Taylor Kitsch as John Carter

OK. I admit: it’s too early to judge. The movie isn’t even out yet, just trailers and promo photos, but on that basis alone I am regarding the imminent release of John Carter with one eye a-squint.

This does not look like the hero (and heroine) I know and love from Edgar Rice Burroughs‘ classic John Carter of Mars series, and I am perturbed.

In Which I Discover Science Fiction, Along With a Few Adult Topics

Now, please understand: Burroughs was my first introduction to science fiction. As soon as I turned 12 I became eligible for the adult library card at the Long Beach (California) Public Library, which I promptly upgraded to. And there were three pieces of adult reading I instantly checked out. One was John Carter of Mars. The entire set of Burrough’s Mars books was there on a shelf, calling my name, and I’d only been able to browse but not really lose myself in one before that summer birthday. There was something there that captivated me, that I needed a full dose of. And finally, oh joy, I could take one home and go to Mars.

The other two books I eagerly grabbed from the shelf were the Autobiography of Christine Jorgensen, the first widely known transsexual, and Myra Breckenridge by Gore Vidal, a comedic/satiric take on Myron’s transformation into Myra. “Transgender” was barely a word in the contemporary vocabulary, but “sex change” was getting a lot of buzz – usually in scathing tones – and I knew this was one of those secretive adult topics grownups didn’t want to talk to kids about. Critics were praising Vidal’s book, and moralists were thundering against it, and Jorgensen was in the news again as well. Why? I was burning with curiosity about this taboo-but-in-plain-sight material. Que curioso.

Of the three books, it was Breckenridge that caused the librarian to peer at me over her half-glasses a long way down her nose and ask, “Do your parents know what you’re reading?” To which I boldly replied, “They do, and they’re ok with it.”

Well. They knew I was reading books, at least, and had a new adult library card (Mom had just signed for it), and they were certainly ok with that. More details the librarian did not need. And neither did my parents.

Jorgensen’s autobiography touched me, and educated me. Myra Breckenridge – I didn’t see what the fuss was about. This was my first excursion into the realms of gender dysphoria, transgression, and sexual identity. I came away from this with the conclusion that adults should let kids read adult things before their viewpoints are tainted by grown-up biases. Kids are capable of forming open-minded opinions of their own when subjects are not framed in judgment, fear, or hatred. At least it worked for me.

So both of those books were eye-opening in a special way that summer of 1968. And then….there was Burroughs.

Burroughs is always linked for me with my first foray into Adult Reading, which is why I mention the other Adult things I was reading at the same time. I brought the same ready-for-anything open-mindedness to Burroughs’ work. But the John Carter story was a whole different kind of adventure. A near planet, exotically renamed Barsoom by the locals! Moon shot/science fair/science nerd moi loved the concept. Four-armed giant green-skinned aliens! Flying air-ships! Adventure! and let us not forget, “the incomparable Deja Thoris.” I was in heaven and read the whole series beginning to end. Then discovered anthologies, and Harlan Ellison and Ray Bradbury and Isaac Asimov, and much more, and off I went down the slippery slope to aspiring science fiction novelist at high speed.

So. A little transgenderism, a little subversive literature, a whole lotta adventure on another planet – all in all, a wonderful summer. (OK, so I was one of those twelve-year-olds…)

John Carter & Deja Thoris by Frank Frazetta

Meanwhile, Back on Mars…

John Carter is an iconic figure for fans of Barsoom, on the same scale as Tarzan, Burroughs’ better-known character and series. His descriptions and background about the character are clear, and here’s where I get my first hit of terrible cognitive dissonance.

To quote Burroughs from A Princess of Mars,

He was a splendid specimen of manhood, standing a good two inches over six feet, broad of shoulder and narrow of hip, with the carriage of the trained fighting man. His features were regular and clear cut, his hair black and closely cropped, while his eyes were of a steel gray, reflecting a strong and loyal character, filled with fire and initiative. His manners were perfect, and his courtliness was that of a typical southern gentleman of the highest type.

His horsemanship, especially after hounds, was a marvel and delight even in that country of magnificent horsemen. I have often heard my father caution him against his wild recklessness, but he would only laugh, and say that the tumble that killed him would be from the back of a horse yet unfoaled.

Enter Taylor Kitsch cast as the lead. He stands 6′. His hair (in character) is brown. And…long. Long? Say it’s not so! He effects a scraggly could-be-savage-he-man kind of presence, or, like Tom Brady’s late unlamented locks, one could be reminded of the mythical “girly-man” of gubernatorial scorn if one wishes to bundle a lot more critical subtext into these descriptors. Why does that wording even come to mind? Because this look is so counter to steely eyed 6’2″ John Carter of the close-cropped black hair, gentlemanly manners and manly courage, with a distinctly broader shoulder-to-hip ratio than Kitsch demonstrates. The fault is not entirely in the casting – Kitsch did a fine job playing troubled teen Tim Riggins in Friday Night Lights, so one would think he has potential – but what foolish makeup and costuming decisions were made to package his look in this manner? From the very get-go, this actor does not look like John Carter is supposed to look. Too short, too long-haired, and where, prey tell, is the carriage of the trained fighting man, the fire and initiative? Where is his presence? He does not seem to have the right heroic edge to him, to judge by the trailers.

This is sad. It is unfortunate. It is perhaps even a travesty – I’ll reserve judgment on that point until I see the movie, but with this start from first impressions, I am not optimistic.

But Wait! There’s More!

And this brings me, then, to Carter’s love interest and co-protagonist, Deja Thoris, Princess of Barsoom. Burroughs describes her through John Carter’s eyes:

[T]he sight which met my eyes was that of a slender, girlish figure, similar in every detail to the earthly women of my past life. She did not see me at first, but just as she was disappearing through the portal of the building which was to be her prison she turned, and her eyes met mine. Her face was oval and beautiful in the extreme, her every feature was finely chiseled and exquisite, her eyes large and lustrous and her head surmounted by a mass of coal black, waving hair, caught loosely into a strange yet becoming coiffure. Her skin was of a light reddish copper color, against which the crimson glow of her cheeks and the ruby of her beautifully molded lips shone with a strangely enhancing effect.

In addition to this, Deja Thoris is much smaller than John Carter. She has a slender, girlish figure, and is “less than half the height” of the green-skinned, four-armed Barsoomian aliens; she has “little hands” that she puts on his arm or chest when speaking to him. One gets a clear picture of a woman leaning closer to average height than not, perhaps even petite, who although imperious at times is also relatively small and to be protected by large strapping warrior John.

John Carter and Deja Thoris (Taylor Kitsch and Lynn Collins)

Now on the big screen enters Lynn Collins – a few inches shorter than Taylor Kitsch, a fairly athletic woman in her own right – far from a ‘girlish’ figure – with straight dark brown hair (where is the mass? the waves? the black?), with attractive but not “exquisitely” beautiful features. But the princess of Mars is supposed to be a babe; she is “beautiful in the extreme.” She is drop-dead gorgeous. And Lynn Collins is…well. 5’8″ of pretty. A suitable romantic lead in X-Men: Origins. But she is not, alas, “the incomparable Deja Thoris.”

I don’t generally critique women’s appearances in media, but in this case I critique both male and female leads for one simple reason: these characters are as well established in their physical presence as anyone from Tarzan or Lord of the Rings or myriad other properties with distinctive characters made famous over time and multi-book series. That the essentials of their appearance, demeanor, and presence are blithely ignored by director Andrew Stanton, without even an effort on the part of makeup to compensate for some of these shortcomings, tells me that the screen presentation of the in-the-book characters is not important to this creative crew. This is like casting Walter Matthau as Gandalf and saying “that’s good enough.”

Ian McKellum as Gandalf, and Walter Matthau: change hat, add beard. Good enough!

And that, of course, makes me wonder what else Stanton has deemed dispensable. In his spoken intro to one movie trailer, he talks about loving these books as a child and wanting to stay true to them. If this look in the lead actors is his idea of staying true to the original…well, all I can say is, he’ll never be Peter Jackson when he grows up.

In any case, time will tell. The movie will be released in March 2012, so it’s just around the corner. I think this is one I will be catching on DVD, not the big screen. In the meanwhile, I think it’s time to reread some Burroughs and John Carter of Mars.

The real one.

Rating

This movie has not received any Stomps of Approval because a) I haven’t seen it yet and b) this is a commentary not a movie review. When I see it I’ll update this post with a link to the review proper.

 Related Post

Me, Short Stories, and Robert Heinlein

Cover art by Joe Jusko.

See this post at Notes From the Lizard Lair: John Carter: Not the Burroughs Hero After All?
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The Destiny from Stargate Universe

I recently finished watching the whole two-year, 40-episode run of Stargate Universe (SGU), which aired on TV from 2009-2010. I confess I am having a strange relationship with this setting and story arc. It is haunting me. That is the only word for it.

There is a peculiar flavor to this show, one I don’t think has been captured by any other science fiction I have ever viewed. It manages to engage with its realism and drama regardless of the arguably fantastic setting. (Once you agree to the premise of ancient alien technology, all else follows from that, and that premise is well established both in SGU and in the larger Stargate franchise). It challenges one to actually contemplate the size of the universe, humanity’s inconsequential position in it, and the nature of faith, science, technology and reality.  The show dances on the edge of the un/explainable, even venturing now and then into the mystical, in the sense that an event a character cannot explain remains opaque to viewers as well. Yet this is managed in a way that comes off as luminal rather than simply mystifying. The result is not so much a sense of frustration as a realization that there are some things that are beyond our understanding and just can’t be explained. We the viewers must reconcile ourselves to that reality just as the crew must. And yet such grand questions are explored in an intensely personal manner. SGU is a close-focused microcosm of the ship-voyage crucible, successfully blending wonder, science and the nearly mystical unknown in sincerely moving drama.

Read the full review here.

See this post at Notes From the Lizard Lair: Stargate Universe: Science Fiction That’s Out of This Galaxy
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She was a Very Small Mouse, with teeny-tiny eyes that she squinched shut in favor of sniffing at things with her nose. She was the one who didn’t hide from us humans outside her tank, but instead timidly confronted us, sniffing and squinting in our direction. Had to have her.

"Is it safe yet?" - Blossom coming home from the pet store.

She swiftly became my Portable Mouse – always cheerful, always happy to wake up and see where she was going next. To visit Max? To cuddle with Geejers? To play with the Food Giant? Whatever was asked of her, she was game, even though she was also always very timid. You could see her curiosity prodding her to explore, while her caution left her trembling with flashes of trepidation. Still, she soldiered on, and went from cage to tank, from companion to companion, whenever she was asked.

Later, when those meeple (mouse-people) died, Blossy moved in with Earnie the ASFrat, and the unlikely pair – bitty little Blossom, Big Earnie, three times her size – became inseparable Mutt-and-Jeff companions.  And more recently, with the addition of new Geejers (her second time around; I’ll tell her reincarnation story in another post), Blossy was again the Portable Mouse, going from tank to tank until all the girls were introduced and could finally live comfortably together.

Blossom had bowel problems from Day 1 (took her to the vet for “no pooping” problems her first week here). When she was 9 months old, it seemed she would die from a combination of lung and bowel problems, but she did a sudden turnaround, and lived 4 more months. But gradually she began to eat less, and had tenderness and swelling on the side of her chest, apparently an internal tumor. Her last month of life was in marked decline, and  her death at 13 months is very untimely: that is something like being around 40 for a human.

Still, I spent some quality time with her, she was safe and snuggled in the girl’s little colony for all of that time, and I was able to catch her last days of life on film.  And that is the video embedded here.

Blossom was a sweet little soul, and I’m blessed to have known her.

Nicknames:  Awesome Blossom, Glossy Blossy, Portable Mouse

Related Posts: Related videos and meeple-posts are indexed on this Meeple page.

See this post at Notes From the Lizard Lair: Blossom the Portable Mouse
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In the fall I begin to become…brilliant. I have bright ideas. Not flashes in the pan, but things I will sit on and think about and which frequently change my life in the coming months. I gestate (that’s absolutely the word) for months, and often something radically new emerges at the end of this process.

Come spring (March!) things start to burgeon, and whatever I have been hatching during the winter comes roaring forth. As life and seasons morph into summer during the course of May and June, I settle into a groove and continue on with work and patterns that reflect the decisions, commitments and energy laid down during the winter cycle just past.

See the symmetry in this? From November through January, something important or evolutionary is gestating beneath the surface, and from February through April (coincident with my rising sign in Aires), it sprouts and comes roaring forth. It is the energy from this dormant-through-blossoming cycle that sees me through all the rest of the year. July, my natal month, is nearly always a completely workhorse period, where I’m nose-to-grindstone working on All That Stuff that gathered heft during the winter.

No surprise that this coincides with my astrological “underside”, the subterranean aspects that touch on career and karma-infused Life Directions. During this time I am Inanna, on a journey to visit Ereshkigal, and when I resurface in the spring I am someone new.  I am really aware of when this cycle starts. I feel the run-up to it in October, when fall begins and begins to become evident. I really love Halloween and Dia de los Muertos because those holidays mark not just a time when the veil is thin, but also signify a sea change in the energy that will see me through my Earth-energy-infused dark winter cycle of my astrological (and calendar) year.²

It is not surprising that some of my very best friends are Capricorns. We ‘get’ each other. I don’t live where they do, nor they where I do, but still. Grokking occurs, both comfortable and sometimes intense.

Tonight I was contemplating this picture I took in the garden a few days ago (the photo above).  Our trees are surrendering the last of their leaves, the last of the summer flowers are shriveling in the increasingly cold nights.  And yet I saw this vignette in the flower beds, and it spoke to me as a harbinger of Fall, of this wonderful Autumn when I start to become both more subterranean and more furiously creative. I am beginning to percolate. I have new projects brewing that will spring upon the world in the Spring. But for now, I’m getting ready for something that looks like Winter hibernation. But it is not.

In an odd way, it is my most fertile time of the year. On the surface, outside of business and work obligations, I am desultory.  I will play video games and get totally square-eyed; I will stay up too late and sleep too much (hibernation!), and wallow in simple physical pleasures. My showers are too long; I use all the hot water. I cook, and eat, and sleep, and dream (amazing dreams). But now, for the first time in ages, I am so much more clear on my relationship with Self and Muse and Creativity. I am really anticipating my Winter phase this time around because it is not merely a fallow time, but a time when I may spring ahead by quantum leaps.

Can’t wait to see what this next phase will bring.

And all this, this remembering, and this harbinger of things to come, from a photo in our flower beds….

I am blessed.

_____

1. If you’re not astrologically inclined, or think things metaphysical are silly, superstitious or just plain wacko, well, ok. We’re not on the same wavelength in that regard, then. My relationship to astrology (and a slew of other esoterica) are predicated not on ‘belief’ but on certain real-world experiences I’ve had in the body, in the here/now.  That stuff is so way not relevant to this blog, I’m not going to get into it here. Let it suffice to say I deal with these things not from a basis of “belief” (leap of faith; trusting in X without evidence, etc), but from some experiences that are relatively empirical in nature. At some future point I’ll probably get into this or point you to a whole ‘nother blog that deals with such things. For now, though, let’s just take it as a given that this kind of awareness and worldview is part of my reality.

2. And as to these “day of the dead” holidays, awareness of this energy is a persistent thing with me. I’ve even written about it in my fiction. You can download a recent story in this vein here: Li-Wan’s Revenge, an illustrated “Halloween” story that takes place in one of my fictional settings. The point, of course, is that even this alien culture recognizes this time near the equinox when the veil between worlds is thin.

See this post at Notes From the Lizard Lair: My Fall Transformation
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In fact, we sail along in a pretty crowded neighborhood in the universe. Asteroids are whizzing past our heads all the time, and we are (thankfully) oblivious to it. Well – until the time one bangs right into us again, which bears the possibility of precipitating a mini-ice-age, perturbing the earth’s orbit, causing sudden climatic variations that cause animal die-offs (from which humans are also not exempt)… you get the picture. Here’s some discussion of impact events to give you a broader picture of the possibilities.

So what’s an oblivious global population to do? Well, if nothing else, we can (and have) set our cosmic watchdogs to keeping a weather eye peeled, to let us know of hazards approaching from the cosmic skies. For decades NASA has kept watch on near-earth asteroids and other moving bodies, endlessly tracking trajectories and hopefully never finding anything on a collision course with Earth.

And finally, here’s one asteroid that’s coming close enough to be exciting, but far enough away that it poses no real hazard to the Earth or the Moon.  An asteroid dubbed YU55 is in our neighborhood right this very moment, and will pass at its closest point to the earth right about 6:30pm Eastern time. Yeah, in a very short time! as of this writing (hey, I only just found out about this myself.  If you have a 6-inch telescope and a clear sky you might even be able to see it from the earth.

Hm, I did say close, didn’t I?

What isn't happening when YU55 passes near on 11/8/11.

Here’s more on the imminent passage of YU55, and the video below is a JPL animation of the projected event.

It’s another near miss in our cosmic neighborhood. But it’s just as well we’re not going to have to write disaster books about this one!

See this post at Notes From the Lizard Lair: Asteroid YU55 Passes Close to Earth Tonight
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What do a 1956 science fiction classic movie and the 1960s retro hit Mad Men have in common? In my world, it’s Anne Francis, the sexy blonde who not only became famous for her role in the cult classic Forbidden Planet, but who also broke ground in the tv show Honey West, featuring a hot female private eye in 1965.

Growing up in the ’60s, I was very close to Sally Draper’s age as she is depicted in Mad Men.  In that show in 1965, we’ve seen the 10-year-old  caught masturbating to the provocative image of Illya Kuryakin (David McCallum in The Man From U.N.C.L.E.) in bondage, held captive by the bad guys. The awakening of her young sexuality parallels my own at the time, but I am wired a little differently than precocious Sally. I adored The Man from U.N.C.L.E. for its serious spy adventures – all the more compelling for its contrast with the farcical genre satire of Get Smart (which made me grit my teeth even then). How, then, could I not fall in love with Honey West, the gun-toting, karate-fighting, courageous crime-stopping private detective in the show of the same name? I had a crush on Anne Francis for years (although it took even more years to figure out why I had crushes like that in the first place.

Honey West was the bomb for a young girl looking for female heroes as role models. The hero thing I “got”, and there were plenty of them on the media landscape – but almost without exception, they were men. In 1965 I practiced swimming underwater in pools and holding my breath a long time so I could do underwater spy work on the off occasion like Napoleon Solo (Robert Vaughn) did in Man From U.N.C.L.E.. The very next year I would be captivated by the dark-of-night adventures of the Green Hornet (with Bruce Lee as Kato); Adam West’s heroics would compel me to don a towel cape and dragoon my (younger) sister into playing Robin to my Batman. I would soon have fits if I missed an episode of Mission: Impossible (where Barbara Bain would become my woman to watch).

But except for Anne Francis, at the mid-point of the ’60s television offered a glaring dearth of women who were heroic and bold and adventuresome all on their own. I recall Barbara Stanwyck in The Big Valley as being matriarchal and commanding. And there was Miss Kitty (Amanda Blake), the saloon owner in Gunsmoke – she had an edge on her that was interesting. Action figures, though, these women were not. The memorable Emma Peel (Diana Rigg) of The Avengers would bump Honey West from the air a year later, but she was only half (and the junior half, at that) in a spy team, and the show came from England. Lynda Carter’s Wonder Woman was a decade in the future, and Jaime Sommers, The Bionic Woman (Lindsay Wagner), a year beyond that. By then I’d be in the Army having my own heroic adventures. So, what was a girl to do in 1965?

Swoon over Anne Francis, that’s what. She was the first female detective to be featured in a weekly tv series. Francis described Honey West as a “tongue-in-cheek, female James Bond,” complete with hot sports car and spy gadgets.  She had it going on, and looked damn good doing it, too.

Today, frankly, I don’t remember much about the episodes themselves. And while I’m being confessional, I must admit I’ve never seen Forbidden Planet either: one of Leslie Nielsen’s early claims to fame, and the thing that put Francis on the map as well (although the podcast of the radio version here seems an interesting way to catch the substance of it online.) But maybe those details aren’t important. What matters is that Ann Francis captivated my attention (for many reasons!) at an impressionable age, and showed me what so little other media did in 1965: a confident, capable woman, risking danger and taking care of business and the bad guys, and relying mainly on herself, not others, to do it.

Hm. Sounds like many of my female protagonists, now doesn’t it?  Thanks, lady, for the inspiration.

Anne Francis passed away in January 2011 from complications of cancer.  I’m sad to see her go.

UPDATE: Here’s an interesting behind-the-scenes article about the authors of the Honey West books that spawned the tv show, Skip and Gloria Fickling of Laguna Beach, CA.

And how about you, readers? What heroines inspired you growing up, and why? Share your thoughts in the comments section.

See this post at Notes From the Lizard Lair: The Sexy Link Between Forbidden Planet and Mad Men
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- I am (as some readers may have gathered) still rather bogged down in a re-write of Splintegrate. This is rewrite in the sense of altering plot elements that are integral to the structure of the novel, and hence, shifting the nature of the novel itself. This has been a long and troublesome birthing process for this book, but I believe it is nearly done. Part of the issue is that the story as originally conceived is not the story that emerged in the telling, and I have had my work cut out for me learning to distinguish where to quit forcing things, and where to let the characters take the reins – or not. At any rate, I think my long-term peregrinations about this particular work will soon come to an end.  Since it is still gestating, I’ll leave it at that.

- I like blogging. I like taking the time for blogging, and articulating various thoughts. I also like having a well-thought-out site that lets readers explore a writer’s work, quite aside from the blogging aspect of things.  Part of my boggle with the Lizard’s Lair, is that this site conceptually attempts to do both those things at once, and in doing so, perhaps does not do either as well as I had originally envisioned. Maybe this is because I haven’t put the requisite time into building out content here (I still want to give you a portal into the worlds of the Sa’adani Empire and my science fiction and fantasy universes, for instance). On the other hand, it may be that structurally I’ve gotten off on the wrong foot here and thus it is difficult to course-correct. The result is that….

- I’m contemplating a re-design of this site. I want to have bloggy things, but also more writing- and world-design specific things, much more easily findable/accessible than a blog-centric site permits. So I will probably be moving to something more like a magazine format in the coming months: i.e., something that can (and will) contain a blog, but also with sections better highlighting my books and other topical areas of interest to me and hopefully to you.

- on the third hand, I don’t have endless hours to put into a redesign of this site, so am pondering the most time- and cost-effective way to achieve these things. Lizards do a lot of pondering, in case you hadn’t noticed.

Finally, on the I’m-Getting-Something-Published front, I’m happy to announce my short story Live Fire has been accepted into No Man’s Land, an installation in the Defending the Future anthology series published by Dark Quest Books.  The book is military science fiction featuring female protagonists and is currently slated for release in mid-2011.  Live Fire was inspired by a bit character from a role-playing game, or more properly said, the character development phase of a role-playing game, and an intriguing webisode series from Battlestar Galactica.   I’ll talk some more about that short story in a separate post later.

So there you have it. Not quite all the news that’s fit to print, but a snapshot of the Lizard Lair that hopefully brings you up to date with saurish doings.

More soon!

See this post at Notes From the Lizard Lair: A Little Update on Life in the Lair
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Taylor Caldwell was a best-selling, award-winning novelist who wrote from 1937 to 1980. She is best known for her historical fiction and the breadth of detail it contains – detail which she credited to past life memories of those eras.

This kind of recall started young.  As a child she had a series of vivid dreams about Atlantis, and wrote her first novel based on those dreams at age 12.  Her grandfather, a book editor, considered publishing the book, but couldn’t believe a 12-year-old could write something so sophisticated. Thinking she must have plagiarized it, he rejected the novel, which languished in her files for 60 years.

In the 1970s astrologer and occultist Jess Stearn was working on a biography of Caldwell. He learned of this book, and helped edit it and get it published. That is the genesis of the book, The Romance of Atlantis, which, one might argue, is almost like being there.

If you like historical novels, Caldwell’s other work is also worth taking a look at. Her book Captains and the Kings was quite popular back in my librarian days, and is what first put her on my radar as an author.  But for the Atlantis-curious, give this Romance a spin. It is an unforgettable take on that setting.

See this post at Notes From the Lizard Lair: Taylor Caldwell and the Romance of Atlantis
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Portrait of Doyle, 1890

This month our fictional exploration of the world of Atlantis begins with a book by Arthur Conan Doyle. Although better known for his Sherlock Homes adventures, Doyle also wrote adventure stories, including many that were called at the time a “science romance.”  Science romances were becoming quite popular: think of books like Jules Verne’s  20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.  These stories of exploration and danger were quite successful for him, particularly his Professor Challenger stories such as The Lost World (wherein an expedition to the Amazon discovers dinosaurs still alive.)

Concurrently, Doyle was interested in Spiritualism. He was a long-standing member of the Society for Psychical Research, and went on lecture tours on the subject in his later years. It was during this time that he developed an interest in Atlantis, and in 1929 he published Maracot Deep.  As far as I can tell, this is the first fiction novel to treat of the subject: earlier writers in the modern era, from Francis Bacon to Helena Blavatsky have written non-fiction accounts of the place, but for a complete story set in Atlantis (or in this case, its remnants), it looks like the creator of Sherlock Holmes has first dibs. It is also the last work of fiction he wrote before he died. (His last book was The Edge of the Unknown, appearing in 1930, about his experiences and observations in investigating the supernatural.)

Maracot Deep is what we today would call science fiction, featuring the use of technology to explore a remote location, and offering science-based rationales for the underwater nature of Atlantis and the survival of people in the deep-ocean environment.  It is a short book, more what we would consider a novella; some of the dialog sounds dated, as it is period slang from the 1920s.  But the story is entertaining, and it is a glimpse into how a master storyteller conceived of Atlantis, and how adventurers from the (relatively) low-tech 1920s might have encountered it.

Happy reading! And please do leave a note if you give this book a gander. What do you think of it?

See this post at Notes From the Lizard Lair: Arthur Conan Doyle’s sci-fi about Atlantis: Maracot Deep
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Bot  is the odd childhood nickname of my sister, explanations therefore reserved for later. I shall leave her identified only via that moniker here, in case she wants to distance herself from these proceedings in the future (ha).

Botly has lately commented on the fact that I get books quite frequently through the mail. It’s true: between reading for fun, for education, and for research, I have a constant influx of tomes from online sources. I don’t usually pay more than $4/book (check out www.betterworld.com for a great economic solution to your bibliophilic cravings). The result is, I can afford to feed the book habit on a relative shoestring and the consequence is, a plethora of books.

Bort (ok, it’s a mutating name, but I like that one especially. It’s kinda like Borg, you know?) – Bort reads a lot too, but mostly just for fun, and the necessary mental vacation from her very intensive work in the insurance industry.  Ergo, she does lots of “popcorn” reading – quickie books, light romances, some thrillers and mysteries and paranormals, things with cool cover art. Like that.

But she lately opined that she should get as many books as I do – from me, as gifts, was understood. She is ogling my volume of incoming and having biblio-envy, I understand. In our perfect world, we would each have time to do nothing but read.  With this as necessary background, I share with you my newly hatched Grand Plan.

She’d like a book a week (she can read more than that, but 1 a week from me is something she’d actually get around to reading, probably, as opposed to collecting for eventual perusal 10 years from now).  Her ideal mix would be, 1 non-fiction to 3 fictions/month.

Whereupon I say, “Bwahahaha…..”

The Scheme

After pinging her about topical interests, I gave her a non-fiction book about Atlantis. This on the heels of a conversation where she said she was interested in Atlantis but there wasn’t really anything factual about it. To which I replied, “Oh yes there is.” To which she replied silently with the infamous Raised Eyebrow.  Which resulted in me giving her this book, Survivors of Atlantis (see below for details). It marshals arguments from some well-known archaeologists who make arguments for the historical existence of Atlantis, and traces this Atlantean influence through various civilizations.  Interesting content, at the very least provocative of thought however you come down on the Atlantis question.

So, my grand plan is to follow up on the non-fiction Theme du Month with fiction books that elaborate upon that topic. That means, thematically, we can get into a subject of interest with a non-fiction groundwork, and then see how that subject has been elaborated upon in story narrative.

Now, how too cool is that? (Though if you don’t see at all what might be cool about that, you probably don’t grok this blog at all… !)

This means former-librarian me gets to go dig around in forgotten corners of literature and history and find really interesting (and ideally, mostly forgotten)  gems of literature, and share them in the context of the ‘real world’ framework they explicate.

I’m delighted. I think Bot will be delighted – if she actually finds time to do the reading. I hope she will. At any rate, I’ve managed to intrigue my own self with this concept, and see that I will have to order multiples of many of these books, because they’re things I would like to read as well. (Oh, darn, must…buy…more…books….!)

Therefore, with this post, I am announcing the Bot Book of the Month Club. Now and then I’ll post here about the Topic Du Month, and what titles are being bought and shared to delve into that subject.  When I post about the non-fiction seed of the month’s fiction reading, YOU are invited to contribute fiction reading suggestions that you think fit the theme.  Please do be sure to let me and other readers here know why you think the fiction work is relevant. I’m hoping for something that goes beyond just, “Story x takes place in that time/place.”  Why is that work  especially interesting?  Why should we look at this one book as a notable elaboration upon our non-fiction topic?

I’m curious to know what you might recommend.

With that in mind, then, here’s the non-fiction book for this month. Let me know what fiction you think would be suitable companion reading to this. Later, after I’ve made some selections, I’ll share my own choices and the rationale why. I’m limited to 3 fiction works to every 1 non-fiction for the Bot-book-supply-plan, but trust me that intriguing titles readers post about here are very likely to be purchased and read by myself, at the very least, and possibly The Great Botkins as well.

The Book this Month

Survivors of Atlantis: Their Impact on World Culture

There is a lot of fluff written about Atlantis. There is also a lot of esoterica on the subject. I don’t dismiss that out of hand – I have my own experiences with esoterica, when it comes to that – but for someone interested in a contemporary factual treatment of Atlantis, Survivors of Atlantis is of particular interest.

This book makes an argument for the existence and global impact of Atlantis by comparing various cultural influences on widely scattered continents that seem to come from a single trans-continental source in prehistory.  In making this case he cites the work of various archaeologists who are respected as legitimate scientists in their fields.  The book gets generally good reviews from Amazon readers for its marshaling of facts, and stands out to me because one of Bot’s abiding areas of interest is archaeology.  Hence this pick for our Book of the Month club.

Survivors gets generally good reviews from Amazon readers, who especially like how author Frank Joseph uses archaeologist-collected evidence to make his points. In the News from the Weird corner, Joseph himself is, shall we say, a colorful character, notorious, even, for some of his past doings. I don’t want to get into that history too much here in a book description: at one point in his later life, Joseph seems to have turned a corner with his awareness and his personal activities, and since then has devoted his time and energy to things like his research about Atlantis.  If you are mucho curioso about the author, Google is your friend. Personally, I’m willing to let a work stand on its own two feet, and in this case there is much that is thought-provoking and well-grounded scientifically in this book.

But this is just the appetizer.  It sets the stage for our flights of the imagination in narrative tales yet to come. Do you have any stories in mind that take place in Atlantis, or are about that lost continent? Leave your reading suggestions (and reasoning why!) in the comments.

See this post at Notes From the Lizard Lair: The Book of the Month Club, or, What’s Bot Reading Now?
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