Hyborian Bridge 62 (part1)

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.

(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)

ODETTA

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.

FONTELLA BASS

Rescue is what the muscular, heroic figure is often doing on Weird Tales covers by Margaret Brundage.