there is some special reason to jump six months within an issue or between issues. Thus, different books released in the same month may describe events that are not at exactly the same time. All the same, we normally assume that a new story is happening "now". Second, the events of Fantastic Four # 1, which was published in 1961 and began the main Marvel diegesis or continuity as we currently think of it, took place about 13 years ago. At the moment, therefore, they took place in about 1997. Back in the 1980s, they were thought of as having taken place only about, say, 7 years ago, so in 1987 we might have thought of the events of Fantastic Four # 1 as having happened in roughly 1980. However, the gap between those events and "now" is not currently increasing; thus, come 2020 we'll still be thinking of the events of FF # 1 as having taken place "13 years ago", which will then be about 2007.
As a general rule of thumb, we can think of the number of years ago that an event took place within the diegesis as about one quarter of the number of years since the publication of the comic in which the event was described. So an event described in an issue published around 1990 took place about 5 years ago. This is very malleable, though, and can't be applied mechanically. All of these "abouts" are important; Marvel doesn't want to be pinned down.
But note that the same event will probably still have happened only about 5 years ago come, say, 2015 (edit: for complicated reasons this might not be quite right). Also, with the 13-year gap not increasing, a time will come when we have to say, as our rule of thumb: one fifth of a year within the continuity per year in the real-world publication schedule. And so on.
Marvel sometimes likes to make topical allusions in its stories, such as referring to whoever is the US president at a time when a comic is published, but these sorts of references are considered to be automatically retconned away in the longer term. So, an issue published in 1977, when Jimmy Carter was taking over as US president, now has to be thought of as not containing references to Carter - Carter should not be referred to in a flash-back, for example. What is important is merely that the characters interacted in some analogous situation. Occasionally, there will be more explicit retcons, so that a character who supposedly fought in the Korean War will later be said to have fought in Vietnam; a character who supposedly fought in Vietnam might later be said to have fought in the first Gulf War - and so on. There's no need to republish or even revisit the story: it's sufficient for a later story to update later information. This places a lot of events that were mentioned a long time ago in a state of flux, but for the writers it leaves the discipline that characters remain essentially the same (however that is interpreted). We're supposed to think that something analogous took place, whether or not the detail ever gets specified; writers can't just play with the net down.
Occasionally there are characters whose histories are very closely tied to twentieth-century events. For example, it's essential to the original Captain America, Steve Rogers, that he fought in World War Two. However, Rogers retains his relative youthfulness because he spent 20 years in suspended animation, frozen in a block of ice. Um, actually the original 20 years now has to be thought of as much longer: over 50 years. It will continue to increase over time. Something similar applies to various other characters who are kept physically young by some narrative device or another, despite their lives being linked to historical events. Depending on the narrative device used, new problems can still open up, but Marvel will doubtless solve these as and when they become sufficiently egregious - if, indeed, anyone cares anymore. An obvious approach is to "reveal" that a character spent time in suspended animation at some point or points (as with Bucky Barnes, who has become the new Captain America). Other approaches, I suppose, could be the "discovery" that a character travelled forward in time at some point or maybe engaged in some space travel at relativistic velocities (as seen in Planet of the Apes). So far, Marvel has generally managed to avoid these sorts of scenarios, but there are at least a few characters for whom they may become necessary one day.
The general effect is that no character can be more than 12-13 years older than at the time of Fantastic Four # 1 or such later time as when the character was first introduced. There can be isolated exceptions, as when a character such as Hope Summers travels in time, grows older in a different time period, then returns to "now". But if we assume that Reed Richards was about 30 in FF # 1 he is now about 43 (he did have a 40th birthday at one point). Sue Storm may have been about 19 at the time, in which case she's in her early 30s. Johnny Storm was a younger teenager, and is now still in his 20s. Ben Grimm may have been a similar age to Reed, in which case he's also in his early 40s, though I have no idea whether he ages physically in his rocklike form as the Thing (if Marvel has ever told us, I missed it).
It's a bit vague with the X-Men, with some inconsistent information floating around about how old they were at the start, but if Cyclops was 18 at the start he's now about 30. Beast should be slightly older and the others slightly younger (Iceman may be about the same age as Spider-Man, whom I'll get to below). Marvel has been inconsistent with Emma Frost who may be anything from late 20s to mid-30s. Wolverine is over 100, but he scarcely ages compared to us. Marvel's "first mutant", Namor, also ages far more slowly than we do, so it doesn't matter that he's now 90 - he's still youthful.
Magneto's age at the time when he first appeared in (Uncanny) X-Men # 1 (1963) may require some ironing out one day, since he didn't appear very old ... but it's essential to his character that he was born in the 1920s. In any event he's physiologically about 40, having been rejuvenated to his physical peak or "prime" not that long ago within the continuity, and his raw power level has recently been restored to what it was at 20. Marvel may also have to address the situation of his children, Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch, one day: they are seemingly about 30, but as time goes on they must have been born more than 30 years ago. I'm not sure where I saw this, but some fans have suggested that they spent some time in suspended animation as part of the High Evolutionary's experiments. That's kind of neat, but who knows how Marvel will eventually handle it ... if the company ever even sees a need to? There's also, I think, a problem with retconning away Professor X's birth relatively early in the 20th century, given his connection to Israel in its early period.
This brings me to Spider-Man, perhaps the most iconic Marvel character of all. When he was first introduced in 1962, in Amazing Fantasy # 15, Spider-Man was in high school. With Marvel time being so malleable, that was maybe 10 or 12 years ago. Depending on exactly how old he was then, he is now in his mid- to late 20s, and Marvel prefers the idea of "mid". I guess, for the sake of argument, we can plausibly think of Spider-Man as, hmmm, say, 26.
In 1987, Marvel married him off to (one of) his childhood sweetheart(s), Mary Jane Watson. Mary Jane is a beautiful and successful model, and I guess it seemed like a good idea at the time to give Spider-Man, a.k.a. Peter Parker, a glamorous life with such a spectacular life partner. A bit of wish-fulfilment fantasy for the fanbase. But we now have to think of Peter and Mary Jane as being in their very early 20s when the marriage took place. In recent (real-world) years, Marvel decided that it is too limiting to have Spider-Man married: it cuts out a lot of possible storylines and makes the character appear "old", at least to contemporary teenagers ... a demographic that he is emphatically supposed to appeal to. The Marvel movers and shakers found a way to retcon out the marriage, elaborating this at length in a more recent story arc, and have even managed to cut him lose from having Mary Jane as his girlfriend. This leaves open other love interests for Peter Parker, and the possibility of all kinds of soap-opera plots going into the future.
There has been plenty of outrage from the fans about this decision, as well as some support. The powers that be at Marvel stand by the decision. They defend the aesthetic merits of the story, but more importantly they insist on the need to free up the character in a way that preserves what they see as its original essence ... and keeps Spider-Man attractive to a young demographic into the indefinite future. A clear implication here is that they want to keep him in his mid-20s forever, or at least indefinitely, and the idea seems to be that the current gap of 13 years since Fantastic Four #1 will not be opened up further any time soon. It's about as far as they want their iconic characters to age.
That has other implications, though. It's okay, I guess, that Reed Richards will always be, say, 42 or 43 ... but is it so okay if we never get to see Reed and Sue's son, Franklin, age beyond 8, or if little Luna Maximoff, the daughter of Quicksilver and Crystal, never gets beyond whatever she is at the moment (about 6 or 7)? There's a certain emotional pay-off in watching characters get older and develop in new directions. If Marvel doesn't want to do that, right now, it raises questions about what we want from comics.
I don't really have a dog in the fight over whether Marvel did the right thing in retconning away Spider-Man's marriage. I'm going to say some more about it in my next post - in a couple of days - but more importantly for me the argument raises interesting issues about popular culture and our changing society. Most of what I've said above is just to provide the background to that discussion. See you later in the week, and I'll see if I can make all the above detail pay off in an interesting way!
Continuity issues become especially interesting in comics, where the same characters may be used in the same essential form over a period of many decades. To take an extreme example, Superman was created in 1938. Even if we assume he doesn't age beyond a certain point, the merely-human characters around him should age, so why isn't Lois Lane in her 90s by now? And yet, we want to be able to tell stories about these more-or-less mythic characters indefinitely into the future - don't we?
Frankly, I have no understanding of the methods that DC has used to solve this problem, though - setting Superman aside - it has often involved new characters and younger characters taking on the identities of costumed heroes as older characters retire. If anyone can give me a concise explanation of how it hangs together, or point me to a link that does so, I'll be delighted.
I do, however, think I understand how Marvel Comics handles these sorts of issues, and I've been sharpening up my understanding by reading what Tom Brevoort (one of the Marvel executive editors) has to say on his formspring page, where he has answered thousands of questions about how things work at Marvel. This provides outsiders with a fascinating insight into the way Marvel's continuity is shaped by commercial and broadly aesthetic considerations, which are not easily separated, and Brevoort certainly deserves plenty of kudos for taking on such a Herculean task (especially given the rudeness and obsessiveness of many of his interlocutors!).
If I've got it right, it basically works like this. First, all stories are taken to be happening pretty much now, i.e. at the time they released to the public. Exceptions to this are rare and minor: sometimes it is necessary for storylines to get slightly out of kilter with each other, as when a story arc that is told over a period of many months covers only a few days' events or if there is some special reason to jump six months within an issue or between issues. Thus, different books released in the same month may describe events that are not at exactly the same time. All the same, we normally assume that a new story is happening "now". Second, the events of Fantastic Four # 1, which was published in 1961 and began the main Marvel diegesis or continuity as we currently think of it, took place about 13 years ago. At the moment, therefore, they took place in about 1997. Back in the 1980s, they were thought of as having taken place only about, say, 7 years ago, so in 1987 we might have thought of the events of Fantastic Four # 1 as having happened in roughly 1980. However, the gap between those events and "now" is not currently increasing; thus, come 2020 we'll still be thinking of the events of FF # 1 as having taken place "13 years ago", which will then be about 2007.
As a general rule of thumb, we can think of the number of years ago that an event took place within the diegesis as about one quarter of the number of years since the publication of the comic in which the event was described. So an event described in an issue published around 1990 took place about 5 years ago. This is very malleable, though, and can't be applied mechanically. All of these "abouts" are important; Marvel doesn't want to be pinned down.
But note that the same event will probably still have happened only about 5 years ago come, say, 2015 (edit: for complicated reasons this might not be quite right). Also, with the 13-year gap not increasing, a time will come when we have to say, as our rule of thumb: one fifth of a year within the continuity per year in the real-world publication schedule. And so on.
Marvel sometimes likes to make topical allusions in its stories, such as referring to whoever is the US president at a time when a comic is published, but these sorts of references are considered to be automatically retconned away in the longer term. So, an issue published in 1977, when Jimmy Carter was taking over as US president, now has to be thought of as not containing references to Carter - Carter should not be referred to in a flash-back, for example. What is important is merely that the characters interacted in some analogous situation. Occasionally, there will be more explicit retcons, so that a character who supposedly fought in the Korean War will later be said to have fought in Vietnam; a character who supposedly fought in Vietnam might later be said to have fought in the first Gulf War - and so on. There's no need to republish or even revisit the story: it's sufficient for a later story to update later information. This places a lot of events that were mentioned a long time ago in a state of flux, but for the writers it leaves the discipline that characters remain essentially the same (however that is interpreted). We're supposed to think that something analogous took place, whether or not the detail ever gets specified; writers can't just play with the net down.
Occasionally there are characters whose histories are very closely tied to twentieth-century events. For example, it's essential to the original Captain America, Steve Rogers, that he fought in World War Two. However, Rogers retains his relative youthfulness because he spent 20 years in suspended animation, frozen in a block of ice. Um, actually the original 20 years now has to be thought of as much longer: over 50 years. It will continue to increase over time. Something similar applies to various other characters who are kept physically young by some narrative device or another, despite their lives being linked to historical events. Depending on the narrative device used, new problems can still open up, but Marvel will doubtless solve these as and when they become sufficiently egregious - if, indeed, anyone cares anymore. An obvious approach is to "reveal" that a character spent time in suspended animation at some point or points (as with Bucky Barnes, who has become the new Captain America). Other approaches, I suppose, could be the "discovery" that a character travelled forward in time at some point or maybe engaged in some space travel at relativistic velocities (as seen in Planet of the Apes). So far, Marvel has generally managed to avoid these sorts of scenarios, but there are at least a few characters for whom they may become necessary one day.
The general effect is that no character can be more than 12-13 years older than at the time of Fantastic Four # 1 or such later time as when the character was first introduced. There can be isolated exceptions, as when a character such as Hope Summers travels in time, grows older in a different time period, then returns to "now". But if we assume that Reed Richards was about 30 in FF # 1 he is now about 43 (he did have a 40th birthday at one point). Sue Storm may have been about 19 at the time, in which case she's in her early 30s. Johnny Storm was a younger teenager, and is now still in his 20s. Ben Grimm may have been a similar age to Reed, in which case he's also in his early 40s, though I have no idea whether he ages physically in his rocklike form as the Thing (if Marvel has ever told us, I missed it).
It's a bit vague with the X-Men, with some inconsistent information floating around about how old they were at the start, but if Cyclops was 18 at the start he's now about 30. Beast should be slightly older and the others slightly younger (Iceman may be about the same age as Spider-Man, whom I'll get to below). Marvel has been inconsistent with Emma Frost who may be anything from late 20s to mid-30s. Wolverine is over 100, but he scarcely ages compared to us. Marvel's "first mutant", Namor, also ages far more slowly than we do, so it doesn't matter that he's now 90 - he's still youthful.
Magneto's age at the time when he first appeared in (Uncanny) X-Men # 1 (1963) may require some ironing out one day, since he didn't appear very old ... but it's essential to his character that he was born in the 1920s. In any event he's physiologically about 40, having been rejuvenated to his physical peak or "prime" not that long ago within the continuity, and his raw power level has recently been restored to what it was at 20. Marvel may also have to address the situation of his children, Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch, one day: they are seemingly about 30, but as time goes on they must have been born more than 30 years ago. I'm not sure where I saw this, but some fans have suggested that they spent some time in suspended animation as part of the High Evolutionary's experiments. That's kind of neat, but who knows how Marvel will eventually handle it ... if the company ever even sees a need to? There's also, I think, a problem with retconning away Professor X's birth relatively early in the 20th century, given his connection to Israel in its early period.
This brings me to Spider-Man, perhaps the most iconic Marvel character of all. When he was first introduced in 1962, in Amazing Fantasy # 15, Spider-Man was in high school. With Marvel time being so malleable, that was maybe 10 or 12 years ago. Depending on exactly how old he was then, he is now in his mid- to late 20s, and Marvel prefers the idea of "mid". I guess, for the sake of argument, we can plausibly think of Spider-Man as, hmmm, say, 26.
In 1987, Marvel married him off to (one of) his childhood sweetheart(s), Mary Jane Watson. Mary Jane is a beautiful and successful model, and I guess it seemed like a good idea at the time to give Spider-Man, a.k.a. Peter Parker, a glamorous life with such a spectacular life partner. A bit of wish-fulfilment fantasy for the fanbase. But we now have to think of Peter and Mary Jane as being in their very early 20s when the marriage took place. In recent (real-world) years, Marvel decided that it is too limiting to have Spider-Man married: it cuts out a lot of possible storylines and makes the character appear "old", at least to contemporary teenagers ... a demographic that he is emphatically supposed to appeal to. The Marvel movers and shakers found a way to retcon out the marriage, elaborating this at length in a more recent story arc, and have even managed to cut him lose from having Mary Jane as his girlfriend. This leaves open other love interests for Peter Parker, and the possibility of all kinds of soap-opera plots going into the future.
There has been plenty of outrage from the fans about this decision, as well as some support. The powers that be at Marvel stand by the decision. They defend the aesthetic merits of the story, but more importantly they insist on the need to free up the character in a way that preserves what they see as its original essence ... and keeps Spider-Man attractive to a young demographic into the indefinite future. A clear implication here is that they want to keep him in his mid-20s forever, or at least indefinitely, and the idea seems to be that the current gap of 13 years since Fantastic Four #1 will not be opened up further any time soon. It's about as far as they want their iconic characters to age.
That has other implications, though. It's okay, I guess, that Reed Richards will always be, say, 42 or 43 ... but is it so okay if we never get to see Reed and Sue's son, Franklin, age beyond 8, or if little Luna Maximoff, the daughter of Quicksilver and Crystal, never gets beyond whatever she is at the moment (about 6 or 7)? There's a certain emotional pay-off in watching characters get older and develop in new directions. If Marvel doesn't want to do that, right now, it raises questions about what we want from comics.
I don't really have a dog in the fight over whether Marvel did the right thing in retconning away Spider-Man's marriage. I'm going to say some more about it in my next post - in a couple of days - but more importantly for me the argument raises interesting issues about popular culture and our changing society. Most of what I've said above is just to provide the background to that discussion. See you later in the week, and I'll see if I can make all the above detail pay off in an interesting way!
Monday, September 13, 2010
Back from Singularity Summit AU
I spoke earlier this evening at the Singularity Summit AU, which proved to be an enjoyable gig. My slightly (not entirely) sceptical talk about mind uploading seemed to have the audience interested, and it certainly produced a lot of discussion. I assume that Melbourne is now full of people who can't sleep because they're tossing and turning, trying to figure out whether - or in what circumstances - they would really enjoy the fruits of being uploaded into advanced computer hardware. I promised at the start of the talk to do my best to add value to the ongoing arguments about this, even if I couldn't resolve them definitively. Hopefully, that happened.
Thanks to the ghost of the late Bernard Williams, who inspired the questions that I was throwing out about when you'd fear something that was likely (or threatened) to happen to your uploaded self. If you don't fear threatened bad things that will happen to the upload, such as being tortured, I suggested, you also can't look forward to the upload's expected experiences if they are of something good, such as a long life revelling in the exercise of super-dooper cognitive powers. (In any event, I don't see why that symmetry doesn't work.)
Jenny and I had a pleasant dinner afterwards with Jeremy Byrne, whom I hadn't caught up with in ages. As one of the editors of Eidolon, Jeremy published "Lucent Carbon", which I consider the best of my stories about issues to do with uploading.
I have one more gig to do in Melbourne before driving back to Newcastle on Wednesday.
Thanks to the ghost of the late Bernard Williams, who inspired the questions that I was throwing out about when you'd fear something that was likely (or threatened) to happen to your uploaded self. If you don't fear threatened bad things that will happen to the upload, such as being tortured, I suggested, you also can't look forward to the upload's expected experiences if they are of something good, such as a long life revelling in the exercise of super-dooper cognitive powers. (In any event, I don't see why that symmetry doesn't work.)
Jenny and I had a pleasant dinner afterwards with Jeremy Byrne, whom I hadn't caught up with in ages. As one of the editors of Eidolon, Jeremy published "Lucent Carbon", which I consider the best of my stories about issues to do with uploading.
I have one more gig to do in Melbourne before driving back to Newcastle on Wednesday.
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