One thing I got
from Flamingo Feather was the cosmic sense of adventure that is earth,
moon and sun circling eachother as Man plunges into the interior of what was a
dark continent.
“Anal-compulsive” is right. That is the world where numbers have overwhelmed the carefree, rugged simple act of living and giving birth. That is what Musk &Co are because the world they live in is an illusion.
(moonsong, page
202)
What that seems
to mean to me is that the moon seen from earth symbolises physical reality, of
the most primordial kind. The moon is larger seen from earth than it is seen
from Apollo 13 and, actually, once you get there you find nothing!
The fullness of
the moon is seen from primeval earth, and it is a physical reality. This is the
way I can defend the seemingly indefensible position that space travel is a
perspective illusion.
Man builds
linear edifices or elegant circles, such as you find in Silent Running
or 2001: A Space Odyssey. Nature breaks them up with irregularity; this
is where you get the ethical theme of Silent Running (also found in
Japanese anime Macross).
Planets are
battered objects and Man, if he were to land on them, would add a perspective
order of his own. Earth, because it is a living planet, has an organic order, not a logical one.
If
interplanetary travel were attempted, all it would mean is that a perspective
order would replace the natural order, which is rugged and carefree. No doubt
the internet would connect them, or the infrastructure of electromagnetic
perspective.
In other words,
the solar serpent slowly emerges from the Earth, and it’s called space travel!
That basic line goes back to Hyborian Bridge 37 (“luxury liner”). That
everything – bar nothing – is electrochemical or electromagnetic. So all that
would happen is physical reality (body) would be replaced by the head. It’s an
illusion.
This is where it
pays to go back to Howard and his savage ethic. Even if one can see
similarities with van der Post’s African fantasy Flamingo Feather, in
Howard the heroism is as muscular as the demons that face it.
One flailing
talon-armed limb knocked his helmet from his head. A little lower and it would
have decapitated him. But fierce joy surged through him as his savagely driven
sword sank deep in the monster’s groin. He bounded backward from a flailing
stroke, tearing his sword free as he leaped. The Talons raked his breast,
ripping through mail-links as if they had been cloth. But his return spring was
like that of a starving wolf.
No quarter is
given nor asked in the red butchery.
The demon
staggered and fell sprawling sidewise, its head hanging only by a shred of
flesh. The fires that veiled it leaped fiercely upward, now red as gushing
blood, hiding the figure from view. A scent of burning flesh filled Conan’s
nostrils.
Red butchery and
blood-red moon are one and the same, and you find the same imagery throughout
pulps
(TCJ 90 1984)
In this one you’ve
got three artists – Williamson, Krenkel and Frazetta – and it’s clear from the
picture on the right something is added to Al’s pencils. There are more leaves,
more waving tendrils and fronds, towering crags, an aura of romance.
Romance is fierce
and lusty and primeval (even 2001 starts with apes!). Romance exists on
primeval planets such as the ones imagined by Al and Wally Wood. It’s not
something Krigstein is known for so he cannot add the raw savagery.
Primeval power
is the power of earth and moon, not sun which can be illusory. If you think about
it, EC science fiction always has two things: the sleek spaceship and the
primitive planet. It goes much deeper than aesthetics; the aura of decay and
regeneration. The entire area of the underworld is lacking in a solar culture.
If you recall, in Greek mythology Pluto has Proserpine (Persephone) as a bride –
but only for six months of the year.
She is spring
and joins her mother Ceres (harvest) the other six months. This cycle is
harvest moon, the mother earth. Robert Howard’s space fantasy, Almuric,
is even more obvious as it is much more a pure fantasy set on an alien planet
(of the imagination). Similarly for A Princess of Mars, there are no
rockets, only prehistoric beasts. CL Moore’s Northwest of Earth contains
no rocket descriptions, but a lot of seedy and dank underworld descriptions.
The future “they”
prescribe is all about numbers. How do you think a rocket flies, detaches then
lands back on the flight pad? Because there’s a gyro that is electronically tied
to fins and ailerons and thrusters and there are a lot of algorithms floating
around. Algorithms are numbers (machine code).
So, as CC Beck
says, the fact that it’s very precise isn’t surprising. Here’s a quote from
Grace Slick’s memoirs.
Then, on
October 30, 1939, at Chicago Hope Hospital, Virginia Wing gave birth to Grace
Barnett Wing at 7:47 A.M. Well, not really. I don’t know my actual time of
birth or the name of the hospital, because they weren’t written on my birth
certificate. Back then, record keepers weren’t as anal-compulsive as they are
today, so I’ve always made up my own stats when it was time to fill in the
blanks. (page 12 - compare with Lindsay Anderson's quote on "numbers" Alternates 4)
“Anal-compulsive” is right. That is the world where numbers have overwhelmed the carefree, rugged simple act of living and giving birth. That is what Musk &Co are because the world they live in is an illusion.
By heading
straight for “the heart of the raging sun” (Pictorial 25) they enter an
electromagnetic world that is not strong and physical. Without the physical,
muscular strength of the active body, they are in their heads and the
end-result is often the compulsive plying of figures (meaning numbers!)
Similar remarks
apply to Wall Street POWER
IN THE BLOOD
I’m not
anti-dollar or anti-rocket science, but the idea that their notion of
interplanetary colonisation is anything more than random figures by mad
algorithms is madness. Whether it’s Bezos, Musk, Zuckerberg or Gates all are in
the same electromagnetic illusion that denies the physical body its cultural
reality on Earth. One word for it is hygiene (machine); another is compulsive
(order).
The
carefree life is the physical reality of the body, not the compulsions of the
head (pornographic or otherwise). This is the land of folk-tales and folk music
(page 57)
From 50s folk is
a small journey to Rocket 88 and the new era. The carefree sounds of the early
soul/r’n’b have been regurgitated so often, it really does pay to listen to the
original facility.
Rescue is what
the muscular, heroic figure is often doing on Weird Tales covers by
Margaret Brundage.
