#this story deliberately avoids saying exactly when the great disaster took place

[cantsayidont]

April 1974. The KAMANDI, THE LAST BOY ON EARTH series says that a Great Disaster ended our world and brought about the rise of the talking animals, with surviving humans reduced (as in PLANET OF THE APES) to a bestial state. The original series never specifies exactly what the Great Disaster was, although in KAMANDI #16, Kirby does reveal how the animals became sentient: A Walter Reed physician named Michael Grant (whose diary is presented in the handwritten captions) had developed a "brain-enhancing" chemical called Cortexin, which was released during the Disaster. In this story, a gorilla doctor named Hanuman finds Grant's diary and notes and manages to recreate Cortexin, which is released again during an attack on Washington by the Tiger Empire. (Among those exposed is a group of feral humans, suggesting, as Hanuman's thought balloons imply, that history may again reverse itself.)

After Kirby's departure, DC attempted to fit KAMANDI into other future timelines, asserting that the Great Disaster was the great atomic war of ATOMIC KNIGHTS and that Kamandi himself was the grandson of Buddy Blank, the nebbish alter ego of OMAC. I don't think that Kirby intended any such thing (he certainly wouldn't have tied it to ATOMIC KNIGHTS except under editorial duress), and there's no indication that he had any particular plan to reveal the whole circumstances of the Great Disaster. Its function in the story (other than of course to set up Kamandi's future) is just to give Kamandi a goal, albeit an open-ended one, in his wanderings, and resolving it would limit its value as a plot device. Thus, the truth about the Great Disaster is a mystery that's not intended to be solved, which is a once-common storytelling conceit that now seems a little old-fashioned, and one I think modern creators have some trouble getting their heads around even where they aren't trying to rhetorically go to war with Kirby the way John Byrne is wont.

[bakechochin]

The Book Ramblings of February

In place of book reviews, I will be writing these ‘book ramblings’. A lot of the texts I’ve been reading (or plan to read) in recent times are well-known classics, meaning I can’t really write book reviews as I’m used to. I’m reading books that either have already been read by everyone else (and so any attempt to give novel or insightful criticisms would be a tad pointless), or are so convoluted and odd that they defy being analysed as I would do a simpler text. These ramblings are pretty unorganised and hardly anything revolutionary, but I felt the need to write something review-related this year. I’ll upload a rambling compiling all my read books on a monthly basis.

Gogol - The Collected Tales (as published by Granta) It took me a while to find a Gogol collection with all the stories that I wanted; this is still not it, but it’s as close as I could get without buying the Everyman’s Library edition with the shite cover. I’d describe Gogol as a nice writer; his narration is always warm and inviting (even when adopting different voices for the frame narratives of the individual stories), his tales are often engaging, funny, and easy to follow, and there’s no shortage of amazing weirdness. The book is separated into his Ukranian tales, which remind me a lot of Russian fairy tales (and I guess by extension Arden’s The Bear and the Nightingale), and his St Petersburg tales, which are more like what I’ve known Gogol to be from my readings of his work in the past. I haven’t the foggiest idea what to call his works, which is just as well since critics can’t figure this shit out either; it’s like magical realism but with subdued magic and a loose grasp on realism, where weird and unrecognisable events happen in a weird but recognisable world. I love both of these varieties of stories for different reasons, but I reckon I prefer the St Petersburg stories; fairy tales can get a wee bit repetitive (especially if you read them one after the other), but the St Petersburg stories are just inherently interesting, if only because of how bloody difficult they are to describe. Gogol manages to create some bloody great characters, distinctive and memorable, out of just a few sentences of description, and yet his descriptions are worded so nicely as to find the  good in everyone and never outwardly antagonise any position in society (with the noteworthy exceptions of dissolute drunkards and the devil - Gogol really hates those guys). This does mean, however, that the really minor characters get a maximum of one sentence dedicated to establishment, and when there’s a shit load of minor characters being introduced as soon as they appear, it can be a tad confusing and not a little frustrating when it comes to trying to figure out if I’ve missed something. Also, not to seem thick, but I found remembering all of the million Russian names, and being able to match everyone to their names, a bit of a challenge (especially since, in some stories, the spelling of said names changes every now and then). There are some much-appreciated fiddlings with the storytelling format in Gogol’s tales that usually make for interesting reading; some of such additions to the stories, such as the establishment of some definitive narrators to form a frame narrative to the tale in question, or how unreliable narrators mess with the reality of the story, work quite well, but there are some that are a tad frustrating by how unnecessary they seem. For example, 'The Terrible Vengeance' does not reveal the framing explanation for the story’s events until right at the end, making everything prior to the explanation confusing and subsequently tedious, and 'Ivan Fyodorovich Shponka and His Aunt' is deliberately written to not have an actual ending - I get enough of incomplete stories from writers who unintentionally don’t finish their works, without Gogol pulling a deliberate fast one on me because he cannot be fucked to resolve one of his stories. I will, however, admit to being a tad hypocritical in this complaint; consider for a second ‘The Nose’, how it is deliberately written to be obscure or to have no clear explanation for the story’s bizarre events, cuts away from every encounter without revealing why anything happened as it did, is questioned even by the author, and yet is probably my favourite Gogol story (to some extent because of this stupid structure). The titles of the story’s bely how interesting they actually are; in the St Petersburg stories, the titles are short and succinct and can convey mystery through ambiguity in just a few words, but the titles for the Ukrainian tales were often needlessly verbose and consequently established the stories as perhaps being a tad boring (kind of like the titles of the short stories in Lem’s anthology Mortal Engines).

Voltaire - Candide This is some quality satire right here. This is a ridiculously fast-paced rollercoaster of a novel, a wild world-spanning picaresque narrative of stupid proportions. Harking back to Oliver Twist, another novel that uses satire to examine the world, I wrote that I found its highlighting of social issues to leave a sour taste in my mouth, as I didn’t believe the reasons for foregrounding these issues to be noble; society doesn’t dramatically change its flaws just because some dickhead wrote about them, and so I reckon that writing with the intentions of ‘improving the world’ is folly and what’s more total bollocks. However, this book is not trying to change anything. It is a big fuck-off harangue in novella form, less concerned with changing anything as it is with taking the piss. It expertly highlights exactly how the optimistic philosophies spouted by its idealistic cast are total bullshit, by writing this whole book to completely and utterly fuck these characters up. Reading these characters stumble from one horrendous catastrophe to the next is bloody hilarious; you’re prompted to keep on reading just to see what shit these lads would end up in next, and how their circumstances could possibly get any worse. Obviously a book that emphasises the very worst acts and disasters that the world has to offer might come across as a bit sad and fucked up, but this book avoids such labels by a) making the pace so fucking fast that you don’t have any time to have a contemplative pause about the atrocities being written about before you move on to the NEXT horror, and b) our protagonist Candide is so unwaveringly happy and genial, emphasised excellently with the reductive language of the characters and narrator. The story is absolutely ridiculous, spanning half the bloody world and satirising every city Voltaire could get away with writing about (although I will say I wasn’t a fan of how England was not a major part of Candide’s adventure), and yet characters still fortuitously stumble across one another (usually in significantly shittier circumstances than when we last saw them). If I was feeling cynical I would say that the constant returns of characters previously thought to be lost was due to the fact that there really aren’t many memorable characters in this story, and so Voltaire needs to get the most out of the few interesting characters that he has; of course all of the characters are funny because of their status as reductive character archetypes (and because of their laughably hyperbolic downfalls), but aside from Pangloss and Martin there aren’t many characters in this story who will stick in your memory. However, I am well disposed to this convoluted and stupid story, not only because such serendipity is justified within the framework of the picaresque narrative, but because the circumstances behind characters’ impromptu returns to the text are often fucking hilarious (especially Pangloss). The story is just the right length; it’s fast pace ensures that it gets more than enough out of its ninety-something pages, and if it was any longer than it would probably outstay its welcome and lose some of its novelty trying to come up with new problems for its protagonists to be fucked over by. I’ll freely admit to knowing absolutely fuck all about the setting that this book takes place in, but for the most part, thinking about that was hardly forefront in my mind as I was reading; the setting changes so rapidly that you hardly have a chance to focus on any one setting, and since the story is entirely defined by a long stream of grim and miserable events, it’s hardly as though you need to know all the relevant historical context to understand what’s going on. This does, however, make the constant namedropping of place names and historical details seem a tad incongruous with the breakneck pace, as I’ve got to keep flicking to the annotations at the back to understand them. (Yes, I really ought not to bother, as not knowing all this shit isn’t essential to understanding what is going on, but I still feel like I’m missing something in my reading if I’m not understanding everything). I feel that the story takes quite a long time to get to the moral; as much as I love the great amount of shit that is dealt to the characters, the book really keeps dealing out the shit right to the very end, to the point where when the ending moral does finally come along, it seems very much out of the blue and wasn’t really given enough build-up.

Bulgakov - The Master and Margarita This is among the more interesting texts that I have had to analyse, due in part to the fact that the narrative is split into two storylines, one of which is incredibly compelling and fun to read and the other is really rather dull and boring (especially by comparison). I suppose it’s lucky that the Pontius Pilate storyline (i.e the really boring one) is overshadowed by this book’s vast quantity of good shit. I’ve been trying to take a more professional look at the books that I ramble on - these are classics, after all - but I must admit that I struggle to think about this book in a professional way, because it’s very reminiscent of the usual low-brow fantasy nonsense that I pass the time with. Anything ‘proper' I can think of to talk about this book pales in comparison to the nonsense and hilarity of its content. Supposedly it is a satire, and I’ve held the view that all messages in satire are painfully obvious once you know that the text in question is meant to be satirical, but I struggled finding the message of this book. The gist of the book is that the Devil comes to Moscow to bring havoc and disarray to society, but the trouble with this is that I’m no expert on how the seemingly very complex and convoluted Russian society is supposed to run, and so any disarray catalysed by the Devil and his entourage is somewhat lost on me when I could have just as well attributed it to the overall madness and chaos of this sensationalised depiction of normal Russian society. Even before the Devil comes along, there are aspects of society that are told by the narrator as though they are attributable to otherworldly or otherwise fantastical sources, but because I often wasn’t fully sure as to what such fantastical stuff was actually satirising, I didn’t really get the full impact. Some elements of the satire are basic comments on universal human nature, with the Devil making fools of people who are vain or gluttonous or whatever, but oftentimes the satire is indeed dependent on knowing the ins and outs of 1930s Moscow; some of it I could surmise, some of it I couldn’t. The story follows a series of different characters whose lives are negatively altered by the influence of the Devil’s entourage, with things going wrong in any number of ways, and it is amazing fun to read; it’s very disorderly, but that’s the whole point. What did pose a challenge to me is how, with all these characters popping in and out of the story, with minimal descriptions and often not as much characterisation as I would have liked, I often got confused between them all - because, of course, we’ve got an abundance of three-part Russian names with ten bloody syllables in them (honestly whoever thought up the idea of patronymic surnames can bugger off). Obviously this isn’t a deal breaker, and anyone who reads this book will get the hang of it, but this book’s abundance of minor characters posed a bigger challenge than usual. (Oh and also the character names differ in different translations of the text, which is ever so fun to have to figure out). The characters are all alright, especially the Devil and his retinue, who are an absolutely delight (though they are admittedly best when they don’t have to carry stories on their own). I did however feel that the eponymous Master and Margarita didn’t really seem like main characters; the Master isn’t introduced until a good ways into the book and even then could easily be mistaken for another of the minor characters who appear and disappear in that part of the book, and though Margarita has a good few chapters to herself that really establishes her as quite a good character, by the end of the book she is subsumed pretty much entirely by her relationship with the Master. Also their connection to the ever-so-boring Pontius Pilate storyline can get a tad vexing, having to keep on returning to read about Pilate for a bit before the actual storyline can continue. I was wondering how a book with such a basic premise as this would have ended, since I didn’t really think this book could have ended in a way more interesting than ‘the Devil went home again and things returned roughly to normal’, but this book cleverly subverted my expectations by making the ending more Pontius Pilate bollocks.

Burgess - A Clockwork Orange I get the feeling that a lot of modern classics that are heralded as ‘the book that will change your life’ are going to be like this one, in that the actual story will by far and away be the most forgettable aspect of the book. Most of the things I love about this book are attributable to the narration. As someone who loves colloquialisms, Nadsat is an absolutely incredible language and it colours the book so brilliantly. Not only does it make the book incredibly fun to read, but it’s incredibly versatile, being able to diminish the horror and repulsion of the book’s acts with its alien descriptions and subsequently reflects Alex’s desensitisation to such matters. Alex is an incredibly interesting and compelling character, to the extent that I can forgive the book for not really having any other memorable characters. The book is really rather disturbing at points (to the extent that I don’t reckon I’ll ever be able to watch the film), but the aforementioned beautiful writing style/language and overall black comedy tone of the book carries it well. You don’t get a detailed look at the dystopian setting that the story takes place in, but what you can glean from Alex’s perspective is bloody amazing. However, the story is exactly what I expected it to be; heavy-handed satire with a few cool bits interspersed throughout, but overall the least interesting part of the book simply because it only serves to highlight the issues that it is satirising. The premise for this book is really cool, but in practice the story cannot do much other than display Alex being a bad person, or describing how his sadistic tendencies are remedied, over and over again. And in the end it hardly really mattered, because he goes back to the way he was at the beginning of the novel, and the one permanent change of his character occurs right at the end of the book in a rather anticlimactic manner. But of course you can’t feel too irritated by it, because the story, seemingly uneventful and circuitous as it is, is written so eloquently and fantastically that it is still a joy to read, and you’re willing to forgive its possible flaws.

Himes - The Heat’s On I haven’t read many books in the hardboiled genre, mainly because I felt that I didn’t need to read a lot of them to get a feel of what they are all like. This book features most everything I would expect from the genre, but perhaps a tad more sensationalised, which I like a lot. There’s a big horrible crime-ridden city, and there’s not one but TWO hard-as-nails policemen who have got to swear a lot and pistol-whip some motherfuckers for the good of society. Reading the blurb of this made me think of Sin City; the setup is generic but the characters and events within the story are absolutely ridiculous and very memorable. Characterisation is kept minimal because this is hardly the most profound of books, but none of the characters are one-dimensional. The writing is of course bloody great; it’s tight and clear, employs some excellent turns of phrase that make for surprisingly rich analysis despite how simple it is when taken at face value, and facilitates the story’s fast pace. Oh and of course, an important trope of hardboiled literature, this book included, is that the ending simply must be an anticlimactic frantic tying together of all loose ends. Since this book is essentially what I’d expected from a hardboiled text, I don’t have anything to say about it as an overall piece that couldn’t have already been surmised from me saying ‘it is a hardboiled text’; therefore, any comments that I have on this book aren’t really especially academic, but are more of just little subjective nitpicks. I do think that this book does venture at points into being a bit too silly; obviously I’m not expecting, or even hoping, for sophisticated literature here, but there needs to be consistency in its established stupidity. There’s a fine line this book walks between Machete’s level of dumbness and Machete Kills’ level of dumbness, and it often threatens to audaciously cross that line. Though I do appreciate the fast pace, because you need a fast pace in a book like this, there are times where character development occurs too quickly to be logical, and said development is often made when the plot itself has somewhat slowed down, which makes the irrational changes within people all the more noticeable. I base what I know about the hardboiled genre off of Hammett’s Red Harvest, and I reckon that although Himes is better than Hammett, Hammett did a few things better. Red Harvest took place in a fictitious city, and whilst Himes’ representation of Harlem is very sensationalised and fun, his constant name dropping of real place names can be a bit alienating when I know fuck all about anything American. Also this book isn’t really as centred on Harlem itself as I would have liked, instead continuously reaching out to other places in the world for its characters and plot progression. The lack of any molls or femme fatales was a bit saddening in some regards because that is a trope that I enjoy, but honestly the pursuit of love isn’t really forefront in the protagonists’ minds, and I’m content to substitute some romance subplot with more stupid action sequences.

Stuff I read this month that I couldn’t be arsed to ramble about: Maud: A Melodrama by Tennyson and a few miscellaneous poems from Christina Rossetti. 

[docsamurai]

Humans are weird: The Galactic Council

*Quick note before I start: This is the 7th and final installment in a series I’ve called the Lost Colonies which is largely about human society adapting to the strange environments of other worlds. You can read the previous installments here: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed writing this series, but with my new work schedule I had to bring it to a close. If you’ve enjoyed this story follow me on here for my other writings. Thanks again to everyone who has reblogged, liked, replied, DMed, or otherwise shown their appreciation for this series. It means a lot to me that people enjoyed it and the love you’ve all shown me has really helped keep me going for these last few months.*

It was hard not to be at least a little nervous as Kiara made her way to the council chamber. Somehow even with thousands of years of advancement space faring races still hadn’t developed a decent elevator. Kiara idly flipped through the notes she had made on her datapad and she realized how little she actually bothered to reference her notes. Some of them were years old and she hadn’t bothered to so much as look at them since she had initially written them down. It was too late now for her to try and prepare some kind of speech, though given how evasive the council was being about the purpose of this meeting Kiara wasn’t sure how she would have prepared in the first place. Still though, meeting with all 3 senior members at once could be nerve wracking.

The elevator door finally opened and Kiara stepped off to see her family waiting for her. Kit’cha was thoroughly amused at Jeanne reacting to their newest family member and seeing the way she acted around Kit’von it was hard not to smile. Currently she was letting the infant Turic ride on her shoulders. “You’re a LOT heavier than you look puffball!” Kit’von burbled something into his translator as he was still too young to pronounce most words in basic. “Dad says it’s because I’m so full of shit.” The fur on Kit’cha’s neck stood on end and he rapidly tried to change the subject. “KIARA HI! How’d you sleep Honey? Do you have everything you need for the meeting?” 

Kiara chuckled as she plucked Kit’von off Jeanne’s shoulders and gave him a hug. “I’m fine. I’ll be fine. It’s good to see you all here. How’s the mother doing?” Kit’cha relaxed slightly. “Parran is doing fine. She’s still resting back on the homeworld and has registered Kit’von to our care officially. She sent me a message earlier confirming it and to wish that he grows in health and prosperity.” Kiara gave Kit’von a kiss on his forehead and set him down as he burbled a happy noise that the translator couldn’t interpret. Jeanne smirked. “We’ll have to go do something special later to mark the occasion. Not every day someone trusts me with their kid.”

Standing in the middle of her family Kiara wished that she could stay in this moment forever but the pit of anxiety still ate away at her. “I love you all, but I’ve got to get to this meeting. You had yours first, did you piss them off this time?”Jeanne shrugged and took Kiara’s datapad. “It’s hard to read them sometimes, but don’t worry I was professional. Now get in there and do your thing. I’ll be waiting for you when you get out Sexy.” Jeanne gave her a wink and a kiss and Kit’cha gave her an awkward one armed hug as Kit’von scaled his back. “You’ll do great. I’ve known you long enough to know that if anyone can handle the council it’s you. Now I need to go feed this one before he drools on me any- oh, there it is.”

Kiara squared her shoulders and walked through the arched doors into the council room. The room was normally built for hosting large gatherings of the member races, but today it held only the 3 senior members of the council at the curved semi-circle table on the central dais. Kiara had to practically run down the stairs when she realized that the council was already waiting on her. As she reached the dais Kaira realized there was no table or any kind of concession made for her comfort. This wasn’t an interview, it was an interrogation. Kiara planted her feet and stood face to face with the council for the first time in a decade.

The senior council members came from the three spacefaring species with the largest populations and most economic power. There was a female Turic named Shureen. Like most females she was larger than the males at nearly 3 meters tall, though she had shorter, black fur making her muscular physique even more impressive. Females also had a large flat crest on their forehead that the males lacked. Shureen’s was impressively styled with ornate engravings, an obvious status symbol. The Kennic named Arid was currently male having just molted. He would be irritable, Kiara made a mental note of that. Kennic were closest to reptiles from old Earth and there were rumors that some species of dinosaurs were old an old Kennic colony. The final council member was an Acanthius who had no name as it was part of a hive mind. It wore a complex environment suit that allowed its face to be exposed while still allowing it to breath while onboard the station. Its moist, grey skin, slitted nose and black eyes reminded her of sea creatures she had seen on several planets.

It was Arid that spoke first. “Glad you could join us Miss Venn.” Kiara wondered if he simply didn’t know how she preferred to be addressed or if he was deliberately trying to get under her skin, either way she put it aside. “It’s an honor to meet you all. I understand that this meeting is in regards to my work with the lost human colonies.” Arid made a clicking sound in the back of his throat like dry, coughing laughter. “Is that what we’re calling them now? Isn’t there a human expression better suited to dealing with pests?” The Acanthius shot a glance at Arid. “I apologize for my fellow council member, he should not be allowing a personal problem to interfere with his duties. You are correct though. This is in regards to your work over the last 25 sols with the human rehabilitation division of the council.”

Kiara shifted her weight uncomfortably and didn’t know what to say. Officially she had been given the title of “Ambassador Liaison to Human colony worlds” but she had always felt there was an undercurrent of resentment that the galactic council felt towards humans on account of EarthGov’s actions. It was Shureen finally spoke “I’ll get to the point of it all. We’re here to decide the fate of these human colonies. You have proven that an individual human can integrate into galactic society with effort and understanding, what we need to determine is if humanity as a whole is capable of this same feat or if they will repeat their imperialistic past and attempt to bring war against us again.”

“I...don’t...” Kiara began to say before Arid cut her off. “Please spare us your babbling human. It’s a simple proposition: Make your case for humanity and if the council decides in your favor humanity will once again be allowed to travel the galaxy unrestricted, otherwise we may need to quarantine them. Again.” The Acanthius’ nose slits flared in annoyance at Arid before it turned its attention back to Kiara. “Your colleagues were all very professional but can’t seem to speak for more than themselves. So I ask you Miss Kiara Williams-Venn, why should humanity be allowed to once again join the rest of the galaxy?”

In the back of her mind Kiara could see her family urging her on and she smiled to herself knowing exactly what to say. “I couldn’t possibly deny humanity’s dark past. In my research I found that even prior to the Unification War and the rise of EarthGov we were frequently a brutal people that would attempt to justify our worst impulses on the basis of demonizing an ‘other’. From that point of view it would only make sense that humanity would repeat this awful cycle again and again. What I’ve found just as often though is that in every situation in which humanity gives in to these impulses it is a society that cannot maintain itself. Regimes that promised to last a thousand years on the strength of their convictions alone crumbled to dust within a single lifespan. It always fails because though that fear and hate is a part of us, so is our love.”

“The simple fact is that we are a people of duality. We are fiercely loyal to each other, while also engaging in rivalries that can outlive our descendants. We are dangerous and destructive while also being brilliant, creative and adaptable. I’ve personally witnessed feats of human ingenuity that most council races would be hard pressed to replicate. I’ve also witnessed the same people rushing headlong into disaster because they didn’t take the time to understand their situation. I know that the brutal, horrible things that were done in the name of an ‘Earth First’ mentality by a fascist government can’t be undone and could never be repaid. I also know that humans are hard working, dedicated and compassionate and that many of us, if given the chance we would not stop attempting to make amends for our past.”

Kiara took a deep breath and locked eyes with Arid. “You argue that humanity should be segregated to a handful of under supplied colonies. I argue that if that way is pursued it can only end in disaster. Those lost colonies would find their way back into space if given enough time and though most wouldn’t carry a grudge, if they were continually treated as ‘pests’ then it would only be a matter of time before it came to conflict again. If you want to avoid that future then integration and unity are the only answer.” Arid glared silently at Kiara and Shureen thoughtfully tapped her fingers on the desk. The Acanthius broke the silence. “Are you suggesting that not only do we lift travel restrictions on human worlds, but that we actively attempt to reintegrate them with galactic society?” Kiara nodded “And a seat on the wider council so that we have a say in our treatment wouldn’t hurt.”

The frills on Arid’s arms and back flared but he didn’t say a word. Shureen cleared her throat. “Your ‘husband’ has told us much about human cultures that he has researched. He seems truly enamored with your species.” Arid again gave that dry, clicking laugh, Shureen ignored him. “But what he has said confirms much of what you tell us now. Indeed, you come from a race that is remarkably strong of will. We will have much to discuss with the wider council at a later date and we may need to call on you again, but I can at least promise that we will bring this matter before them. You have represented your race admirably Kiara. Thank you for meeting with us today.” Kiara tented her fingers across her midsection forming a perfect triangle and bowed. Shureen stood and returned the traditional Turic honorific.

Kiara smiled to herself and left the council chamber to go meet her family for dinner. It had been a long day and there was still a lot to do, but that could wait for a while longer.